Dakore Egbuson-Akande, a Nigerian actress and founder of Beauty Brand, has urged potential young entrepreneurs to have principles, plans and be proactive in order to survive the Nigerian business environments and be outstanding.
The renowned actress discussing the topic “Reinventing your brand and staying relevant in your lane” at the 10x Thrive Conference, global conference to help career professionals and entrepreneurs overcome adversity and take action to thrive with a theme: “The Action to Thrive” held recently disclosed that to remain relevant in business the entrepreneur needs to strive for excellence and have values and principles.
“In times of difficulties, you need to remain stable, focused, have principles and values and be ready to add values in all you do. Ensure you are connected to God and have mentors,” Dakore said.
The ambassador for Amnesty International, Amstel Malta and Oxfam of America disclosed that the philosophy that has kept her on top of her game in the 25years of business is, ‘understanding the season of her life, believing in God and herself, and being proactive with planning’.
She encouraged young entrepreneurs to always try to maintain excellence in all they do and be creative all the time.
“It is not about being perfect but about perception. Do not allow the environment to shape you, rather shape your environment by creating your personal identity; these are the things that make business forward,” she said.
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Egbuson-Akande reiterated that it is not easy doing business in Nigeria, hence business owners must be ready to persevere. According to her, to be above board in business, one must be ready to work hard and learn to work with people.
“Hard-working background helps me manoeuvre my business challenging environments. Besides, learning to work with people is an ideal skill to acquire because people can be too difficult to work with. Knowing yourself, delegate responsibilities and being mindful of your health are keys to business success.”
She maintained that business owners must consciously learn to build a team, because in business there are times things do not go the entrepreneur’s way, and he/she will need people to fall back to, though sometimes, they might be hurting, yet they are needed in business.
However, she warned that business is not about being a diva, but being purposeful.
“Divas do not make bank, but good divas make the bank. It is about being kind and human with people in business,” she noted.
Ayesha Bedwei Ibe, tax leader and Africa diversity and inclusion leader at PwC shared how entrepreneurs and employees, in particular, can excel in the workplace using the E.M.P.O.W.E.R in her paper titled, “Building a strong career and business case using the E.M.P.O.W.E.R model.
Bedwei-Ibe revealed that she ventures into helping people build their career through the model because in the course of interacting with people she discovered many people fail in business and career simply because most times they are not prepared for the challenges before them.
The president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ghana explained that expertise is vital to succeeding in career and businesses. Individuals must learn to articulate their expertise/skills and not to assume that others or the employer should know. A successful employee must know his/her career.
Marketing, which according to the founder and chief executive officer of Careers1825 is selling oneself and/or product, is key to navigating oneself through the rough business world. This she said helps both the employers and the employees to know their contributions to the business.
Personality entails bringing one’s personality to the table and being determined and creative, because most employees will find themselves standing before people.
Opportunities according to Bedwei-Ibe are all about knowing the open doors for you and the business per time. What are the opportunities you are building for the business and for yourself? She stressed that opportunities give people the room to build pipelines in their careers.
And with opportunities, it becomes necessary that the entrepreneur and the employees must win. Wins, she said, is the ability to win or seize opportunities.
Knowing one’s environment is very important in business success. Career success encompasses knowing one’s political, socio-economic and cultural environments.
Revenue is the last in the model and this stands for revenue. The bottom-line of every business she said is revenue.
“Revenue is the key area of every business. And this call to action wins. Most times people struggle with revenue and wins,” Bedwell said.
Lanre Olusola, the executive and transformation coach/founder OLCA spoke on “Personal success: Small things that make great difference”, said the concept is built on the ideology that mankind is not an island.
“Both small and great things work hand–in–hand. Human beings are sub-set of a set, hence, the way a person views himself or herself matters,” he said.
Lanre explained that a small thing can make or mar success in life, buttressing that even big dreams are realised by doing small things. He cited how Bill Gate achieved his dream of connecting the world through the Microsoft medium by doing small things first.
“Gate first shared his dreams with his friends while in a workshop, and that was a small step that led to the big success,” he said.
Catalyst shared the seven concepts of achieving ones goals such as having a clear conception of what one wants a strong confidence that he/she can attain that goal, concentration on what it will take to achieve it, consistent pursuance of the goal, an emotional commitment to the value of one’s goal, good character that guides along the way.
