As a custom in awesomejasperblospot,we're ever ready to frequently
dish out inspiring and motivational news and stories that have the potential to
revamp destinies,one of such is the story of this young business
tycoon,Ezekiel
I hereby present to you Ezekiel Solesi, a 28-year-old business consultant who in chat with TOBI AWORINDE about the inspiration for and challenges of starting his firm, LIMBsimple
all i need from you is sit back and extract the solvent in this story.....or you can call it interview..all thesame
Why did you go into business?
Whenever people hear my first degree is
in Chemistry, they often wonder how I came about leading a business
consulting firm. But I am always quick to tell them that together with
my dad, I started as a manager of a soap manufacturing company, where we
used pawpaw to make soaps. That was before I went to the university. So
you see, the entrepreneurial influences preceded my career and choice
of course of study.
I started a personal business development
when I was in JSS3. I was fortunate to have great friends who
encouraged me to read books and attend conferences from a tender age.
So, from that time, I knew I was always going to be an entrepreneur.
I Studied Chemistry so I could fulfil my
ambition of establishing my own business in the manufacturing industry.
I’ve always been consumed by the desire to acquire and share knowledge.
In the university, a senior friend and I started an initiative called
the Purpose Group. The great thing about the Purpose Group was that it
prepared people for both academic and business excellence. That
platform, in many ways, is the foundation for almost everything I have
achieved today.
What informed the name of your company, LIMBsimple?
It started with my book, ‘The Game of
Money.’ After it was published, I got a lot of good feedback about it
being a really simple book on financial education. So, with that, and
the fact that the company’s name I chose first wasn’t approved by the
Corporate Affairs Commission, I started to brainstorm with my
girlfriend, who is now my wife. That was in November, 2011. Around that
time, I wanted to start writing a free newsletter. So we started with
names like “Money Made Simple.” And then I thought we could expand it to
include all of the things I was always talking about. So, we expanded
the newsletter to include sections on Business Made Simple; and later,
Investing Made Simple. One day, after our discussion, I was leaving my
girl friend’s house when she asked why I did not want to add “Life Made
Simple.” That was when it hit me that we could have’ Life, Investing,
Money and Business Made Simple’. T hat’s how we came about the name
‘LIMBsimple’.
What are the core values of your business?
There are four core values of the
LIMBsimple, which are in tandem with my life philosophy. First, is being
teachable. I am teachable and I love to work with teachable people. We
all can not know everything we need to know, so being teachable is one
strong value for me. The second is integrity. The word speaks for
itself. Integrity, for me, is just the standard. The third value is
excellence. To me, that simply means always ensuring your last work is
your best. The final one is simplicity. I like everything being simple. I
sometimes think that my obsession with simplicity is the reason why I
dread wearing ties, except when I am facilitating a training in an
organisation that considers it a huge part of its corporate identity.
What has been your greatest challenge in doing business?
I trade with knowledge. I am not going to
follow the pack in saying that access to funding, or whatever, has been
my greatest challenge, because I learnt early to start with what I had
and I have grown from there. I started a shirt-making business in school
with just N5,000. In consulting, however, the biggest challenge has
been gaining the access to train and consult for the big organisations.
So what have I done about it? I have worked with mentors and various
collaborators to facilitate trainings for these big organisations. They
do not have the LIMBsimple on their payroll yet. But I have got several
opportunities to co-facilitate and execute several projects for them
from the background, while I focus on building a client base from the
bottom up; in essence, starting from the micro small and medium
enterprises.
What is your book, ‘The Game of Money’, about?
The Game of Money is a book based on a
very simple ideology. I call it the game of who is indebted to who. For
example, you are wearing a nice shirt, fancy wristwatch and a good pair
of shoes. All these things were bought. Even if they were given to you,
someone somewhere paid for them. I try to help my readers see the big
picture that for everything you buy, you are paying somebody else. For
instance a soft drink company sells about a billion bottles every day.
That means, every day, about a billion people pay their debt to the
company. They might not know it, but sometime during the day, when they
buy a bottle of the drink, they have paid their debt. Everybody owes,
but the problem is that most of us wake up every morning paying everyone
else and have not asked the most important question: who is paying me?
In the book, I also link being paid to solving problems, because money
is only a reward for solving problems.
Where do you see your business in the next 10 years?
In the next 10 years, we hope to have
helped over one million businesses, entrepreneurs and aspiring
entrepreneurs in building and sustaining their businesses. At that time,
we will have started consulting for the big companies in some African
countries. Also, I will be getting ready to step down from being the CEO
at the LIMBsimple, so as to transit into the real sector businesses,
face my manufacturing business, and focus on some other interests that
the opportunities of networking and learning will afford me. That is
what 10 years from now looks like for me.
How has keeping a family challenged your business?
I married my best friend. Remember I told
you how she was even responsible for the name of my company,
LIMBsimple. For me, family is important. It’s just one of the reasons I
had always wanted to be an entrepreneur so that I could have control of
my time and have as much time as I want for the family. Besides, being
married is fun. My wife, who’s also an entrepreneur, always makes me
learn more and more about business, because she engages me at business
strategy level. Our home is a blend of two business and life partners. I
don’t think I would have wanted it differently.
What is the greatest success story of the LIMBsimple, so far?
Our greatest success story so far is the
Enterprise Development Conference, which we hold in Abuja annually. To
date, we have been able to help 1,200 entrepreneurs set up, grow and
sustain their businesses. We adopted a different model from the one
popularly used for entrepreneurial trainings here in Nigeria. Some of
our products have gone on to build successful businesses from the ground
zero; some have become YouWin recipients. And some have been able to
build their businesses such that they have attracted investors. I would
also say success stories are best told by satisfied clients. When we
train an organisation and the CEO gives us feedback after about a month,
saying profitability, morale, and/or productivity have doubled or
tripled. That for us, is a great success story, because a satisfied
client becomes an evangelist.
Who is your role model?
My biggest role models are my parents –
my dad particularly. He is, for me, the epitome of the never-give-up
mentality. I’ve seen him go from failure to failure, and then to
success. He never, ever gives up on anything. Professionally, my role
model is Niyi Adesanya.
source;THE PUNCH
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