Babaeko is a fast-rising digital advertising/ marketing/branding entrepreneur. He is the group chief executive officer of X3M Group, made up of X3M Ideas, X3M Music and Zero Degrees, among others.
He recently added to his plethora of businesses an agro-based firm known as Babaeko Farms Ltd.
He was recently selected as one of Adweek’s Global Creative 100.
Friends and colleagues hosted the entrepreneur at the George, Ikoyi, Lagos, where they spoke exhaustively about the entrepreneur’s grit, which has catapulted him to the zenith of the advertising world.
Babaeko recalled that he started his advertising career in one of Biodun Sobanjo’s companies known as MC & A Saatchi & Saatchi.
“At the time, the company had Victor Johnson as managing director. Johnson gave me my first job around 1995 in September and those people really inspired me a lot to give this business a shot,” he said.
He said the reason his group got into music was that there was so much talent in the music industry for the company to turn a blind eye to.
“What I just have to say is when you get to the top, don’t get the ladder down so that others younger guys can come up,” he said.
He said he is consistently inspired by his wife and family, which is vital for his success.
“My wife is a photographer. She recently had a very successful photo exhibition about albinos. I have the limelight all the time, so when she is having her moment in the spotlight, I stay very far away from the spotlight and let her take the credit because she has worked hard,” he said.
To the young and upcoming entrepreneurs, Babaeko said he tells them to be patient.
“I have a lot of people in this category who walk up to me. When you hear that someone becomes an overnight success, that person might have put in eight to 10 years in the industry. In my own case, I put 17 years of serious servitude and learning the business, learning from people. By the time I started X3M ideas in 2012, we knew all the tricks; we knew where we had to play soft and where to play hard. The deep learning has really helped us,” he explained.
“For young people, I am just going to preach patience. People are in a hurry and that’s wrong. Yes, you learn on the job but you should be patient to fully grasp the basics of the business you are going into. I just tell them, ‘be patient’,” he stated.
He said one thing he does is to continue to inspire creative people to reach the apogee of their career.
“Whatever the creative field we find ourselves, go out there shoot your shot and you can do it, whether its music, film, advertising or whatever,” he said.
On managing competition viz-a-viz quality outputs, the entrepreneur said people are not going to understand or appreciate anybody’s capacity unless they demonstrate it consistently.
“Talking about my music work, I have never signed any talent because someone said I should. I sign talents because I believe in those talents. If I invest N100 million in a talent and it doesn’t give me the return, I can live with it. I choose my talents and my talents do not choose me. So do your thing the right way, the world is going to understand and when you are done, they are going to give a round of applause,” he stated.
On Babaeko Farms, he said he plans to grow the economy and create jobs with it.
“There is so much unemployment in this country. We are one of the youngest in the world in terms of population, but people look towards entertainment for quick fame to acquire stardom. I think that is a poor mentality. The truth is, out of every thousand young people who go into entertainment, if we are lucky in a good year, 15 will come out successful. However, with agriculture what you put in is what you are going to get out of it,” he added.
ODINAKA ANUDU
