Sir Steve Bamidele Omojafor is one of the biggest names in our advertising industry. Currently the Chairman of STB McCann, Omojafor occupies a front row seat in his sector. Equally well respected and revered in the corporate world, YES INTERNATIONAL!’s GBENGA SHABA cornered him for this eye-opening interview at NIIA, Victoria Island, Lagos during our 3rd anniversary which he chaired. Excerpts…
What are the best ways to run a successful business?
Good question. That is the essence of our lives in this part of the world. We got to run a successful business because a successful business doesn’t come cheaply. They don’t come easily. There’s a lot of work that goes into it. You have to plan, look at your capital, your stock and the market where exactly you want to create a niche for yourself and you got to take stock every year to find out how you are doing. Where you are not doing too good, you change your target. But always be on top of the market place to make sure the right people are ready for you and of course, you need a lot of advertisement and make sure you are close to corporate organizations, advertising agencies and people that would feel your market to make sure that it stays alive. Planning it is very important for you to be able to know how you are doing. Planning is very crucial and to crown it all, the owner of the business must ensure that they don’t want to make profit overnight and close the business. It is a long time process, so you got to plan from year to year. But at the end of every year, take stock to know where you have succeeded and where you have failed. So, generally, it’s not rocket science, but all about planning and ensuring you have a focus, you have your goal and you have a plan on how to get it.
You are one of the successful people in Nigeria. How would you describe your success secret?
I don’t think I am one of the successful people in Nigeria. No. I will probably disagree with you. I just know that I’m like you. We all are struggling. You know when you are growing up, you don’t know what you are going to become. You just go to school because your parents say you must go to school. When after school you start asking what am I going to do? You look at your course of study and see where it’s going to lead you to. I studied Mass Communication, so I knew that I was either going to be a journalist, broadcaster or a PR person. I started with print journalism, with Daily Times. I worked with Daily Times for a number of years, but I didn’t get satisfaction. I moved into advertising. But you have to understand that none of this was planned. After four to five years in Lintas, me and some colleagues of mine decided to set up Rosabel Advertising. From there, we set up a second agency called STB McCann, which I ran until I retired. So, when you talk about planning, there are certain things you really don’t know ahead, what it’s going to be. Every successful person you talk to would never say to you I knew I was going to be a wealthy man, I knew I was going to be a big success. You just to take one step at a time. Sometimes you make mistakes, you come back again to take stock of what you have done and see where you made mistakes and forge ahead. So, when all these things are put together with success and failure at some point, they strike to make you great and that is where you stay and that is where you remain.
Why do you think some people attain success and are unable to sustain it?
It is because they didn’t work hard to sustain it or they were looking for too much money right from the beginning. When you start a business, money should be one of your least worries in terms of what you get out of the business. The major thing is to put in as much as you have and start working on that; get a right partner, get the right and best business tutors to shape your temperament and also take a look at your environment. Now, people get greedy. That is when business begins to fail because if you make one million naira today and all the partners sit down to share the money and wait until the next one comes, the business will fail. In fact, in the first three years of starting a business, don’t think of getting anything out of it. You’ve got to plough back, you have got to re-invest until you get to that comfort zone where you can start sharing. When we started Rosabel, for 6 months, we said nobody was going to get a salary. So, we had to fall back on our families, our wives and all that to be able to keep the business going and you also have to cut down on your consumption pattern because you have a business to grow. You cannot grow 10 things at the same time. You cannot be growing your business and grow your lifestyle at the same time. It is not going to work and if it works, it’s not going to last. So, that is how it is. There is no magic about it. It is you as a person agreeing and telling yourself how you want to run it to be able to make it a success.
Between the print media and advertising, which one do you find more joy doing?
Each of them! Each of them has its own peculiarity and each of them has tutored me at the age I am. As a journalist, I enjoyed reporting, I enjoyed writing features and there are a lot of stories that I wrote and sometimes that put me into trouble; either with government or with people around. But at some point, I said to myself, it was time to leave. But while I was there, it was good fun until I said no, let me move on to something else and I went into advertising and I also enjoyed working there. That is why I haven’t left it up till now. So, really, if you ask me who I am; first and foremost, I am an advertising practitioner and that is how I want to be known and anything beyond that is just something by the sideway. So, advertising is my life.
What advice would you give to a young graduate who intends to venture into business?
Unfortunately, our young graduates; these days, nobody wants to give you money to start your business and you know, when we were starting up Rosabel, we didn’t borrow from the bank because no bank was going to give you money and it’s been like that since we started like almost 30-40 years ago. Banks were not there to take care of young entrepreneurs, so we had to go out and borrow the money, either from your family, your friends or whoever and put the money together and then we started managing it. So, for the young folks, these days, if you are lucky to find a family friend, your father, your mum or whoever it is who can give you a bit of loan to start up with, you are lucky and no matter how small, you build upon what you have and building upon what you have also means that you are not going to be greedy, you are not going to take up a lifestyle that is beyond your means. But it’s always good when some capital is there, available for you. That helps out and whatever money you borrow, put it on top of your mind that you are going to pay it back. In fact, before you start paying yourself the salary, before you start earning a salary, pay back what you are owing outright. I mean, for me, we borrowed money in those early days and we were paying back monthly and that was why we couldn’t take a salary. So, my advice to the younger ones is: take a look at your business, find out how you can grow it, remove greed, don’t build up a lifestyle that you cannot maintain or accommodate, start up as small as you can and watch it grow and don’t start running until you learn how to walk. Don’t start running or sprinting or trying to impress anybody until you know exactly what direction you are going. Don’t set out to impress anybody because nobody is impressed. Whatever you think you have, you must always know that you have greater people than you. So, who are you trying to impress? The most important thing is take your business, hold it strongly, be determined to succeed and take it one step at a time and eventually, you will get there.
You keep talking about we, at Rosabel. Who are these we?
It is all about partners: Akin Odunsi is now a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria; Otunba Tunde Adelaja is our third partner. So, it’s the three of us that started up Rosabel in 1978. I don’t know how long that is now, but it was in 1978. So, today, we are talking of about 40 years ago and we are still together as partners. That was something we taught the industry; that partnership can work if three of you know exactly what you want to do.
What do you think has kept the partnership for so long?
What has kept us is the fact that we know each other enough and greed was not part of our problem. Money was not what we wanted to base our lives on. We knew we were going to work hard, we knew we had to enjoy what we were doing and knew we only had to live on what we are able to produce and we managed our lives well. But at the time that the business started to grow, each person now had a car and a second car; built up your family, your children went to good schools, because for me, that is success. You give me a billion naira today; I will ask you what am I supposed to do with it? And that was what sustained the partnership. Our needs were very limited. When we could not afford a Volkswagen car, we didn’t plan to buy a Mercedez Benz or a Volvo or whatever. That is part of what kills our entrepreneurs. They are aiming too high, even before they can get there. So, we believed in ourselves, we believed we had to work hard and we didn’t make money or wealth our major plan of staying together. So, today, we are all satisfied people; not because of money or wealth or what we built up, but because of who we are as human beings.
For someone like you who makes working hard his hobby, how do you relax?
You may not believe this; working for me is what I’ve made into a hobby. I unwind by working harder and harder. You have to put fun into whatever work you are doing, because if your work becomes something that makes you feel sad, doesn’t give you fun, makes you regret while you are doing it, then it is not for you. Like I said, journalism was fun for me; advertising was even greater fun. I enjoy every moment of it. Believe me, we work from morning till morning and we tell our wives to bring our food to the office. Sometimes when there is a lot of pressure, we don’t go home. We stay till the following morning. So, your work should be fun and be part of your sustaining hobby. That is the only way you can make a success of your work and of your life. But on the extra-time, I swim. I read when I have the time. I used to be a squash enthusiast, but with age, I have stopped doing that. But I think reading, swimming and travelling are the things that give me extra fun these days.
NB: First published September 2014