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Ubong Kingsley- Udoh, CEO/Principal Analyst, SYSPERA, talks about challenges involved with starting up a new business, how small businesses should view competitors and what the future holds for SYSPERA in this interview with Connect Nigeria. CN: What are the things you have learned within the five years you have been in business? Kingsley-Udoh: Coming into a new business, you really need to unlearn most of the stuffs you’ve learned probably from business school and know that the business hinterland is very rough and people are unapologetic for most of the things they do. It is much more like you mentally tasking yourself…telling yourself you are not quitting because the death rate of businesses is quite high. If you can survive the first twelve months of your business, you’ll be on your way to glory because the first twelve months are quite tough.

Kingsley-Udoh: One of the earliest advantages I had was my age. Most people were willing to listen to me. Maybe what I said was very exciting. I leveraged on what I had and I was able to make a lot of things work at the time. I had the content and I propelled myself and I knew it was either I grow big or I go home so there was no option of quitting. I have been at it since then. Persistence pays and I am still pushing it. CN: How do you deal with your top market competitors? What are you doing to keep at par or go beyond them? Kingsley-Udoh: In the new economy, I don’t think we need to keep our focus on our competitors. I think it is counterproductive. That was one of the earliest mistakes as I learned from the founder of NetScape, Marc Andreessen in the Netscape and the Microsoft saga and he was asked seven years down the line what he would have done differently and he said that the mistake he made was probably focusing on Microsoft. I learned my lessons that even though you look at your competitors, you are not looking. So, in the new economy, all you need to do is to take advantage of what you have. There is more money than ideas these days. You are meant to be a disruptor, a maverick, break old barriers and create new rules. I am more focused on making my company achieve that point of profitability and brand equity height. CN: How do you acquire new clients? Kingsley-Udoh: From the strategy we have employed, we work in a sector immersed with overblown claims, with most of your competitors promising things they cannot fulfill. Given the age and given what we do, we have been able to circumvent another path into getting our clients. We don’t wait for the market to come to us, we go to them knowing fully-well that there is a need. We monitor trends. We glean data for actionable insights. Data seems to be like the new oil, there is a whole new vista of opportunities when we juggle data. We go get the market from government institutions and corporate sectors and we take the game to them and offer the right advice and insight. CN: How important is Attitude in business? Kingsley-Udoh: One of the prices you have to pay for being the best is eternal vigilance. So if that could be ascribed as being an attitude, so be it. I am a fan of working hard and going the nth mile to make things work. It is my personality shade. I won’t take no for an option because failure is not an excuse to me. So, if I have psyched myself up mentally, then anything is possible but in retrospect, I think attitude is largely overrated because it is a personal thing. At the end of the day, it is about getting the job done. Personality matters but talking about it for too long a time makes it an overrated entity. CN: What’s up for SYSPERA for the next five years? Kingsley-Udoh: At SYSPERA, we have a progression we call base camp for every five years. During our brainstorming session on 1st of May, 2013, we drew up another base camp till 2018 and one of the first things that came to mind was that we are no longer aspirational, we are in for the real deal and as I said, it is important that we get to that point of profitability and the needed brand equity. We are trying our best to be a whole lot better than the competition; leveraging on every channel we can use to give ourselves the needed platform that will take us a bit higher and note fully well, that for the next five years, we want to be in the first three and we are not compromising on this. We want to be one of the first biggest three consulting firms birthed in Africa. I think the beauty for us is that we have withstood the challenges every small businesses can face. We are still pushing. Next five years is it. First three and we aren’t relenting.