Welcome to the MVP Show . My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills . If you have not checked it out already , I do a YouTube series called how to Become an MVP . The link is in the show notes . With that , let's get on with the show .
Today's guest is from Nigeria . He is the principal consultant and product lead . He was first awarded his MVP in 2023 . His passion is digital transformation and enabling people to become digital natives , so important in this day and age . You can find links to his bio and socials in the show notes for this episode . Welcome to the show . Ayotunde .
Hi Mark , how are you doing ? Good , did I pronounce your name right ?
Fantastic , you can just call me Ayo .
Ayo , awesome Good to have you on the show . I've watched a few of your videos on YouTube to make sure that you could speak effectively on the show . I love meeting new people in the MVP community . It's such a joy that it's always expanding .
Particularly , I like what I'm seeing coming out from the continent of Africa , what we're seeing in the last I left London in 2019 just before COVID moved back to New Zealand . It's kind of in that window it has exploded . The tech community , the MVP community . I see more and more Nigerians becoming MVPs all the time . Wow , it's exciting times .
Yes , it is , it is so good .
So good . Tell me a bit about family , food and fun , those things that you do when you're not in front of a keyboard . Now , fun still might involve a keyboard , but tell me a bit about you .
All right , basically I don't do much . I'm married , I have a wife , a beautiful wife . She's also into tech yeah , exactly . And apart from that , what I do again , I don't really go out , so I'm literally indoors on my television watching sport .
I'm a fan of Formula One , basketball and football , so I basically just watch sport and I love reading , so I'm always on the internet getting information , reading , and then church and then gym . That's all about me .
Wow , that's good . I mean , that's a lot of variety . Right , that's a lot of variety . Tell us a bit about your company .
Yeah , stringify All right , fantastic . So basically , what we do is simply provide digital transformation to people .
We are more service oriented in terms of bringing Microsoft technologies and Customs of two engineering , so the people in the team are more people who have a Microsoft experience Microsoft Dynamics , microsoft Power , platform , Azure and then we have Customs of two engineers . So , like myself , I am a programmer . I write C sharp and a few other languages like that .
So we just provide services , look for organizations who have no digital background and see how we can bring them into the digital world and help them upscale their business processes . So that's basically what we do , and then on the side , we consistently then offer training .
Nice , nice , how long has your company been running ?
Officially registered in 2021 , but we've been doing unregistered actions for about three , four years .
Okay , and how many ?
staff . We are currently about 15 .
Yeah , that's what impressed me right . You're growing pretty quickly and it's pretty exciting . I love seeing on your website all the staff profile photos . You seem to have quite a diverse skill set mix , from your integration specialist , your Power BI folks . You know your deep skill across your business .
How and I know this is not a promo for your company but I'm intrigued when people start companies in BizApps , and so I like to explore it a bit . Tell me a bit about where do your customers come from . How do they find you ? Are they only in Nigeria or are they global ? Yeah , how do you typically find your customers ?
So , funny enough , most of the customers are referrals and partnerships . So , for example , because I've worked with quite a few organizations and I still consult for a few organizations , so what they do most times is when they have businesses , they just call up to me are you , can you work with us on this , can your company come on board ?
Or the cases where can we get your guys to work on this ? So , like , that's how we get businesses , and sometimes I just get people reach out on LinkedIn and we just pick it up from there . So , and yeah , at least in the past few months , we had opportunities to speak to a few organizations , four in one in the United States , two in India .
We're currently having a partnership conversation with an Indian firm right now . We're just pushing . We're just pushing .
So anyone would sound like this , would sound like I'm interviewing you for work , but tell me , how quickly could you add another 20 staff on if you had the work ?
So I have some sort of a privilege . So what's the privilege ? So the privilege is I'm more on the technical side , I'm more of a technical person . So in the community in Nigeria , most people just like , ah , you need technical person , ayo , ayo , ayo . So when it comes to technical project , and then I think it's my 40 .
So if there's a project right now , I can reach out to 20 , 25 people in the community who I know , who I've worked with in time past to get on board of a project and all of that . Yeah , awesome .
And from a are you using Azure DevOps as your kind of tool to manage project work ?
Yes , yeah , I'm a DevOps person . We just finished a DevOps journey recently , in April . Yeah , I love it .
I love it and tell me a bit about the community in Nigeria from your perspective Are heaps of people discovering bizz apps and then switching their careers and realizing , you know , there's a lot of opportunity if you get onto the Power Platform . You know there's so much work out there . What are you seeing ?
Is there an appetite in Nigeria for people to get digital skills , to develop a digital mindset and really use the latest in technologies to further their you know livelihoods and careers and things like that ?
The ecosystem is large In Nigeria right now it is large . We held the global power plot on bootcamp , just so in Nigeria .
We couldn't hold ours in in February , so we did it in April and we recorded recorded more than 500 people physical attendance and I think about 1,000 total in the whole country because we had about six locations , the , the , the interest of people in terms of coming into the business applications , the local technology , the Microsoft ecosystem is wild , is wild and
the interesting thing is the rate at which organizations , enterprises , the large ones , that the medium scale one up coming on board of the local system is Something else .
I can tell you for a fact right now that in the past two years I've had to work with two , three companies and We've had to implement nothing more than 30 35 process for one for each of them . That's , that's how they're embracing the system right and Microsoft partners in the country . Currently now we now we are also on our journey to become in the partner .
We were currently doing the onboarding . You know right now most of the you know senior Microsoft partner companies in the country and I can tell you for a fact they are all steadily on board Bringing up businesses . So businesses and personnel's are really embracing the low code because its businesses are seeing the effect .
They're seeing the speed of operations , the ease in their in Up , in upscaling their business processes . And then , when you now come to the personnel side , we know how difficult it is to probably learn the programming language right and then you can easily pick up our automate , pick up our apps and then you're building things right .
I remember one of my one of my interns . In two months she was good , she had a final year project was power apps . You know things like that . So the community in Nigeria is Wide , is large , and a lot of people are onboarding , coming on . But it's so easy to preach a power platform right now in the country . It is to preach something else .
I I started a Very long time ago . Let me see if I can find the guy's name Hamid . Do you know Hamid Abdulaziz ?
Yeah , Do you know this ? We worked in the same company at some point .
So so you know you can see that because , hang on , let me just On my camera . Can you see ? Can you see ? It's a WhatsApp group , the Nigerian Dynamics 365 user group .
Yes , I'm on there . I mean , I'm on there , yes .
Yeah , yeah , 300 , sorry , 293 participants in that group . I , with Hamid , I started that group Just before I left the UK . Isn't that nuts ? How much it is growing and how , liz . That's why it blows my mind in these last you know , since about 2020 , there's been this epic explosion in Nigeria .
Mm-hmm , I'm telling you that's , that's the way it is . The explosion is massive , is massive .
Yeah , it's exciting times . How ? How is Microsoft executing in country ? Like , how are they Engaging the market ? If power platforms large , they must be happy right , because they're obviously Doing license deals and things like that . Are you a Microsoft very proactive out in the customer base , or are you more introducing customers to the platform ?
Or is it more Microsoft ?
I think I will say both ways . I All right and because I'm privileged to be in the mix . So , for example , I was in Microsoft ADC office two weeks ago . Three weeks ago , microsoft organized the program for a university . So already before this student leaves the school , microsoft already preached the business applications , the local technology to them .
And I could remember , while I was speaking , everybody on seat almost wanted to do what I do Like , can I do what you do Like , can I just do this ? And these are guys that these are . All they've known in four years of being in school is is that you're coding or you're not coding .
Nothing else but hearing somebody's a Microsoft MVP , but he's not a Microsoft staff . And then is Microsoft brought him to the office to do something that shows to them that there's something Microsoft is doing that in terms of education , right , and that education also helps partners .
Because when people they want to engage Microsoft product , then you get to have partners come in , come on board to then take over the system , right . And then on the other side , the community is doing that also the MVP community , power platform community you know dynamics community . So all the Azure community . So all the communities .
We have also organized different seminars , different , you know boot camps , and that also helps to onboard customers . So it's been both ways . Fantastic , amazing .
Tell me , tell me about becoming an MVP . How did that come about ?
Yes , all right . So I think it's a very roller coaster . So , basically , right . No , like I said to you earlier , I'm always been , I've always been a fanatic for technical things . So for me it's been . I just like to be . Once there's a problem , bring it on board , I get , let's find the solution . That's me right .
It's all about projects and then I also teach , so , like I've been doing technical training for about five years steadily , no-transcript . I have friends who are part of a community . They do a lot of things right .
So there was a time in January there about was it January , I think December January I noticed that most of the people that I was privileged to even mentor at some point it just became MVPs . What's going on ? Eyes are possible , and most of them then keep coming to say , ah , boss , boss , you should be an MVP For what I don't know .
I do trainees , I organize sessions , but I don't really . So I met with two of my good friends and colleagues they are both Microsoft staffs who are part of our community and I said guys , carry me along . Anything you're doing , bring me on board . If you need any help , call me . And they were like I'll eat you . You're not answering , you're not coming .
So I said , okay , you know what , I'm available , because people always think I'm busy and I say , yes , I'm busy at the same time , but I'm ready to offer to bring things on board . So I just joined the community and then we started doing back to back things and I joined them in what they do and all of that .
And then from the community , from my mentors , you know Lajumukhetoriolla , david , abu , olan , rwajio , yubuoke these are names you might probably know . You know we just I met himself that you said . You know , you just said I owe you a lot of materials , you've done a lot of things . Just bring them together .
And then I just woke up one morning and saw that my former boss , olan Rwajio , has nominated me . I like wow . So I was like what will I submit ? She just told me how to do it . By the time I went I had a lot of things I could actually submit . I was shocked , like , oh , I do have materials .
Roundabout . How many did you put in your spreadsheet that you sent through ? It was a lot .
It was at least every month . I had nothing less than three , four engagements .
Wow fantastic , Great , great . That's brilliant . And it because , like a question a lot of people ask is how much right , how much do you got to do and so ? So that's , that's interesting . That's a really up to date insight . What's been the benefit of becoming an MVP now ? What have you found ?
I think it's just more work . I love it . I love it . It's more work , it's more , and I think that it resonates with one of the core values I have . I feel that if we are privileged to move ahead , we should also see how we can bring others into what we enjoy . And it's not about the morning , the morning . The morning is about the value .
So for me , I think , I think , I think that the purpose of being an MVP is having that sense of it's more like having a reason to say whether you like it or not , you must give back . So and then in giving back , you don't need to attach a value of money to it .
You give back because and one of the things I've the joy for me is in giving back it does not affect the fact that what I do that brings me revenue stops . Instead , it even opens more ground . And then in opening that , for example , now in August , we're having a bootcamp for 50 high school students 15 , no , no payment , nothing .
We're just bringing them on board , showing them low code and a few other things , and we release them after the summer . You know , just like that . And the beauty is just give back , give back and help more people become digitally transformed and aware .
So I think for me that's the beauty the fact that I know Microsoft will take a low call and ask me what have you done ?
Hey , thanks for listening On your host business application , mvp Mark Smith , otherwise known as the NZ365 guy . If you like the show and want to be a supporter , check out , buy me a coffeecom forward slash NZ365 guy Once again , and see you next time .