THE CEO INTERVIEW www.ceotodaymagazine.com 15 make it a success. How do you balance family life and running a business? First of all, I need to give my wife a lot of credit and thank her for everything she does. My busy life means I’m always somewhere and she’s had to sacrifice a lot to make it all work. I discovered the true meaning of work-life balance in 2021 and the thing is that it looks different for different people. After 17 years of grafting, I now have my goals aligned with being able to enjoy my life too. I’m starting to introduce my family to the business too – after 25 years in the corporate world, my wife has now joined my company. My children on the other hand come to business meetings, dinners and networking events with me and so I’m able to interact with the even more on a daily basis. The delegation of tasks to my growing team means that I get some of my weekends and evenings back, and I even get to enjoy important date nights or frequent short breaks away with my beautiful wife, and family time away with the kids doing what they want to do. Has there been a time when you were ready to give up? What kept you going? have clarity. I did a little bit of anything that anyone can think of - from selling cars to selling clothes, to having an internet café, to working as an Uber driver. I lost my business in the oil & gas sector in Nigeria but I think losing everything back in 2015 is what motivated me to seek clarity and purpose. My faith in God helped me majorly. I did not know exactly who or what I wanted to become. I wanted to be successful but initially, I didn’t understand the vehicle that was going to lead me there. But then I discovered property. I started with rent to rent – or renting other people’s property with their permission. I also began deal sourcing, where you find people who are looking for property opportunities and you trade it for cash. Then I started acquiring properties by learning how to find investors’ finance, and through that process, I was able to buy, refurbish and refinance properties which allowed me to pay my investors and continue buying properties. Which very quickly allowed me to grow my property portfolio from £1.5 million to £2 million, and then from £2 million to £2.5 million. Gradually, the numbers just kept increasing and increasing, and they keep increasing as we speak. I think a lot of entrepreneurs make that same mistake all the time, because most of them start off doing too much and not focusing on one particular business for long enough. They’re never giving one thing enough time to actually Absolutely. Many times. In 2015, after losing my business, I nearly gave up and became a delivery driver. I felt like I’d tried so many times and I felt defeated. I felt like someone who’s gone to battle and lost everything. I was in that job for about two months and I then became an Uber driver. I kept asking God to show me the way and after some time, I suddenly got my fire back to look for new opportunities. And the rest is history. Keep believing and keep fighting – I promise you’ll get to where you want to be eventually. What’s a lesson you learned in 2021 that you have brought with you into 2022? 2022 is a massive year for me and it will be a year of reset. We went crazy during all the lockdowns. We worked extremely long hours with no breaks and it did pay off. 2021 was extremely successful but we had to sacrifice our sanity. Because of how hectic everything was, we never revisited things so this year, we need to focus on playing catch-up with our success. 2022 is the year of revisiting and remapping for greater success in 2023. 2021 showed me that planning and structure are key, and this is what we’re doing now – restructuring and revamping our operations in preparation for bigger things.
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