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My thoughts and advice on building a strong personal brands.

Reinvention: How to Live Multiple Times in 1 Lifetime

April 13, 2025

Reinvention: How to Live Multiple Lives in 1 Lifetime

Reinvention is how you live multiple lives in one.

Let me explain how. April 12 was my birthday. The birthday came with beautiful prayers, wishes, and messages.

And it felt so good to be appreciated.

The birthday anniversary also reminded me of how fast life moves, with responsibilities and relationships growing stronger or weaker with time.

Time is Constant for Everybody, yet Different for Anybody

When you are in your 20s, you seem to have abundant time.

It’s the same 24 hours for everyone, but you have more energy to stay awake. And so many interests, passions and causes compete for your ‘seemingly infinite’ time.

Whether it’s launching a business or growing your business. Whether it’s finding a new job or maintaining your current job.

Starting an NGO. Or being part of an NGO. Watching a personal development video. Or re-watching a Netflix series.

The options are limitless.

Then suddenly, your time now seems to get shorter with every birthday celebration.

Reinvention: The True Concept of Time

There used to be days when I woke up by 5 a.m., went to work, called friends, read voraciously, wrote over a thousand words, took an online course, slept by 1 a.m., and still felt energetic the next day.

Now, there are days when I struggle to read, return a missed call or finish a 90-minute movie as I try to relax.

Even though you want time to go at your pace, this is when patience comes into play.

The Patience Paradox

In this present age of cybercrimes and the increasing display of wealth, it is easy to sway from the right path.

Let me explain this with a few real-life scenarios:

Example 1: You just started your business. You sell cakes. Or probably clothes.

Your cakes are sweet and amazing. Your clothes are top-quality and fitted.

But the customer patronage is low. The sales are not coming as you expect.

Then you ask yourself, why do I have Few customers?

The keyword is PATIENCE.

Example 2: You wrote your first book. Or built your first app.

You spend a lot of energy and time on it. Excitement overwhelms you. You are hyped up.

You finally launch the book. Your app is live on the mobile app stores.

You get a lot of congratulations, but the users are few.

It’s nothing compared to the resources spent.

Then you ask yourself, why is my book not a bestseller? Why are people not talking about my app with their friends and family?

My friend, the keyword is PATIENCE.

Example 3: You organise an event.

You design flyers and publicise them on social media.

The venue is set.

You even bought light refreshments for your guests. You tell your friends, family and even enemies.

Most of them promise to come. You are already imagining a fully packed event.

Then the D-day comes. Only a handful of people attended.

And some of them only came because they heard there would be small chops.

Then you ask yourself, am I missing something here?

The keyword is PATIENCE.

In these situations, you have two options.

You can either wait for your friends to make money and then buy your products.

Or you can search for clients who are willing to pay for your services.

Both choices will still take time. It will still require PATIENCE.

Does this mean, you should stop trying? Of course not.

Patience is one of the most underrated virtues. It takes patience to stop making rash or stupid decisions when climbing the ladder of success.

It takes patience to analyse a situation and make the right decision.

Reinvention: The Patience Paradox

You can always speed up the process through direct mentorship, deliberate practice and careful observation of the greats.

But you should not skip the process altogether.

Trust the process. Enjoy every moment you spend today in improving yourself and your craft.

Patience is the bridge between lifetimes, and this is when it leads to growth.

Growth – The Misinterpreted Compounder

When we were younger, growth was often defined as the irreversible increase in age and size.

But now that you are older, this concept changes, especially for life itself.

Growth is now the increase in character, competence and convictions.

The attitude you exhibit. The passion and dedication you infuse in your work and craft.

And the values and principles that govern your daily decisions.

As I read some messages on my birthday, I rediscovered that growth is not just counting the number of birthdays you have witnessed so far on Earth.

But it’s also in the quality of your relationships – people above, below and on your level.

Growth is reflected in your influence over people and in the values you try to teach and learn daily.

Reinvention: What Growth also Means

The destination may change. The career prospects may not be what you planned it to be.

But one thing is still sure,

God’s Grace. Dedication. Diligence. Perseverance. Execution. Creativity.

The principles that worked for successful people will still work for you and me too.

Growth is the soil where your multiple lives bloom.

The Rule of Reinvention

In my “past lives”, I have been a laptop seller, graphic designer, biology undergraduate and even a client experience officer.

Elon Musk worked on online maps, business directories, and financial services before he became CEO of Tesla. Dangote imported and distributed commodities before he started manufacturing. Jesus Christ was a carpenter, healer and teacher before he became the saviour.

Most people replay the same year 10 times and call it a decade.

They work, sleep, scroll, repeat. They do not evolve, only age. That’s not life. That’s existing.

Living multiple lives in one lifetime requires intentional evolution, not just passive endurance.

Leonardo da Vinci didn’t just paint the Mona Lisa; he was an inventor, scientist, and architect. Each pursuit was a “life” he lived within one lifetime. Oprah shifted from news anchor to media mogul to philanthropist. Each phase was a distinct “life.”

The key to reinventing yourself is to learn skills and keep compounding them. Every new skill is a new life. So, try to learn and apply one life-changing skill per year.

Coding, storytelling, public speaking, negotiation, photography — each opens a new version of you.

My book, Fast Track, can help you learn skills and place you on the path of reinvention in a shorter time.

Embrace skill stacking. Don’t see learning as ending with formal education or your current job. Actively seek out and dedicate time (even just 30 minutes a day) to learning a skill completely unrelated to your main hustle.

Use Patience to build competence, let time allow it to mature, and watch how this new skill adds another “layer” or potential “life” to your existence.

Treat your Life as a Netflix Series

Think of your life not as a single career path or role, but as a Netflix series.

Just as how a Netflix series rarely stops at a single season, you should not limit yourself to one version. Develop all aspects of yourself.

Each reinvention of yourself is a new season.

Your season 1 can be “the Hustler”. Season 2 can be “the Learner”. Your season 3 can be “the Baller”

You don’t cancel the show after one season. You keep producing, rewriting, shocking the audience. The plot twist is your responsibility.

Living multiple lives means actively working and balancing these different storylines in your series over time.

Some seasons might be excellent while others are just okay, and you might add entirely new storylines throughout your lifetime. Time allows each episode to improve, Patience helps you get better seasons (life challenges), and Growth is the overall increase in your series’ value (your richness of experience and character).

Don’t let your years pass by and track only birthdays.

Create intentional ceremonies or markers when you’re entering a new “life” phase.

What about the day you started your first business? Or started a new job? Did you mark the day you moved to a new city with just faith and your laptop?

Create the Right Timeline

In the End, Reinvention is for Your Own Good

When you cultivate different aspects of yourself – different skills, different roles, different knowledge bases – you build incredible resilience.

If one area of your life faces a setback (like a job loss, a business downturn), you have other developed parts of yourself to lean on, draw strength from, or even pivot towards.

You’re not a “one-season wonder.” You’ve lived multiple lives and learned different ways of thinking and problem-solving.

This adaptability, nurtured by patience through various growth cycles over Time, makes you better equipped to handle the inevitable uncertainties life throws your way.

You bounce back faster and see opportunity where others see only crisis.

This is how you will live multiple times in a Single Lifetime.

Reinvent Yourself Often

July 1, 2024

Lucky Break: Once in A Lifetime Opportunities are Overrated

What does it mean to have a lucky break?

On 29^th May 2024, football fans were shocked when Bayern Munich the biggest club in Germany announced their newest club manager. A popular sports media agency carried the announcement with an headline saying “the World has officially gone mad.”

Apparently, this manager is inexperienced. Just four years of coaching experience. And one of those years was spent in the English second division.

His only European campaign ended in a Conference League qualifying loss. He has never coached in a Champions League game.

In corporate terms, it’s like a multibillion international company hiring for the role of their managing director. A position that demands decades of experience and influence.

Then this company gives this position to a young man who has only managed a small startup in a local city.

This man does not appear to have the capability or achievements to get the coaching role.

But this is what the available data indicates.

Stay with me. There are important lessons to be learned from this appointment.

Vincent Kompany. That’s the name of Bayern’s newest manager. He is not at fault here, even if it feels like a massive jump.

At 38 years old, Kompany is still a promising manager with the potential to become a great one. After a few seasons at mid-level clubs, he should be able to refine and expand on his ideas, and then he could be prepared for a position as important as that of Bayern Munich. However, it all seems to be happening much too soon.

From a wider angle, it highlights the mess Bayern were in. This ‘multibillion dollar organization’ blew through their managerial targets after asking their current manager to leave the club.

They were left with a manager who appears underqualified and unprepared for a job of this magnitude. Months of searching Europe for possible targets. Pursuing big names, and repeatedly failing. All efforts were in vain.

Getting a Lucky Break

When Preparation Meets Opportunity

“If you are very skilled in a field, you will notice when a lucky break happens in that field.” – Naval Ravikant

A “lucky break” is often seen as a stroke of good fortune. However, those who are skilled recognize these breaks because they understand the context and the implications of the opportunities presented.

When a prepared individual encounters an opportunity, they can take immediate and effective action. This ability to act quickly and appropriately can create what seems like “luck.”

It looks like Vincent Kompany already knew about this one.

His managerial credentials don’t jump off the page. Kompany first became player-manager at his boyhood club, Anderlecht, in 2020. The club legend was tasked with bringing the sleepy giant back to the top by the Belgian team, who offered him a four-year contract.

Anderlecht finished fourth in his first season in charge. He also finished third in his second season while making the Belgian Cup final. Kompany then accepted a coaching job at Burnley.

His first season was historic as the team played delightful playing football. Burnley topped the Championship, winning the league with 101 points – becoming the first team to hit triple digits in nine years.

To be frank though, it felt Kompany was doing something great with Burnley.

Small club or not, the quote of “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity”

I understand that his next season with Burney was disastrous, that saw them finish 19th in the Premier League, being relegated back to the Championship.

But his “lucky break” came at the right time.

LESSON 1: THERE’S ALWAYS A COMEBACK

Life is in cycles and seasons will always come back and go.

Therefore, everyone in life would experience significant life changing opportunities.

You will have several opportunities in life to experience breakthroughs.

Before these breakthroughs arrive, have a combination of hard work and the ability to recognize and act on opportunities.

Like Kompany, this combination is essential in becoming the best option for successful breakthroughs

Will you be prepared when your own lucky break comes?

When Opportunities are already missed

At the start of 2024, Bayern Munich decided to rid their previous manager before the season ends. With this strategy, they believed they could get a head-start on finding the best candidate to take over.

Their primary target was the manager of their domestic rival club. It was Bayern’s tradition to bring anyone who threatens their dominance in their league to their club and it was believed that their primary target would carry on that tradition.

After all, they were the biggest club in their country. It was not to be, though. In retrospect, this was a messy strategy.

Because of this rejection, Bayern were then left scrambling for other options. They turned to the man they had sacked only 12 months previously in controversial circumstances. This man rejected them too.

The German giant began a second wave of search. Rejection. Upon. Rejection. All potential candidates turned down the role. Because they had signed new contracts with other clubs. Or personal reasons.

And this is how the biggest club in Germany ended up with a manager of a relegated club in England.

LESSON 2: DON’T BE ANGRY IN THE FACE OF REJECTION

“Even the migratory birds are punctual to their seasons.] Yes, the stork [excelling in the great height of her flight] in the heavens knows her appointed times [of migration], and the turtledove, the swallow, and the crane observe the time of their return.” – Jeremiah 8:7 AMPC

You might have missed some opportunities in the past. Or gotten rejected.

This does not mean you get angry or bitter in those times. Rather look at them as learning opportunities

It is like what an old king once said, “The stone which the builders rejected eventually becomes the chief cornerstone.”

Rejection might just be a step in fulfilling your destiny. So don’t be careless in the times of abundance. Don’t be afraid in the times of leanness too.

This is all for my end.

Will Kompany be successful at Bayern Munich? We don’t know yet.

That’s your homework to find out as the year goes on 😉.

March 3, 2024

Productize Yourself: Become The Best at What You Do

“PRODUCTIZE YOURSELF: Productize has specific knowledge and leverage. Yourself has uniqueness and accountability. Yourself also has specific knowledge. So you can combine all of these pieces into these two words.”

This term Productize Yourself is popularized by the Angel Investor – Naval Ravikant. Naval is an investor, who invested early in companies like Uber or Notion. He is also an entrepreneur, co-founding AngelList.

As a product manager, I’ve always been fascinated by this concept and in recent times, I decided to take a deeper look at this notion of productizing yourself.

What does it Mean to Productize Yourself

Productizing yourself means that you must figure out what you’re uniquely good at and apply as much leverage as possible. It’s like taking the best of what you are and packaging it in a way that creates value for others. This concept is common in entrepreneurship, freelancing, consulting, and personal branding.

And you can apply this concept to yourself today.

Productize Yourself

Start with Leverage

Making impact and building influence requires leverage.

To Leverage is to use ‘something’ to its maximum advantage. In this context, that ‘something’ is yourself. How can you fully optimize your skills, knowledge, and experience?

And there are many ways to build leverage.

Leverage can be built through labor or capital. However, these kinds of leverage are gifts from other people. For labor, somebody must follow you. To obtain capital, someone must give you money, assets to oversee or equipment.

Yet, there is a new form of leverage.

Leverage with Code and Media to fully productize yourself

These include books, media, movies, and codes. With this new form of leverage, you can easily package your knowledge with the intention of making it simple to duplicate and distributing them to everybody without having to pay significant additional expenses. Naval called them ‘products of no marginal cost of replication’.

This is the perfect strategy for productizing yourself.

You can locate your audience by searching the internet and social media platforms. And you can use the internet to express yourself uniquely, grow a business, provide value, and make people happy. Any specialized interest can be pursued online, provided you’re the best at it.

All you need is your phone (or a computer) —you don’t need anyone’s permission.

If you can’t code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts – Naval Ravikant

Be Credible and Accountable

Intentions don’t matter. Actions do – Naval Ravikant

To get the best of your leverage, you must establish credibility and accountability.

Credibility is risky because you have to do everything in your own name. On the other end, accountability has two drawbacks. It enables you to accept responsibility for successes and bear the consequences when things go wrong.

But imagine this…

You’re waiting for the chance to shine when something new comes along that requires your set of skills. Meanwhile, you have built your brand on LinkedIn, on X and by constantly sharing your knowledge. You took some risks to establish your reputation. When it’s time to seize the opportunity, you can do so by applying as much leverage as you possibly can.

That’s what being accountable will help you.

You have to enjoy it and keep doing it, keep doing it, and keep doing it. Don’t keep track, and don’t keep count because if you do, you will run out of time. – Naval Ravikant

And here is the last step.

Be Authentic to truly Productize Yourself

No one can compete with you on being you. Most of life is a search for who and what needs you the most. – Naval Ravikant

There will always be competition out there.

Finding your unique skill set and being authentic are the keys to breaking free from the competition trap. No one will be able to compete with you because you love what you do, so you know how to do it better.

The good news is that, despite our individual differences, everyone excels at being themselves.

Remember this as well…

Make your most important decisions when you are determining what is right to do and who is best to collaborate with. The real secret to making major improvements in both your financial and personal relationships is staying committed and positive in the long term.

Become the best in the world at what you do. Keep redefining what you do until this is true. – Naval Ravikant