Toluwani Akaehomen

Episode: Toluwani Akaehomen, Entrepreneur, Executive Coach, Leadership & People Development Consultant
Toluwani shares her background and the challenges she faced in the hiring process, which led her to starting her own business and becoming a successful entrepreneur. She and Hogai discuss the mindset and opportunities involved in striking out on your own, the importance of finding networks and connections to build your business.
Visit her website Vantage Dymensions and her LinkedIn profile

Open Mic is a new podcast presented by the Open Doors Initiative which explores the challenges and opportunities of the working world from the perspectives of marginalised communities. The podcast takes the form of short interview segments with individuals who will share their lived experiences and insights.

Guest Host
Introducing Hogai asefi Wardak. Born in Kabul Afghanistan in 2001, the youngest of her family, with 4 sisters and 2 brothers. A family where she could see her older sisters not getting what they wanted in their lives, not reaching their wishes and goals, because her father had never allowed or permitted, and never had an open mind for women to engage, work and participate in community, at that time in their country. 

In 2016, she graduated from high school and was enrolled in Kabul University. She started working with Zan TV, which is a specialized tv network for women. She started to host programmes dealing with Women’s empowerment, Women and sports and various social programmes. 

She also established an educational community for children, to help women and youngsters to get jobs, by joining POOHA NGO and worked with NATO. She’s still working with Zan TV on screen.

Open Doors Initiative

• ODI’s key mission is to enable equitable access to employment for marginalised people
• We create pathways to work through training, education, employment and entrepreneurship.
• Collaborative network of over 125 partner organisations
• Together we carry out training, work experience, mentoring, research and reduce barriers for people who are marginalised
• We helped nearly 74,000 people on pathways to work in five years

Visit https://opendoorsinitiative.ie for more information and follow us on social media including Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube

Transcript

Hello everyone welcome to Open Mic podcast presented by the Open Doors Initiative which explores the challenge and opportunities of the Working World from the perspectives of marginalised communities the podcast will take the form of short interview segments with individuals who will share their life experiences and insights my name is Hogai asefi Wardak hosting the Open Mic podcast the podcast will be available from the Open Doors website and from different podcast streaming providers it will be promoted online through social media and our member companies and supporting partners welcome back our today guest is Toluwani Akaehomen entrepreneur executive coach leadership and people development consultant welcome Toluwani thank you how are you I'm very well and you how are you fine not bad just like at the first tell me about yourself how you get start your life your journey yes thank you so while you've introduced what I do I am the founder and director at Vantage Dimensions yeah and it's the leadership and people development consultancy um also the founder of Her Gen Africa is HGA and it is a social Enterprise that promotes social economic inclusion among Ireland's new communities and also support female entrepreneurship among females of African African descent wow so I'm also involved a lot in my community and it is primarily to serve the needs of uh well the Community but particularly people within the new communities in in uh in my own in my own County that's because there's we I've been here for in Ireland for quite a while so we see a lot of people who come in and need a lot of support that we can give not just me but other people in the community to support their growth and development and I suppose integration into the Irish Community so how did I get started business I'll make this story very short it's a long story but I make it short so I had come into Ireland with my own third level qualifications from my country originally from Nigeria nice and I had kind of thought that it would be easy to get into work spaces but it wasn't so I did the Irish leaving cert again cause I just didn't know what to do then I went on to do other courses at level five and all of that yeah but at a point I felt okay I really wanted to get into a job and I started applying to places but long story short there was a particular incident that really nailed it for me it was kind of like okay this is I had applied for a CE scheme then it was to be the personal assistant to the CEO of a yeah of a particular organization and I thought wow I nailed it this this is it this job is for me I thought I'd done well at the interview and yeah after about a week I remember where I was till this day till this day after about a week I called the CE scheme supervisor who had connected me with that job and I remember that he said well Toluwani the client says she didn't think that that no the lady said she didn't think their clients would like your voice yeah on the phone at that point I just broke down I was tired I was tired about the sound yeah that the the but that's what the lady said cause it was lady that interviewed me she was the CEO and she I was supposed to be her personal assistant if had if the interview had gone my way but that was what the man said the man said okay this is the feedback we got from her she didn't think their own clients would like my voice on on their phone got it so that was a big shocker for me and it was it kind of was that thing that could have broken the the back of the camel so I remember ringing about a few minutes later because I couldn't really believe that I heard what I heard so I rang him back just a few minutes later and said oh Paul I just can I just tell me what the lady said again I didn't really get what she was saying yeah and he said it's as I said before she didn't think that clients will like your voice on the phone and by the way Toluwani I find you a bit aggressive myself oh my God so I remember I was just broken and long story short well a lot of people said to me oh this is discrimination this is whatever you need to take it up you know and I I felt look I needed to pick my battles yeah I come into a new community the advantage is weren’t stack on my side so I said look I'm just going to leave it but I remember about uh two months later because I wanted to some closure to that I wanted to know what what really happened yeah so I went to the lady I asked to see her again and I remember where we were again till this day and this was 2008 and I I asked her to give me some feedback and she said to me oh I think the interview went well I couldn't really fault anything about you but there was just this something you didn't have and that's what she told me something she didn't tell me what that that something was so I think I got angry in my spirit I was really cross and I said I'm starting my own business so nice yeah in a not shell it was revenge entrepreneurship I agree yeah I was like I'm going to show them what I can do and that was 2009 so I started my business 2009 I mapped all my skills that I brought into Ireland and what I acquired in those few I've been here since 2001 and the the skills that acquired in the time I'd been here and the ones I brought from home and all of that and I looked at what I could offer yeah and that was how I started so I was doing a lot of um my major was in broadcasting and I was in on radio at home and I was a reporter and all of that stuff that goes into media and I said okay I'd offer speech writing um ghost writing whatever I could do training whatever and yeah here I am up and down different models yeah it entrepreneurship would have been there do that Toluwani you mentioned the story of your life and uh can I ask you what was the biggest challenge for you and did you re received any

support well with female immigrants generally they well an entrepreneurship there are those kind of challenges that are typical yeah for for me being a woman being from a developing nation and being from a developing nation of black Africa those are those challenges that are there anyway but particularly for me the challenge was first of legitimacy yeah because I was in a community that knew where I was coming from they knew when I didn't have a job they knew when I wasn't anything do you know what I mean and then being able to sell myself as somebody that has value to offer that has human capital value in terms of you know the the skills I was bringing through my business was a a challenge you know I found that you know that saying that a prophet has no honour in his own home was clearly my story you know so I just didn't yeah do too much I was just I took my business outside yeah and didn't focus too much on my own county then another thing was mentoring it's somebody starting out in business a new community relatively there was that challenge of having mentors not just from maybe the local Enterprise office but from my own community of new communities who had been maybe in business there was really no one to speak my language and I'm not talking about English or my own native language but to speak the language of someone from a new community and being able to help me navigate my strength in that area so there was and then there was the the absence of social networks because in my in my own native language they would say that um your your biggest asset are the people the calibre of people you surround yourself with so I didn't have that as well in terms of the social network you know so that was to to help me to open some doors yeah yeah so that was in there as well plus the typical got it yeah challenges uh Toluwani what do you think uh how can business leaders best address they issues we now face in an increasingly changing Ireland what do you think Ireland yeah yeah go ahead is like the best The Business Leaders Business Leaders in particular yeah but Ireland has changed significantly in the last 20 years I've been here now since 2001 that is almost 22 years just under 22 years and Ireland has changed significantly I mean before Ireland it was a nation of net emigration people left Ireland but in the last two 20 years plus it has become a national significant migration it is really as his name the land of 100,000 welcome people want to come to Ireland and that has a lot of implications for Business Leaders and of course businesses and of course the first one is the challenges that come with migration and opportunities as well yeah okay so of course the opportunities of having a diverse pool of talents from different places and all of the advantage that that could be for businesses in Ireland and also the opportunity to add value to ourselves culturally okay even in the workplace but the challenge of managing diversity is there for every leader whether micro organization small business medium whatever the size the challenge of managing diversity and the um should I say the the opportunities that are there in inclusion but also the challenge of making organizations more inclusive then we also have the opportunities that are there in new businesses that could emerge from all of this things all of this change that that Ireland is is um becoming or facing and I think the Business Leaders how the how best to address these changes yeah I would think for me it would be I want to kind of encapsulate it in in one word and say it is about being really agile so agility in leadership and what I mean what that has been defined as is that capability that leadership leaders acquire to very dynamically yeah sense and also respond to the changes yeah within the environment in a really focused way in a really fast and flexible way yeah so with all of the changes happening around us business leaders need to be really that agile need to be on top of their game and seeing okay first okay I don't have all the answers being agile doesn't mean that you have all the answers all to managing all the changes that is going on in Ireland but it's also being open to the fact that change is constant it's we don't even know what's going to happen and going to still continue to happen there is no time for yes so it is part of the agility is knowing that I can't have all the answers so I need to tap into other resources and tap into other brains yeah to be able to get the answers that we need to become a really powerful thriving organization it doesn't matter the size yeah and also being able to bring together teams to work through teams like teamwork team work establish really good teams and it's really about finding and strength in people and that's where the the diverse the the the advantage of the diversity comes in because now we have such a diverse kind of people not just diversity in terms of race but diversity in every way yeah and being able to tap into that level of diversity and harness the advantage is there that the value there for the organization but also being able to be uh looking for the right word here being able to connect with seeing your business not just in terms of that place that you call work yeah but being able to reach out into the society into communities and seeing people to the people beyond your own people within the organization but being able to tap into the the value within communities because sometimes business leaders think that okay this is work and this is community we are separate but the changes occurring in Ireland means that we're not just seeing ourselves in our businesses and silos but seeing what value can I draw from the community another community and what value can I add but there also but being able to understand yeah how we can shape our internal environment to be that forward thinking forward looking but also be relevant for now so it is a nice chat you know good information but because of the lack of the time we are compelled to ask just the last question and the last question is are there any uh like pitfalls to avoid that you can suggest for someone just starting out as an entrepreneur an entrepreneur yeah the pitfalls from your own opinion yeah well let me put it this way let me let me not say pitfalls let me say opportunities yeah let's look it in terms of the opportunities that are there and then we can leverage on those opportunities so I think from my own experience one of the key ways an an entrepreneur can win when let me put that way can win yeah is to first be very confident about what they bring it means like self-confidence yeah or confidence in self confidence in your product or your services because when you are in a new community and I think it comes back to that issue of legitimacy that I mentioned earlier when you're a new community maybe because of things that going around you and maybe the things that happened in the past you kind of have a little doubt about yourself do I have what it takes know people accept me would they receive me you know you have all of those questions coming to up in your mind so I think it's important to first be very confident in who you are don't overreach and begin to sell what you can sell in terms of skills or products whatever yeah know what you can do and understand your Market and give them the best so but with every level of confidence so I will not start going into some spaces because no nothing it's not my space but where I sit I'd like to sit there very confidently and know that when you when I enter a room when you call me to do something you're going to get the best so it's them having that level of confidence every entrepreneur has to have that that's there's there's opportunity in that and then I also found out that no is not always the final answer the no no don't take no and say oh they said no so I'm walking away no just means okay you didn't say the proper way go back it's all about motivation repackage what you're going to say you know maybe you didn't say it right and the person didn't really understand you or something but the point is no is not always the answer go back and re-knock on that door go back and knock again until you're satisfied I've pulled I've done all I can even maybe there is more doors you know exactly see so you need to sometimes you should find the doors find the doors yeah and then sometimes it needs you to leave that door and find your own door as you said that you hear from the organization that about your voice and then you start your own business exactly to find your own answer to find your own door exactly so it should be a good sentence you know for a people absolutely so when people tell me no and I say no you can't do this you can't do that and it's all about okay they're not going to invite you to the table or whatever my friend will say bring your own seat find a space on that's but even if they push you away find your own table build your own table so the this is good yeah because you're an entrepreneur you have to and it comes back to confidence you have to believe in what you can do who you are don't be who you're not just be yourself but give you the very best and also consciously and very intentionally grow your network you know grow your networks your social networks exactly it's not all about finance when you ask a business an aspiring business owner even a business know what you need it'll say oh I need finance and I say no sometimes what you need is not finance what you need is people yeah you know find the right people the right connections yeah that's what we call it connections as I found you here thank you for that so find the right connections and they will open the door for you they you have more access so it's not always money yeah so like they will support you and they support you yeah exactly and some things that you might think money is going to get or something's going to get it actually the people that you need like I met you now so it's going to open some doors for me yeah I agree I agree you're an amazing you know Toluwani everything was nice every like best of luck for your the rest of life it was an amazing chat to you thanks a million to coming here and I found you this is a good connection for absolutely yeah so thanks a million everyone to uh listening us uh just uh wait till next episode I'll be back to you thanks a million thank you Toluwani we hope you found the series helpful please follow us online at open doors work on Instagram LinkedIn and Twitter thanks a million