In this motivational business session, speaker Bankole Banjo (Speaker B) shares his 12‑year entrepreneurial journey—from banking to managing hotels, catering, manufacturing, real‑estate, photography, clothing, cleaning services, and event production—highlighting the massive revenues and lessons learned. He introduces a practical 7‑step framework for solving any business or personal challenge, emphasizing the power of clarity: 1) Define exactly what you want; 2) Identify the emotional why behind it; 3) Diagnose the barriers; 4) Generate concrete solutions; 5) Take decisive action; 6) Reward yourself for each action; 7) Loop back to step 5 and repeat. Banjo illustrates the method with a real‑world example from his event‑production team, where he re‑structured responsibilities and incentives to improve efficiency and brand perception. He stresses that entrepreneurs should focus on solving problems for people rather than chasing money, arguing that revenue follows value creation. The session ends with audience encouragement and a testimonial from Speaker A, who praises Banjo’s insights as a “key” for aspiring entrepreneurs and recommends one‑on‑one coaching.
All right, thank you. Thank you.
Once again, my name is Bankole Banjo, and I started my own career as a banker back in 2008. And then a year and 9 months later, we were forced to resign due to restructuring that happened in the banking system. So afterwards, I was offered a job by my brother to manage his hotel, a 16-room hotel, with zero experience, right? But I took up that challenge to manage the hotel. But that same year, we also acquired another hotel, a 40-room hotel, making it 2 that I was managing. Then afterwards, we went into outdoor catering. After outdoor catering, we also went into manufacturing of snack food, went into trading of home finishing products, went into real estate, went into photography, went into clothing, cleaning service, and then events production. Now, over the space of 12 years managing and growing these businesses and generating revenues of hundreds of millions every single month, Right? I also went through a roller coaster of emotions managing and growing these businesses. We also made a whole lot of mistakes while managing and growing these businesses. Now, this information that I have learned is what I now teach people. When I left managing and growing these businesses for my brother, this information is what I now use in teaching other people to become better at what they do. So how many of you are willing to learn a step-by-step method on how to solve any problem or any challenge that you might face in your business or even in your personal life? How many of you? All right, thank you. Now there is something in life— clarity leads to power. When you're clear and certain about something, right, it gives you the power to make what— to make the right choices. All right, so you might want to have— you might want to have a pen and paper to write this down, right? And this is the process. I'm well aware. This is the process, right? Step 1 is this: what do you want to achieve? You need to write it down. If you're facing a challenge, what exactly do you want to achieve? When you're so sure of what you want to achieve, it gives you— it gives you a clear direction on what to do next. What exactly do you want to achieve? That is a step. Now you put it down, the outcome you want for that, for that challenge you have, put it down on a paper. And I'll also share an example of what I did when I was managing the event production, event production part of the, of the whole organization, right? You know, this is what I did. I had, I had about 30 people that was working in that, in that team. And then, you know, event production, we do light stage, sound, and all of those things. We move a whole lot of things around, right? Quite heavy stuff and all. So we have technical people— the sound guy, the screen guy, the light guys, and also the movers they have around. But then again, my MD said he would rather have contract people come in to do some parts of the technical work. Right? And then they get paid extra for that. But the team that I have working with, those guys were not happy because they think that because I am staff, right? And they are paying me, I'm not going to get that extra cash. So what was happening? They were dragging. They were dragging and it was costing me a lot of time. It was costing the reputation of the organization. So what did I do? I looked at the whole situation. I said, what do I want to achieve? I said, number one, I want to achieve the most efficient kind of team. I want to achieve my startup to be faster. I want to improve the brand perception. So what I did was to tell them that, look, I am going to take off those contract people and hand over the responsibility to you and then give you a certain percentage of the money, right, that I'm supposed to pay those people. Right now it is saving me money. And you're also making them happy, and the job was moving faster. So that was where I started from. What do I want to achieve? The next step, step 2, when solving any problem is why exactly do I want to achieve this? 2 reasons, major reasons why people don't achieve what they want in life is number one, they don't know what they want. Number 2 is they don't know why they want it. Now, why do you want the results that you have written down in step 1? Now, this is very important, right? You need to find an emotional connection to that reason, because our thoughts will lead to the way we feel. That feeling will lead to the action we take and eventually produce the results. Now, if the emotion that is driving what you want to do is not strong enough, you won't jump up to want to run for it every single day. That is why you see people that say that they want to become an entrepreneur, and then you see opportunity, you are not so eager to want to push it. But you see some other people in the same industry, right? They see the same opportunity, and then the kind of speed that they take in pursuing those things, you'll be wondering what exactly is driving this guy. So you need to build that emotional connection of what is going to always continue to push you. You can say, look, you can say, look, if I don't run this business, right, there are a lot of people that are depending on me that I need to help, right? There are a lot of people, my family members, that are waiting for me to succeed that are looking up to me, right? I need to also enjoy my life. I need to also help some people that do not have the privilege that I have, right? So I must get up every single day to want to push in as much energy to get these results, right? So why exactly now? So if I don't solve this, if I don't— so if I don't do this, right, I may not be able to get the result that I want. All right, so that's step 2, right? Now Step 3 is, why haven't I achieved this yet? Now, at this point is when you start thinking of what are the possible challenges that are holding me back? What are the things that I feel that is holding me back in getting this result that I want for myself? You know, start thinking, maybe I've not learned enough. Maybe my marketing is weak. Maybe I need to collaborate with other people. Maybe I've not realized whatever skill, or I've not practiced whatever it is I want to do enough yet. Maybe I need to make— find a mentor to train me. Maybe I need to go to training school. All right, so you look at all of those things that you think is limiting you, or you look at it again and say maybe it is personal. Yeah, I'm afraid to take some certain kind of action. Do I need to go for personal development trainings? So look at all of those things. Look at all the challenges that you think you have all around that may be holding you back from getting that result, right? That's step 3. And then step number 4 is, how can I get this result? So this is when you now start looking for solution. How can I get this result? Do I need to register with HighLead? To get some kind of trainings that are going to help me? All right, do I need to find a mentor, right? Do I need to buy some courses? Do I need to understudy someone that is successful in the same industry that I am, right? Do I need to get the opinions of friends and family, people that are honest with me, right? Do I need to put in more time? Do I need to work harder? What are those things? Do I need to build my self-confidence? What are those things? What are those challenges that you might be facing that you think you need to find a solution to? Now, step number 5, and this is the most important aspect of all of this. You can plan as much as you want, right? You can put in all the processes as much as you want. You can pull out all the challenges as much as you want. If you do not take a single step of action you won't get the result that we are looking for. And this is where, this is where a lot of people find it very difficult to do. Where? What? Taking action towards whatever it is you want to do. That is where you start seeing people saying things like, I don't think I am good enough, right? Maybe they may not like me. What if I try? What if it doesn't work? What if I do this? What if I fail? What if I talk to somebody, they reject me? All right, all of these things always come up. I totally understand, but you need to find a way to get across that barrier, right? Fear is, is something that is super strong. It's an emotion that always holds a whole lot of people back. But I'll tell you today, whatever it is that you're afraid of, right, it is just, it is just because you have not experienced that thing before. So you're skeptical, you're afraid what is going to happen, right? And a whole lot of us as human beings, we are always waiting for validation from the next person until somebody says, yeah, you are doing well, and then we continue to push out. Even though I totally understand, I totally understand that it could be a motivating factor, but then again, in life, right, you need to understand that nobody is coming here to help you. Nobody is coming to push you. You must push yourself until they accept you. All right, and I also say to people, right, the race of this life is not to choose a winner, it's just for us to live a fulfilled one. So go at your own pace, take action towards what you want to do. If it works out, fine, good. If it doesn't work out, it simply means that there are some things that you do not know yet. Doesn't mean that you failed, it simply means that there are some things you don't know. So what do you do? You go back and learn. All right, so step 5, always take action. Take action towards all the solutions that you think you're supposed to— you're gonna need in solving that problem. All right, now step number 6, when you want to take action towards one of the challenges that you want to solve, right, write down the reward that you want to give yourself. Maybe something little. If you say that, okay, when I'm able to take this action to get the results, I'm going to go into a fancy restaurant and treat myself nicely. All right, so you can put that reward, whatever reward you want to put in there, right, towards taking that action. So once you take that, you reward yourself. All right, that's step number 6. And then step number 7, which is the last step, right? Step number 7 is that you are going to go back to step number 5 and repeat that process continuously. Repeat the process. You take action towards it, you reward yourself, take action towards it, reward yourself, until you get the desired results that you want for yourself. All right, now like we've been asking earlier, what are entrepreneurs? Entrepreneurs are problem solvers, right? You solve problems for people, right? And they get rewarded in terms of what? Payments. Now I need to let you know this: if your primary goal of wanting to start a business is to make money, if that is the primary goal, this is my belief that you are going to struggle. If that is your primary belief, that you want to make money, you are going to struggle. The attention and the focus should be that what problems can I solve for people? That money you're looking for is still going to come. What problem can I solve for people, and how many people can I solve this problem for to get paid how much that I want? If you solve a problem for one person, you get one money. If you solve it for 10, you get 10. If you solve it for 100, you get 100. Do you understand? So look at the industry that you have, look at the skill that you have, the knowledge you have, the experience you have, and then think about what are the, what are the challenges that are around, happening around us, and how can I solve that problem with what I know, with what I've learned, with my experience, and with what I love. So that, that is the whole process of how to solve a problem using that template, and it works every single time.
Coach, uh, I mean, if you ever, ever dream to start business, I think he dropped the key. There's no better key than that. You know, today a lot of people are closing the business and all that because they are not in practice.
Exactly.
That key he just dropped. So if you don't have the hangout, or if you miss, if you just join the group, please make sure you grab his number and get him into one-on-one coaching so you can get that nugget. Listen, I've been in business for probably more than 22 years today. I developed a small business from zero to small business from, I'm saying, zero to what, $75 million. I know how, you know, start small business and get to the point and get stuck and have to pivot to go up. The key is what he just shared. Uh, normally class like this, we should give him at least $10,000 to be here because he, he give us solutions that we can apply anywhere. Um, I know sometimes human beings decide what is valuable. And sometimes when things doesn't cost much, we think, you know what, what its value is yet to come. Um, thank you so much, my friend. This is, uh, it was just mind-blowing. Thank you.
