Mr. Femi Adeoya is the Chief Executive Officer of Skytrend Consulting Limited, an accounting and business development outfit based in Lagos. Armed with a first degree in Accountancy from the University of Ado-Ekiti in 2000, he did his compulsory one year national youth service in Anambra State where he taught accounting, mathematics and economics in a secondary school. After the youth service, Adeoya went back to Lagos and worked in various places as an accountant/accounting officer during which he was able to put into practice what he learnt in school. He rose to become the head of finance at Marketing Mix, a marketing communications/public relations outfit that is also into hospitality industry, before starting his own business last year. He speaks on his business, challenges and advises the youths to take responsibility for their lives. Excerpts:

Motivation:

Said Adeoya  “At a point in time, I felt the job was becoming monotonous and I needed to move on. I told my boss and he was reluctant to let me go, my friends could not understand why I wanted to leave a well-paying and secure job for the unknown. But my goal was not just to make money. I read Rich Dad, Poor Dad where I learnt I should work to learn, not just for money. The import of that to me is that it is not just about earning money, it is about networking and developing yourself. Yes, I was not unaware of the challenges, I have heard of people who left their jobs to start their own business and failed but I told myself I was going to move on.”

Stepping out:
On July 1, 2012, Adeoya officially started Skytrend Consulting. “When you are working for somebody, you should not just resign without notice, give them enough time, it’s all about relationship. So I gave my boss six months notice, from January to June, 2012.” It was no wonder then that Marketing Mix became his first client. I have always wanted to become an entrepreneur. I had registered the company before as Skytrend Company Limited in 2009 but that was more service-oriented and when I left Marketing Mix, I felt I needed to register a company that is devoted to my profession so I started Skytrend Consulting Limited. Basically, it is a business development and accounting solutions company. It covers the entire business functions of an organisation. When someone is sick, he goes to the doctor and the doctor diagnoses him and gives him medications. That is how the job of an accountant is – diagnose the ailments of a business and proffer solutions. A lot of people have the misconception that an accountant/economist is synonymous with stinginess, someone who does not want to spend money, a miser. That is not correct. An accountant is someone who maximizes limited utility or funds at his disposal, someone who optimizes the use of money, who puts money to the greatest use. For instance, if you have N1 million and put it under your pillow for one week, that is wrong because that money has a cost of fund attached to it.  An accountant looks at an organisation and asks: What can I do to make this organisation work? Have they employed the correct number of staff? What can we do to increase their income and turnover? Are they making turnover without making profit? So it is the duty of the accountant to look at the financial and business dynamics of an organisation and put some things in place to make it positive. That is what Skytrend Consulting does. We look at the entire concept of a business and help the business owner in projecting a good financial framework.

Our focus:
“Our focus is more on small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs), that is where the challenges are. A lot of business owners don’t take much interest in the finances of their organisations. They may or may not have accountants but they have the cheque book with them and they withdraw money any time. They don’t appreciate how the financial aspect of a business can impact the long-term sustainability of the business. We help them appreciate the business so they can also sit down and understand the financial activities.

Just in the one year we have been at work, we have worked for at least 10 clients and one common denominator is the way many of them spend money and run the organisation like a personal fiefdom. Of course they own the business but we advise them. When you want to spend money, allocate yourself a salary; don’t just take money from the company for personal use. That is business development. The second aspect is accounting solutions for organisations. A lot of businesses do not have proper accounting solutions to run their business. In those days, things were done manually but today, things have become a lot easier with simple accounting solutions. With a little knowledge of accounting, you can become a quasi accountant. You don’t need to have a degree in accounting to be able to use these packages so we help many organisations develop their accounting system and then give them the best accounting solution that will help them run their business. The accounting solution is automated. Once you know how to use it, all the money coming in/turnover are fed into the system and at the end of the day, week or month, you can easily determine your turnover, profit, loss etc. You can determine illegal bank charges.”

Training:
“We also do training. We don’t just train the accountants but the CEOs also. They either come here or we go to their organisations to train them. We do week-day and weekend training for those executives who cannot attend the week-day training. I have many clients using the software now and they are very good at it. You can analyse your organisation at a glance.

We are planning to go to every university in Nigeria and educate the final-year students and let them get the training before graduating from school. It’s unfortunate that a lot of accountants cannot prepare an accounting system. Many still use excel which is not an accounting package, it is a business package.”

Challenges:
Adeoya noted that although there are so many challenges like power, access to funds etc., “but if you are goal-oriented, you will make it. Lack of funds is a big challenge to SMEs. I know a new generation bank that does not lend money to SMEs. So SMEs are not able to make progress because of lack of access to loan. There are so many people with ideas but no matter how good your ideas are, without access to working capital, you cannot go far. We want to expand but we are limited by lack of access to funds. I applied to a bank for loan and they said I should go and bring cash-back which means I should get someone who can make fixed deposit to the bank and then they will give me from there. That is exploitation. Government should help us look into this.”

He regretted that many graduates want to become rich overnight without paying the price. He, however, advised the youths to take 100 per cent responsibility for their lives. This means that although there is no power and no access to funds, but you just tell yourself that you are the one to provide those for yourself. Find solutions; don’t wait for anyone to do it for you. Don’t wait for loans from banks, you can go to family members and start with whatever you have, no matter how little and build up from there,” he advised.