Bitter Truth Not Bitterness

Yeah, This Truth Will Change You!

Ogunranti Adebayo Moses
3 min readOct 2, 2024
Ogunranti Adebayo Moses

Keep building and keep selling; that’s how you stay relevant, especially when you’re able to increase your sales every single day.

What most people are running from is the need to sell. It’s much easier to sit behind a desk and collect a paycheck for doing almost nothing. And let’s be honest, many Africans love that “free money.” But that’s also where our downfall lies. We need to create things that people around the world need and sell them — that’s how we generate wealth that’s truly ours.

However, with the corrupt culture in Nigeria and much of Africa, it seems nearly impossible for governments or even individuals to recognize the value in creating and selling real products — earning clean money.

The more we run from it, the deeper the hole we dig for ourselves and for our children. Africans will never be free until we start creating value and competing on the global stage. This is critically important.

But here’s the thing — it’s not impossible.

The concept of making money through sales is as old as time. Every successful empire, whether legitimate or not, has been built on sales. You sell something, and you get money in return. The only person who is truly a slave is the one who sells nothing but survives on borrowed money. The borrower is always a slave to the lender for as long as he keeps borrowing. He’s bound to follow the lender’s rules.

We need to understand this and start building value we can sell. That’s how we attract real money.

If we had large businesses that could provide enough jobs for the 200 million people in Nigeria, we wouldn’t have such a big issue. But the reality is, we don’t. The businesses that exist aren’t enough to support the population, let alone pay decent wages.

Even if there were more businesses, unless they are large enough to generate substantial profits, they won’t be able to offer good salaries. That’s why Nigerian companies struggle to pay by the hour — they simply can’t afford it.

What’s worse is that we keep avoiding the real issue. We keep pushing the problem onto the next generation. Everyone’s focused on making it individually, showing off on social media, without a care for what happens to those who come after us.

One thing I’m sure of is that my parents didn’t leave me with much to build on — no capital, no savings. So, like many others, I had to start from scratch. Thankfully, I received a basic education, like most in the country, and that’s something. But it’s far from enough.

The real key is quality education and capital. If you have both and still quit — without a good reason — then maybe you deserve to be buried in a shallow grave.

Every parent should leave behind a solid inheritance for their children, which boils down to capital. That way, the next generation doesn’t have to start from zero.

Starting from zero means a lot of learning, and a lot of failure before you eventually hit on that one thing that will sell. Then you start selling, step by step, gradually building momentum until you become an unstoppable force. But every move requires capital. Now you see how the lack of capital sets you back. That’s when you wish your parents had done better. And, to be honest, they knew better, but they didn’t do enough.

The difference between some of us and those chasing social media approval is that we’re focused on practical experimentation, figuring out what works and what will work on a large scale. When I make it, everyone in this group and beyond can be sure they’ll make it too, once we lay out the blueprint for success.

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Ogunranti Adebayo Moses

I’m Moses. And I admire people and communities. Aside from the everyday startup development, writing is how I help more people.