I truly believe that the solution to world peace and harmony is love and respect. I truly believe that the secret to peace and harmony in any relationship, interpersonal, family, friends, romantic, etc., is love and respect. I truly believe that the secret to an excellent personal relationship (that is, your relationship with yourself) is love and respect for yourself.

The best restaurants in the world are not so great because they prepare meals that are from the outside world. Look at Jiro Ono, the owner of Sukiyabashi Jiro sushi restaurant in Japan. His attention, care, attitude, and love for service and world-class service are just so admirable.

So, the lesson is world-class. Standards must be sustained, depending on which kingdom you belong to. If you won’t give your best to something, don’t do it at all. It will affect your psychology and your self-esteem. It will affect the world that will receive such work. If you won’t love with all your heart, don’t commit to any relationship. Don’t waste people’s time. If you won’t offer your best—based on your subjective definition of what’s currently sacrificial to you—then hold your peace and allow others. And if you’re not in the mood to decide, then communicate to be given more time to ponder on the request. If you notice you’re pressured to decide on the spot, your answer should be a straight NO!

Again, the lesson: keep standards. If you’re a world-class player, keep excellent standards. Have values, and keep to those values. Watch yourself. You’ll make mistakes now and then until you develop mastery. That’s fine. Growing in keeping with your values will build your self-esteem. (Especially if you’re a woman 🙃)

I believe that being a wholistic human being is about being fed well enough in the multidimensional parts of what makes a human being. And these parts include the body, soul and the spirit. Each requires different attention, appetite and substance that keep them alive and vibrant.

Number one: Body. The body is the more physical part of a human being. You and I. Touching your flesh, that’s your body. In my opinion, and how I live my life, the human body needs to be fed and nourished with food, water, and sleep. Permit me to not add any commentary, yet. Maybe in another part of this series.

Number two: Soul. The soul is the part of you that is paying attention to what you’re currently reading. Of course, it’s your brain that’s processing and making sense of what you’re currently reading. And it’s part of your body. Yes. But, after the brain has processed this information, there’s a function of your being that is able to take this new information and use it to alter your behaviour, character, and attitude. To put simply, it’s the part of your being that is able to bring about transformation from the information your brain tries to process. The development of this essence, or the soul, is with letters (words from books) and with music. It’s not yet time for me to demystify these things. So, later.

Finally: the spirit. The spirit of a man is the man. That is, if your body shuts down for some reason, “you” will still be alive. But the part of you that will still exist is your soul and your spirit. You’ll then have to exist in another civilization, if I may put it that way without sounding overtly spiritual. The weird part is that, I believe, as a result of my religious faith, that your new civilization will depend on the transformation of your soul. When you existed in your body, the actions, submissions and transformations that directly or indirectly affected the colour of your soul and spirit are what will qualify you for an existence in a civilization. (I welcome questions in the comments.)

So, to feed your spirit, you will need word, prayer and meditation. Again, I can’t break these things here, for now. Just understand that the food for the spirit has to be spiritual, the food for the soul have to be soulish, and the food for the body has to be physical. The spiritual, soulish, and physical foods have to be transformational for their useful stages.

You can read a book but it’s only profitable for the soulish level. Likewise, for biscuits, which should only applicable as physical food. For example, reading a book on Chemistry is only useful for soulish transformation. But reading a book, which has spiritual origin, like the tract, Bible, Quran or writings that have transformative implications for a man’s spirit. (For example, a book like Harry Potter, The Da Vinci Code, Six and Seven Books of Moses etc.) Again, it can transform either positively or negatively, based on its spiritual origin. Also, a cookie snack should normally be useful for the body as food, but if it has a spiritual origin to its manufacturing, it’s able to have a transformative power spiritually to the man who consumes them. It’s how people can be initiated spiritually by eating some particular foods or snacks prepared to transform the consumer at such level.

It’s not difficult to understand. When you understand these things, you can better engage life and understand how and why you might be affected in several ways. Food is on the body level, but if it has soulish or spiritual origin to its preparation, it can feed you on that level. The same goes for all. It’s about the origin of preparedness. We could be deeper on this but let me pump the breaks here.

I started life being the youngest in the house. And my older ones were girls, mainly. I was cuddled in a most remarkable way and protected, also. One time, a neighbour of ours, who was within my age range, came to the house dressed shabbily. She was bodily exposed. And one of my sisters, forcefully— yet politely—asked her to go change. “Don’t distract my brother”, she said. They laughed over it, but her point was made. I felt like a king. I felt safe. I felt protected.

Now, the baton has been transferred to me. With my family here, I’m the oldest. And I have two girls and three boys to love and protect. The girls are 16 and 11 years old. They are young and need to be protected. And it is my responsibility to protect them, as their older uncle. The boys, I’ll have to protect them from being overexposed to too much corrupt content from TV, music and movies. Some of the movies I watch, I don’t allow them to watch. (I didn’t allow them to watch Super Pumped with me. They used too many f-bombs.) You know, one time, I heard one of my 9-year-old boys almost say, “What the f***”. I cautioned him. Later, he changed it to, “What the fraterna!” That’s a decent way of still saying the former. I guess I have work to do. My uncle is a traveller and leaves for months before he returns from work. While I’m still here, I have to try to fit in.

Wow! Today, I hosted a podcast conversation with one of my pastors, and it was one of the best talks on religion, Christianity, and the rapture. It was a blast! My guest also spoke on fatherhood and how he nurtures and watches over, and protects his three boys. He told a story that one of them came home from school one day and said, “I’m a girl”. He was shocked! HAHA!! Pardon me, that’s not funny, but imagine such a statement. He had to enquire into where it came from to fix the problem forthrightly. I love the stories he shared. They were very inspiring to me, showing me how I envision raising my kids and loving the family I’ll build.

That’s it for this one. Stay focused. Stay nurtured. Keep building.

One of my mentors, Emanuel James Rohn, said the man who wakes up in the morning to the loving kiss of his wife and the loving embrace of his children is powerful. You can’t touch him. Nothing can hurt him.

The happy man knows the world out there is chaotic and turbulent, BUT he knows, when he gets back home, he is welcome. He is loved. He is understood and respected. He is appreciated.

The happy man knows the world, even his mind sometimes, wants to point fingers and call him incompetent, not good enough, not accepted, imperfect. BUT, he knows, when he prays to his God, he is competent, good enough, accepted, perfect, and loved.

The happy man knows life is hard sometimes. BUT, he knows there’s hope. He knows his God loves him and has great plans for him. He knows that the love of his life understands him and appreciates him. He knows his family sees him and respects him. He knows his children adore him. He knows everything will be okay. Such a man is invincible. Nothing can hurt him.

I don’t want to be the happy man. I don’t wish to be the happy man. I’m the happy man. I’m invincible—nothing can touch me.

Hypocrisy. I fear her most. Hypocrisy.

Nothing scares me more than being a hypocrite, where what I profess is not the truth of what I am or feel. I don’t mean being wrong. There’s a difference between being wrong and being disingenuous.

I can’t stand hypocrisy in myself. I can’t stand hypocrisy in other people. And I or people can be wrong, unknowingly. But when I can consciously be dishonest, untruthful, or hypocritical, that’s my worst fear. I fear what I put out is not what I truly am—especially spiritually. And this fear often propels me in different ways. It’s not always healthy, but for now, I appreciate the drive.

It’s different from the way some people might think I’m more sophisticated than my candour would suppose. People’s suppositions are their business, but I like to be sure of who I am. I won’t act below my mental and faith carriage. My faith and my mentality have levels of sophistication that, when I speak, you might consider me to be proud or entitled. But I’m not. I speak from the transformation of my consciousness—and I won’t dilute my poise to sound or look appropriate to my audience, unless it’s subjectively necessary.

Hypocrisy, that grey lady winked. Be careful of hypocrisy. You might not be a hypocrite, but you might make the decisions of a hypocrite; you might use the words of a hypocrite; you might innocently do the acts of a hypocrite. Correlation is not causation, you say? Yes, it’s not. Tell that to the [J]udge.

So, watch yourself; watch your motive; watch your intentions; watch your heart; watch your speech. Watch your grace; watch your faith. Again, these days, being untruthful—even unknowingly—has connotations of being disingenuous. And the society won’t take long before they begin labelling us hypocrites. Watch.

The General Magic story brings to my mind the consequence of timing in building something worthwhile. Talent is important; funding is important; work and execution are important. But timing, which is a consequence of market adoption, appetite, education, and availability of the right technology, is even more important. Perhaps, most important.

When I think about Notes, a lot of things cross my mind. I mean, a lot. You have no idea. Even when I don’t want to think about it, I still do. There are basically four kinds of leverage today, as Naval would put it, labour, capital, media and code. Labour and capital are permissioned leverages—someone has to choose to work for you or give you capital resources to build the things you want to build. Media and code are more permissionless kinds of leverage—you don’t need Uncle Joe’s money, and you likewise don’t need the patronage of a friend or employ labour. You can just write code and ship it out, or record media content, and package it for social media. The problem is that when you’re building something that you want to scale, you’ll then need capital and labour. And if the initial gem of what you’re building isn’t that remarkable or doesn’t take off fast, that is, it needs some time to build the ecosystem of tools to make it remarkable, then it can wear you out building it alone. That’s where we are with Notes.

The vision we have for Notes is to build this tool for people to express themselves. And with their data, they can choose to do something remarkable with it, train an AI digital twin, create an AI persona, blog, or whatever they can dream up. There are powerful tools today to unlock value from the data they create from freely expressing themselves in whichever direction or topic they choose. There’s RSS, API, and MCP—among others we might invent. But this opportunity is gold: archiving the stories of every individual, making it useful to themselves, their loved ones, and professional communities. I think it’s beautiful to create content that can be trained into my digital twin, which could be prompted by myself, my loved ones, or my professional community. Each party will only have the compartments of results that they can access. It’s one of my dreams—not just for myself but for every single human in our world.

Now, it’s just difficult. We see the wave coming. It’s possible. But it seems like we’re rolling our boat too fast and are getting exhausted. And I do not intend for the team to wear ourselves out before the wave comes. I think we have to be smart, manage our energy and our resources, so we can survive. We’ll have to build much more slowly than before because this is going to take a while.

In the future, we intend to support not just text, but videos, audio and pictures. We intend Notes to be a portfolio of you. A space to be vulnerable enough to share more deeply because it matters to you, to the ones you love or probably to your professional community, among others. Who knows when we finally develop the technology to make our vision possible, we might begin supporting other kinds of data people can entrust us with. Maybe, medical. Maybe!

It’s called a vision for a reason. It’s far-out. Like someone said, don’t apply intensity to things that require consistency. We believe this project requires consistency, for now. And we hope we remain attentive and sensitive to discern when we’re ready to go beast-mode again.

Keep building.

We have now been reminded of the initial instruction, and it is to make a difference. To make a difference is to contribute our time, our skill, our life and work purposefully in making people’s lives better, and at the same time, separate ourselves from those who are not devoted to such.

To make a difference is to democratise excellence so it is equalised to as many human lives as possible. You know, after a while, I thought that the democratisation of excellence was now the instruction. But it has always been about making a difference. That has always been the inspiration, the phrase that kept me going. To make a difference. I’m not sure I understood much of what it meant, but I just knew it was what I was supposed to do. To make a difference.

I’m a founder. I’m created to be one. I don’t know anything else to do other than being a founder, creating tools that can enable other people live better lives, contributing to the furtherance of humanity, of truth, of peace, joy, happiness and love. With time, I’ve recognised that these are the things I desire most. And, to a large extent, knowledge, money, power and influence are tools to make these things possible. That’s the reason I want those things. (I used to say to my family that I’m literally going to print money. And I pray it works out so. I hope my team and I create so much value that the world incentivises us with so much money and power, so we can do the good things we have in mind to do.)

Alright. We’re going back to the core mission of Netintui. And that’s to make a difference. That is to build products and services that contribute to making people’s lives better; that’s to contribute to truth, peace, joy and happiness to individuals and families. That’s what Netintui is all about, and I am grateful to God Almighty for the opportunity to share my portion of life-time doing such good work—not alone obviously—with great young men and women who believe in the dream and love to contribute their time and skills to make it happen.

So, we are restructuring Netintui. Notes will be a project, the Podcast will be a project, as well as other cool things we might work on.

God bless Nigeria.

Friends are those wonderful people who know all about you and still like you. They know that behind all your spurts of craziness, you’re a pretty good person. And when you have these people in your life, it’s a pretty good plus on your self-esteem.

I like to say that the knowledge you have that there’s someone in your life who loves you unconditionally will do wonders for your self-esteem. (That was from Naval.)

It’s true. I have a few people in my life that I know that I can lean on. I know they love me. And I love them. I mean, we can be awkward sometimes and say some unnice things to each other—once in a while. It could be because of something: stress, unintentional outburst or just sheer mental quirk in the way the person was thinking, at the point in time. Sometimes, it could be their attitude. But, you still love them. You still trust them, and you still believe this is a nice person—they just have something going sometimes and they can always learn and change.

I’m like that, sometimes. I mean, sometimes I mess up. I get sharp sometimes when people don’t match up to my energy. Someone once said she wanted to get on an exercise spree. And you know the daily “don’t break the chain” routine? Well, she really shattered her chain. One day we were just chatting and I asked her, “How about your exercise routine?” Knowing it was just the wrong thing to say given the context of the discussion we were having. It was after my meditation session, I thought to myself, “What a stupid statement you made, Joshua!” I had to apologise to her.

To all my friends who understand my craziness and still get to put up with it because of our relationship, because of peace, because of love, THANK YOU. I’m aware and I have overcome it, in Jesus name. I’m daily becoming the man God wants me to be. So help me God!

The lyrics said, “Show me Your Way, my Love, my Lord; Draw me to grace, so strong and sure; I run to Your mercy, where I am free; Let me find my all in Thee; Please mend my soul, my frame, my life; A contrite heart, Thou won’t despise; Take now this pain and misery; And let me find my all in Thee.”

The song is by Young Ocean, My All in Thee. I love it. It’s one of those songs that makes me cry when I listen to it. I was into Firm Foundation (He Won’t) by Maverick City Music & Chandler Moore. Then later, CHINECHEREM by Neon Adejo. Yeah, I live on songs. My heartstrings resonate on different frequencies at different times. It’s been a great experience.

I love My All in Thee because…I love the song. Someone said that if you have a reason to love, then you will have a reason not to love. If the reason to love is attacked by life—and it sure will—then your love will fade. So, reason is a condition.

And I know it’s difficult for humans to love without a reason. Almost every human being needs a reason to engage in something. To love someone else, what about them is attractive to me? That’s a reason there. When that thing is taken away or fades, as is the situation of all mortal glow, then your love might fade. I believe that’s why God found a way to force men to stay in loving the other, even when all the inevitable glamour goes away. And that’s covenant. Consecration, if you may.

There’s something I call the Hierarchy of Responsibility. Some people in your life are bound to you because they are responsible for you, or they make themselves so. Either because they are your parents or siblings, or your spouse, or they just love you. They can’t help but be of help to you. Before he travelled upstairs, when my father was ill, my mom had no choice but to be next to him. At the hospital, or when they went back home, or during his cognitive dissonance, during every struggle until God called him, she was next to him. She couldn’t go anywhere even if she wanted to or felt like it. I remember a story she told once during the earlier years of her marriage, when there was much ‘quagmire’ in the family. She said she wanted to leave, but she considered a lot of things: adultery, her children, the hurt of separation and a lot of things. And she decided to stay in the marriage till my dad got his bearings corrected.

Say, for example, I ask you—yes, YOU—for 50k to pay my bills. If you don’t have it, you’ll just tell me and expect me to go ask someone else. But if I ask my Mom or siblings, they have to find a way for me to get the cash, even if it might mean borrowing. They can’t tell me to go ask someone else. That’s the hierarchy of responsibility. There is no politics of appropriation here; this is just sheer responsibility and devotion. Love, if you may.

Yet, I would argue: of course, there are obvious exceptions. Some friends are like brothers or sisters. They can help you through thick and thin. I want to be such to some, and I hope I can find some who can be such to me. The ones I can give my time, my ideas, skills, resources, and all I have. The best place to begin practising this is in the Church. We are not just friends, we are family. We will always be there for each other. And that’s all that matters.

When I gave my life to Him, when I refused to live like others in the neighbourhood, when I tried to play it safe by schooling close to home, when I tried twice and it didn’t work, and when my leader said to me, “Just try one more time;” and when I decided to go far from home—where neither mom nor dad nor siblings nor friends nor pastors could reach me—I did it all by faith.

When I came to the strange land, I was alone. No family, nor friends. I could only make new ones, and I did. I hustled from homes to dorm to squad. And when I finally got footing, I made new friends. I did it all by faith.

With my new friends, I made a new family—some spiritual, some familiar, and perhaps, some for life. I observed my family closely, thinking which ones I could cling to more closely. I found some I believed could stay for decades, and sadly, there can only be one that could stay forever. And I believe I found one. I trusted in my relationships and I invested in them. What I did, I did by faith.

To my spiritual family, I gave my time, my mind, my strength, my life, and my toys. My toys got damaged for His work; and I charitably gave some away—I probably would have needed them, but at the time His purpose was weightier. He’s a Man whom all was worth spending for. After all, all I had was His. But I had the power to give or withhold, and I chose to give. All I did, I did by faith.

To my familiar family, I gave my time, my skill, my presence. I invested all. I never held back. Why should I? They are the only family I have here. And the One who sent me here knows I can’t live without a family. I’m tough only to those who admire; I’m weak and in need of help only to those who’re familiar; and I am vulnerable and helpless only to the One who helped me. All I relinquished in hopes of my new family, I did by faith.

To my friendships for life, I was an open book to all who cared. I gave it all. I gave up secrecy. I gave up insincerity. I showed all my cards. I gave up independence. I gave up reasoning. I was vulnerable. I told. I confessed. I submitted to accountability. I relinquished pride. All I did, I did by faith.

Now, what do I do? Where do I go from here? I don’t know. I’m layered with bruises and ills. But I keep dreaming. I keep building. I keep investing. I keep giving. I keep believing. Will I be pushed back? Yes. Will I relent? It depends. My faith might be misunderstood; it might make me lose some weight, some opulence, some honour, some health, and a lot of privacy. I’m sorry; I really am. But I have a dream, and all I do, I do by faith. One day at a time, by faith—building the future I believe in with the ones who believe in me.

Where I lived in Lagos, just a mile away, there was a house owned by an Alhaji. Observed from my house, there was always electric power supply. Almost always. I admired it so much I told, I believe, everybody in my house about it. (I'm kind of like a family person. I'm a talkative to the people I love or work with, and a recluse to the people who don’t know me personally.)

After a while I felt a nudge that I should go to the Alhaji's house and ask them a very strange question, “Is there Light in this compound?” I hesitated for a long while. I didn't even know how to navigate my way there because Ajegunle was a weird community looking at it from a map perspective. (Someone's backyard—or worse, living room—can lead to another street.) Until a day came that I went to refill the cooking gas. This day, instead of these people to refill my gas in their shop, they said they'd take me to their ‘other shop’. I innocently followed them. We moved through strange paths, corridors, people's passage or backyard and finally to a street I could vouch is not of the state's map. Then, I was led into an uncompleted building. I knew this was a shady business. I had already paid earlier, so I thought I might as well just get what I need and get out of there.

I went out of the strange building—leaving them to fill the cylinder with gas. (I didn't care whether they'd be truthful to fill the right quality. Maybe, maybe not. The environment was just not my vibe.) Lo and behold, I walked on that funny street and right in front of me, separated by a carnal, was that Alhaji's house. I also saw a kpakò bridge from where I was to the other side where the house was. I was shocked! Are you kidding me?

I went back to the guys filling the cylinder. Took my property, and went back home. I said, “With such providence, what excuse do I now have? I might as well do what I might be meant to do.” I took a shower, wore some neat clothes—corporate actually, with office shoes. And onto my journey. My Mom asked where I was going to and I told her I was going to that house I've always talked about, and I'll ask them if there's Light in the compound. She said okay. (She's probably used to strange things happening.)

I went to the house. They were cooking for a Muslim celebration. I pumped in, looked around and found my prospect. It was a woman. I got close to her and said, “God sent me to ask if there's Light in this compound.” She looked at me; I can't describe how she felt, but she responded that she and her family were the only Christians in the compound. The rest were Muslims. Well, looking around, she was right. The other thing I did observe was that there was a soundproof generator in the compound and it looked active. (No wonder they always had electric light.)

I probably gave the woman a tract or a women mirror. I can't remember. And I navigated my way back home. Frankly, that was by far one of the most ridiculous thing I have ever done.

Now, you might ask what the moral of the story is. Well, I don't know. I just think I should document it. It's better documented than lost in my memory, I believe. That's what we built Notes for.

What is a miracle? It used to be this piquant category of happenings that we do not quite understand or have too much awe for it. And yet, it still is. But I want to argue that a miracle has to be seen differently. It’s not just about the blind receiving their sight, the lame walking or the dumb speaking. Miracles can be much more tangible and closer to our reach.

If we take the definition of a miracle, prima facie of the definition as something we do not quite understand how it works, then the conception of a child is a miracle; falling in love is a miracle; inventing or building something that never existed before is a miracle; understanding a subject is a miracle; raising a good, well-mannered child is a miracle; A lot of ‘inconsequential’ everyday happenings are actually miracles.

If you do not quite understand how it’s going to work, yet you choose to work it, and it somehow comes through correctly, that will be a miracle. And we ought to celebrate it.

So, go work a miracle today.

Once, I told a friend of mine that time is like fire. It proves things. It tests the material of people, dreams, desires, friendships, ideas, and visions of people and communities. It’s a powerful force of nature.

If I told you I’d do something, it’s just a matter of time before you have to judge if I’m serious or not. If I were building something, it’s still just subject to time. One week might be too soon; one year might be too late. Just the right duration is right. It differs for different things. But time always will tell.

Subject everything to the fire of time. Try everything with time. Expose it to time. If it lasts, it’s probably made of good material. Time is one of the nonpareil indicators of true worth.

There’s no future—only signals. It’s impossible to know your future. In fact, even if you had a dream for where you’re to arrive in years to come, do not trust it. Only follow the signals.

The signals are the pointers forward. I can’t tell you what they look like, how they feel, what they sound like, how they behave, in what manner they come, or by what frequency. I cannot. And I do not believe anybody can, in truth. You have to be sensitive to them. The core thing to look out for is signals of progress. And among the signals that lead you to progress, two signals tell you what progress actually is: one, inner witness; two, results. (Yet, I argue, it’s still not exhaustive.)

The inner witness is the calm, warm assurance you feel about your decisions. That might be about the friendship you have going, the work or project you’re currently on, or where you live. But you might not always have that reassuring feeling; that’s when you have to have faith in results. You judge the outcome of the relationship, the partnership, the job, the project, and the environment you moved to. You judge. How profitable has it been? Where is it leading to? Is this a good road?

(You know, sometimes people think counsel can be a shortcut to these things. Always seek counsel, they say. Once, during a particularly challenging time in my life, I wanted to meet my campus state pastor for counselling. His wife tried helping me make an arrangement, but I relented because I had already been told that his prayer would not take the season away. I was meant to go through it.) Sometimes, your heart will be so quiet, you might become confused if you’re still the same person. Only by the results can you judge. A huge part of some decisions, in some seasons, given some circumstances, is by faith. You will be unable to find any iota of reassurance. Nothing!

So, trust the signals. Follow the signals. Never conclude your involvement in anything based on prescience. Don’t follow prophecies, follow signals. You might end that friendship, shut down that business, stop learning that skill, quit doing that job, or anything. Nothing is static. Just follow the signals, per time, per season. Step by step. There’s no map. There’s no future—only signals.