Last week Monday the 25^th day of July 2011 happens to be my birthday and also the 1^st year anniversary of naijapreneur Exactly a year ago I launched this site naijapreneur as my 26^th birthday gift to the world. I wrote about this in the very first post on this site, you can read about it here.

This experience of using one’s birthday as a blessing to others by creating a completely new project to give away as a gift to the world has been a huge blessing indeed. In other words, my birthdays are not just a celebration of life; they are also an avenue through which to make a difference.

I first learnt about this idea from Seth Godin and started applying it to my life 2 years ago on my 25^th birthday. Last year when I shared this story on the launch of naijapreneur with some young Nigerian CEOs, a bank manager was greatly inspired by it that she decided to celebrate her 40^th birthday in an orphanage with less privileged kids. Rather than ask invitees to give her a present, she asked us to bring the motherless children gifts instead.

Not only do I look forward to my birthday every July 25^th, I also look forward to the completion of a goal I set for myself a year ago. In essence, my birthdays serve as a benchmark for evaluating the progress of my life. I have learnt to not only grow older, but striving to do better with each passing year of my life. With each New Year, I conclude an old goal and set a new one against my next birthday.

These goals however are not random in nature, rather they are strategic. The completion of one leads me closer to the fulfillment of my life’s purpose. I want to be able to look back at the end of my life and see that I did use my life for something SIGNIFICANT [unique and useful].

For me, this is the highlight of my life every year. Every single day onward from my previous birthday till the next one, I live with one major goal in mind – the completion of my birthday gift to the world!

What is this year’s gift?

A 100+ page manifesto of unusual information for unusual entrepreneurs titled; “The Entrepreneur’s Journey”

This is my first published eBook which has taken me one whole year to complete. I am giving this away for FREE to as many entrepreneurs out there in the world who desires to make a success of their entrepreneurial journey.

The entrepreneur’s journey is the most unusual journey of your life as a human being. It is often referred to by many as “the road less traveled”.

The journey is not only tough, but also long. It is one journey that rarely has an end except death. The entrepreneur’s journey is a journey of a lifetime. It is one you are embarking on with your life!

In this free eBook, I will be taking you through the pages on how to evaluate your progress and make a success out of this unusual journey. I will be showing you how to succeed in business without losing your entrepreneurial soul. I will be showing you how to build a business that fulfills your life’s purpose!

The Entrepreneur’s Journey

Inside every one of us lies the spirit of business. That spirit of business is our purpose. The particular assignment every one of us have been created to accomplish here on earth. Your purpose is the spirit of business within you!

There is a problem plaguing humanity and the solution to that problem lies within you. For every problem, there is a purpose. Problems don’t exist for nothing; they exist for a purpose – to be solved. The purpose of problems is to inspire the quest for a solution. Problems offer mankind the rare privilege to be creative.

Without problems, we humans face the inherent danger of losing our creative potentials. Thank God for problems, because they help unlock our creativity. In other words, they help unleash the spirit of business [purpose] within every one of us!

The entrepreneur’s journey is about unleashing the spirit of business within. It is about our lifelong quest as entrepreneurs of creatively coming up with unique and useful solutions to the problems plaguing humanity. It is about using your life to make an impact through your business.

It is about you and the contributions you want to make through the business or businesses you establish. It is about finding and fulfilling your life’s purpose profitably. It is about making profits by making a difference [creating unique and useful solutions to humanity’s problems]. It is about using your life to build a SIGNIFICANT [extra-ordinary] business that fulfills your purpose here on earth profitably.

 

It is about changing the world and profiting from purpose!

Why I wrote this eBook?

Entrepreneurs in our quest to fulfill purpose through our untiring search and creation of solutions to the problems confronting humanity. We have been called crazy by our loved ones, some investors would consider us day dreamers, and some of our peers sometimes think we’ve lost it. It gets to a point that even we the entrepreneurs begin to question our own sanity in the heat of the journey.

The road is not only long and rough, but also full of thorns because of the endless risks and uncertainties involved. Success doesn’t happen overnight; so to say this is how you are doing is not as easy as it sounds. There are too many questions that need to be answered and too many factors that must be considered. There’s the money factor, time factor, fulfillment factor, life factor and freedom factor.

I’m sure you are familiar with at least one of these questions;

• “How is my life?”
• “Am I fulfilled as a person?”
• “How well did I do last year?”
• “Am I making progress or remaining stagnant?”
• “How is my business?”
•  “Is it making any significant progress at all?”
• “Is it what I should be doing with my life?”

Whether you choose to admit it or not, as entrepreneurs these questions always haunt us and they need to be answered. Else, we would lack the clarity of focus we need in order to achieve our entrepreneurial dreams.

Since you have decided to embark on this journey less travelled, how do you know how far and how well you are doing? How do you provide answers to some of the questions going through your mind and that of your loved ones? How do you evaluate your progress as an entrepreneur?

The challenge is arriving at a set of criteria on which to evaluate your progress as you go on this unusual journey. On what benchmark would you measure the progress of this unusual journey?

To evaluate your progress as you go through this unusual journey of entrepreneurship with your life is the essence of this free report. It was written to equip you as a tool for assessing the success of your entrepreneurial life and journey.

It is an attempt to help you answer the most important question in the mind of every human, what am I doing with my life?

That’s why this free report was created. To help entrepreneurs cut through all the clusters of ‘busy-ness’ in their lives in order to see clearly and focus entirely on what really counts as progress.

This report is not written for everybody. It is written for only those who care more about the quality of life they live rather than merely focusing on survival [getting by]. This report is written for those entrepreneurs who are purpose-driven; I refer to them as unusual entrepreneurs.

It is not only a road map, but more like a compass that brings you back on course every time you seem to have lost your way. Believe me when I say this, you’ll definitely lose your way from time to time as you go along this journey of the less traveled.

ONE LAST THING!

A gift is not meant to be kept, it is meant to be shared. There are a million and one unusual entrepreneurs out there in your network, this manifesto was written strictly for them. This is my birthday gift to you, in return all I ask is that you share it with others out there as well. Help spread the word. Please retweet on Twitter, share on Facebook, Linkedin, google+ and forward via email.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Thank you and God bless.