It was a bright Friday afternoon in the administrative hub of Lagos State, Ikeja, Seun Adeola and I were set to meet for a chat at the Techpoint Africa studio. After a few minutes of setting up, I sat beside him – which in hindsight, wasn’t a great position. I realised post-production that I was so engrossed in the conversation that I forgot to take a look at the camera every now and then. Anyway, lesson learnt.
While we waited for the cue to begin, we sat up in our black swivel office chairs, which incidentally matched our t-shirts.
Growth Operations lead, Shara at the Techpoint Africa office, Ikeja
“Seun Adeola, two first names. My last name is also like a first name; Adeola,” Seun responded, acknowledging my compliment about two short names contrasting mine, which are 19 characters long. Moving on from the small talks, we kicked off the chat.
Seun has a reputation for growth and brand management, which, interestingly, can be easily described.
“When people say, ‘what have you done?’ I say, ‘do you know OPPO?’”
For context, before his current job, Seun was the public relations and digital marketing manager for OPPO, a Chinese smartphone manufacturing company, for three years. His achievements in this role, so far, are top of his list of accomplishments. He was responsible for establishing a brand presence for the company in Nigeria, which is still noticeable today.
He mentioned how he and his team worked tirelessly to create the appeal that OPPO smartphones have gained over the years in the Nigerian mobile phone market. And he achieved this through strategic partnerships with African and international football clubs and players, automobile manufacturers, famous reality shows, and celebrities.
“It’s very easy to point at. I particularly enjoyed that project; I worked with some very brilliant people on the project also,” he added, beaming with pride.
Growth Operations lead, Shara
Currently, Seun is the growth operations lead for Nigeria at Shara, an African-focused fintech startup that offers a range of financial services for small business owners and salary earners. Though this is his first foray into the fintech industry, he’s able to capture his experience in three words: fun, new, and stressful.
With 12 years of experience in the bag, he has worked in banking, insurance, electronics, automobiles, mobile phones, and FMCGs industries, including destination marketing.
Because of this, he could make a comparison between marketing in a startup and a typical traditional agency company.
“Most marketing jobs are very brand focused. You find yourself discussing things like share of voice, impressions, conventions, and stuff like that.
“It’s very superficial. In tech companies, marketing and sales are one; they call them growth. So you need to make it work. Now you have a new concept, like unit economics. It means that it needs to make sense.
“Like if I’m spending $1, how many dollars did I make in revenue? How many dollars did I make in profit? Stuff like that would typically not happen in your regular brand. Number two is that there, you do QPR, Quarterly Performance Review here, you do Weekly Performance Review.
“I kind of struggled with this in my first month. Your long-term goal is many short-term steps. But in traditional companies, you need a quarter. You do a half-year review, you do a full-year review. The pace is slower. Also, if you make a mistake now, the business will feel it. So it’s very different from like a large corporation where you have to send to reporting line, global, regional office before it gets back to you.”
Despite the possible downside…
“You could get carried away because you’re so invested in work. It could affect your friendship or relationship.”
…Seun thinks marketing can be addictive. He explained how.
“For people who love marketing and sales, it’s like a drug. You just can’t have enough of it. So it keeps you thinking short-term. Your long-term goal is many short-term steps, right? That’s kind of how it is.
Driven by the famous fashion brand Nike trademark, ‘Just Do It!’ Seun is not afraid of taking risks.
“If I fail,” he shrugged, “if I don’t fail,” he paused for another shrug, “the only way to find out is if I do it.”
In the past 11 months at Shara, Seun said he had made significant transformations in the startup in Nigeria since it just came into the country.
“We’ve not scratched the surface yet, there’s a lot of potential for the business in Nigeria, and I’m happy to be spearheading that. And the interesting part is that we’re doing all these with zero marketing. It’s the first time I’m doing anything without a marketing budget. Everything is organic, we’re growth hacking, boots on the ground. I’m like ‘wow!’”
If anything, Seun grew up as a vocal child and was always encouraged by his parents to speak up. He’s grateful as this has contributed mainly to his public speaking and communication skills, which are valuable to marketing.
I asked Seun what drives him; he leaned well into his seat, shook his head and said, “Trenches”. For context, ‘trenches’ is a popular Nigerian slang used to describe an underprivileged living condition. We both laughed at this revelation, but he made me understand that it’s an intense drive.
“Being in lack is something I fear so much, and it makes me very serious with my life. It makes me make better financial decisions.”
Marketing, growth, and everything in between
Growth Operations lead, Shara
Seun told the story of how he began and how far he’s gone.
“When I was very young, I started as a semi-professional cyclist, right? So I always dreamed of being part of like the tour de France, tour de Dakar. I used to cycle a lot, I trained with the Nigerian Cycling Federation, but then I think one of the coaches there told my parents to let this boy focus on school.
“Cycling is not something that will become big in Nigeria. So it kinda just fizzled out into being a hobby. Also, I always wanted to be an ambassador because there was one man, like a family friend, who was an ambassador; he used to travel a lot. I just thought I wanted that life for myself. So I studied international relations and diplomacy.”
By the way, he had a funny story in secondary school.
“In school, I created a political party with my friends because I was in boarding school to revolt against… we were eating a lot of beans, right? So we demanded spaghetti corned beef, we wanted more Jollof rice, and the school refused to give us.
“I was the dining hall prefect. So I’m like nobody’s eating. So, we let the food spoil a couple of times. before they now said, ‘students, what do you people want?’ Then they eventually gave us what we wanted.”
Maybe you’re curious to know what happened to his cycling hobby.
“I still cycle sometimes, not a real bicycle. I used the elliptic cycle in the gym. Yeah. But I don’t think it’s like before. I could cycle for hours before, but now after 15 minutes, I’m tired, maybe 30 plus.”
What about his ambassadorship dream? After all, he had his first and second degrees in international relations and Diplomacy.
“We will get there. There are three parts to that, you can be what you call a career diplomat, which means you will go and start from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. You line up, level seven, level eight, and up to level 16. The second one is political appointees.
“You lose an election, and they compensate you with ambassadorship. And the third one is, uh, you can join the core diplomatic by being a Subject matter expert. So when it comes to like marketing, I’ve done destination marketing, which is why I kinda took that job.
“Because I’ve worked with governments like different African countries, even Europe. Now you can be an Abike Dabiri for your country, but with ambassadorial training. Right. You can also be an Okonjo Iweala sort of, right? So there are different ways to do it. The dream is still there, but for now, let’s do this.”
Growth Operations lead, Shara
Interestingly, Seun has an entrepreneurship side, something he’d focus on if he wasn’t into sales. Spoiler alert, Seun might have a passion for marketing, but his love may just lie with the hospitality business.
“From school now, we just used to organise parties. So I think we went to one party one day, the party was dead. We were like, ‘shey make we help them?‘ So we kinda help them. The party was lit. So they were like, who are these guys? So, they used to invite us to parties. If the party wants to die, we help them. They were like, why don’t you just start making money from this thing? You know?
“Then we started organising parties. We started doing collaborations with brands, partnered with brands and sponsorships. We started getting big. We’re like, whoa, we need to register this. We started running it like a good company, and it’s called the party company.”
Here are his thoughts on transitioning into marketing. Heads up, Seun had to learn the hard way.
“First thing that happened was that my parents stopped any form of support. It just stopped, no heads up, nothing. It just stopped. So anyway, I had saved some money and I was managing that, and then the money finished. I remember I used to play football manager at home.
“I’ll just be on the bed. I’ll play overnight, and then I’ll sleep during the day. I realised that man, and I need to eat oo. So I was forbidden from eating in the house. I was idle now. They said, ‘okay, maybe because you’re still eating, that’s why you’re idle.’
“So I started thinking of what to do to make money. So I’ll go to Nairaland, I’ll read stuff. And I read somewhere that you can sell cars to make money. So I went to some car dealers around Barracks and Stadium in Surulere. And then I told them I’m here to sell cars.
“They laughed at me. They are now like, okay, if I can sell a car, they’ll give me like ₦50,000 naira. That year, it was quite a lot. So I took pictures of the vehicles. The first car I sold, sold for ₦350,000. The owner of the car sold the car for ₦300,000, and he also gave me ₦20,000; then I just realised that, wait, you can do something for yourself, you don’t have to rely on people.
“’Cause, it felt so good. That ₦70,000 naira was the sweetest thing that happened to me. So I wanted that to continue, so I kept doing that and realised that it seemed like I knew how to convince people. While doing that, I’ll go and teach and then do personal shopping for my friends. My first job.
“I learnt of a company and I went there, they said, they’re not employing. So I said, OK, you know what? I want to work here for free. It was an advertising company. So I started, I resumed the first day
“I was doing everything. I didn’t mind. I was learning. I sat down in their meeting and I was just listening. So whenever they give somebody, like maybe you’re my boss, they give you something to do. I’ll do it on my own, then I’ll come and show him, so he’ll correct me. One day, we were in one meeting and they were brainstorming ideas for copywriting and the ideas were really poor.
“So I just said something, and they were like, yeah that makes sense. And they used it, and the client liked it, That was how they gave me a job, actually. Then I saw a job ad on Twitter, I applied, went for the interview and got the job. That Job was in a marketing company. At that time digital marketing wasn’t a thing.
“I read this book, Malcolm Gladwell called Outliers that says that if you do 10,000 hours of anything, you’ve attained master. I did my 10,000 hours. It was supposed to take me like four years. I think I did it in two and a half or so. I was like, I want to become a master. That was it from there. And yeah, I worked there for four years, I left, I was tired of agency life.
“So I kind of put myself out there on like social media, like Twitter, for instance, I know we’re there on the platform to laugh and play, but the person you are laughing with is good at something. Right? So, uh, one of the things I do is I kind of network in all directions. upward, downwards sideways. I won’t say, oh, this person is an intern, I don’t want to talk to a person. No. People try to network upward only. Right? So I do a mix of it. At least if I need something, I know someone, if I don’t know someone, I can ask you and then you help me find someone.
“So I wanna talk to somebody who’s in that field. What’s this field like? What matters most? How do you measure success here? I do that. I do a lot of research. I stalk competitors a lot. I want to see what they’re doing. I want to know what they’re up to.
“I want to understand them. YouTube is your friend, whatever you’re looking for, someone has made a video about it. Don’t be, don’t be shy to ask questions. I’m not afraid to be ignorant. I know I’m a subject matter expert. but I’m not a field expert, so I need your help to apply what I know here. Right. So your new colleagues are less defensive when they feel like you’re vulnerable towards them.”
Let’s see how an average day goes for him.
“I like to start from the night before. I kind of plan my day before I go to bed. Then I start the day with a stand-up session with my team. You always have to be in sync. I do quite some ops work until like 12 noon.
“Then after 12 noon then I get into my actual work. I try to stop working by six, like deliberately. Even if I have some extra work to do, I always stop working by six, I go to the gym or I go and watch Netflix.
“Maybe later by 9, 10. If I have extra work, I just do some work, till like 12, it depends. But I always try to have a start and stop time for work.”
And this is what leading operations at Shara look like for Seun.
“It varies. Right? I work with data sometimes. Other times I’m out on the field. I go to the field a lot. So when I say field, I’m talking about the markets, ’cause we do SME financing. So we have customers in Oke Arin, Idumota, Ebute Ero, Alaba, Ladipo. So I go to those places, I will kind of have to wear like my company uniform and everything.
“I go there. It’s a different orientation. I’m not speaking English, speaking Yoruba, speaking pidgin, speaking small Igbo. Right. So I’m out there in the field, but you don’t want to go to the field before doing ops work. I’m not doing my grades from the office every day. In the trenches, that’s where my customers are. I’m very close to your customer.
“When everybody’s talking about their brilliant ideas, I’m telling them the mind of the customer, like I know you want to do this, but here’s what the customer really needs. So even though that’s nice, let’s prioritize this. While I’m driving between places I’m on calls.
“Uh, speaking to my team, I’m speaking to my supervisors in different regions. It’s a very fluid structure. So I won’t say it’s very regimented. The only thing I have that is regimented is meetings. That’s all that. That’s already scheduled. So I know what I’m doing every day. That’s it.”
You should pay attention here if you’re going into marketing
“Well, I think specializations first. A lot of people want to do… today, you’re in content, tomorrow. You’re in, uh, product. You need to start. Okay. For marketing, you have above the line, below the line, and through the line. Above-the-line is out of home, radio, TV; below-the-line is activation, experiential and all of that; through-the-line is your digital PR. Check the specialization.
“Pause there for a while, maybe four years. Right? Become that good. While you’re doing that, you’re picking what you call knowledge in the other aspects., you don’t need to be great at everything. You need to be strong as one thing and have a good working knowledge of others. Right. Then, when you now take that to tech you can apply that. So if you want to start your career in marketing, I won’t encourage you to start in tech.
“You’ll be quite restricted. I would encourage you to go to an agency. If you have the right attitude, you’ll learn, and you try your hands at different things. You’ll also be under the tutelage of people who are a lot more experienced. Your actions have little impact on the outcome. So you can make mistakes there.
“If you make mistake in a startup that’s bootstrapped, everything goes down, you know? And it’s also good for your confidence. You need to be quite good with different types of sheets, you need data application skills. you also need teamwork and collaborative skills, you need to develop that and also be very detailed.
“You need to be able to articulate your points. Sometimes you’re upset, you should also have like emotional balance, so you’re gonna be buffer a lot. And then because marketing and sales, they are in the firing line, you need to have a tough core and spine.”
I asked him, who would you advise not to go into marketing? And he answered frankly.
Someone that is too lazy to develop themselves, to ask questions, to research, Yeah. So anybody who is like you’re too mentally lazy, let’s say mentally lazy. Don’t bother. Right? There’s a drive you need to have. So that passion is very important. That’s all! Anybody can do it.
Seun relaxes from work by watching movies and clubbing. On his bucket list is a plan to drive through three autobahnsEuropean countries on high-speed motorways and document the process. Apparently, he has it all planned out, but it’s pretty expensive.
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