Wow!
End of a decade (or not, depending on who you follow on twitter.) Anywho, we made it!
If you’re reading this, you’re alive in 2020 too. And you’re literate. Well, congrats. Here’s to another decade.
I’ve been seeing people write down their experiences for 2019 so I figured what the hell. Documenting stories for posterity is its appeal, after all.
2019 had its ups and downs. Finally chose a career path (goodbye, chemical engineering; farewell, music production; so long, professional twitter pun star, you will all be missed!) and settled into a job at a crypto firm in January. In the beginning, my imposter syndrome kept giving me lowkey yimus but I learned the ropes instead of hanging myself with it. Secured two awesome certifications and met the best people I’ve ever worked with in one fell swoop. Together, we signed 14 Instagram influencers in one day and coordinated the creative direction, photoshoots, and promotion. Yeah, that was something.
March came with a lucky freelance job that flung me headfirst into the muck that is digital marketing proper. Up until then, I had only done social media management and some ads but here was an opportunity of a lifetime. Armed with nothing but Google and outlandish ideas, I supervised the launching and promotion of a ridesharing app that trended on the AppStore for a week! Do you know what endorphins are? I had those. Goosebumps? I had many. What a day, fam.
Meanwhile, my best friend has always thought I’d be able to write. At some point, she’d gotten tired of begging me to try. By April, I finally worked up the confidence to put words to paper. It was my first piece, raw, crude and uncut but to me, it’s the biggest win of the year. I’ve always dreaded writing and conquering this fear was as liberating as the first raindrop after a long drought.
Obidiponpere what else, what else, what else…
I fell in love with SEO around June/July and I just couldn’t get enough. Thankfully, my friend Petra taught me most of what I know and we ended up launching Silicon Social on August 1st, 2019. We had our first client in September and our first 1st Page ranking by December. Somebody shout hallelujah.
(Or is it alleluia? I don’t know. Ehen, around this time, I turned agnostic too. lol, Tori for another day)
By September, I joined a dating app startup and we got into an accelerator. Thrown into the world of venture capitalism and startup politics was a real eye-opener for me. Words like market size. equity and profit share stopped being vague terms you only hear from Bobby Axelrod and became real life. I mean, someone wanted to give us $300,000. Okotoribua. Unfortunately, we didn’t win but yeah, what a thrill!
Around this time, two things happened in quick succession.
A night at Bogobiri brought about my first product idea.
A smoke break at work inspired the second.
The rest of the year passed like a flash. Picked up UX skills and suddenly found myself leading Patricia’s UX team, started a YouTube channel and created lifestyle content I can be proud of, dove headfirst into scriptwriting, ad direction and production and you know, just generally kicked it. In November, I had an accident on a bike that changed my mindset about life and the brevity of existence and since then, I’ve chased both products with even more ferocity. Working on two separate ideas has been tiring, to be honest. Organizing a team of strangers with little to no experience in business-ing into a cohesive unit has been more than a challenge but honestly, what’s life without challenges? A great life, granted but yeah, we’ll make do with what we have.
Dyed my hair for the Dettiest of Decembers and it didn’t even look half bad. Also, got my passport so baby steps.
Finally, here’s a list of things I tried to learn in 2019 but gave up halfway through:
User Interface (UI).
HTML.
Python.
CSS.
How to write with my left hand.
The Guitar.
Adobe Premiere Pro.
How to date someone with sense.
Photography.
Did someone say consistency 2020? That’s the motto.
