Olanike Olaniyan migrated to Canada ten years ago. She had worked in Nigeria and had risen to the position of business director at Insight Communications after working there for ten years. She started her consulting business after leaving Insight, and upon relocating to Canada, she registered her business and continued consulting. She also had a baby during her first year in Canada, and combined with her thriving consulting business, she didn’t feel the need to get a job. Olanike tells us how she pushed the boundaries, grew her business and surmounted the challenges of finding a job. She tells her full story here:
My migration experience in Canada has been rewarding and challenging. During my first two years in Canada, I concentrated on my consulting business and eventually grew my clientele base to include clients in the diaspora. However, I soon realized the need to get a job here because I was told I didn’t have enough financial footprint to acquire the mortgage I applied for. This led to my search for a job in Canada.
At first, I met the double challenges of having no Canadian experience and no Canadian Education, but despite these hurdles, I landed my first job at a bank. Working at the bank proved too mundane and uninteresting and didn’t provide me with ample opportunity to express my creative abilities and nurture the skills I had groomed in the creative industry. I soon resigned after the training, got other jobs and eventually settled for a government job. I was there for six years until I resigned two months ago to focus solely on my business.
One unique aspect of my migration journey is that I came to Canada and continued with my business. Within my first few weeks here, I registered my business, opened a bank account and continued consulting. I have also had the privilege of working in the public and private sectors and running my own business. Thinking back on what I would have done differently, I wouldn’t have changed anything because I learned early in life to live on my own terms and stick with my choices, not the choices people or circumstances force on me. This has always worked for me.
During my career progression here, I was advised to get a one-year diploma to improve my chances of getting a job. I thought to myself that I have a master’s degree and professional certification with CIM, UK, with several years of work experience. Does it mean that this diploma supersedes all my other degrees, which have been assessed here in Canada and verified by reputable bodies to be at par with Canadian standards? I didn’t get the diploma, and I still got a job.
Having lived in Canada for ten years, I have seen a lot. I have seen many entrepreneurial-minded people come to a new environment, folding their arms and waiting for the environment to dictate their fate. I emphasize entrepreneurial because for someone to leave their country and be willing to start from scratch in another country, that person has a high-risk entrepreneurial mindset. Most of these people, especially women, become so engrossed with family concerns that they just let life happen to them. We lose sight of our gifts and don’t use our talents; we shortchange ourselves and allow the environment to dictate to us how and when to make progress in life. I have seen people with PhDs who had successful businesses in Nigeria come to Canada and take all sorts of jobs, and the disaster of this is that they have accepted this as the norm, and this has become their reality. It is understandable to start from there, but we should not stay there; we should plan, plot, and strategize our way out of these menial jobs and into better opportunities.
You see, the challenge is with our minds and thinking. Some immigrants are caged in their minds to believe that because they are newcomers, they have to accept a second-rate life. This mindset is so rampant that it is transmitted unconsciously among immigrants and, if not consciously squashed, will grow and become a stronghold in the mind. The reason we left our home countries is because we were limited by the environment and policies there; however, when we migrate to our new environment, most of us are content to live a subservient life. We don’t reach for the stars; we are content with just day-to-day survival.
It is this mindset that I preach against. My consulting business is focused on training and mentoring migrant entrepreneurs to build successful brands. This is imperative because building brands is building generational wealth. I run a platform with over a hundred migrant entrepreneurs and organize virtual and real-time brand boot camps. We just concluded a mini exhibition in collaboration with our church where over thirty business owners showcased their products.
Using these platforms, I encourage people to dream, be resilient and focused, and I tell them they can achieve whatever they set their minds to do.
I end this story with a wise saying from my daughter. She once said, “Don’t tell me the sky is the limit when there are footprints on the moon.” My sisters, regret is a terrible and irreversible feeling. Why not try out that idea, that business, and that initiative you have been thinking of doing? Whatever will happen, you still would have tried, learnt, and become wiser and better. Don’t let your fears hold you back; remember, everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.
Olanike is the author of The Wisdom of My People: Life’s Cheat Sheet. To get a copy of her book, please click here: The Wisdom of My People: Life’s Cheat Sheet: Olaniyan, Olanike Justina: 9798343589986: Books – Amazon.ca
Olanike tells her story from Alberta, Canada.
