NEW ICAN SYLLABUS- Effective From November 2014

Entrepreneurship, Career and IT Blog: The Secrets to Passing ICAN PE1 Exams (Part 1)

When It Looks Like All Your Mates Have Left You Behind

This piece is dedicated to my good friend. I know she won’t want her name mentioned here but she will definitely be among the first people to read this. Thank you for the inspiration to write this.

At different times in life, we expect to move to the next stage; like after primary school, secondary school, then JAMB, then University, then get a job, then get married, have children, watch them grow, and live happily ever after with your family…hmmm!!!

Life would indeed have been so interesting without waiting for too long at any of the stages, it’d have been all trilling and bliss etc, but many a time, what we expect and how we want things to turn out do not always happen the way we expect. The worst part of the whole thing is that those we think/know we are better than always get past us along the way. And we wonder why our case was different. Some would even ask, “God, but why me?” This is a difficult situation to be believe me, I’ve been there not once and not twice. You’ll feel inadequate, worthless even suicidal!

First and foremost, you need to be sincere with yourself. Do you have the criteria to be in that level you are aspiring for? For example; do you qualify? Do you have the basic minimum requirements? Is your O’ levels complete? Did you pass the JAMB cut-off marks? Do you…? You must answer all these questions sincerely and truthfully within yourself. My pastor will always say “…even if you are deceiving others, at least don’t deceive yourself”. Don’t try to faith it at this level! I’m not talking about the discriminatory requirements like getting a “2.1” from school or being more than “26 years” etc. All the discriminating requirements can be surmounted trust me!

After you’ve answered the above questions, if the answers are more of “NOs”, you’ll need to work on yourself and make sure you get them. But if your answers are “YES”, then you need to move to the next step. What are you not doing right? There should be something you are not doing right. Why did you not pass? Find out, read more, practice more, get somebody to assess you. Is your CV properly written and arranged? Meet people to help or better still get online help. Why aren’t you getting the jobs? Is your business proposal properly written and convincing enough? Get a mentor, someone who has achieved the same thing you are pursuing. Etc. Check yourself, go out and meet people, ask questions, find out why. Don’t be lazy. “Good” things don’t happen to lazy people. There should be something you are not doing right.

If after the above; meeting basic minimum requirement and blocking any loopholes (if any), and things don’t change, take this words from my good friend, Zaynab Cynthia Momoh (facebook page, January 4, 2014 – she’s a cake expert/event planner and she’s based in Abuja -+2348037342250) “sometimes no matter how hard you try, or how many precautions you’ve taken, or what you do, things will simply not go your way. This is why trust and reliance on God are such a necessary part of life”(sic). You need hardwork, patience, more patience and God.

This is the life. Don't let challenges bring you down and at the end of time, let your story be "I came, I saw and I conquered".

Shalom!

The Mindset Of Entrepreneurs

Business owners fall into two categories- the self employed and the entrepreneurs.
 
The self employed are those who have talent and skill and they know there are people willing to pay them for their time, product and service. So they employ themselves rather than work for someone else. They begin marketing their products and after a while they have some customers. After a while, they find themselves working too many hours, they can’t take too much time off because without them there is no business or income.

The entrepreneurs, on the other hand are the business owners who seems to grow their business effortlessly, and maintain steady growth. They can afford to take some time off to participate in other activities because they’ve empowered people to be like them.  What do they know that the self employed do not?

 

They have gained the entrepreneurial mindset. An entrepreneur is a great strategist and a master at getting others excited about helping them grow their business. They know they need to develop multiple profit centres not just one or two, so they are constantly looking for creative opportunities to do so and some of those profit centres need to be passive income that is not dependent on their time.

What makes a successful entrepreneur? There are many contributing factors-like quality, education, skills, training, networking, experience and others. There is however one thing you shouldn’t disregard if you want to become a victorious entrepreneur – the mindset. Without it, you will definitely find it difficult to succeed in whichever business endeavour you take.

Successful entrepreneurs are positive thinkers. They always believe they can do everything. Confidence is one important trait that you must have as early as possible. You must also be able to set your vision to look at certain situations differently. For ordinary individuals, problems are considered obstacles, but for many entrepreneurs, they are challenges.

Everything does not end in thinking alone. If you simply think and think, you will not achieve anything. But if you think and act, you will certainly reach the peak of success. You must be able to come up with well-intentioned objectives and your actions should be focused.

If you find yourself thinking you don’t have the time to put together the plan and strategy you need to achieve this mindset, try thinking about where you will be a year or two from now. I can tell you where you will be-self employed.

Let’s meet at the top! Become determined to think like an entrepreneur!

 

The Secrets to Passing ICAN PE1 Exams (Part 3)

Tackling Management Accounting (MA)

 

Management Accounting was perhaps my most dreaded course in my PE 1 days. Even after the results were released and I passed, I was still scared!!! 

 

 

Ok back to you and your MA at the PE1 level, the simple technique which I discovered after the exams was that, MA has standards! There are selected topics in the syllabus that are recurrent year in, year out. You must identify these topics and master them. Some of them are; Capital Budgeting, Standard Costing, Cost Estimation Techniques, etc. You must practice them again and again. When you finally master them, no matter how they twist the questions you will definitely find a way around it. 

 

 

Passing Advance Audit and Assurance (AAA)

 

Somehow I’m tempted to say there are no standard ways of passing AAA, but deep down there are! I’ve seen ‘scholars’ write this particular course repeatedly for up to three (3) times!

The way I’ve come to understand it is that most times people forget the fundamentals of a particular course. Auditing is a practical subject and you don’t study it with your ‘book-sense’ approach but more on a practical approach. See yourself on the field carrying out what you’re reading. Put yourself in the process. Don’t read it in abstract. Otherwise, you’ll end up cramming! The risk of failure is higher these days when you cram because of the examination approach; case study!  

 

Remember to do a lot of case studies on this subject. When you exhaust the ones in the ICAN pathfinders, go for the ACCA materials. There are case studies for every topic in auditing. Do as many as possible before the exams.

 

Other tips

 

I see a lot of people still reading the BIG-BIG books few days to the exams, please save yourself the headache. Your brain can only retain little new ideas few days to the exams.  You should concentrate on past questions this period. Re-read those spots you underlined while reading initially. Get adequate rest before the exam day to avoid fatigue.
 

After all preparations and all, PRAY! The importance of prayers cannot be overemphasized. It can save your script from missing or/and marked wrongly. Even if it is for nothing else, the fact that you wrote the exams successfully!

 

I’m waiting to hear your success story.

 

Shalom!