Though am yet to meet her face to face but have heard, read and got a lot of views about her. The delectable BrandWorld COO distinct from the regular CEO we do know, yes peculiar I mean in this interview shares her inspiring entrepreneurship adroitness which she said is wired in her DNA.According to Sunnews.. Enjoy
After a degree in Guidance and Counselling at the University of Lagos, Clara Chinwe Okoro opted to pursue her aspirations in the fasted-paced, creative field of media, branding and advertising, rather than waiting for job opportunities and bracing up to be a shrink.
One of her strongest beliefs is in the power of ideas to change the world. Spurred on by that, and her tenacity to meeting challenges and solving problems, she trudged on honing her skills via different platforms before berthing her company, BrandWorld Media, a company that boosts an impressive clientele list of blue chip firms.
This brand expert, who aptly described herself as having entrepreneurship ‘wired in her DNA.’
“After school, I worked a bit in a production company that does documentary for two years. After that, I went to work for an advertisement agency, then known as MC and A, a part of Insight Communication. I worked there for a few years then I left to establish my first production company, Ziess Nigeria Limited, and from there I met Dr. Ken Onyealife who I partnered with to establish BrandWorld Media.
“I see myself as an entrepreneur. I like challenges and I like to solve problems. What engenders me to do that is, as an entrepreneur I could be the solution that someone is looking for out there. So mine is to turn that around and earn money through the solution I provide through my enterprise,” said the easygoing fair-skinned lady.
She also gave a hint on how to run a successful business, means to source for capitals, how she overcame gender issues in her career, future plans.
Excerpts.
Early beginning
I hail from Arondizuogu in Imo State. I attended Onward Nursery and Primary School and Methodist Girls’ Secondary School. I started Brandworld in 2003, but I’ve been into production for 13 years. And in doing so I have garnered more experience being in the industry than studying about it; nothing teaches you better than real life experiences. So, when I go to courses, seminars and conferences I absorb more and add to what I have already learnt in the cause of running the business. So, that places me an edge over somebody who doesn’t have the experience that I have, merging with the knowledge I have gained when I go for my courses.
Why I dumped Guidance/Counselling for Branding?
From childhood I had a very fertile imagination and unfortunately we didn’t have guidance counsellors to guide us from the early year in pointing directions for us. So, I just went through school, took on the courses that I figured related with the type of personality I had. And then it was while in the university that I realized that advertising hold huge fascinations for me in terms of the fact that it was a place where my huge imaginations gave rise to whatever it was I wanted to explore. And from the onset I didn’t study it in school, I just felt that I could still explore it even if am armed with a degree because I felt my degree was just a foundation for me to go out to the world and explore who I was and what I wanted to do with my life. And luckily enough, I saw an agency that keyed into what I believed in, in terms of exploring my imaginations. That was how I began to build my career in branding. It was immediately I left school I ventured into it.
Between finance and ideas, which comes first in starting a business?
I have a philosophy that ideas are the currency of the future. You first know your idea, tear it apart and know if it is sustainable before you know whether to put the money into that idea, because if you are armed with the money and you are in the dark on how to make the money work for your idea, then it is a failed venture from the onset. Idea has to be strong enough to project and push you, for you to know when to get the money and where it would work in the scheme of things for that idea. So the idea comes first.
Staying afloat in business
I would say it is because of the tenacity with which I pursue my goals. I wake up every morning knowing that this was a decision I took by myself and was going to fight the battle with me. So, every day is a brand new day for me to explore and play. And putting in the parlance, ‘Yesterday is gone, today is here and tomorrow is coming,’ it is like a warfare you have overcome yesterday, you are battling today and you are challenging tomorrow. So, in whatever situation I find myself in the course of running this business, I accept and face it head on. Starting this company is a decision I made and it is a decision I would live by, so if the failures come, I accept it, if the successes come I also accept. It is all rolled into one, and that is why I said that it is wired in my DNA, otherwise I would have given up and looked for paid employment.
Memorable experience in business
That was when I had a chance meeting with Richard Branson eight or nine years ago when he came to Lagos. I spoke with him for over five minutes, and it just didn’t occur to me I needed to ask for his call card and get a photographer to capture that moment for me. And up till today, it is something I keep regretting. It taught me one big lesson in life that you never have a second chance to make a first impression. So you capture the moment as they come, because it would either lead you to a bigger thing or stagnate you at what you never bargained for. That really taught me a lesson.
Another one was when a client made me wake up so early to catch up with an interview with a CEO he had arranged only for me to get there and I was told the CEO just left that morning for a trip. And the person who made this arrangement from an agency did not think it was professional enough to inform us that the schedule had changed. I felt it was the height of irresponsibility and how not to treat a client.
Challenges of management
Every entrepreneur faces challenges in terms of the peculiar nature of the environment we operate in. You have people that cannot understand your vision, so they are not willing to key into it. You have the issue of power supply which is a major issue in the country like ours, you have issue of sustaining your clients trust by making sure you that whatever the challenges you face with them, you are always ready to know that the client is the only reason you are in business. So, you go the extra mile to make sure that they are happy with services you are providing for them. You have the challenge of innovating consistently so you remain relevant in the business you are doing. Then you have the challenge of liquidity flow so that you continue to affect other areas of business that you could look at as upstream of your business to make sure that there are other streams of income coming to sustain your business. So, these challenges are what you go through daily, and keep going through them to make sure you survive daily.
Again, one of the biggest challenges in these times is the issue of manpower development that is human capital. A lot of youths I come in contact with, I realize, are not even keen to explore knowledge to be able to equip themselves with the sort of value they could add to an organization, which would then in turn impact on the remuneration they would be asking for when they are negotiating for a paycheck. I realise many of them have an ‘I-can-make-it-up-as-it-goes’ mindset. But it doesn’t really work like that. If you really want to be a success to yourself, you must humiliate yourself where knowledge is concerned, because once you learn, nobody can take it away from you. What most of these young ones don’t want to do is to discipline themselves to learn.
Advise to aspiring entrepreneurs
You have to realize that success doesn’t come cheap. It is very expensive because you have to invest in it. You have to make a lot of sacrifices. The money I could have used to buy lots of clothes or most of the posh cars, I keep injecting it back into running my business to make sure that I sustain it. When you priorities are facing you, you have to decide whether to run that business on the long run or not. So, you have to make sacrifices.
Secondly, your attitude determines your altitude. The same ways I face failures are the same ways I would take success. They all mean the same thing to me. It is the attitude I bring to the table every morning that would engineer me. It is all in my mindset, to know whether I want to continue running my business or not, because the moment you let fatigue to set in, it begins to depress you and you begin to toy with the idea of quitting. An old axiom says that winners never quit and quitters never win. So you must continue to engineer your mindset for success. You must continue to innovate and add that extra in your business. You must be hardworking. You must realise that if you exhibit nonchalance when you were an employee in an organization, when you decide to move into being an entrepreneur, you would still portray nonchalant attitude in running your own business.
Tips for raising capital
To be honest, there is no free lunch anywhere; people don’t just give out money for the sake of a great idea, they need a workable plan that could generate streams of incomes to pay whatever investment they are making on your business idea. So, you must first explore within your immediate relationships, those that can help you raise this money. You can bring them in as equity holders in your business. On the alternative, you could approach microfinance banks. Unfortunately, most people do not have collaterals, but I hear a lot of microfinance houses do not ask for loans, they only ask for a business plan to know if your business is sustainable in order for them to invest. These are issues you have to stubbornly pursue.
Gender discrimination
Yes, I face discrimination. I do. It is a regular occurrence in the industry, but to me it is not something that works against me. Rather, it works for me, because it strengthens my resolve to make sure that I push myself further to succeed. I don’t look at the discrimination any more. What I focus on is the strength of my idea. I challenge myself mentally to think of diverse ways to push what I am doing. I don’t look at the discrimination anymore. What I focus on is the strength of my thinking and the resolve I have to pursue other means to make sure that the challenge does not deter me in any way.
There are lots of such incidents where I have been looked down on because I am a woman. For example, men don’t think you can wake up at 3 a.m. to be with them at some drinking joint talking business, because that is where they strike their deals. In the middle of the night, they go to the boys’ clubs to moot ideas and put pen to paper. We were not willing to do that to succeed, so I had to look for other means to pursue my businesses. Those are discriminatory angles you talk about, but it does rarely have effect on our business because I might not have the same opportunities they do, but I have ideas that they are not privy to and those ideas might be superior. Those ideas might be what they need. So, they have no option than to approach me to key into that idea.
Brandworld in the next five years
I am very optimistic that growth is attainable and sustainable. In recent findings, we are told that Africa is one of the fastest growing markets now; growing at the rate of over six percent globally. The markets in Africa are emerging fast, while the ones in Europe and America are stagnating. This implies that the population has cash to spend. That is why you have a lot of people coming into Africa. So, we are positioning ourselves to be relevant in this emerging new market. We deal with brands and we know that brands are a global thing. Now that we are beginning to see young African brands emerging, we want to position ourselves to be relevant to tell their stories to the global economy. And data is being looked at as a big missing link in the African continent. We are also positioning ourselves to be able to guide big global brands making in-roads into Africa and direct them on where to find the kind of data they are looking for, so that their brand can create impact.
Hobbies
My hobbies are reading, watching movies, listening to music, travelling and playing ches
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