I wasn’t born with a silver spoon – Awoyungbo Olugbenga Jackson

Tell us about your early days as a business owner and talent manager. The huddles you faced,  what kept you pushing and how you overcame. 

Early days of starting a business isn’t always easy as we all know, it was very hard but there was passion, zeal, and vision toward the mission . I remember starting my business ,I was living with few other people working with me in my room ( at my parent’s house in mowe ) for about a year plus. Then I decided to relocate to lagos (lekki) where myself , staffs and artist where all living in the same house. Even the recording studios was in the same house. We managed and we kept pushing. I do tell my artist we have a Vision and we are on mission which isn’t suppose to be smooth but consistency and perseverance  is the key to any success so we need to keep pushing and keep doing what ever we loved doing. The other challenge was financing the promotion of the videos and audios. It was crazy but thank God for early knowledge about Forex and crypto, which I converted all sales to international currency and traded for the time and kept all profits. Then put it into my business. I remember I wasn’t making money for almost 2 years but I kept spending. Friends and families started advising me to quit and focus on a more productive business but this was passion to me, so I kept on pushing and believing, keeping the fate up and telling my artist how much I believed in them. Eventually, I started seeing results, and here we are today, counting endless successes.

-Most people say the only reason you’re wealthy, is because you have rich parents, what’s your response to this? 

Hahaha , Well I wasn’t from a wealthy family, and my parent were not rich, the hustle was real. i remember back in my days at Abeokuta, I started my first business buying pure water in bags from distributors and then selling to student and saving up my gains to enlarge. After saving a few profit of about 10,000 then in 2008, I decided to buy a multilink phone and started a phone boot center in my house, where student came to calls. I remember it was about  20 Naira / minutes then, I further ventured into selling recharge cards, but on a very bad day a customer came to buy a card and returned it and claimed it was used., I gave her a replacement to try, but encountered the same issue.  Apparently all recharge card i had, had been used by an unknown person. This really discouraged me however, I didn’t stop. I saved a few cash and was going to continue . In 2009/.2010 I decided it was time to make more money off student and this time student where buying generators at the federal university of agriculture Abeokuta. So i became an electrician by watching couple of youtube videos.  I would go into students’ roof and help them distribute the light, make a switch over for them. I was doing that for a lot of student back in school but I still wasn’t making enough money. So   I bought a complete tool box and started servicing students’ small generator set.. Every weekend I go from house to house to service generator set which cost #300 per service. I gathered some money during this period then decided to announce the talent management group, while in school. I went to the auditorium before lecture or after lecture hours, inviting student to sign up and that was the beginning.

My parent were comfortable at least we had a free house we were living ( my uncle’s extra house ) funny right ?. My Dad was diagnose of diabetes in 1996 and had managed it most of his life till it resulted to kidney problem. He was a high level civil servant, who worked at lagos state university teaching hospital, Ikeja (Lasuth) but all his money went into his health balancing , weekly dialysis. He took a lot of loans, sold properties. When doctors were on strike er had to take him to private hospitals. We spend at least 6/month a year back and forth in hospitals, before he finally passed away. Watching him in pains traumatized me but he’s in a better place now. I started business doing business when I was barely 18 and i have been on my own up until this level . It wasn’t easy for me getting to this level, today, without inheritance or anything to pick from home. All was gotten through hard work .

What would you say are the common mistakes mistakes talent managers make?

Been sentimental about decision making , not taking their time to understand the talent before bringing the act out .  I feel first thing is to understand the talent , then understand what the community want then how can you blend both to sync together , it will help both the artist and the company to grow when the outside community accepts the act of the talent.

What are the major challenges you currently face as a talent manager and businessman.

Financial challenge – money to promote the talents to the level of acceptance and projects

Talent  (Artist) Management – Meeting up to talents demands  , some talent want so much and they forget it’s business .

Promotion – even with high investment into promotion you might not still get the result and it can be frustration

-What are your greatest fears?

Dying not accomplishing the vision.

If given a fortune what would you spend it on?

Building a bigger  facility or a platform people can benefit from and reduce unemployment.

What’s that one thing people don’t know about you? 

I hate lairs

What are you presently working on? 

-Signing new talents and venturing into the movie industry , hopefully start an academy thereafter

-Where do you see the Nigerian Music industry, in the next decade?

-I wouldn’t know where Nigerian music industry will be but I know Nigerian music will be a sound that is globally accepted paving ways for Nigerians through entertainment.