I’ve added skipping to my workout routine before, so I thought it would be easy. It was not. Skipping is deeply humbling, and after doing it for about half the month, my left knee now feels like it is considering a separate life outside my body. Still, the results surprised me. I joined the challenge mostly to support my friend and have fun, but judging by the pictures I took in July and early August, my body apparently took the assignment very seriously. Wow is all I will say.

Skipping is yet another reminder that every visible result has a cost; it is repetition, discomfort and the willingness to keep doing something even after it stops being exciting.

I also did a lot of work in July. There has been restructuring at work, several products are being shipped, and I burned the midnight oil more times than I would like to admit. Settling fully into this phase of my career has taken a lot from me, but I keep reminding myself that I chose the stretch.

School, however, nearly finished me.

By July, I was deeply exhausted and waiting desperately for summer break. It felt like I had used everything I had academically to write my corporate finance exam, and everything that came after it felt like an unreasonable, gruelling task.

The funny thing is that I passed corporate finance with flying colours. It was my best course and my highest score. The very subject I feared most became the one I performed best in. I have chosen to interpret this as evidence that the fear of failure is sometimes the beginning of success, but please do not quote me anywhere. I am still developing the theory.

July also brought me to the UK, where I had the chance to reconnect with so many people I love. One unexpectedly beautiful consequence of the wave of people leaving Nigeria is that whenever I travel now, there is familiarity waiting for me somewhere. Especially here.

This trip has been full of hugging my friends, lying beside them, sharing stories, eating together, laughing until the conversation goes somewhere completely unserious, and generally loving on people I have missed for far too long. Every time I come to the UK, I start briefly considering dismantling my entire life in Lagos and moving here for the community alone.

Money is valuable, but I am increasingly convinced that a good name and a life full of people who will open their homes and hearts to you are forms of riches that cannot be replicated by money. My friends hosted me in London and Bristol, took care of me, made room for me and reminded me that I am held. I do not take that lightly. In many ways, July was a heart-wide-open month.

Some of the month’s experiences brought me back to the person I was before I became so busy, before so much of my life began to revolve around work, earning potential, clients and deadlines. I lived freely, loved loudly, allowed experiences to happen to me without trying to control, analyse or place them immediately into some larger plan, and my God, life was simpler back then.

I feel as though July broke my heart open (in the best way possible) and reminded me to lean into the feeling of life.

And life happened in the most ironic way when I lost my aunt towards the end of the month.

Aunty Joy was my father’s oldest sister. Because she was older than most of her siblings, there was always a little distance between us, but her death has still struck me in a way I do not yet know how to explain. I did not know she was that sick, I did not know what she was battling, I did not know how bad it had gotten, and while people may say she was an old woman, all I can think is that she was still young enough to have more life.

Two years ago, when we lost aunty B, Aunty Joy stood beside me as co-chief mourner. She followed me to the mortuary, stayed close to me through that terrible day and helped carry me through a kind of pain I did not know what to do with. It is strange and cruel that this is now one of my clearest memories of her, but I am grateful for it. That is how I will remember her: standing beside me when grief was too heavy to stand alone.

If I could speak to her one last time, I think I would simply say I am sorry.

I am sorry that life was hard, I am sorry for how it ended and I am sorry that there was still so much life left to live.

Most of all, my heart hurts for my father. He has now lost two sisters in two years to the same horrible illness (fuck cancer). I pray for him every day that God strengthens, protects and keeps both him and my mother for us.

Losing my parents is one of my greatest fears. Watching my father bury two siblings has brought that fear closer than I would like. It makes me wonder what comes next, even though I know life cannot be lived by constantly anticipating its worst possibilities.

Loss has made me want to love people more openly. I want the people around me to know what they mean to me while they are still here. I want to take care of them where I can. I do not want the quality of their lives diminished if I have the power to improve it. I want to give my time, my resources, my affection and my presence without always waiting for a more convenient moment.

Even if we die today, I want us to be able to say we lived it.

That we loved without holdbacks.
That we did not leave the most important things unsaid.
That if tomorrow changes everything, there was still enough love in today.

On the business side, Voyagers Nigeria continues to grow. The numbers keep climbing, the clients keep coming, and I will always be grateful to 2026 for becoming such a turnaround year for the business. My creator network is doing well too, although I am hungry for more global opportunities and actively hoping to find an international agency that understands how to position and represent me beyond the limitations of the Nigerian creator market.

There is still more I want. There will always more I want. But July was a class act in noticing what is already here. Thank God for a sweet dispensation.

Things I loved this month

Staying fit.

Passing corporate finance with flying colors.

Being reunited with my friends and reminded that chosen family is one of life’s greatest gifts.

TRAVELLING!

Staying open to beautiful experiences.

Things I hated this month

Academic burnout.

Poor sleep schedule.

Losing Aunty Joy.

For August, I pray for breakthrough that comes with release. I want to unclench. I want to breathe without feeling as though every breath should be used to propel me somewhere. I want to trust that I do not have to hold everything so tightly for it to remain mine.

July showed me that a heart can hurt from grief and still break open for love in the same breath. For August, I hope mine gets to rest.

See you next month, never stop finding your way.

With love

Amaka

Just like May, June started in the sky. I’d say I’m tired of constantly being in motion, but that would feel disrespectful to the 24-year-old girl who hauled her entire life in one tiny red suitcase and moved to Lagos to make something of herself.

I caught a flight to Spain for my third residential week in the course of my Executive MBA at ESADE, this time on the Madrid campus, and in a strange, almost psychadelic way, I fell in love with the city.

Madrid was a little strange ngl, while I was in school, my body was behaving like it had personal beef with me. I spent the first day battling ulcer, and the next five days fighting a migraine from start to finish. It was such an unserious thing to happen during a week that required so much mental sharpness, but somehow I still made it through. I went to class, I learned, I partied with my classmates, I let myself enjoy the city, and somewhere in the middle of the physical discomfort, I made a decision that if I ever move to Spain, Madrid would be where I call home.

From Spain, I went to Serbia, my 34th country, for a quiet holiday. I spent six days there mostly trying to rehabilitate my body, catch up on work, and return to some kind of routine after the chaos of residential week. I also visited the Nikola Tesla Museum, which I found fascinating. Science has always fascinated me, and every now and then I think there is an alternate version of me somewhere in another universe who is a proper STEM babe, wearing sensible shoes and doing deeply important things in a lab.

From Serbia, I went to Dubrovnik, and that is where June became one of those months I know I will return to in memory.

I spent four days in Croatia, and it was one of the best holidays I have had in a while. Before now, I used to say Lebanon was my favourite country, and maybe I still need to visit Croatia two more times before I make any final declarations, but from the moment I landed there, I knew I was in trouble. Everything was beautiful, everywhere looked like a postcard, the people were warm, the food was good, and the apartment I stayed in sat directly on the beach. I would walk down the stairs and be greeted by one of the most beautiful coastlines I have ever seen. It felt magical, and I soaked up every bit of it.

From Croatia, I returned to Rotterdam, which has become my grounding place in Europe. My friend lives there with her family, and every time I come, I feel myself exhale. It is where I also came to lock in and study for my corporate finance exam.

Corporate finance, by the way, is still the devil.

I wrote the exam in June, and while I was nervous, I was not as terrified as I had been for financial analysis. Maybe because once you survive one monster, the next one no longer looks impossible, just rude. I think the exam went well. I attempted all the questions and wrote properly, but yet, because I am me, I still suspect I may not do as well as I did in financial analysis, even though logically I know I performed better this time. Anxiety is such a strange little liar.

But I think that is also a good summary of this year so far: doing hard things while afraid, and then doing them anyway.

Because when I zoom out from June and look at the year as a whole, that is what I see. I see a woman who started 2026 by publicly acknowledging her unaccomplishments from the past year. I even made a video and marked them with a cake, because if there is one thing I know how to do, it is turn honesty into ceremony. I started the year willing to name the things that did not happen for me, the things I wanted and had not yet touched, the things that sat unfinished on my spirit.

And now here we are, halfway into the year, and I have accomplished at least four of them. That is not a small thing.

I think because I am always moving, always building and becoming, I don’t stop long enough to really honour what it means to see things come through. But June, being the midpoint of the year, and my annual gratitude journal month, has forced me to look back properly. And when I do, I see little fires of success everywhere.

I see it in the way I have adjusted to a new job and the increasing weight of the workload, in business, with launching two businesses from the ground, and restructuring another, in my personal brand, shining brightest in my field, getting respect, recognition and due praise, in academics, finishing year one of ESADE, which still feels surreal to say, because Business school felt like such a mountain at the beginning. I see perseverance in my content creation career, which keeps growing even when I do not always have the capacity to show up the way I want to. And again in my businesses. Voyagers Nigeria kept bringing in clients and making money, and I am grateful for that. But June also reminded me that thriving businesses have back rooms nobody talks about.

This month alone, I lost a couple thousand dollars on a bad travel deal with a terrible agent, and that too is part of entrepreneurship, the part we don’t often see when founders document growth. Sometimes money leaves in stupid ways, sometimes lessons are expensive and the receipt of experience is written in red.

Still, the month was golden.

In fact, June was beautifully balanced. There was pain, but there was beauty too. There was pressure, but there was movement. There was spending, yes, obscene spending if I am being honest, but there was also earning. There was fear, but there was proof. There was illness, but my health did not collapse. There was work, but there was summer. And oh, Europe in summer? what a dream! This is actually my first time experiencing it peak summer after seeing Europe in every other season, and I honestly understand the hype. Everyone keeps complaining about the heat, and I get it, but I am a Lagos girl. What is a little heat to a Lagos girl?

Ultimately, what has moved me most this year is not even the wins themselves, but what they reveal about me. That I can recover, rebuild, persevere, hold my spirit tight, wait, feel, but not fold and finally, still live through it all.

Cheers to you and me for surviving half of a fleeting fire horse. We ride at dawn into H2!

Things I loved this month

Madrid, even though my body tried very hard to ruin the experience.
Dubrovnik, for reminding me that beauty can still take me by surprise.
Europe in summer. Magnificent stuff.
Making money. Always worthy of gratitude.
My personal brand still growing, even when school had me in a chokehold.
Finishing year one of business school. Genuinely surreal.
The fact that halfway into the year, I am looking back with pride and not regret.

Things I hated this month

How much money I spent. As a matter of fact, June owes me at least $4k.

As for July, I am leaving room for surprise. I think that is what I want from the second half of the year too, not just plans, but (good) surprise. I want to be delighted by how good it gets in Q2.

See you next month, never stop finding your way.

With love,
Amaka

May started in the sky for me. I had to go to Accra for a conference at the beginning of the month, and what was meant to be a quick work trip turned into one week in a city that used to mean a lot to me. Accra was once my comfort city. Before 2022, I had been there four times. I even used it to escape heartbreak in the same year. I stopped going because it became too expensive and, as a financially smart, occasionally frugal babe, I could no longer justify the spend when Benin Republic and Togo were sitting right there... But this trip reminded me why I loved Accra so much in the first place. I also got to reconnect with an old friend I had not seen since the last time I was there, which made the whole trip feel even more full-circle.

From Accra, I returned to Lagos and went straight into planning mode for the relaunch of Active Lifestyle. And when I say planning, I mean PLANNING. This relaunch has been in motion since the 5th of January, when I posted my unaccomplishment cake video. I got my first batch of restock in February, and since then it has been samples, iterations, returns, adjustments, spending money, spending more money, and trying to make sure that when this business came back into the world, it did so properly. May was the month it all finally came together.

And thank God, because the event was a success.

I sold out an entire carton of activewear at the pop-up. That may sound small to some people, especially those with bigger businesses or larger numbers, but for a business like mine, which is not exactly a major name in this industry, it felt huge. We made ₦1,385,000 in sales, recorded over 45% goodwill for the business, received two potential stockist requests, and built the kind of community that makes an event feel like more than just sales. It felt like proof of life. ALS is alive!!

May was also generous to me in other ways. So many desires I had from the beginning of the year started to bloom. My travel business is still doing well. We are now officially at 13,000 followers, which is almost 5,000 more than the last time I wrote a newsletter, and our clients keep increasing. We have already secured five approved visas for some of April’s clients(Somebody shout power), which is a beautiful thing to witness when you are building something that people trust with such important parts of their lives.

My budget hair business also made progress this month. I received two batches of samples, tested the products, and I think I am finally at the point where I can stop overthinking and just sell. Which is convenient, because people have already started buying and almost all my samples are gone. More stock is on the way, so let us see where that goes.

I also finally repaired my car.

This deserves its own paragraph because that car has been parked by the roadside in my estate for five months, looking sad and abandoned. It was not even that I could not afford to fix it. I had just been prioritizing other things because I want a new car, and somehow that made it easier to neglect the one I already had. But one day I looked at it and remembered that when I desperately needed mobility, that car came through for me. I bought her at 28 and she has served me well for four years. Yes, she is nearing the end of her life and definitely due for a change, but she did not deserve abandonment. So I fixed her, and in the sweetest turn of events, she really came through for me during the pop-up launch. We went back and forth to the venue in that car, and I felt weirdly emotional about it. There is a sweet lesson in there about being taken care of by the things you once worked hard to buy.

In between all of this, I did some more planning for another multi-country trip. I will be heading to Spain first for my business school residency, and then on to a few more countries that I will save for next month’s newsletter because some suspense is healthy.

Fitness, however, was not my strongest ministry in May. I was juggling about ten identities in my bare hands, so the full routine suffered. I did keep up with walking and I am pretty sure I hit 10,000 steps every day, but because my proper fitness routine has three parts and I only managed one, I am calling it a fail. Or at best, a very reluctant pass.

Still, I made it through the month healthy, which I do not take for granted. Considering how much I had on my plate, I was genuinely afraid of breaking down or falling sick, and thankfully, that did not happen.

So I think if I had to describe May in one sentence, I would say this: it was a month of small personal victories where I was not afraid to take flight.

Things I loved this month

Reconnecting with Accra.
Seeing and spending time with Carin again after four years.
All the money I made in May.
My health miraculously holding up and holding me down.
My best friend traveling all the way from Delta to help me with the pop-up.Finally relaunching ALS
Finally getting my car off the road.

Things I hated this month

All the money I spent in May.
I hated that I barely got enough rest.
I hated that I could not commit to fitness the way I usually do.
And I especially hated corporate finance.

My MBA cohort started a new finance course this month, and let me just say that however bad you think financial analysis was, corporate finance is worse. It is the devil. The only good news is that confidence grows after you survive things. I was terrified of financial analysis, and even though corporate finance is harder, I am not as scared because I already passed the big bad monster. The exam is in June, so we shall see what the Lord will do.

See you next month, never stop finding your way.

With love,
Amaka

In April, I had at least 17 tabs open in my brain, and somehow, all of them were playing music.

After March stretched me like a rubber band, I entered April begging God for rest. Instead, April came with a whole new set of responsibilities.

One minute I am a marketing professional thinking through fintech positioning, the next I am a travel creator researching visa requirements for Nigerians, then a business owner reviving Active Lifestyle, then an MBA student trying to keep up with school, then a daughter, sister, lover, friend, employer, gym babe, content machine and occasional tired babe who just wants to watch One Tree Hill in peace.

It became clear I needed to hire more hands. It was either that or I drowned from all the work stress, so I hired two new people to join Amaka and Sons (no seriously, I’m thinking of trademarking this name) and I am genuinely excited about the structure I am building as a founder. For the first time in a long time, I can feel some of the workload slowly lifting off my shoulders. There is still plenty to do, but at least now, I am not doing all of it alone.

I am also very proud of myself because I am now able to pay the people who work for me what my job used to pay me. That is a big, big win for the little girl who came to Lagos with one suitcase and dreams that were larger than life.

Something equally wonderful happened this month — for the first time, I am showing up with authority in the travel industry and it is paying off!

After 5 years of travelling and 4 years of bootstrapping a travel company, I have always known I had experience, but I never fully owned my authority in the field because I am someone who believes you don’t just wake up and become a thought leader because you posted three hot takes and bought a ring light. Authority is built, layered and earned. It comes from doing the work, making the mistakes, gathering proof and then finally standing in the room like you belong there. And me? I have arrived.

From owning authority and being visible, my little travel business made over $19,000 in sales this month alone, and we now have 8,000+ community members, 6 new clients and a network of hospitality partners around the world. Quite impressive for a business that started for funsies, no?

Oh, April has paid off in so many beautiful yet scary ways. Remember when I decided to grow my Instagram out of spite? Well, it has been barely two months, and I have grown almost 10,000 new followers for my personal brand and 4,000 for VoyagersNG!

Spite is one of the greatest motivators in life. There are other things that can move a person, of course. Love, purpose, hunger, ambition. But you see spite? Nothing propels a human being further than the need to prove a naysayer wrong.

April was also a visa Olympics. I spent the entire month in embassy halls and consulate buildings, gathering documents and bleeding so much money. Visa applications are so bloody expensive! At some point, I was applying for three visas at the same time: China, Sweden and Spain. I may have broken a personal record there because who exactly sent me?

The sad part is, I am not going to China this month. I have the visa. I have a brand sponsoring the trip. But the Swedish Embassy currently has my passport because I am trying to get a Schengen visa for my next school residency. Painful, but we move.

On the brighter side, I visited Sweden and Denmark this month, which means two new countries have been added to my list. I also saw Davido in concert and left starstruck and in awe. I used to think I wouldn’t like concerts, but the thrill and rush of live music is unmatched. Copenhagen gave me my first real concert experience, and it was beautiful.

So many new and exciting things started this April and I am grateful for how God is moving intentionally with my life.

My word for the month is evidence.

Evidence that structure matters, faith is a rocket, visibility works, and even though I burned my old life to the ground and started over, I am capable of rebuilding even more.

Things I Loved This Month

Song of the month — Gratitude by Brandon Lake. Because honestly, what else can I say but thank you?

Bonus song — Everything Hallelujah by Justin Bieber. I have been manifesting all my dreams to this tune since I heard it.

Win of the month — Creating more business structure.

Film of the month — I didn’t watch any films this month, but I watched One Tree Hill. So many great lessons to learn from that series.

Food of the month — I barely fed myself this month. I ordered more food in April than I have in the past year. Currently loving the grilled fish at Farmcity.

Things I Hated This Month

Overthinking
My mind really needs to stop hosting conferences nobody registered for.

Financial anxiety
No matter how much money I make, debit alerts still know how to humble me.

Visa stress
Three applications at once is actually mad behaviour.

Missing China
Visa in hand, sponsored trip waiting, passport unavailable. Comedy and tragedy at the same time.

Trying to be everything at once
A noble ambition, but babe, you are one woman. Please behave.

Food unseriousness
May discipline and an in-house chef locate me.

What I am carrying into May: answered prayers still require capacity, so I am asking God for both.

See you next month. Never stop finding your way.

With love,
Amaka