Larry Izamoje was born on the 24th of February 1962, He single handedly pioneered Sports Radio in Nigeria and the entire Africa when he founded Sports Radio 88.9 Brila FM in Lagos, Nigeria, in 2002. He was born in Onitsha, Nigeria, he is the fourth child in a family of nine. He is married with three children.
Early life
Izamoje attended the Institute of Continuing Education, Warri before attending the University of Lagos from 1981 to 1984 graduating with a Bachelor of Science (second Class Upper Honours) degree in Sociology. He did his National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in Kano State and was a recipient of the Kano State NYSC award for excellence. He was a member of the editorial board of the Kano State NYSC Newsletter during his 1984/85 service year.
Izamoje returned to school to receive a Master of Science degree in Sociology in 1986 from the University of Lagos and got a doctorate degree in 2012 from the Business School,Lausanne,Switzerland.
Question: Please tell us some of the things you do when starting up a business?
Answer: Basically I have discovered over the years that a Business must start with a good plan. The problem with most businesses in Nigeria is that they just dabble into business without a plan, some may have what they call luck to just go through it, you may just find fresh doors of opportunities opened to you, or you meet trouble and you bounce out of it like a good tyre hitting any rough part, but most people don’t come out of it because of ‘planlessness’, You must begin by having a plan of what you want to do in business. A business without a plan lacks discipline.
Secondly you must know how to reinvest your fund, your money must work as hard as you in business. Someone shared a wonderful testimony with me of how with a 100 million naira he bought a free home worth a 40 million naira. How did he achieve that?… If you keep your 100 million naira in a Nigeria Bank, a good Nigeria bank, you are sure of at least 10 million every year and if you do a mortgage deal were you pay 10 million every year, give yourself four years and you will buy a free home and your 100 million is still in the bank, but what we do here, the moment a person saves he goes off an buy a luxurious car.
As a business person I have learnt to wake up early to go for it, sleeping all the time will lead to slumber and slumber will lead to poverty.
Always see opportunities around you.
You don’t tell everybody or just anybody that area that brings all the profit to your business or the unique selling point of your business. Every business has it unique selling point, so before you go into any business, you must know your unique selling point.
Learn to be an Original even in a field that is saturated, we must learn lessons from other people’s business. For example I did not start Radio in Nigeria, but I came and said in Africa there’s nothing like sports radio, so lets be an original in that area. Today there copy cats everywhere, but you still find out that yes they may have the Novelty effect, but the novelty effect does not last for more than a year, it will dry off and people will return to the original.
Every business must solve a problem for it to succeed. If your business doesn’t solve any problem, then you are not there yet. So the first take off point as you do your business is to think of a business that solves a problem and then you work out how you will solve the problem.
You must always practice what you have on your plan, put them onto action. You must practicalize your plan; you must persist because sometimes it takes some time for your business to be fully accepted.
You must be prepared for the perseverance stage, you must be ready for problems.
You must persist and persevere too; you must also learn to pray because there’s always someone bigger than you up there.
Be very transparent as a business leader, nothing kills a small business faster than a leader who isn’t transparent. You can start out small and target were you are headed, do you want to grow the business to become a big time investment or just a small scale business.
Question: Why do we have just one generation businesses in Nigeria?
Answer: Because of “planlessness” (lack of planning) the culture of communalism. Never add sentiments to business, for example, don’t put a relative in a sensitive position of the business without adequate training or adequate exposure to that responsibility.
Another reason is the issue of low capacity on the part of the owner and the worker because they don’t invest in training, but remember the saying that “ if you think learning is expensive, Try ignorance”.
Limited or no opportunity for good capital. As big as Nigeria is, those who suffer the most today are the small and medium scale organization. No protection, because by the time you go to the bank for soft loans, they tell you they don’t believe in your oranges or your small restaurants. They believe more in people who have gotten contracts from the Government because they are sure the Government will definitely pay, so at the end of the day you find that small and medium scale business are affected by poor capital inflow, poor infrastructure, inadequate or no exposure to new technologies that will aid work.
Question: How can they come out these limitations?
Answer: Every business owner must learn to invest in training his/her staffs. Give your workers authority, watch them stumble and fail and then you prompt them up again and then correct and revive them.
As a business owner you must lead by example, your workers must believe in your dreams and also in you.
At the end of every year make them understand that this is the profit and loss level for the year and as the director of the business am taking this and planning back with this… while you carry the kidney, make sure your workers get some meat to also take home.
Question: some business owner feel it’s okay to spend money from the business unaccounted for…what is you take on that?
Answer: That is a wrong approach to it, you must start your business with a lot of self discipline, the plan is to grow the business, most businesses started in small ways like Guinness, Honda, Suzuki, and so on.
Question: A lot of times the impression we are given is that as small business we are meant to always reinvest our profit, since the interest rate in most banks is low…is that a wise decision?
Answer: Saving is almost risk free. In Nigeria currently if you give a bank anything under 50 million and the bank folds up or crashes, the Government through it’s agency that regulates what banks can keep will pay back your money up to 50 million, so anything above 50 million in a bank, you are on your own. You must know the rules of government at any point in time.
You can spread your money in different banks to avoid the unforeseen.
Buying shares is becoming lucrative again after a while, another way is buying lands, but you must secure it properly to avoid being duped by fraudsters. Its usually advised to apply for a Government land because it puts you on a safer side.
The best way to save in Nigeria at the moment is by buying government Treasury bills or direct fixed deposit with banks. The stock market is also picking up again.
Question: Can you recommend Two business books for us?
Answer:
- Labor Mobility in Small and Medium Organization in Nigeria By Dr Larry Izamoje.
- Business Ethics By Prof. David Gration.
You can get the books on E-bay and Amazon UK.
Question: Who are your role models in business?
Answer: I would say there I are people I look up to in business, but I wouldn’t call them role models in every sense of the word.
High Chief Raymond Dokpesi (owner of African Independent Television, AIT)
Question: When did you start your business?
Answer: I started my own business with my wife in 1993, it started as a sport video club.
Business is about trying and failing without lost of Enthusiasm.
From a video club we moved to selling baby wears which my wife was running. We later moved into advertising production, which later changed to Brila Studios. Brila studio is still functional in Lagos. From there we became independent producers and Brila sports was born and I became an independent producer doing programs on radio.
Sponsors started coming in once we became an independent producer, by 1993 Nigeria was qualifying for it’s first World Cup appearance and CADBURY asked me if I could do them a daily show on the world cup because of the success of the weekly show I was doing for them , which they were sponsoring and I agreed to do it and with the support of my immediate elder Brother in the U.K Dr Innocent Izamoje.
In 1999 we decided to take it a step further and we applied for a full sport radio and we started operations in Lagos in 2002, In 2007, 1st of Jan. we started operation in Abuja and in April 2011 we started in Kaduna, Nov 2011 we started in Onitcha.
This is my story for now….
CREDIT: MY BUSINESS LESSONS
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