 So success is the ability to make ordinary people do extraordinary things and one of the things that we've tried to do at Landmark is make ordinary people like you and I do extraordinary things and hopefully we're well on our way to extraordinary but it's a journey. I always say to my team if you're not passionate about business then you're in the wrong business. And the third thing I'd like to say is life basically when you want to start a business there's a message I could give out there. If you want to start a business it's not about making an income it's about making an impact because if you do make an impact you will make the income. Wow! But you know as I say you know everybody has bright ideas right but the ability to execute those bright ideas is more important is the way the value is is the ability to execute rather than the ideas if you thought of it many other people have thought of it but not many people have executed it. So one has to always try to find a way you know to meet the challenges you know sometimes in Africa one of the down things in Africa is we focus too much on the problems. We've got to start focusing on the solutions we know some of the governments are bad we know some of the regulations don't don't favor us we know that we don't have all the raw materials we know we don't have all the money we know we don't have the infrastructure but how do you get around that and how do you ensure that you can create something for the benefit of the people because if you serve the needs right you will do well and you'll be successful. The view in here is incredible. Yeah you love it? No love is on the statement yeah do you have a new word apart from like a head of love? You know this is this is God's creation not mine so I'm not gonna claim what God did. All we can do is work on it. Yeah. Oh my goodness. Okay. Mr. Paul how are you? It's the third time meeting you in three days. It is in three days. There must be something about that. Exactly you know what everyone is telling me my trip in Nigeria won't be complete if I don't speak to Paul. You flatter me. Oh no, why is it everyone is talking about you? I don't know whether they're talking about me or talking about the things. No I just want to ask you this question. This is from a beautiful lady she said I should ask you are you married? Very much so. Happily married with two lovely children. Because she adores you you know I'm so sorry. That's okay. Mr. Paul my name is Wadamaya from Ghana. And I'm Paula Wanibe as you know. From Nigeria. From Nigeria. But I'm a global citizen. You know global citizen you know I've seen what you've done. I don't even want to introduce yourself. What is your wish for Nigeria before I start my video? I'll say progress and I'll use the simple word as progress. Let every day be better than yesterday. Every new day should be better than yesterday. And your wish for the entire continent of Africa? The entire continent of Africa is relevance. I think Africa is relevant because of its people, because of its its nature, because of the land, but we want global relevance. We want the African leaders to come together and ensure that Africa plays its part in the world. Mr. Paul you're one of the people that represents its possible in Africa. Do you know that? You're also one of the people that represent Africans are capable. Well Walter Ridney said even the best is not good enough Africa. And that's true. Even the best is not good enough Africa because what we can do and what we can achieve in the world on that global platform is limitless. I mean tell me your name and where you from because I know Paul. I don't know the full name. If you can tell me your real name, where you were born and raised and let them know more about you. All right okay. You got to take a walk. It's all right. Yeah yeah absolutely why not. Yeah so my name is Paul Awani Bay. I'm from eastern Nigeria. I'm a little town called Oweri that's that's grown up a lot. And I was born in London. My parents were diplomats so I was born in London at the time, but I did my primary school in London. Came over to Nigeria and did my secondary school. So my parents sent me to boarding school in Nigeria at the age of 10. My brother and I, my sister was lucky then we were and she's still the state. But I went through Federal Government College Lagos Ejanike and it's now called Federal Government College Ejanike. Had a great time there. First year or two was hard but three, four, five years. Made some great friends, great associations, great relationships and a lot of the people I know today and speak to today in the continent of Africa and more specifically the country of Nigeria are people I met in Federal Government College Lagos. After Federal Government College Lagos I got a bit of the Nigeria spirit. What is that? Africa spirit. Africa spirit. Yeah I wanted to stay here and not go back to cold London. So I took the jam exams unfortunately passed. I did an architecture degree at the University of Nigeria. Made another great set of friends, enjoyed myself. You know I call it the best University of Nigeria. Sorry to your viewers who went to other universities but it really was a quality university with quality relationships and I think I stand here today having attempted to do the things that we've attempted to do because of that background of Federal Government College Lagos and University of Nigeria. After the University of Nigeria I went back to the UK, worked in architectural practices, did a construction management, master's in construction management and project management degree. Were they certificate from Nigeria? Yes I did my BSC in Nigeria and I did a master's in architectural and environmental design in Nigeria as well. I went back to the UK, worked in architectural practice, did a master's in project management and construction management, did an MBA in London Business School and decided to start working. I then realised I didn't really want to be an architect but I liked buildings and I liked the property environment. So I focused on the business end of property rather than the drawing end of property. I worked with a property development company, I worked with Bovis which was a large property development and construction company. Then I went to work with Beacon Development which was a housing development company across the UK. You're just working with them. You never had your own project. You're just working with people? Yes I was working with them. I was working under that platform and but you know as I was learning because I travelled a lot and then I went to work with Regis and then when I went to work with Regis which is the global leaders and service officers and I went to work with them in their property and logistics team. At the time it was almost the inaugural Regis platform so there were very few of us at the time and I worked with this entrepreneur, a special man called Mark Dixon. He put $200,000 into this company and floated it for $1.4 billion eight years later. We watched that growth in the time there. I travelled to 67 countries. We built 269 office complexes and he just changed the way people worked and that's where I learned how to persevere, how to be courageous, how to climb mountains and go down valleys and how not to complain because you know we're just fortunate in life when you have something to do and so that was interesting. That's the point in time I said I'm going to start my own business. Which year was this? Gosh this was in 1997. That's when you started your own business. Yes I was a young man then but I travelled a lot. I had grown old by hard work. I was sleeping two three hours a day you know so you know it sounds interesting but even you know I told you I did my masters and my MBA and stuff. I did that while working you know and I even worked in the post office to make things up you know so we you know we we it was hard you know this hustle is real. What were you doing when you started your own project? Landmark this so I started in the UK yes and then I started in London and it was it was designed to service office businesses so I am I pursued the companies that were very small that wanted a big image so I said to myself I want to be in the best building on the best street in the best area of a city so we did that in London it grew fairly successfully then I opened in Paris in Prague in Madrid in Frankfurt and then went to New York opened up in New York had a bloody nose in New York the American market is tough but it was it was final the same but I went into one of the Twin Towers and that came came to an end unfortunately when when the Twin Towers was was blown up yes so which means landmark is not just Lagos. No no this is this is the later end of landmark. I think a lot of people don't know this that's why I say landmark Africa I'm like why landmark Africa which means you have landmark Madrid. Yes I know I had so I know I tell you a story in 2003 I decided to a very close friend of mine visited them miss visited me in the UK and well you know came to work with me while his family were on holiday and at the point he said you know this thing you're doing here this hard sweat you should bring it to Nigeria and I said look I didn't really want to Nigeria business I used to come on holidays to Nigeria and it was still sort of trying to grow up the country and I said but I would like an Africa business because you know I saw myself as African and so in 2003 we teamed up together and he worked in a private equity organization or or ran a private equity organization and teamed up together with a couple of other people and decided to create landmark Africa so we said we wanted the four corners of Africa so we opened an office in Johannesburg in the south in Nairobi in the east and in Lagos in the west and that's how landmark Africa was formed. No not Africa. No we tried and several times we tried in Cairo in Egypt we had hard issues we tried in Libya and then you know what happened in Libya the war broke out and we did a big job there for for Siemens and GE and Nokia Siemens networks at the time and GE but it didn't work out the war came and stuff but so we focused in west east and south and we started in Finland and we we did 14 different buildings in in that arena. So you get a real bird's eye view. It's an entire landmark. That's one side of it the other side is on that side. Yes so we walk over here so you can sort of see so from that wall to that wall. Let me understand yeah you bought the land including the beach. Yes that was um gosh so it's a private beach. 13 years ago it's a private beach yes. Let me know if somebody's here landmark for the first time what is landmark all about? Well gosh landmark is many things but bottom line is landmark is a business leisure lifestyle business right so we call ourselves a destination so when you think of places like maybe Canary Wharf, Disney World, Melrose Arch, Victoria and Albert's embankment in in Cape Town um our job is to bring people here so most most businesses there what they use to operate is currency our currency is footfall so number of people who come here determine how well we and how successful we are so we make them come here we make them stay here so the longer they stay here and the more they spend here and the more they enjoy themselves and tell everybody else to come then that's success for us. I mean where do they live when they come in here? Where do they live? Why do you want them to live? Because I thought it's just a beach. No not at all landmark is so landmark is a business leisure lifestyle destination I said we have corporate clients from PWC, Novartis, Universal Studios, Sony, AC Nielsen, Bosch, Microsoft were here once, GE were here with us um Johnson and Johnson, CNN are here um so so we have quite a few things um and talking from left to right so there's a cinema there there's an event center we have some of the world's best restaurants shero the hard rock spur 355 the popular KFC is here as well um we have offices in the retail shop retail boulevard we have probably the number one convention um center in in Lagos um we're also home to the scholarship academy um which is called the Nigerian University of Technology and Management on the top floor in that building 65 scholarship students in the building we're standing on the roof on um it's a mixed use building there's shops and restaurants downstairs there's six floors of offices there's a hotel and you stayed in the hotel you tell me about it and and the residential apartments and the residential apartments and we're the penthouse of one of them yes and and of course there's the beach the beach is is the is the leisure and lifestyle part of of who we are um but 90 percent of landmark is more it's more the business end of it yes so but i mean i've been to the beach and you have to pay before you're getting there it's well technically there's something that i don't understand online is 2000 rather gates is 3000 why because the idea is we don't really want people coming here without paying so it's meant to be a private members beach so we're trying to encourage people to become members anyway right it's 50 000 naira a year to be a member so this is not about money but it's just about the the people who come and making sure when they come they enjoy themselves and and have a very easy access arrangement so we try to discourage money on the beach so we're creating a cashless society here which is why you know we've had issues but so before for about three or four months we had only an online payment but people you know they came over and couldn't do online or hadn't done online and didn't and wanted to pay cash but we don't accept cash we allow credit card payments and on the beach as well in all the vendor outlets we have 59 different businesses within landmark we employ 3000 different people and they're probably another 8 000 people employed by well indirect employment as as they say but directly from my landmark head office staff the 80 of us well i i understand we're 90 now well there are 3000 people that work within this ecosystem so one hopes that we're not only just generating employment um but also generating some excitement in the in the in the state how did you discover this one well from the air how from the air so so i've been coming to Lagos quite often and i understood because i live in Nikoi when i was little and um i understood victor island and i saw the leki corridor growing and i kept on thinking there must be something in between leki and victor island um so we rented a helicopter and i flew over and i looked i was looking for a place where i could create a destination you know a mixed use destination and i wanted to buy the water side and one of the things that stunned me most about Nigeria is that you know you have this beautiful scenery you have all this water you have all this great land but there's very little very few developments on the water right and you see most of the developments on the water they back the water they build a fence i don't think it's just like jerry it's an african thing it maybe it's an african thing you're right you're right so um i saw this from the air and i thought you know what that piece of land there at the time it was called maraco right and it was it was swamp land there was hardly and there was nothing here we had to build a road when we when we bought this land i'm giving you this land for free life doesn't work like that so you mean there was nothing here nothing absolutely nothing was marshland there was nothing here there's no road you couldn't there was nothing here nothing no buildings nothing nothing was marshland it was wasteland you did everything by yourself yes we did everything so we was the land expensive very very but there was nothing here and you want to help so whatever that's the way that's the way life is we're talking but you i'm sure you've heard the last vega story no you haven't heard the last vega story when when the guy found the place and um a strip of land a mile long and a mile wide and he's he said to the um the the politicians that he wanted to create you know at the time was during prohibition in america when everything was banned and he said i want to create a destination where we can on ban everything here you know the gambling the prostitution the drinking and stuff so and then he said look this will be a success story so the mafia sponsored him and then waited three to five years and um it never happened uh and um so they killed him right but you know that last vegas today is the number one destination on earth on planet earth um for many reasons um now we're our model is not vegas our model is sort of more business legend lifestyle so we want we found out in africa all when you think of all the problems in africa and in nigeria specifically in legos locally right it's traffic it's crime it's infrastructure deficits so and service issues so how do you bring everything in one place and put in infrastructure remove the traffic create a sane environment and make sure that people can and whether they want to be on the beach work in an office watch a movie eating a restaurant stay in a hotel um you know and do that with with peace and leisure and that that's the very idea behind what we're trying to do here so worth it establishing this in legos i mean it it is it i mean is it worth it it's a it's a tough question it depends on what perspective it's a profitable i mean have you been able to get your money back i mean your investment no well you know real estate it's a long-term investment real estate you know we're not traders here so real estate is a long-term business and and unfortunately the challenges in this part of the world are a lot more significant than other other places especially when it comes to real estate so if you look at the value chain of real estate from the acquisition of the land to the infrastructure to all the permits and licenses you require then the building you need then the servicing of that building and the resources and the stuff so there's a long chain and remember there's financing between so it's it's tough i really don't like asking people how much their property worth but the way you are talking to me i feel like asking you how much do you think this whole project will cost i mean now it's 50 percent down after 100 percent i don't know we we have spent um close to i would say about between 80 and 90 million dollars so far um where we are right um in terms of because of property appreciation and stuff obviously maybe worth a little bit more sometimes it goes down because the dollar crashes sometimes it goes up because the narrow strengthens but but i can tell you what we spent i can't i you know we don't know how much it's worth and it doesn't really matter exactly it doesn't really it's like living in a house and you say my house is worth x but you're still living in it so it's not really worth anything exactly you've been in Nigeria for how many years now so i've been so i've been in Nigeria i i mean i i i travel back and forth and if my wife is watching this i live in london right but i work in Nigeria yeah together as a private jet you know this business doesn't make that kind of money you know but hopefully when we retire someone will lend me theirs but um yeah so i've been in and out of Nigeria since 2003 i've been in Nigeria almost every month since 2003 and now i spend considerably much more time in Nigeria than anywhere else but do you think do you ever regret investing in Nigeria no of course you know i mean this is this is my country um do i like because these are questions that people are asking like oh i mean living in the uk you have everything why would you want to waste so much money to invest in the motherland i mean there are a lot of Africans who have a lot of money out there but they don't even think about Africa when they talk about investment that's what i'm asking do you ever regret investing in Nigeria no definitely not not i don't even have to think about the answers that i question absolutely not we've had hard times we've had difficult times we've had times when i thought gosh i wish i wish i'd done it in a different way right but i you can't regret investing you know it's like you know it's like regretting having a child you can't no matter when the child cries and when child is stubborn you know you work with it you don't you don't regret it and i would say congratulations because you've made it you know i don't know about that it's a journey i mean i know you're trying to be modest but no no people are telling me that don't leave Nigeria without talking to paul paul a lot of Africans watching us right now i mean if you have any message for them to invest in the motherland what would that message be well my my big message will be belief you will hear the problems you will hear of the issues but you know the thing about Africa and Nigeria specifically there's so much to be done and everything to be done is an opportunity and people you know you just said oh you know you you live in the uk where there's everything and that's not true that it's not everything i tell you something when i get to the uk if my family were not there i would do a u-turn in a day right the only reason i spend longer yes it's cold it's miserable the people don't like you even the way they pretend to half of the time i mean these countries are getting a lot better and the more more acceptable right but they're not without their own problems they're just a very different set of problems and so coming to Nigeria where you have an identity you're looking people in the eye you're actually helping people and you're changing people's lives and you're communicating with people in a very different way than you can in the uk by the way um so you know there are challenges in their hearts so what i would say is my biggest advice would be if you're coming to a place like this to invest right you can't get exponential returns if you focus on excellence and you have challenges climb those challenges yeah make you know all the easy things have been done right so just remember everything's going to be difficult right and if you have a mindset that everything's going to be difficult then you will eventually get there because not everybody thinks of what you're doing as a service right some people think of it as a service to yourself right um so not everybody looks at it as a greater good and you know you just have to make enough friends and tell your story enough well i mean we have a lot of young Africans that want to be like you yeah including me yeah you flatter me again you flatter me again i well i just want to know yeah what are you doing right now i call this the question i want to ask you it's like transfer of knowledge what are you doing right now to empower the people around and you need to empower some of us you know i mean in Nigeria they call it ginger what are you doing at this very moment to ginger the people around you well you're looking at me from afar imagine my team my all my colleagues in landmark they look at me from close by and i talk to them every day and some of them i'm sure are tired of listening to me but but i i think at the end of the day we all have experiences in the world and i learn from people i learn from 20 year old people that work at landmark right and and hopefully they learn a little bit from me but i think what we have done here um so far right has been monumental considering the challenges we've had um the people some of the sweat and blood and tears just the perseverance the hard work and the courage shown by the team to do some of these things you know most of the the team at landmark really hadn't been to an environment like this and and some of the old professionals all went to university and stuff but some of them just haven't had haven't seen this sort of challenge so you know what i did three years ago i took the entire company to dubai right and we spent four i think four or five days and a five star resort in dubai because i wanted them to see exactly what it was we were trying to create here and it was it was the most expensive investment i've i've made it's cost more than some of these buildings here but you know what it was it was the most rewarding because it didn't mean anything so first i had to get most of them passports those that had passports we had to get visas we had to get a plane to carry everybody and make sure they came back right um but you know we had a good time and it really opened everybody's eyes including mine right and people understood what quality meant you can't really achieve something unless people actually see what it is you're trying to achieve because the vision is sort of 10 15 years from where you are today right so just explaining that so you know we have a collection of executives in landmarks that spend so much energy trying to encourage and teach and share wisdom and knowledge and i've learned a lot i've learned so much in the last 17 years here and i'm grateful for that you have a chance to change one thing in the motherland what will that be oh government private sector and public sector what i want to say oh you want to add more i want to add more because private sector and public sector what i mean by that is you know there's one thing i could change in Nigeria it would be the handshake between the government and the private sector they're not shaking hands right no no no they're not shaking hands so the private sector don't respect the government as much as they should and the government don't respect the private sector as much as they should someone told me that the government actually forced treat private sectors is well the government some people in the government sometimes frustrate the private sector that's there's no doubt about that and i don't think i'll be breaking any oath by saying that and some people in the private sector frustrates good government officials as well in their own way but what what this what this country needs is for the private sector to recognize the role of the government and for the government to recognize the role of the private sector because the private sector can do things in a much more efficient and an excellent way right and the government can help provide the platform for that excellence and if if the two came together and said you know what we're now going to do things for the greater good you know um i remember sitting down with the government official once and i and i said i said you know what we have many problems in Nigeria right and there are many solutions and if you can't be part of the solution yes just please don't be part of the problem right because we can find the solutions if you if you don't if you're not part of the problem and i think if i were in the government i'll be saying the same thing to the private sector i'll say the same same thing and make sure the private sector weighs into right with with his own CSR within community pay your taxes you know do the things you know be a proper citizen right and contribute to the land you know you said something that i'm so happy said be part of the solution don't be part of the problem if you're telling Nigeria to be part of Nigeria's solution what would that message be um i would say always do what you think is right um i think if you do what you think is right if you pursue excellence without any restraint yes um if you're honest if you're hardworking if you're courageous and you shine a light where you think something is wrong um i think generally bit by bit because i'm a property guy i'll say brick by brick we'll change this country and we'll change it for the good i want to say thank you so much for talking to me i appreciate the pleasure that's really mine