A few weeks ago I made the difficult choice of ending my active participation in a venture that I had been involved in for more than 3 years. I had started a logistical outfit with a friend several years ago and then broke away on my own after over a year to begin my very own logistical outfit alone. It was a decision I had taken with the hope that focusing fully on this line of business would afford me the chance to make it a significant force in last mile delivery services within Abuja. Things didn’t go as planned owing to many factors but what really made me shut down operations was largely as a result of an obligation I could not keep up with.
Before I go into the reason why I shut down this venture I must confess that when I began this logistical outfit I was so in love with it. I loved the day to day challenges and the fact that I made so many businesses seamless was almost all of the satisfaction I thought I needed. I was also in love with the idea of building a brand and watching it grow organically. The gradual process of seeing people become familiar with your work and brand is something I feel helps one see the physical manifestation of fulfillment. But there’s so much more else that life demands of people that I wasn’t meeting up to or able to handle because the business itself wasn’t bringing me monetary security. Business wasn’t growing at the rate where I could fully focus on the operations or other aspects to help it maintain its growth rate consistently.
Coupled with other challenges I found myself slipping into a serious depression last year. At first I thought it would pass but when I started seeing the problem affect my business I knew I had to do something about it. My head space was so preoccupied with so many thoughts of dissatisfaction it increasingly became difficult to give 100% to keep the business running optimally. Close friends suggested I close up shop and get a 9–5 job but I think a part of my ego felt it would be admitting to failure if I went down that path. If you’re familiar with depression you know that at a point you begin to question your own self worth and lose interest in a lot of things you were passionate about. That’s exactly what started to happen to me and then things were so bad it became difficult to pay salaries. If there’s one thing I won’t compromise on, it’s staff salaries and when I found myself unable to meet up with this particular obligation I knew it was time to pack it in.
I don’t want to dwell too long on this part of the story so in summary I finally opened up to my family about my situation and I guess it became easier for me from that point on. Somehow the clarity of the things I felt I needed to do flooded my mind. Immediately business opened this year I intimated to my staff that it would be likely business would be shutting down by the end of the month. I also contacted all of my regular clients and apologized to them. I also provided them with a reliable alternative for their logistical needs. The funny thing was listening to each of them genuinely encourage me to keep my head up even though they sounded disappointed.
It’s been a month since operations officially shut down and I can’t say I have fully figured out what my next move is but I have to say that mentally, I feel relieved. I’m slowly getting back to enjoying my old passions again and building myself back up. In truth I am going forward to the next thing with such a priceless wealth of experience, I’m not sure if I could have gotten the same somewhere else.
