At SageWorks, We’re Passionate About Strategic Leverage for Scaling, Replicating Success – Gaza

You’re a start-up founder operating in quite a unique niche, communications consultancy and publishing services. First, what exactly do you do?

Thank you very much. As you rightly said, we deal in communications services for individual and corporate brands by deploying our expertise to help them communicate strategically to their target audience and achieve desired results. That means, where a detailed strategy for how a brand communicates is lacking, we step in, assess what they do and provide tailored solutions cutting across developing an integrated strategy document and ongoing communication contents and copies that deliver on their set business objectives.

On the publishing front, we work with top leaders, busy executives, professionals, and thought leaders in varied fields to either ghost-write or edit their manuscript, then journey with them through profitable self-publishing and ensuring that they produce a great book that transforms readers, elevates their brand and scales their influence. We equally work with organizations to produce varied intellectual assets targeted at meeting particular objectives, such as e-books, white papers, reports, newsletters, etc.

This summarizes what we do. We are passionate about supporting people who want to scale their impact and returns, as well as create massive change in society by transforming lives and improving cultures. Our promise is simple: If you have a story or message to tell the world, SageWorks is the partner you need.

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What has your experience been, leading a start-up in Nigeria: challenges and wins?

Interesting question! The truth is that we’ve had our fair share (and still do) of some challenges that accompany doing business in Nigeria. In particular, not to mention the unease of doing business that we all know about, you may know that doing business in the knowledge space in Nigeria, particularly as a start-up, has the endemic challenge of minimal appreciation for the kind of value that you deliver. Most people readily appreciate tangible value more than intangibles – which are the kind of value that power and produce the tangibles. So, sometimes you encounter a client who feels your fees are “too high”, because, as they perceive it, you’re only working with your brain and time – intangible resources – to deliver value to them. Nevertheless, this was a concern mainly when we started; we have since outgrown that phase. Not everybody is or will be our client. We have identified our ideal market and are focusing our attention on serving them the best value possible.

As per wins, we have a lot to be grateful for. Among them, we have and continue to serve some very top leaders and recognizable brands across Nigeria, both in the public and private spaces. We equally serve clients in the US and the UK, all of whom are happy with our professional services and eagerly refer us to their networks.

Interesting. Narrowing down a little, why did you choose to provide services such as supporting aspiring authors to develop and publish their stories, expertise, and knowledge as books, being something not very common in Nigeria as a structured business?

Quite simply, we saw a very wide gap and owned the responsibility to bridge it since we have the expertise. The gap is that Nigeria and most African countries don’t very much appreciate the need or importance of passing on wholesome legacies from one generation to another—I mean on a widescale now. Only a few successful people build deliberate structures or leverage tools for largescale mentorship. We believe this is why we have so few enduring transgenerational institutions, for example, because many of these success stories were not told in structured ways that are available, accessible, and to inspire young people to replicate them.

To drive this home, how many top executives and experts (in business and public service) in Nigeria have books to mentor younger Nigerians through their stories, experiences, and expertise? How many have autobiographies, biographies, or memoirs capturing their mistakes and eventual successes, to guide the youth to take better and informed actions? Interestingly, what we discovered that spurred us in this direction is that many of these people would really love to put out their stories to mentor younger people, but understandably, they simply don’t have the time. This is where we come in. We weave ourselves into their schedule and deploy our expertise to make sure they achieve this aim, effectively managing the entire process for them. And I assure you that there are people eager to learn and reproduce the successes of these highly successful people. Gone are the days when it was true that Nigerians don’t read; this is the digital age and Nigerian youths are global in their thinking and striving to compete favourably, so they readily consume any resource that will give them an edge. With this trajectory, we will ultimately improve our country in different ways through ripple impacts as different individuals are inspired and taught what to do right and how. We’ll see more enterprises thriving and paying taxes, employing people, improving the livelihood of families, etc.

I believe that this culture of deliberate mentorship through valuable resource materials is one of the reasons for the high proliferation of churches in Nigeria. Check it, the top pastors have tens and hundreds of books and other materials that teach younger ministers how they attained where they are. So it’s easy for anyone who has the heart and discipline to learn and cultivate their success in that area. The same applies to developed countries; they value knowledge sharing and mentorship through value resourcing. That is why you will find thousands and millions of books on literally any subject matter there.

So, we came into this market because we want to help popularize and entrench the culture of documenting stories and expertise and publishing them as great books to transform lives and improve societies. We recognize that some of the people who have these rich stories and expert knowledge don’t have the time (for some, know-how) to develop their books themselves, so they call us to work with them towards developing transformational books that will power their legacies and add to their contributions to humanity. This is what drives us.

How about your communications consultancy services, what value do you provide with that and what has your experience been?

Okay. Here, as I said before, we work with executives, upwardly mobile professionals, and corporate organizations to deliver strategy-driven, targeted, and effective business communication solutions to meet their objectives. This applies especially to how they engage with their external audience, particularly through employing the timeless power of storytelling to grow their brand visibility, reach, audience connection, and conversion. We do this in tandem with their specific objectives and communications strategy (which we help them develop where lacking).

I’ll give you an example. In mid-2021, we worked with a corporate consulting brand to develop an Integrated Marketing Communications Strategy document for them. We engaged with their communications team, drew needed feedback, understood the corporate direction, then deployed our solution. After that, we took over their digital communications and ramped up their visibility and communications consistency by 211.45% within the first 4 months. We’ve also worked with various brands to develop varied content types and intellectual business assets for hitting particular objectives.

What are your short, mid and long-term goals at SageWorks?

For starters, we’re here for the long haul. Our corporate vision is to become the powerhouse for converting thoughts, ideas and stories into communication assets and published books that transform people, empower results, and elevate human and cultural experiences for the better. So, we intend to continue to grow and scale our performance by supporting as many individuals and businesses to achieve their communications objectives, as well as intending authors and thought leaders to publish books that have transformative power. Shortly, we will drive initiatives and business expressions that will improve organizations’ communications outputs and deliver optimal results for them. These expressions are already contained in our Growth Plan document and will come to life as they each become due based on timing and other parameters. One of them, for instance, will be geared at data-driven communications so that corporate actions match objectives and results are, as practicable as possible, inevitable.

In publishing, we will drive projects that will see us create books and other published assets of own initiation and sponsorship and targeted at driving quantum change. Already, plans are in gear right now for what we call SageBooks, an initiative where we will be partnering with individuals who have attained high milestones in life to tell and publish their biographies, giving them a wide reach for impact. We are presently collating names for the pilot and anyone is welcome to provide themselves; we’ll be happy to explore such requests. Over time, we will equally employ varied tools and platforms to innovate and improve on how publishing is done in Nigeria – and Africa by extension.

So again, we’re here to play for the long term and we’re building as circumspectly as we can, brick upon brick, until we become a  communications and publishing powerhouse. That is, as our mission mandates, the go-to company when people have something valuable and transformative to say, that must be well said, and that must be published widely for influence, impact, and profit. So help us, God.