Name: Joshua Agu

Title: Managing Partner

Organisation: Outbox Experience

A Sales and Marketing Consultant with vast experience in B2B distribution models and Brand penetration strategies. I own a marketing agency that caters to small and large scale businesses with a Niche in real estate marketing. I'm Single and passionate about value creation everyday.

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

I hope Joshua's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. What have you found most challenging as a leader?

The difficulty of transferring vision to the people I work with. It's quite challenging to get the team to see the vision daily, and stay the course without attempting to cut corners or take short cuts

2. How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

I have always had this strong passion for Branding and Marketing. After highschool I attempted to start a magazine in my family home (Planet-3). I was a creative from a very early age. I grew up knowing I was meant to be a brand specialist. So I went to business school and studied Financial Accounting to understand the language of business. Applied for my first Job as a Sales Executive, to learn the Art of Selling.

Took a course on Project Management to Understand planning, organization and communication. After 5 years with a multinational working on various projects across the sales function, I felt I was ready. I started my own Agency, took up consulting, and today I have a 25-man team working on changing the concept of Branding in Nigeria, one brand at a time.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

I keep a journal and a Diary. So my calendar is detailed. I wake up at 6 am daily and sleep at 10pm. I take an hour to exercise. I read a non-work related material for at least 30minutes daily. I dive into work for 7 hours. Do socal media for 1 hour. Watch TV for 1 hour. Attend meetings, make Sales Calls and build a network with the remaining hours. That's fairly how my work day looks

4. What's a recent leadership lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of?

That plans always fail. You can never get it right 100%. Flexibility is critical to success.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

Who Moved My Cheese by Spencer Johnson. It's a simple story about how not to get stuck on anything. As a leader It is important to know when to move on from an idea, a project, a person, etc.

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young leader, what would you say to them?

It's 50% passion and dedication. You can never have all the resources you want, but you always have what you need, just look deeper. Believe in your dreams and understand that there's a price to pay for success.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader, so far?

2022 I lost a major client and had to restructure the team. It was a tough decision deciding who to keep and who to let go. And the answer came to me at a clinic from a pregnant lady. She said life is like a pregnancy, it takes 9 months to birth but you start counting the age of the child from the day He/She is born. The 9months are the hardest, but they don't count. I realised at that moment it's about the people who understood where we were going and who understood that the period of nurturing wasn't what mattered, it was the moment we hit our goals. It was fairly easy to seperate the team after that.