Meet Temple Obike – Founder & Chief Encouragement Officer of Brand Envoy Africa an advertising and creative marketing agency

First of all, how are you and your team doing in these COVID-19 times? 

It’s such an interesting time to be alive and thankful. God has indeed been good and business has improved despite the global ups and downs.

Tell us about you, your career, how you founded or joined this company?

My name is Temple Obike and I’m the Founder and CEO of Brand Envoy Africa (BEA), an advertising and marketing agency with a presence in Nigeria and Ghana. I’m an author, a certified Life marriage & family counselor & a psychotherapist who has learned to use my innate understanding of humans and their thought patterns in positioning brands in the marketplace. I founded BEA in 2015 because I wanted a space for myself and future “teamsters” to be innovative without restrictions or bureaucracy. In our first year of business, we were blessed to have been selected as one of the few agencies that handled mobile and online campaigns for the Nigerian presidential campaign. This came as a result of some note-worthy campaigns we had all been part of in our former places of employment. A real morale-booster it was for me and my team giving us the confidence to innovate and squeeze our colors out as a company.  https://www.linkedin.com/in/templeobike/

How does your company innovate? 

A company is only as good as the people within its ranks. We have never shied away from positive change or transformation in our personal lives. We develop our knowledge base daily, follow niche thought leaders, curate processes that work, and are ALWAYS puppy-like in our curiosity to discover more.

I have taught all my team members that value is attracted not chased after. You will always attract what you are prepared for and if something bigger comes your way, you can apply yourself and upgrade to a higher version of yourself to accommodate it. This has also been applied to my work life. We upgrade via continued learning, attract value and then repeat the process.

How the coronavirus pandemic affects your business, and how are you coping?

It affected our business positively because while some of my team members lost their side projects, they still had Brand Envoy Africa and when I and my partner Jade Obike had to make some hard pay-cut decisions amongst other things, the team were there to support us. This had made it so easy for us all to cope at the peak of the lockdown periods and throughout the entire period. The negative effect was also profound as we were just limited to digital campaigns at the time. We’ve all adapted and so have our clientele to this new norm.

It was also our day of positive reckoning and I’ll explain. My team from inception has always worked for 3 days weekly at the office premises with the remaining 2 days used for their personal projects while still being remotely available for our work if required. I arrived at this decision because creativity is such an important thing to bridle, especially if you are to use it on specific projects week in week out. In contrast, creative people when given time to express themselves personally automatically connect with their core. The results of this freedom I gave team members always generated excitement at the office come Monday mornings as the office became some Show-and-Tell center. This corporate culture helps us all bond and it also motivates our interns to aspire towards becoming more.

Did you have to make difficult choices, and what are the lessons learned? 

Personally, the difficult choice of taking a personal massive pay-cut, deciding on what was necessary and what wasn’t affected all of us. However, with this situation, I learned that taking a 90% pay-cut opened my mind up to other novel means to provide for my family and dependents. The universe simply abhors a hand that holds back because all you would have done is miss an opportunity to attract more into your life. Most importantly, we are all here, happy and grateful to still have a young growing business.

What specific tools, software, and management skills are you using to navigate this crisis? 

Zoom and google meet for meetings, we transfer/google drive for sharing files, and Joining community network groups for quasi-human feedback considering the need for social distancing.

Who are your competitors? And how do you plan to stay in the game? 

Every day, I compete with yesterday’s success. As difficult as it is to practice, I have always forced myself these past years to stay focused on personal/career development & refining service offerings. That’s how you stay in the game.

Your Final Thoughts

Well, it’s been a tough epoch globally and this was an issue many were not prepared for. As a businessman I say “Fall Seven Times, Rise Eight” but as a psychotherapist, I say “Be like my dear friend the palm tree, bend when the wind is fierce and simply come back up when it passes”.