Exclusive Interview with Ndidi Obioha (The most influential personality of the month)

We interviewed the most influential woman of the month for St Eve Magazine editorial and it’s amazing how she has so much inspiration to share about creating her Empire. We are delighted to share her story with the world and would want our dear readers to learn from it. Enjoy!!

Tell us about yourself?

I’m the CEO of Enthyst Fashion Clinic and Enthyst Events and creative director of the business. We have been in business for 16 years, we execute, plan, implement any type of event. I used to be a banker, and I have a stint in different industries, the telecommunication, advertising and banking industry, and so on, and most people describe me as a serial entrepreneur.

You are a serial entrepreneur with multiple business, we would like to know how you ventured into the saloon, event planning and clothing business?

I am not a hair-stylists, so I was more of the financier, and the main reason why I ventured into the saloon business was that I saw a gap. I always see a gap and I always try to see how I can close that gap. I used to live on the mainland then at Yaba. I really know of good stylists, but not with a conducive environment to put my head on, so I used to come all the way to the island to get my hair done, and I am like okay, why don’t I open a very conducive saloon and then give that very professional service and that touch, and you know to service people on the island, and even tried to bring those on the island to the mainland, and that was what I did, and that thought or idea gave birth to Hair-craft. Hair-craft in less than 3 months of having opened, became the official Hair Saloon for the Most beautiful girl Nigeria Pageant. I remember when I was still in the bank, I just set it up, I was looking for what to do to gradually exit the bank, and one day I went to pick up my husband from the airport, he has gone a trip and come back, at the airport, I saw Guy Murray Bruce and walked up to him and said, I see what you guys do on TV, I watch the Nigerian Beauty Pageant but there is something missing, the girls the outfits are good, but it is a whole package, from their hair to the outfit, and we think we can be of value to their service. When we became the official hairstylist for the pageant..an...get publicity and he said okay, I will pass over you’re your number to my wife who is in charge of this, and let's see how it goes. Met with Ann Murray Bruce, amazing woman, and that was how we got the deal, that was how we became their official hair Saloon, and that, the publicity they gave us made people think we have been in existence forever, but we just started, so that is the power of publicity, that took us there. And then I met the publisher of Wedding…Magazine, that was back then for the bride, that was the only magazine doing that in Nigeria, amazing concept, lovely production, but still, that was missing, so we talked to them about becoming their hair partner, she was very open to us and we became their official Saloon where their models would come and get their hair done. So it was one thing that led to the other, now there was a consultation, where we plan the hair that works best with the gowns, so a lady told me how frustrated she was planning for her wedding, then the planners were not that many, this was in 2000 and I told her about my wedding, how I planned my wedding, so I noticed she was so engrossed with what I was saying, by the time I was done, she was thrilled and told me to plan hers and I have never planned anybody’s wedding but my personal events, and in fact, she was hell-bent on me doing it, and she was not taking no for an answer. So I did it and that one wedding got me three other weddings that were how it started. When I was in the university in my first year I did a show during the ASUU disruption of the school session, from trying pageant events which didn’t work, to rave which was easier to put together, I just thought of it, one thing I like to do is, I like to think it and do it, that is what I do, think it and do it, don’t just think it and put it on the book, no. The beauty of the fulfillment is even if you fail, you have tried., so I did that, that was my first event back then in 1994, I even sold clothes then in the university, now I do it on a full scale. It is interesting how, even that of acting, I have a stint, when I came out of secondary school, and I auditioned and they turned me down, in my old age, I have done cameo appearances for Nollywood movies, done about six appearances, I did one or two for Rukky Sander movies. So this is me, doing everything I always wanted to do. Never throw away your dreams, never let anybody stop you from dreaming and taking you to get there because you dreamed you can get there, Just remain focused, keep trudging ahead, you will finally get there, so it is full business, I look back and l laugh because I can give myself a pat on the back, knowing that I never give up, and at the end of the day I made something finally, out of those things I started on a small scale. So I tell a lot of young people, just keep going, remain focused, and keep believing in themselves.

As featured in the printed edition of the magazine

That is powerful, so it is like every little thing that has been passion, you kind of brought them to reality, and you are making money out of them.

Yeah and that is the best kind of money to make, money that you make from something that you are passionate about, that is the best type of money to make, that is my belief. You never get tired, for you, it is no more a job because it is passion-driven so you enjoy what you are doing.

I think even with the question I have for event planning, you mean that somehow you just love, like what you just said, you love to care for people totally.

Totally, see when I describe myself, I described myself as a person that is happy and tries to make other people happy, for me, it is satisfaction is seeing smiles on people’s faces, be it from the event I do for them, people come and buy an outfit from my store, you see they are praying and blessing me for making them look good. What more joy can you derive from that business, money never drives me, it is the passion that drives, money will always come once it is passion-driven, money will definitely come.

It means somehow what you are doing, you are being sincere about it, it is not being, okay because it is money, let me get the money, you don’t care whether they are satisfied or not.

And you see when you are like that you tend to go out of you the way, you think out of the box, because all you are doing, the way I put it in a very lay man’s language, is you need to be passionate about something, find yourself in it, you eat, drink, sleep thing. When I was in the banking industry, every industry I have worked in, I have always been in the marketing sector of those industries, Telecom I was in marketing, banking I was in marketing, that is why I love the concept of marketing, of being able to convince people to do that which they ordinarily won't like to do and convince them and they say thank you, there is so much satisfaction I derive from there, you know. And I don’t take it for granted. So I am very thorough, I must believe in a product before I put my branded name on it. The same thing I must believe in human beings, I must believe in your skill, your art, your knowledge for me to be able to market you. As an event planner you market a lot of people in that industry, you market that artist, a lot of clients probably know who this person is, so your having to convince them that this is who we should work with, the decorator, caterer, MC, DJ and so on.

I think event planning is really occupying and draining, I wonder how you do that effortlessly and then your family.

Passion, it is still a passion. And the truth is because it is passion driven, I finish an event, I come home, middle of the night, because it was done so well, somebody is calling you for another event, and you see, it has gone so well there is so much joy in you, you come home, my kids understand what I do for a living, so you see, the family I carry everybody along, everybody is a planner in my family, so my 12-year-old daughter knows how to put together a budget, my first payment son knows how to put together a budget, so you see when you carry everybody along, it is easier, they are part of what you are doing, even when I am at the venue setting up, my kids are calling me, mummy how is it going, my son once told me when he was in the country, we go together, we set all of it, and he is in the States now because see mummy doing it, he learned a lot, so his part time job in the States has to do with events, and he is doing it so well. So when you carry everybody along, even when you come, I travel so much, I travel all the time.

Have you ever disappointed any client been a woman with so much to do at work and also at home?

You can’t give me your event and you are stressing, then you don’t have to hire me, you don’t need my services, so if you ask me to do your event, I say to you just get dressed and attend your event, that is all you need to do. Everything we will handle and I don’t know if I have ever disappointed any client. We say to a lot of clients give us your event and go to sleep. So that is the kind of name we made for ourselves. And the truth is like I said, it all depends on the passion one has for the business, and managing the family is the fact that I carry everybody along. And you are happy doing what you are doing, you can’t give what you don’t have, so you come back home happy, so I believe in coming back to a home and not a house and you have to be in that mindset to be able to get there, first love what you do, not seeing as a job, you look forward to the very next one because you truly enjoy what you do.

Every business has its good side and bad side, what exactly are the advantages and disadvantages of being an event management consultant?

The advantage is seeing people having a very satisfying event, the only disadvantage which is the challenges are you can’t do everything, so you are the planner, you have to depend on every other vendor, and depending on them is taking your time to find the vendor, I can’t work with every vendor, because I have my standard and don’t compromise on my standards, and I don’t make apologies on my standards, so it is either you join my bandwagon or you fall out, it is as simple as that, I have the clients interest to protect, I have my brand to protect, so that is the challenge, where you work with some time you come across vendors that, anything goes, so but with us you must be professional.

Does the cost of putting the event together also a disadvantage?

The truth is, event management costs a lot, the least paid in the event industry is event planning, that is the funniest part because we Africans don’t know how to ascribe figure to your time, to service, so it is more okay, I will pay because I can see XYZ, yes, I can understand, but the service that goes in, and are being built for it, you must scream, you must threaten, you must do all that, these are all behind the scene that people don’t get to see so the guests just arrive on the day and everywhere looks up pretty, but what is taking you to get to that point, nobody knows, and it is all the event planner because the client is relying on you, the client will never come and stay with the vendors, no, so it is the planner, you and your team will have to do that, the brief is from you. You have to make sure that everything that has been agreed between you and the vendor, the vendor implements, you can only be sure or ensure when you are on ground, so you are on ground all night to make sure that everything is working, even when I have staff on ground, and I am at home, I am on the phone all through, I don’t leave anything to chance, I always look at it as my personal event because the client is depending on you, he has trusted you with that, so that is the way I will take somebody else’s event, just like love your neighbor as yourself, what you would not do to yourself you can’t be seeing to doing to others.

Let’s shift out into your religious life, how religious are you?

I am not religious, but I am a very spiritual person, that is how I will describe myself, churchy, churchy, no. I believe I am able to know when he is saying to me, don’t do this, so I am more spiritual than everything else.

Do you like to pray, and do you ascribe your success to God, or it’s just by your hard work?

The truth is every success, I give glory to God, which also makes me spiritual and not a religious person, I can identify, I mean we can both be given the same book, my interpretation and implementation may be different, it is not because I know more than you but because of His grace, I pray to travel, I always end it with by the grace of God, it is not by my might, not by my strength, I know with his grace me it will happen, that is you trust him and believe in him, that is faith. You don’t need to depend on another man, helping you reach out to God, it is between you and God talk to him as you talk to your father.

Gender Equality issue is a global issue. Are you in for gender equality, feminism, should women be seen to compare to men, or get the kind of jobs that men do, or what is your take on this issue?

I will be honest with you, am I a feminist? Emm, I think I have seen more, I have a balance, there has to be a balance. We are created differently, a woman cannot make another woman pregnant, you go down that order, so there is still that difference. I think one of the issues being faced globally is, should I say the fear of the men thinking they are losing that grip. When they start to see the woman as a partner and not that superiority, you will embrace and learn better and work better together, knowing that you are both going for the same goal, the same objective, the same vision, the same mission. I think that will balance out the whole superiority, feminist and chauvinist whole thing out there. I believe that women should believe in themselves, see yourself as a human being before the gender thing, first see yourself as an individual, even in marriage, you are both separate individuals that are coming together, so in coming together you are now able to marry your ideologies, and being able to compromise, where this one has a shortfall you make up, so that is the partnership.

That is the challenge now, particularly in the political space of Nigeria, from what happened in America where they have gotten Kamala Harris as the vice president so it has opened the window for women now, so in the next couple of years enough women will come out for presidency. Let me say something, you see you must earn something even respect and regard for you to be reckoned, Kamala Harris has paved a way for a lot of us and a lot more before her, we have first female this, first female that, back in the days but, unfortunately, I don’t know how much they did to help other women or imbibe this same thing in other women, so if one or two women of ten women have come out and they are all, and they are not taking others along, mentorship, availability to mentor and all of that, there would be a problem, this is what the men do right, the men carry themselves back to back. So it is all in the numbers, so when we have 65% of women occupying some of these positions, in politics, we are going to get there.

Another part of the challenge we are having I, well it is a global problem, is the girl child, what do you advise on the girl child, the girl child is an endangered species, the percentage of the girl child being molested, pedophile by even family members, even by women is really alarming, your take and advice on the issue of the girl child? I think mothers have a major role to play, the girl child is seen as a very vulnerable gender, nobody is out here to castigate or whatever, but the truth is the way you carry yourself goes a long way. I can never justify any reason on earth why a man should molest or rape, there is absolutely no justification. People will say it is the devil and all that, but also there is something about being able to appreciate your being, when you start to do that, especially as a girl, a woman, you become a baby, a girl, teenage girl, an adult and all that from that young age if you start to imbibe certain beliefs in your daughter when the government starts to put stiff punishment out there for the rapist, the problem is that a lot of them are allowed to go scout free, there is no major enforcement of justice system in this country, and when these cases are taking up, who are the judges, after all, are they not the men? When our mothers start to educate our boys better. Who would the parents talk to when they want to get married? It is the girl, o you do this and do that, nobody speaks to the man, nobody, and it is on the mothers, not on the fathers. How you want your son to treat your daughter is the same way he will end up treating another girl on the street. So if he imbibes the right discipline, the right beliefs in that boy, if you teach your son it is gentlemanly to open the door for a woman when she is coming back, it is gentlemanly to see a woman carry stuff and helping her to carry those things, it is gentlemanly to see a lady standing and you get up from your seat for the lady to sit when we start to teach our sons to treat our girls right, and they will treat the girl because you start to see how they treat their siblings. I also say to the men the fathers, if you treat your wife and daughters right, your sons are watching, they will treat the women they see out there the same.

Your take on task sharing, these things are for men and these other ones are for women, women are the ones that take care of the family, now the world is saying that it is both of them that is taking care of the family.

I once jokingly said to a friend it is time they rewrite the Bible. The bible says something about women laboring to have the kids, men will till the soil, but now, women are laboring to have kids, they are tilling the soil to provide, common. You see it is an evolving world, things are changing, the way things are now is not the way our parents saw it back then, things were a lot easier, even for the men, they got to get jobs, women were given more opportunity than them either for sake of being admired by whoever that was interviewing them, so the men are facing some challenges, the kind of things that they could have gotten is not there; so there just has to be a balance.

Let’s go into your fashion and style, she is so stylish, so fashionable, would you say you are a fashion vicson, a fashionista, or a fashion junky?

Truth be told I love fashion, I like to be good, I honestly make no apologies, I believe in this saying, you are addressed the way you dress. Looking good, you need to identify what works for you, I opened a fashion house, what I called a fashion clinic, I didn’t call it a boutique, we offered service than just selling a piece of cloth, a lot of people come, they want to know what works for them, there are several questions like when you are preparing for an event, what kind of event are you going to? Is there a dress code? which accessories do you have available in your wardrobe?, all of these will help you decide what to pick, and for me fashion is everything, it is in the hair, it is in the colors, there are colors that would work with your skin tone, at the end of the day your final look will be determined by everything, the kind of makeup, the kind of accessories, the hairdo and so on, But I also believe in effortless fashion, I never like to be seen to have made too much effort, and doing that you are also looking to make sure you are very comfortable in that outfit. Fashion goes down to even your under-wears; I would say, you need to wear the right bras for the outfit to stand well.

Let’s talk about the finishing because that is one of the challenges we have, is it in the finishing, or is it really in the people appreciating that some people have the gift and they recognize it and the more you patronize they get better.

No, you can be creative, you can have the creative person in the fashion house, that is not the person that is making the clothes, I remember when I used to go to New York to source fabrics and all that, I am a fashion buyer, and they are the fashion designer, it’s two different. So I will go to fashion shows and see pieces of designs I like, I approach the designer and get the stuff from them, that is what we do. In New York, there is a store I used to go to for fabrics, and I bumped into two different people that are the creative guys for Auster Dolaranti and another designer, so they are the guys that do the sketches, they had to come, they need to look at the fabric, what designs they have up there so as to know which fabric they can use to translate the outfit. So in the fashion industry there has to be a balance between the one who designs, the one who buys, and the one who sews, But in Nigeria, one person will be the designer, the same person is sewing, the same person sourcing fabrics, do you understand, so they don’t have their actual strength defined, that is why most of them don’t pay attention to the details of the finishing, it’s a bit exhausting.

Exclusive Interview with Ndidi Obioha (The most influential personality of the month)

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