With this statement my relationship with Simon O. Adeji took a definite turn for the better. It was really our first serious meeting, but it was the first time I felt properly introduced to one that will be instrumental to my later success. I’d first met him a year earlier while on a visit to Kaduna at the home of the coordinator of Youth With A Purpose (YWAP), Dr. Charles Ononiwu, one of my mentors. We fondly call him ‘Uncle C.’ This is an interdenominational viz NGO that creates an enabling atmosphere where youth discover their talent and develop them for use under God, and for good. We got talking subsequently as he tried to help me secure a job with one of the telecom industries in the countries.
While at an eatery in Awolowo Road, Ikoyi, I knew that something had happened to me. From that time on we talked, shared and almost lived together. I saw the calmness with which he pursued his dream of floating a magazine, the type that has never been done in this part of the world. He was passionate about it. He exudes such confidence that my initial doubt on the likely success of his intentions dissipated with time and was replaced with believe and enthusiasms.
I’d closed from work and gone to see him in Ikeja one day.
“Four banks are jostling over whom to sponsor my project, Emma.” He announced in his usual characteristical calmness. I said nothing but within me I mused: “Go on, dreamer.” Then the phone rang. I was closed by and naturally picked it up.
“Yes, who is it?”
“Can we speak with Simon? Tell him it’s from the Zenith Bank.”
Probably more for my benefit he picked the call with me standing by. Zenith wanted to solely have it all. I was dumbstruck. Everything he’d said was true.
Today, more than seven or eight editions (as at the time I wrote this piece) editions of Sleek Magazines has been published. A coffee-table book collating almost all the speeches of Ex-President Olusegun Obasanjo was published. At the last count his company, Sleek Communications Ltd celebrated the opening of its London office in April 2008 with assets running into millions. But that is not my surprise. It is that he, Simon, remains humble, accessible and straightforward. During all my times with him and from later conversations with those who knew him before I did, one impression stands out: he has a yearning for excellence. Like he once told me while we were eating at Munchies on Awolowo Road, tapping his head, that the drives for success lies in ones desire to excel.
With him, the need to fill in a gap which is commonly used as in a quest to see a need and changed it is changed to, according to Simon, “create a need, fill the need”, and not “find a need to fill”.
One time we were driving through an almost empty Third Mainland Bridge on a Sunday afternoon, he pointed to his nomination slip by CNN as the “No.1 Fashion Magazine in Nigeria, Africa”. He, it is that built in me the desire to establish something. He was able to see into me what I couldn’t decipher. It was one of those evenings we were together. He was going through my book of collections which I refer to as ‘Savant’s Clippings’, when a small piece of paper slipped out and he picked it, read the content and asked: “Emma, what is this?” I shrugged, characteristically, in given situations like this: “Nothing. Just one of those insights I write. Nothing really.” You think so?” His question made no impact on me, but I showed mild interest, still. “Do you know you can make millions out of this?” “How?” I was bemused. “Stickers.” He doesn’t normally say much. He is précised with his words. That simple expression eventually led me to achieving another thing I never believed possible, that on business one can gain access to what is normally seemingly inaccessible if one acquires the right and correct attitudinal dispositions. With him, you don’t have to have a ‘leg’ to gain access to people, especially where businesses are concerned.
Today, a once timid me business-wise, one who never believed he has any iota of business acumen in him, now own his own business outfit – in publishing. I really wanted to walk under him but he simply encouraged me thus: “Emma, you have it in you. Do not be discouraged. Nobody got to the top on a platter of gold as such. You don’t need money to start, either. Have a marketable concept you can develop and with proper accentuation you will break even and penetrate market and become reckoned with.”
His advice, at a time when he has not even achieved anything to be physically seen became the testimony I can now share with the world. He broke into the market by ‘creating a need and filling it’ and I am right on the same track as well – at my own growing will and determination. I may not have matched his drive and speed but I am grateful we’d ever met. I may not be where I ought to be but it wasn’t what it used to be.
-Emmanuel Enesi Ajanah, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief, DeepRoots Magazine, and CEO, The Breathing Mind Ltd.
Confidence gives birth to confidence. There are reasons to have faith...especially where faith inspires faith. Thanks, Symon.
