Hiiii! Please we will like to meet you

My name is Adeshayo, and I am a lover of words. I love writing. Writing allows me to express myself and my emotions. I pursued my knack for writing, and here I am. And I also love to develop new skills.

How are you with words?

I see words as a medium of expression, and people today talk too much. So I tend to listen more and play scenarios in my head. 

As a lover of words, do you listen more or talk more?

Well, it depends. If you are meeting me for the first time, you will think I am a quiet person, but once I get to know you, I can disturb your life. So to answer your question, it depends on the level of the relationship.

What do you do for Digital Abundance?

I am an email marketer, and I also handle some parts of social media, but it is not as pronounced as email marketing.

So how does email marketing relate to your love of words?

During the day, I write as an Email Marketer. I write to make money and during the night I write to inspire. The aim of marketing is to make sales, and through email we make sales. I use the skill to engage the audience and make more money for the company.

Well, I am still not convinced with what you have told us about yourself; we would like to know more about you. So please, help us out.

So let me give you the background story. I studied accounting in school. But I knew from the start that I wouldn’t be doing anything related to accounting. So, when all of my friends were doing ICAN, I was just wishing them well. Although I think I started liking accounting in my secondary school days, I think I evolved. I discovered a new side of me, a new passion that I wanted to pursue aside from accounting. I still have a knack for numbers; my head picks out numbers faster, but my passion for writing is greater.

Being an email marketer now, are there any similarities between accounting and marketing?

They are somehow related, though. Accounting deals with numbers, ensuring that the numbers are balanced. Monitoring the in-flow and out-flow of money

What informed your decision to study accounting when you knew you wouldn’t be doing anything related to it?

I believe it has a lot to do with searching within yourself—deep and soul-searching. I have a friend who studied accounting but is now a business analyst. So I spoke to him and told him about how all of my friends are doing ICAN. Then he told me that I don’t have to follow a path because everybody else is doing it. that I should look out for the things my heart is drawn to. And the schooling system in Nigeria also, you would apply for biochemistry and they will give you, zoology, and courses that have nothing to do with what you wanted. You accept it because you want to go to school. But along the way, you discover that you have new things that you would like to do and new passions that you would like to pursue.

So I think earlier this year, I had to take some time to search within myself because I can do many things. I can do graphic design and product design. So I simply had to look within myself for what brings me joy. Even though I can do product design well, I don’t get the joy I get when I write.

This is very profound, doing things for that inner joy.

I went for product design because everybody was into UI/UX. People were advising me to get into product design because I can do graphic design. I even went to boot camp. But all those times were not wasted, because all those skills were actually interrelated. I used my design skills once when I was designing an email letter. No knowledge is wasted.

And I think this brings me to my next question, because you are a woman of many skills. So if you are not into writing…

I have a book. I have written a book (wow!). It is titled “The 25th Floor.”

Please tell us about your book, we want to know

(Laughs) I didn’t really want to talk about books, but here we are. I wrote the book to commemorate my last birthday on October 5th. It is a book on life lessons—the lessons I have learned in the past 25 years.  

The book is based on your personal story, right?

 It is not a non-fiction book, but I used some stories to illustrate some of the lessons I have learned over time.

Nice! Is it out for sale?

Yes, it is. It has been published. (Congratulations!)

So if you are not into writing, what else do you think you will be doing?

I will be in sales because I like money. 

How long have you been working with digital Abundance?

This should be my fourth month.

How has the journey been so far?

Well, it has been a journey to learn and relearn. It hasn’t been a smooth ride, though. I have to unlearn and relearn some things, pick up new responsibilities, and meet with a lot of beautiful people.

Everyone I have had the opportunity to interview has spoken about the relationship setting in Digital Abundance, and it really enlightens me.

Very true; it feels as if you are working with a family because everyone is here to support one another.

So far, in the course of working with Digital Abundance, what have the challenges been?

Challenges? Hmmm 

The challenge will be coming down here from where I live. 

Where do you stay?

I stay on the mainland (wow). So this is like the only challenge because I am a very proactive person and I love to embrace new responsibilities. I don’t see them as challenges; they are things that can be learned and moved on with.

For the past four months that you have been working with Digital Abundance, can you say that you have grown? And if yes, in what aspect?

Looking at my work ethics, yes, I have grown. When I first arrived, the first team head pushed me to take on x3 of the tasks I was doing. I was affected at first, but he encouraged me, and he made me see that I could actually do them.

 He helped me in the way I work and in the way I communicate with people.

Well, I believe this is something that happens to any new employee who enters a new company or setting, so please tell us how you handled this phase and found your path.

I think it’s about pushing yourself because there are a lot of things that you can do, but you won’t know that you have the capacity for them until you are pushed to do them. So until you put yourself out there, you won’t know what you can do.

So I think this was my case; I could do more but I had to be pushed, then I raised myself to the standard. 

You said something that I would love to go back to. In this day and age, there are a lot of different things out there, namely, skills. When you have a lot of skills and a lot of opportunities to learn new skills, confusion is easy to set in. Especially when you are told there is money in a particular field, you start learning it, and after some months of learning, you get tired because there is no money to show for it.

So I want you to help our readers. How are you able to shut out every other thing and focus on what you are doing currently?

To answer this, I have to deal with “shining object syndrome.” It basically means going for everything new that pops up. When you hear that there is money in coding, you go for it. You left design for coding. After 3 months, you started saying coding is hard, there is no motivation again, and you left coding for affiliate marketing, and like that, you keep jumping from one thing to another. But you have to stay on one path to see results.

If every expert out there continues to jump around, they will never get to where they are now. Do you have to sit down and check within yourself to see what appeals to you the most?

Three ways to determine know what appeals to you the most are;

  1. Watch out for your pain
  2. Watch out for what gives you joy
  3. Watch out for what you can do without being paid, and your question will be answered.

Can you continue on that path if you don’t see the reward, the money? Because it is not going to be easy, any path you find yourself on has its own challenges.

For the first few months of this year, I didn’t do anything because I had so many options. I was capable of UI/UX, graphic design, social media management, and writing. So all I had to do was talk to myself, settle within myself, and write it down. 

And at times, your path will find you. 

You have spoken a lot about how to handle the pressure from within, but now I want you to help us handle the pressure from outside. For example, if you see your friends doing well because they were able to stay on a ladder while you were jumping from one place to another, you might think to yourself, “I wish I could do that.”

How do you end up not hating yourself?

It has to do with focus. Simply choose a skill and stick with it, regardless of the challenges, good and bad days, happy and sad moments you will still encounter. Nothing you want to do in this life will simply fall into your lap. You have to come from below and climb up the ladder. You must push yourself because no one else will; either you allow the pressures to build you or tear you down.

Coming down to you as a person, writing sometimes can be very brain-tasking, so how do you go about your writing process, maybe when you have a project to work on?

The fact that I love writing doesn’t mean that I don’t have writer’s block. There have been days I have had to ask myself, “Who sent me to be a writer?” But what keeps me going is the reason. 

To answer your question, if I want to work on a project, I look at the brief very well and try to understand it. If I don’t understand something, I ask the person who assigned the task to me to explain it in His own words, not the words of the document. Then I try to flow with the person and, if possible, record the person. From here, I move on to my research. I like going through forums and blogs just to read up on other people’s articles.

Then I sit down to go over the brief again to determine which angle I want to approach from. Then I proceed to write the first draft, flushing out all the ideas in my head. These ideas don’t necessarily have to make sense at first; just put them out there.

After the first draft, I take a break. I engage in any activity that will make me feel relaxed; it might be watching a movie or talking to a friend. After some time, go over the draft again and edit it. Go through this process as many times as possible until you are satisfied. But the first draft is critical; put everything out there; don’t hold back on anything. If possible, write the first draft on paper; this is what I do. Especially when I have deadlines to meet, I put my system to one side. I glow better when I write things out with my hand.

In situations where you have a deadline to meet, do you still go through the process of writing as many drafts as possible?

I think this has to do with planning. When you plan yourself well, you should be able to work it out. When it gets to situations like this, I don’t even use my system; I make use of my paper and biro, and I try as much as possible to put myself in the shoes of the readers.

As a writer, how do you deal with plagiarism?

There are times when you see some awesome articles that are relevant to what you want to work on, and you will love to include them in your works, so how do you go about reshaping words?

To start with, plagiarism is wrong. It’s an infringement on a person’s intellectual property. I read a book called “Steal Like an Artist” by Austin Kleon, and I think every creative should read the book. When you look at a person’s work, you are stealing from that person, but when you look at hundreds of works, you aren’t stealing because there is no way you will write what a person has written. Doing this will give you different ideas.

When I read other people’s work, I read the mind of the writer, so I make sure I read more than a person’s work.

So just know how you work and do not take on a 14-hour deadline when you know that you will need more than that. Know your system of work and flow with it.

Wow!!!

Personally, I have gained a lot. Thank you for sacrificing your time and sharing with us. 

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