• Super Admin
• 08 Mar, 2026

Yours truly (far right) at Old Trafford Stadium, England, to watch Manchester United live, courtesy Globacom If you desire personal and professional success, your answer to the above question should be yes. Human life is about growth and advancement. Same is true for businesses. To achieve the desired growth and development, an individual or a business needs strategic positioning. The right positioning places the individual or a business in the right environment where opportunities exist. It places you among the right people that can point you to opportunities that you may have missed, and gives you access to the right information that will help you take informed decisions. These combination of elements is what is called the 'right room'. So, we should ask ourselves that constant question: Are we in the right room? Where is that right room? The right room may be an actual physical space: a conference, seminar, office, clubhouse, spot centres, where people that matter or are relevant to your desired career or business goals congregate to exchange ideas, discuss opportunities or trends in those specific fields, or build partnerships. These people may be captains of industries, policymakers, regulators, investors, entrepreneurs, and other professionals. The room sometimes is not so much about physical space as it is the ability to access the right kinds of information, opportunities and important trends, and people who can mentor, guide or speak for you where it matters. If you aren't in the right room, then you are in the wrong one where opportunities are scanty, information is absent or gleaned late, and quality people such as partners, investors, friends, or even family who can support your dreams are in short supply. As an individual in the right room For a student, for instance, the right room will be associating with serious students who can positively enhance your academic performance. The right room would be leveraging lecturers who can help shed better light on the career opportunities opened to you after school and possible ways to exploit such opportunities for instance success. Such guidance will give the student that critical career direction and the early start to achieve your dreams quicker than envisaged. The opposite end of that spectrum is the wrong room, where a student hobnobs with shady unserious students, cultists, runs-girls, academically bankrupt students, and unscrupulous lecturers, all of whom can kill academic excellence and an individual's long-term dream. As an entrepreneur in the right room As an entrepreneur, you need to be in the right room to translate your dreams into reality. So, you want to start a business, that business requires funding, patronage, partnerships to blossom. The right room will get you all that and more. One conversation in the right room can lead to mentorship, people who have trodden a similar path in business and are willing to share their experiences and expertise with you at zero cost. The right room can lead to funding/partnerships, and invariably patronage. In my early years as an entrepreneur, I was unmindful of the right room. The result was that I got burnt and almost ruined my entrepreneurial journey even before it started. The right mentorship would have saved my first business and the troubles I experienced, including almost choking on an avalanche of bank debts. As a business in the right room If you have managed to establish a business, congratulations. The fortunes of that business, however, is tied to being in the right room. That room contains the right people: high-value customers, vendors, policymakers, investors, and others, and being there grants you and your business access to the occupants. Many Nigerian startups today have benefitted from being in the right room: ZKTeco West Africa, Moniepoint, ThriveAgric, Flutterwave, FarmCrowdy, Chowdeck, AltSchool Africa, and Paystack are a few businesses to have benefitted immensely from the right room. Flutterwave, for instance, is today a unicorn, with operations across Africa and globally. It was the decision of the founders to join the prestigious US-based Y Combinator or YC programme, a bootcamp of sort for startups, that changed Flutterwave's trajectory and gave it global exposure. The YC accelerator gave Flutterwave access to Silicon Valley networks/investors, seed funding, global mentorship, and the credibility that comes with such exposure. Dropbox, Stripe, and Reddit are some global brands to have also benefitted from YC. Flutterwave's presence in another right room, the Co-Creation Hub in Yaba, Nigeria's flagship innovation hub, through its co-founder Iyinoluwa Aboyeji, probably gave it access to YC. One of the leading logistics brands in the country today, Chowdeck, benefitted from associating with Nigerian Founder Networks, which functioned much like YC by providing startups with early-stage capital, peer mentorship, and strategic introductions. Other benefits of the right room The right room also exposes a business to market insights, emerging technologies and new industry trends ensuring that the business anticipates changes and quickly adjusts to take early advantage of such changes rather than reacting to changes and getting late to the market. Optimise opportunities early The right room exposes a business to opportunities as they hatch. Remember, the right room is peopled by the leaders of the industry, leaders of the nation, and leading investors. You are invariably where opportunities are created. This room includes industry conferences, summits, policy discussion fora, investment fora, innovation hubs, and more. When you see businesses spending so much to participate at conferences or fora for product displays, speaking engagements, or panel discussions, it is never a waste. It is strategic and well informed as such opportunities exposes the business to the right crowd and better insights are gleaned. Strong marketing tool The right room is a strong marketing tool for a business. Why do you think photo-ops are so important at business events, and the media exposure/leveraging of such photos is even more so. When a business or an entrepreneur is regularly seen in the right circles, it creates visibility for the business and burnishes the brand's and its promoters' reputation and credibility. Such brand conveys legitimacy and competency, enabling it to attract quality clients and capital, if needed. Bring an idea/business to life When you have a great idea or a burning desire, it is people, structures, and institutions that will help you translate such idea/desire into marketable products. Thus, success is less about what you build and more about your positioning, networking, and insights. Many great businesses have struggled for growth because they lacked the cutting edge that the right room provides. You often see companies registering their key executives in prestigious clubs like the Lagos Tennis Club, Ikoyi Club and others or encouraging staff to join professional associations like the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria, Chartered Institute of Stockbrokers, Outdoor Advertising Association of Nigeria, and the Nigeria Institute of Public Relations, among others. And to seek elective offices in those associations. It's because they understand the power of the right room. My experience After my early business failure, I learnt to be in the right room. Today, I've benefitted immensely from that decision, personally and professionally. The Stanford University Graduate School of Business programme afforded me the opportunity to engage with world-renowned Stanford GSB faculty, Silicon Valley leaders, coaches, thought leaders, luminaries, and world leaders. The Tony Elumelu Foundation, afforded me a similar opportunity. The networks I have built in these places and my participation at industry conferences and events over the years have helped my businesses a great deal. Courtesy of Stanford, I participated at the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Summit where President Barack Obama gave the keynote address. At the personal level, I had the opportunity years back to experience an unforgettable moment at Old Trafford watching Manchester United Football Club live in action, courtesy Globacom, a valued corporate business partner. Getting into the right room requires deliberate action and strategy. You must court high-quality mentor(s). Such mentor will not only avail you proper guidance in your career or business, drawn from years of experience and their expertise, they can also introduce you to networks that you ordinarily can't access, recommend you to investors and invite you to high level meetings. Join professional associations and networks You must identify professional associations and networks related to your industry and join as a member. You must be visible in those networks by being active. As a civil engineer, for instance, you should be a member of the Nigeria Institute of Civil Engineers, among other related associations you can join. A business will benefit from joining a chamber of commerce. Such chambers and associations often host private events where insights are shared and ideas exchanged, leading to collaborations and consummation of deals. Attend major events Major events provide the quickest way to access influential circles. Every industry hosts a number of conferences, summits, trade fairs, fora, and other similar events yearly. Examples include the Nigeria Economic Summit, Lagos Startup Week, Africa Tech Summit, Africa CEO Forum, and many others. How to optimise the right room Getting into the right room is good but to optimise your presence and reap greater rewards, you must be visible and offer value. Individuals in such rooms respond favourably to value creators and less so to opportunity seekers. For instance, SparkXplorer, an EdTech platform that I established designed to improve academic outcomes through structured learning, safe digital environments, and tutor-assisted workflow for diaspora school children, had sought an audience with an influential professional whom we knew could contribute to the platform's growth. Then I learnt he would be in attendance at a major African conference. I could have gone to the conference and have my meeting. But SparkXplorer decided to add value by co-sponsoring the conference. The decision significantly increased visibility and engagement for SparkXplorer and that gave us better leverage to have quality time with the influential professional and opened discussions on a partnership. Accessing the right room is not optional; it's the difference between personal/business success and perpetual struggles. If you're not in that room, now is the time to take the necessary steps. Source: https://businessday.ng/opinion/article/are-you-in-the-right-room/