Year in Review: Growing with Your People

The growth and development of people is the highest calling of leadership — Harvey S. Firestone

Happy Birthday, Kelvin! 🥳

It’s that time of the year were I look back on the previous year and try to document some of the highlights and low-lights.

At the end of my last year-in-review, I hoped to have more stories in a year. As expected, I have more stories, experiences and lessons. It’s usually when you do reflect on the past you realize how much can happen in a year.

My main goal going into the year was to help the people in my close circle to achieve their goals. I’ll refer to them as “my people” for the rest of this post. My thinking was that if I help my people achieve their goals, they will be empowered to help me, as well as others, in the future. Throughout the year, whatever they needed — time, money, advice, whatever — I gave.

I didn’t have much time to chase some of the personal goals I had in mind. Work took up most of my time and left little room for anything else. Most of the year, I thought about different ways to make more time for myself. However, I never figured it out. The only thing that could give me more time was letting go of some work engagements but given the layoffs that have happened in the tech space in the last couple of years, it didn’t seem like the right option.

I did what anyone would have done in my shoes: sacrifice my mental health in the short term. At least until things settled down in the tech space. I used whatever free time I had to help my people chase their goals.

One thing I did do was travel. I’m a big believer in savings and investing for the future but I also believe in having a good time now. I always like to “reward” myself from time to time for a job well done. I travelled to a few places within Nigeria: Lagos, Ibadan, Uyo and Abuja. In that order. I tried to visit cool things during these trips. There’s an education that comes from travelling that can’t be taught in school. You won’t know until you travel.

In the coming year, I want to travel out of Nigeria. I want to see other African countries. Interestingly, I’ve travelled to a few countries outside Africa but not a single one in Africa. I look forward to changing that in the coming year.

A highlight of my year was experiencing a miracle, like an actual miracle. I’m a Christian so I do believe miracles happen. I’ve just never experienced one up close and personal. It didn’t happen to me so I can’t go into the details. It’s not my story to tell. But it reinforced my faith even more.

There are good habits that I’ve developed over time which I doubled down on. Saving, investing, learning and upskilling. I’m always keeping my eyes open to opportunities for growth, both as a person, in my career and finances. These things are lifelong habits so I’ll always be making improvements here.

As 2023 drew closer to an end, things started coming together for my people. Just before that though, I was let go from one of the work engagements. While it was sad that happened cause I had grown fond of the people and the company, I had seen it coming for some time. I think this prepared me mentally for when it eventually happened. The silver lining was that I now had more free time to myself so I started thinking of my personal goals.

During the last quarter of the year, it was one good news after another. From September to December, it was a crazy run of good news. New jobs, graduation and promotion. My people won! All the work put in throughout the year came together in those last 4 months and it was exciting to be part of it. 2023 was a great year.

Over the last month, I’ve been thinking ahead of what I want to do in 2024. Some things are clear. For example, I started a small project called startupgraveyard.africa that gained some traction on X(formerly Twitter). It was inspired by a tweet by someone who requested a resource to document startups that failed in Africa. It only took a few days to put together but this was only possible because as at the time I saw the tweet (in December), I had some free time to myself.

I’ve not taken up any more extra engagements so I have free time to work on some personal projects. This is what I’ll spend the next few months doing. I can’t share more details right now but as things come together, I’ll share on X(I still mostly call it Twitter). Until this time next year, stay safe.