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By Ayo Alonge, [email protected]
Ayo Ogunsan, who is the Chairman of Executive Group, a group of companies comprising Executive Motors Limited, Executive Voyage and Logistics, Executive Trainers and Executive Education Consulting Limited, believes that with the right strategy, Small and Medium-scale Enterprises (SMEs) can thrive.
In this interview, he bares his mind on issues bordering on entrepreneurship, business growth and copying mechanism amid the myriad of challenges bedevilling startups in the country.
Entrepreneurial feats
In the course of our entrepreneurial pursuit, we have attained several feats too numerous to count which can only be by the grace of God, I must say. Recently, the Institute of Corporate and Business Affairs Management (ICBAM) nominated me for an Honorary Fellowship Merit award, while also appointing me as Director, Strategic Partnership/Inter-Governmental Affairs, of the institute. I am a higher education consultant, organising training for executives in higher institutions. I collaborate with 14 business schools across the globe. From 2008 till date, I have been engaged in the training and retraining of higher education practitioners. I was privileged to know God very early in life, as early as 1990, and that has been helping me a lot. I am strongly and passionately driven to achieve greatness in business. I had a very humble beginning. I started as a sales manager with a pure water and bottled water production company. I was the pioneer marketing manager of the company. I am very passionate about sales management.
One day, I picked up a newspaper and saw an advert for a job in Kaduna by Peugeot Nigeria. Their sales had started dwindling and they wanted young guys to bring up their sales. I attended the interview with over 6,000 others and after the exam, 80 people were shortlisted and then 64 for oral interview and then the last 21. I was among the most outstanding of the 21 and to the glory of God, I was sent to France by Peugeot and coming back, we were attached to dealers. I worked with the dealer I was attached to and rose to the position of Regional Sales Manager of the company. I transformed the sales of the company.
Scope of startup
Executive Group has business interests in automobile, education and some other domains of business. For instance, Executive Trainers focuses on capacity building and human capital development of principal officers of higher education in Nigeria. Its areas of training include linkages and collaborations, innovation and strategies, entrepreneurship, sponsorship and scholarship enhancement, leadership and higher institution management. We are also into automobiles sales and services with focus on Peugeot brand. In 2005, I decided to incorporate my own business because I already had a wide coverage of clients and that was how I started Executive Motors. That was the beginning of the transformation in my life because sales was booming and I was doing very well. Mine became a name to reckon with in the automobile sector. During that time, I was privileged to be on the entourage of the late president Umaru Yar’Adua during his first state visit to England. I don’t know how they got my address, because I was even abroad when the call came in telling me I had been appointed by the president to be on his entourage. I was shocked and asked myself who was I where all the big names were. That encouraged me when I got there and I was able to network. In 2008, I thought of broadening my horizon so as to have streams of income and that was how I started Executive Trainers.
Other News
I was at the University of Coventry in England for a training when I wondered whether we ever had a school like that in terms of structures, curricular, students diversity, administration and the like. I came back to Nigeria and investigated who was doing a similar thing, training academics and administrators of higher institutions and connecting schools here with those abroad. I discovered nobody was and all people were doing was just general training. I decided to tap into that. I told a printer to design my first flier and that grabbed the attention of most vice chancellors, rectors and provosts in Nigeria. They all started calling me. Today, from one Oxford Brookes University, we now have 13 partner universities scattered all around the globe.
Business diversification
We run at least two international programmes, every month. We started the training for Nigerian institutions in Harvard. Through my links with University of Wolverhampton in the UK, the University of Maiduguri has been able to have its entrepreneurial centre. Schools abroad now donate books and technology to Nigerian institutions. We can now have a situation where students would start a degree programme in a Nigerian institution for two years and finish the rest two years abroad. They get two certificates. One from Nigeria and the other from abroad. All these are made possible by our linkages and collaborations. Go to any higher institution today in Nigeria and ask for Executive Trainers, we are not two. For me, I want to advance the course of higher education in Nigeria and I am not losing focus. The other business is the travel agency, which came later. Virtually all the travel agencies would line up here to sell tickets to me to take people abroad but I later saw that as a waste of resources, I can always allow the money flow within. That was how we started our travels agency and to the glory to God, we are breaking new grounds.
Copying mechanism
First, the youth of our generation should learn to discover themselves. Don’t compare yourself to others. In addition, be passionate about that thing you love. Be focused and resolute, because a lot of people would distract you. I don’t copy people. I evolve my own strategy. When I read books or listen to tapes, I only get to know lifestyles of others, but I evolve my own strategies. Everything I have done has not been done by anyone else. It can be very tasking. I met a great Nigerian in Dubai and he asked me what I was doing in Dubai. I told him I brought about 26 professors to Dubai for training. He screamed. This is a very big man. I came in from that same point. It is assumed that most professors are up there but I came up with the strategy of working with them.
Job creation
Most importantly, in employment generation process, for many years now, I have empowered a lot of people. I tell anyone I employ that five years is enough for them to vacate and start their own business. When the fifth year is approaching, I support them in setting up their companies and tell them to move. I tell them to move on, because if they sit here for too long, they will deprive others of the opportunity to come in like they did. I have empowered many contractors who supply us a lot of things. It has been a very fantastic experience empowering people. I also facilitate helping the less-privileged. We have sorted out a lot of people and we are still doing our best.
Mitigating challenges
Virtually all my businesses are international in their operations, so the present economic situation is quite affecting us. What keeps me going is courage. I don’t walk by sight. I walk by faith. I don’t complain, I just keep going. Similar companies have folded up. What brought me into business is not about profit making but about touching lives and impacting the society. The exchange rate keeps affecting all our businesses.
