Business
Media Mogul says Nigerian Entrepreneurs Must Take Risks
For how long where you in the banking sector?
Overall if you count all the banks I worked with, it would amount to about 10 years. I didn’t spend more than two years in each of the banks that I worked. The reason being that I like to learn new things; and I am challenged by knowledge a lot. Back then, I viewed banking work as a routine, and a bit too procedural. I guess that explains why I left banking. But when I went into consulting, I learnt a lot. I saw myself growing intellectually and learning new things.
At what point did you decide to leave paid employment for self-employment?
I made the transition because of what I learnt working at Anderson Consulting. There I saw what you can do when you create value. I saw people who strike out in different directions and out of nothing, they create something. It was at that stage I learnt what it means to make an impact.
John Maxwell says there is a difference between when you are successful and when you make an impact or achieve a life of significance. And he explained by saying that being successful for many people, is making money thereby adding value to yourself only. But when you add value to people’s lives that is when you achieve significance. That spurred me to think of what I would do to make me touch lives and impact people.
Tell us about your first venture
My first project was publishing the BottomLINE newsletter in 2000; it was a subscription-only newsletter. The idea was for a high-end newsletter targeted at Nigerian professionals and business executives, which would deliver highly relevant and useful business and career information in an easy-to-read and remember format. It grew to become very popular and was about the only publication occupying that niche. At our peak, we boasted of over 10,000 paid subscriber base.
However, the economics of the business began to shift. It started first with the banking consolidation in 2007 that shrank the banking industry, the backbone of our business, from about 80 banks to 25. You know the Chinese sign for crisis is the same as the one for opportunity, ‘or breakthrough. This phase also coincided with the emergence of ATM, online banking, online content delivery and significantly, social media. Hence, even though the newsletter no longer exists in hard-copy, we have an archive of priceless BottomLINE content of over 10 years that we are uploading online and will soon be available as online blog content as well as a mobile app.
