If you’ve ever been called unreasonable or crazy, you may have taken offense. According to mainstream thinking, so-called crazy people are the ones who do irrational things like threatening a pregnant woman while wearing a clown suit, skateboarding on the ledge of a 20-story building just for media hype, or running for president with a divisive campaign strategy.
But call Niverville author Vicki Olatundun crazy and she’ll say, “Why thank you!”
In her debut book, Unleash Your Crazy to Win, Olatundun takes a close look at what she calls the crazy—or unreasonableness—that resides in all of us. The difference, according to her, is that the unreasonable person within us is equally capable of amazing feats of irrational behaviour as well as earth-changing accomplishment.
Much of her life’s inspiration is drawn from this quote by George Bernard Shaw: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world, the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
The subtitle of Olatundun’s new release, How Overcoming Infertility Led to Business Success, seems at first to indicate an author with an overactive imagination. How could anyone connect the dots between these vastly different themes? Speaking from the experiences of her own life, Olatundun does just that.
The first part of her book reveals the true story of an author faced with one of life’s toughest blows for a woman: the diagnosis of infertility. After trying every possible medical intervention, her doctors gave up, but not Olatundun. In the relatable voice of a friend pouring her heart out over coffee and scones, she writes with vulnerability, honesty, and frankness.
Though the end of her infertility struggle is hard to fathom, Olatundun eventually gives birth to not one but two children—a girl and a boy—without the aid of anything but her strong determination to never take no for an answer.
Olatundun, a motivational speaker and guest lecturer, understood the need to share her incredible story. “I had come out of a very trying situation and I thought that it was a great idea to share it because I was sure that there were so many people and families out there that had the same experience. I wanted to share that it was possible… to turn their story around.”
This became the impetus for her book. During her own struggle, Olatundun found many books that didn’t inspire her to keep trying. Others were overly technical, written from a medical standpoint.
“I wanted a real human story. I didn’t find any, so I thought, well, I can write it. Because I’ve experienced it from a non-pharmaceutical, non-scientific level. I experienced it as a human and I wanted to share it that way.”
In the second part of the book, Olatundun draws correlations between her infertility and all the other struggles she’s faced in life. Here, we get to know her business side.
Beginning her career as a criminal law attorney, Olatundun soon moved on to areas of work that were closer to her heart: administration in non-profit organizations. For many years, she worked as the Human Resource Director at a homeless shelter in Winnipeg. Eventually, circumstances led her to take a pay cut and begin an incredible journey fighting for the life of a dying family resource centre in Steinbach.
Olatundun tells the story of a struggling non-profit, a group of volunteers and employees who had lost hope, a building in a desperate state of disrepair, and a community that didn’t recognize the value of the centre’s outreach. Her words to the interviewer as she applied for the job of executive director: “If you do not want change, please do not hire me.”
They did hire her, and really big change is what they got, so much so that today the resource centre is proudly situated in a newly renovated building with most of its materials donated by a generous community. Against all odds, she led her team into a new and exciting future. The centre has become an icon for how a community can grow and thrive by taking care of its single moms, tired dads, and children who would otherwise go without.
“If you’re trying to do something that’s wild and [seemingly] impossible and no one has said to you ‘You’re crazy’ yet, the dream isn’t big enough,” says Olatundun. “I find that a lot of the ideas that I have, to the normal person, seem quite crazy. And when I feel that sense of ‘You’re crazy!’, I feel like ‘Yup, I’m definitely on the right path.’ So for me crazy has been pretty much a buzzword for the things I want to do. I’m a visionary. I do big things, huge things.”
But Olantundun’s book is anything but a chance to fly her own flag of self-importance. The message throughout rings with opportunity and hope, regardless of one’s circumstances. Time and again she gives examples of people who dreamed big. One of her favourites is Roger Bannister, a British Olympian who, in 1954, ran the first ever 1,500-meter race in under four minutes. They said it couldn’t be done, but Bannister did it.
In her book, Olantundun opens part two by saying, “Common sense says to accept the cards you have been dealt. But crazy takes the cards, changes the game and plays to win.” The same principles she used to overcome infertility, she says, can be applied to other areas of our lives, whether it’s in business, family, or emotional and physical health.
“I think my hope is that when people read the book they will look at areas of ‘infertility’ in their lives and know that they don’t have to stay that way,” Olantundun says. “It gives you permission to get in the race. The biggest thing for me when I crossed the finish line was being able to turn around and say, ‘You, get in the race.’ You can pull people from the stands and say, ‘Come to the start line. You can run too.” Oluntundun calls this the ripple effect of the unreasonable person.
She is already working on her second book, which is no walk in the park when you work a full-time job, are raising two young children, and your husband works away from home and only returns for a few days every couple of weeks. But she is, after all, unreasonable enough to find the time to do what compels her.
It’s no surprise that she was recognized as one of 40 female change-makers in Canadian Living’s January 2015 edition.
