Ingressive Capital had the opportunity to speak with Abimbola Adebakin, Chief Executive Officer of Advantage Health Africa, an aggregator in the retail pharmacy space on ‘Building To Last’ as an entrepreneur.
She was a guest on ‘The Soaring Series’ brought to you by Ingressive Capital in conjunction with The Spark NG to enlighten and empower entrepreneurs with insight and practical resources to soar despite these uncertain times.
Abimbola is a trained pharmacist from the University of Lagos, with a Master’s in Business Administration and a Certified Performance Technologist (CPT), it was indeed a pleasure to learn from her wealth of knowledge.
Speaking on building structures and processes to last in a business, she explained that most start-ups don’t have everything put together. While there are ideas, the right structures often times aren’t in place to help the business withstand challenges. She says there is a balance between entrepreneurial spirit and administrative spirit every entrepreneur should pay attention to.
“Businesses should have standard guide for risk.”
Abimbola said, understand what type of risks can materialize and the best possible ways to tackle it. For example, a business with three main clients, but along the line, competition comes and poaches the clients, what are the next steps? Ideally, a business should have a line of action against this.
COVID hit the world by storm, businesses where affected, age long structures where shaken and a new normal emerged, all in a short period of time but with enough time for businesses to pivot. Abimbola explained how the lockdown affected her physical stores, essential staffs were unable to get to work on time, working hours were affected and eventually they had to pivot.
Although there were challenges while pivoting, her team was able to leverage tech to meet the growing demand of the market and according to her, this action increased their sales by four times the normal. She also encouraged businesses to be creative. Sighting an example of her company building additional stream of income by providing solutions relating to COVID responses.
In her words, every coin has two sides, one side with problems and the other with opportunities, find the opportunities. When building to last, outside the entrepreneur, the team behind the business are just as important. The team includes staff and advisory board, Abimbola mentioned having two or three people who see the vision from a different angle would help the entrepreneurs confidence and open opportunities they can leverage.
Entrepreneurship is a long road to travel, find people who are on the same journey with you and connect, make friends with people who are kind and comfort you, most important, know yourself and where you are, Abimbola implored entrepreneurs.
To wrap up the episode she said, “be glad you survived, re-strategize and find opportunities.
