I'm so totally honoured to share that I spoke at The Rise to Millions Conference in Paris and received a Legendary Woman of Impact Award there recently 🥳🥳🥳
It was the last weekend of October to be exact
As I stood in front of the crowd, trying to find the words to express how honoured I was, I ended my speech by saying something like: “Well, this wasn’t on my bingo card, but it’s real, and it’s happening because I chose to follow my dreams...literally"
Here's what I meant by that 👇🏾
My grandma was born in the village in Nigeria at a time where girls were not sent to school
That meant from then until the time of her passing in 2022, she never learned to read or write
Despite this, she worked her butt off as a trader in order to afford my mum's school fees when she was growing up
This is because, to this day, education is not free in Nigeria
My mum was then able to move to the UK in the early 80s, where I've been born and raised, and push both me and my sister all the way to degree level
When I first started to gain traction with PR it was as a blogger in the first quarter of 2017. However, by that December, I was ready to quit writing all together
Here's why 👇🏾
"If someone who I've considered a sister for 10 years could so misconstrue and under rate my writing," I remember thinking, "What hope is there that strangers will get me?"
And so, like I said, I seriously considered calling it quits with The Far Above Rubies Collection and all the business ideas that I hoped would come out of it
Fast forward to now and I am an award winning blogger, international speaker and freelance writer who has not only been able to monetise my gift but get featured on platforms such as Thrive Global, The TEDx blog, HuffPost, Bustle, Mic, Addicted2Success, Black Ballad and more. I also just got rave reviews for Media Magic (the luxury retreat that I held in Tulum, Mexico in July teaching business women how to get PR for themselves)
What led to this success was...
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, "It's not the destination, it’s the journey” that counts. Now, I’m sure we’ve all heard these wise words before, but how many of us really and truly apply them to our lives and businesses?
Often, we get caught up in wanting to see the results of our efforts without taking time to enjoy the journey and the getting there. I was reminded of the danger of this way of thinking when I listened to one of my favourite podcasts, The R&B Money Podcast, with Tank and J. Valentine, recently. In the episode I tuned into, they were interviewing someone by the name of Adrian Marcel, and he said something quite powerful and similar to Emerson's quote which was, “A lot of people get frustrated and they quit on their dreams [in this case becoming R&B artists] because they make the date the destination”. I.e., they start saying stuff like, “Man, I’ve been doing this for [years] and I’m not making the kind of headway that I would want to; so I give up.”
Even though we’re not all trying to be R&B stars, we can all relate to having a plan for our careers and lives that hasn't panned out by the time that we thought it would. This expectation of success and the frustration of failure is something I see a lot in PR especially when people end up hearing nothing back or they get a “no” after sending a few pitches. This makes them quit on themselves because when they’ve put in the time and effort with no result, they start thinking that no one wants to hear their story.
If this has been your experience; if this has been your frustration, I want to encourage you…
If you follow me on social media, you would have seen that I recently went to Germany for my friend's beautiful wedding.
In the few weeks leading up to her big day, my dear friend and soon-to-be bride, Kelly, asked if I could read a prayer at her ceremony. I was honoured, and of course, I said YES!
My first thought when she asked me was that all I needed to do was read a verse from The Bible. I was a little mistaken and would soon realise this, thanks to a message from the best man. Fast-forward to a couple of messages later, and worry starting to kick in (lol), I learned that it wasn't a reading of the word that Kelly needed from me. She wanted me to write a few lines that I would say in front of the congregation!
I won't lie; I was a little nervous because I was wondering what I could possibly say to the bride and groom. So, I took a few days to think about it, and these are the words that came to my heart and landed on my page:
One of the things that I like to do to de-stress is play Tetris.
For ages my high score was in the high 6000s and I spent ages trying to beat it until one day I stopped and just went back to playing for pleasure.
A few days ago, I opened up the game to play it again and had to laugh. My new high score was 7032 and I had absolutely no idea when I'd done it!
One of my favourite things to do during the Christmas period is binge watch Christmas movies like Elf, Home Alone, The Grinch (Jim Carey's version, of course), Love Actually and Mean Girls
If you frowned in confusion at the mention of Mean Girls, you clearly don't remember the iconic talent show scene
If you've never seen it before (or simply not as recently as me) it's basically a comedy about a girl called Cady who tries to sabotage the most popular girl in school, Regina George
Because needless to say Regina's really not very nice
One of the many plans that Cady hatches to take Regina down (with a little help from her friends) is giving her these "protein bars" that actually make people gain weight while telling Regina that it does the opposite. And, as you can see from the gif below, she succeeds
I always say that when I was a little girl I was a hybrid between girly girl and tomboy. Like on one hand, I adored Disney, dressing up and playing with my Barbies. Yet on the other hand, I loved WWE wrestling, got hurt climbing things or jumping off them all the time and adored superhero cartoons like Spiderman, Xmen and more.
Not much has changed as an adult either and I love that Disney+ literally allows me to satisfy both sides of me. Like, all my favourite Disney princesses and Marvel movies all in the same place? Yes please!
My favourite thing about both types of movies is seeing how the heroes in these stories came to be (their origin stories). Do you know who else loves a good origin story? Podcast, radio and conference hosts. So much so that "how did you first get started in business?" (or a variation of it) is always asked in interviews.
If you're anything like me, your business started as something that you did naturally for yourself that people:
Saw that you had a talent for
Hated doing/could not do for themselves
Were willing to pay you to do for them or coach them through so that they could learn to do it too
and then it just grew and evolved from there.
Well the same is true for PR, sis…
