Anurika Azubuike is a Business Transformation Consultant who helps Founders, Leaders and Managers across diverse industries to transform businesses by delivering quick wins and long-term results for scale and profit. She does this by helping them capture, launch and sustain opportunities through innovative business strategies and systems. In much simple terms, when it comes to creating and applying successful business systems that helps enterprises make more money, Anurika is the first one to call.
In her words, “I’m fascinated by how enterprises are built and how they evolve as the market is evolving. I’ve dedicated two decades of my life being a part of that process of enterprise development and have worked with businesses to get seen, grab the right attention and stay relevant in the marketplace.“
Anurika has a hands-on experience and involvement in strategy, communications, marketing, brand management and sales, providing strategic communications for the most exciting brands locally and globally, working with them to create and implement award-winning campaigns and masterpieces. Some of the brands she has worked with include Google, Ariel, Pampers, Always, CNN, European Union, Airtel, Nokia, Ericsson, Coca-cola, Blue Band, Vaseline, Ruff ‘n’ Tumble, Guinness, Mouka Limited, Dell, General Electric, Lekki Concession Company, among a host of many others.
Starting a Business community and Academy four years ago provided Anurika the opportunity to reach even more businesses, and because of the results they were consistently getting from her work with them, she documented the system she used in helping them produce those results so that even more people could replicate those successes. This proprietary system is Marketplace Alchemy™.
Anurika created Marketplace Alchemy as a transformative process to help businesses attain systemic change by moving them from Ordinary to Extraordinary.
Read our Q&A with Her and be inspired.
What are three words that best describe you? The three words that best describe me are courage, resilience and determination. I’m a determined doer, a structured yet flexible problem solver driven to make an impact.
You refer to yourself as ‘The Business Founders Ally’. Tell us more about this and how it came about. As a Founder myself and the daughter of Founders, I found many common threads that link the work that many Founders do. But first, let me explain who a Founder is. I define a Founder as a vision bearer who takes the bold step to create an entity and sustains that entity through vision. This clearly shows that a Founder not only is a visionary but also a builder. These great qualities, however, do not mean that everything automatically falls into place for Founders.
From my Marketplace Alchemy™ system, there is a concept I refer to as The Microchip Phenomenon™ where Founders work with the assumption that they are born with a microchip pre-programmed with the skills to run a successful business without the right knowledge, tools and resources.
As a result of this, you’ll find many Founders making common mistakes like pushing their passion over what’s best for the business to thrive, minimal leadership and management skills, not having the strategies that can get them the best results in the shortest possible time, thereby causing them to waste time, energy and resources doing secondary activities that do not lead to their overall goals.
I am aware of the struggles most Business Founders face in accelerating growth and maximizing profit. All this in addition to major factors like government business policy changes that can gravely affect their operations and sustainability. I have taken on a role that fills a much-needed gap as an Ally to Business Founders to help them run profitable, thriving enterprises through three critical areas to:
(i) expand their business offerings so that they can do more in the marketplace and accelerate their growth;
(ii) put systems in place so that their business can remain successful with, without and in spite of the Founder’s individuality;
(iii) increase their earnings after hitting a profit ceiling and staying stuck there in the last few years or after witnessing dwindling revenue.
You have such an impressive background in marketing communications, what would you say is one lesson you have learned being in this sector over the years? I’ll sum up that lesson in one word – Intentionality.
Brands, personal brands and business brands alike, are beginning to better understand the need to intentionally and proactively tell their own story and take control of their own narrative. They are able to provide the marketplace with an overall experience of what they want people to remember them for, intentionally highlighting parts of their brand personality that create memorable moments for audiences and keep them top of mind in the market.
When brands are unable to intentionally tell their stories and carve narratives for themselves, they leave others to tell the stories for them. Usually, the version of the story others are telling will not be favorable to these brands.
You wrote a book recently on Marketplace Innovation. Could you share briefly what the book is about and what inspired you to write this book? Business Founders play a major role in how a business grows or shrinks. My third and most recent book, Marketplace Innovation, which launched in February 2020, exposes why many businesses fail to keep up with today’s marketplace which is ever-changing and constantly witnessing shifts. It hands Business Founders & Leaders a system on adaptability and how to rapidly increase business revenue and profitability in an ever-changing marketplace.
This easy-to-digest book, available in paperback, is an essential read that highlights the number one thing about innovation that can skyrocket business revenue through a proprietary model I created and call The Innovation Compass™.
The Innovation Compass™ is one of the processes within my overall body of work – Marketplace Alchemy™ – which provides a simple framework to help Founders and Leaders navigate and stay ahead of market shifts to find the goldmine in their business that the market is willing to pay for, break through and stand out in the clutter, and capture the right attention that builds a loyal tribe of buyers and fans.
Marketplace Innovation provides expert advice and strategies from my profession and personal life, and years of research which can be applied right away in fulfilling market needs in the highest form and rapidly increase revenue and profitability.
To take this message as far as possible, particularly in Africa, I began book tours with the first stop being the island of Cape Verde, just before the lockdowns were instituted to contain the spread of COVID-19 globally. I intend to continue those physical book tours soon. The book, which can be ordered on the official book site and Amazon, has received great acceptance, even as I continue to do virtual book tours.
Prior to now, I had written two other books – Customer Attraction and The Profits Blueprint.
In this recent times of COVID 19 and the uncertainties involved regarding the future of business globally, what is one advice you would like business founders to hang on to as they walk this uncertain path, not knowing what the future of their businesses look like? When the virus first broke out, it seemed like it was only a health crisis. However, as the pandemic continued to linger on, many governments around the world had to order lockdowns across cities, social distancing measures and other safety practices in a bid to contain the spread of the virus. It became more obvious that we were not only facing a health crisis but also an economic crisis. The lockdown and social distancing measures are directly affecting businesses and people’s daily lives.
While fear, doubt and overwhelming caution are the present order in the face of a critical period like we’re living today, Business Founders & Leaders are saddled with heightened responsibility of making sound decisions in the face of these uncertainties. In order to make sound decisions, what they must first come to terms with is that while most people are waiting for things to return to normal. The world after this season is unlikely to resemble the one before it.
That’s why I created a free e-guide for Business Founders and leaders to keep advancing amidst the complexities.
If there’s one advice I would like to share with Business Founders at this time, it would be that they should be open minded enough to reinvent and adapt to current realities. This means that they will have to relearn the needs of the evolving marketplace and re-strategize by finding immediate solutions that meet the needs of the market.
Do you have mentors and how have they impacted your journey? My parents, the first Founders I knew, interacted with and learned resilience from, had the biggest impact on me. Secondly, are those who I’ve met on my career and life journey who gave me a chance to new experiences and were confident in my abilities to deliver.
Every single person who gave me an opportunity and believed in my capabilities to do a thorough job, is a hero is my books. I appreciate those opportunities and don’t take them lightly.
I also have had the chance to have the best coaches who work with me through my business and personal journey, and I get to meet incredibly, inspiring people every single day.
If you could go back in time, what is one piece of advice would you offer a younger Anurika? “You’re all that and much more!” In those exact words. You see, many of us tend to be our greatest critiques. We have the tendency to listen to the voices in our heads, those inner dialogues that lead to negative internal thoughts. The critic inside is more important and paramount to deal with than the critics outside.
That’s why sometimes, we’ve got to sell ourselves on our abilities and capabilities to achieve our objectives. So, I say to myself “Ditch fear. You’ve got this!”
What are the top impactful things you have done/achieved in the past year as concerns uplifting women? As women, we’re extraordinary beings. Despite the complexities of the problems we face in the world, we always have a way of coming out stronger on the other side.
Over the past year, through my work, I’ve helped more women Founders and Leaders in their goals in building more efficient, profitable businesses.
I also started a ‘Self-Love Campaign for Women’ – a platform which helps more women understand the weight of the responsibility given to us not only as nurturers, but whose roles have a direct impact on the society at large. We cannot afford to be lax about that role which requires that we prioritize our well-being physically and mentally in order to make critical decisions in our lives, career or vocation, and for our families.
What is the most important lesson life has taught you so far? The most important lesson life has taught me is ‘First Love Yourself’. To truly love others, it begins with self. You cannot give from an empty cup.
The second greatest of God’s commandment to us is to Love our neighbor as ourselves. Loving oneself is critical in the way we treat ourselves and others. Loving oneself is useful in helping a person become intentional about living life by design, not default.
Loving oneself also means that a person makes the right decisions for themselves and do not engage in self-sabotaging practices. That fuel also helps a person’s ability to stretch and bounce back from a setback.
What is one bad habit you are committed to changing? Commitment is my biggest stressor. One might ask how commitment can be a bad thing, but as with most good things, depending on how far one takes it, it can become either good or bad.
I can be over-committed in a person or cause I believe in, and usually willing to give 200%, more than is expected, to see it succeed. So how am I changing my commitment level? By early on discerning how much time, energy and resources I will be putting in so I can help it grow without overly pouring in myself into it. I set boundaries and stick to the plan.
Time Travel or Teleportation? Definitely Time Travel, and not like what many of us have watched in movies. As a trained Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) practitioner, I believe that there are three chunks of time – the past, the present and the future.
In the past, we learnt something that had a dramatic or emotional impact on us, and learnt to stick with that specific learning as well as the emotions attached to that specific learning. In the present, we learn to apply knowledge from what we learnt in the past in the Now. That knowledge usually is processed information from past experiences that lead to a present action or reaction.
For the future, let’s look at it as a present future now. In the present future now, a person is able to paint a picture in their mind – to see what they see, hear what they hear, feel how it feels – in their future. So, a person can assess Past learnings and emotions, review them in the Now and how those learnings and emotions might be affecting them towards a Future that they desire.
What would you like to be remembered for? That I truly lived! As a change maker, I want to be remembered to have helped bring transformation to people’s lives enabling them do more to impact the world.
I am a person with multipotentialities, and I want to be able to boldly use up my gifts. I want to able to say to my Heavenly Father when I meet Him, “I multiplied the talents you gave me. I didn’t bury and hide them away.”
More on Anukira
Anurika is the Managing Partner at Marketplace Innovation Africa, a Marketing Consultancy focused on helping businesses and enterprises maximize their strengths to grow in the African market.
She is also the Founder & Chief Officer of Founders’ HQ, a community helping Business Founders to build, scale and accelerate their growth, where she teaches the concepts within Marketplace Alchemy™ and how the concepts can be quickly applied for optimal results.
Anurika is currently a Communications Consultant at one of the world’s biggest private sector Development Finance Institutions where I co-ordinate internal and external communications in Nigeria.
Anurika was the immediate past Lead Consultant at Nigeria’s first and foremost Public Relations firm, Quadrant MSL.
Recently honored as one of the Top 50 Leading Women in Marketing Communications in the country in 2020 by Brand Communicator Magazine, I have a rewarding career in the industry and continue to explore new opportunities to make an impact.
She has a first degree in Mass Communication and an MBA from the University of Leicester, UK. Anurika is blessed to be on life’s precious journey with an amazing husband and three wonderful children.