‘Young entrepreneurs must learn how to write bankable plans’

Temitope Nelson Sanya is the executive director of Nelson Impact International, a firm that trains young entrepreneurs on business sustainability and how to write bankable plans Temitope holds Bachelor of Science (Bsc) degree in Economics from the University of Lagos. In this interview with BUNMI BAILEY, the young entrepreneur calls on the government and the private sector to support Nigeria’s entrepreneurship landscape.

Tell me about your business, and what inspired you to set it up.

I started my business in 2015. But prior to that time, I had been engaged in some business developmental projects while in school, writing business proposals and plans and encouraging undergraduates to develop their businesses.

What inspired my business is the ‘pain of the unheard’, because the primary role of our business is to inspire youths, to prop them up to develop their dynamic skills so as to encourage the emergence of good leaders in entrepreneurship, commerce, finance, economy and governance. What actually inspired me was the day I went on a project field and, on getting there, I saw people wandering around, carrying personal files. I decided to find out why they were there. Many of them said were looking for jobs and also going for interviews. So, I decided to encourage them to develop themselves to some certain level so that they could make money while waiting to get good jobs .That is what inspired me to start this business.

How long have you been in this business?

I have been in this business for about eight years, because I actually started when I was in 200 level. The organisation was registered in 2015 but has been in this business for up to eight years.

You have some experience in entrepreneurship training. Why do you think most start-ups fail after five years of being birthed?

A lot of us have these skills to start up the business and manage corporations, but we don’t have the knowledge to drive them for expansion and profit. What do I mean by this? A lot of us just go out to do business; we don’t know how to keep our clients, and we don’t know how to encourage them. There is no business in this world that you want to go into that someone else has not done before. So it is better you leverage their past mistakes. You have to understand what they call ‘area of unique selling point’. Ask yourself why you are going to do the business and why people have to buy your products or pay for your services over others’.

The main reason major businesses fail in Nigeria is lack of proper planning. If you gather like 100 entrepreneurs in the room, 95 percent of them have no knowledge of what a business plan is. This was what I focused on in 2017. I wanted every business start-up to write a concrete business plan that would actually show the business map.

What was your initial start-up capital?

I cannot even say this is the certain amount of money I set aside to start my business .I just know that I kick-started it and that is the important thing that every entrepreneur should understand. We should not wait till we get some certain amount of capital before we start a business, otherwise we will not even start it. My point is, when I wanted to start a business, I looked at a minimum cost of how I could begin my business. So, the first thing I did was to undergo training. From that training, people began to know what I was doing and subsequently started paying for my services. We still write business plans for start-ups because that is part of our vision. We are not just here to make profits but to make life easier for our youths who want to go into business without having the knowledge, or huge capital.

So I cannot really say this is how I started my business, but the only thing I can say is that I registered my business with N15,000, because I personally went to the Corporate Affairs Commission to register it. And something interesting happened during my process of registration. I actually wanted to register as a corporate social enterprise consulting and training firm. On submitting the credentials, the lady who attended to me asked for my qualifications. I told her I had a B.sc and she told me that since I did not have a master’s degree, I would not be able to register as a consulting firm.

She also said that if I didn’t have a B.sc in education I could not register as a training firm. That got me so mad because no matter what we do, regardless of our qualification, I think it is experience that matters. If this was what they told Mark Zuckerberg, there would not be Facebook today, and if they told Larry Page the same, we would not have Google today.

The lady just directed me to the head of department. When I got there, the woman had already heard my voice and asked me what happened.

I just dropped the documents with her and told her what happened and the woman said it was among the requirements, but promised to look into what I had said.

Though the certificate was quite delayed, I got it and this inspired me.

I keep enlightening the youths that they need to register their businesses and have a corporate account. It does not cost much if you do not contract it out to agents. Go ahead, do it yourself, go through the process and that is the important thing.

Who are you partners?

At the moment, the organisation has six team members and we have had major partnerships from the inception with the Lagos State Youth and Ambassadors; with BEN Television, United Kingdom; Leadership Leverage Africa; University of Lagos; Teenagers and Specials, as well as the Lagos State Ministry for Youth and Development, and many more.

We are still looking forward to many partnerships because our goal is to reach out to youths to enable them to pursue entrepreneurship and shun chasing white-collar jobs.

How far has your business grown since inception?

My business has grown well, though I cannot measure it in percentages. It has grown to an extent that I believe in the next five to ten years, it is going to be one of the major recognised companies in Nigeria because of its level of transition. As at 2015 when we started, we had nothing like business partnerships or big major projects, but between 2016 and 2017,we have executed between four and five projects from partners.

What are your challenges?

One of my biggest challenges in this industry is un-conducive environment. There is no policy that encourages entrepreneurship in Nigeria. Today, when we have big projects to execute, we go through difficult challenges getting finance. When you write projects to develop the youths, you get zero response from big organisations and government parastatals, but we can see the organisations sponsoring shows and entertainment, giving little or no recognition to entrepreneurship. I think that is one of the major challenges we are facing presently.

How can the government address these challenges?

I think from the business perspective, government knows what they should do but refuse to do it. At every government seminar or private organisations’ seminars I have attended, we raise this same issue every day and yet they are left unattended to. So the government actually knows what to do but refuse to do it. The best way is to empower the youths, and give much focus on entrepreneurship in Nigeria.

Every development around the world actually comes from entrepreneurship. We see big cities today fuelled by entrepreneurship and technology giants. Our academic system does not encourage entrepreneurship. I went through the University of Kent to look at its curricula and I realised a lot of things have changed. It has infused innovative disciplines like entrepreneurship and business into its curricula, but we cannot find this in our educational system. We are still used to the old way of lecturing, and this is not providing the right business exposure to young undergraduates.

What will you tell younger self?

At every stage in life, we should all determine and know what we want to do with our lives. The point is this, the 21st century is moving away from collar jobs. Jobs are being lost through technology and I always ask myself, what if technology comes into Nigeria’s petroleum sector to extent that when you get to filling stations, you fuel your car yourself without any attendant and pay with your card. That means all the staff will lose their jobs in a snap. Now, what opportunity can my younger self actually create out of the trend of technology?

How can I fit into this trend and make sure that I am not left out?

Some say it is either you control the economy or you dominate it. It depends on your choice.