 I promised you all that in 2021, I'm not gonna joke with you guys, 2021 is the time that I want you out there to go out there and go live your life. I'm not saying go and have fun, but I'm saying that be part of the change that we are looking for on the continent. Entrepreneurship is the key, whether you like it or not. So this is the best channel for you to subscribe because I'm gonna bring inspiring people every single day. I'm not gonna joke with you, have you subscribed to the channel? I mean I told you that help us reach 700k, I mean after 700 straight to a million, but hey I've also been telling you that Nigeria is not just Lagos and Abuja, I'm here in the cold city, I'm here in O42, I mean I've never been here, you definitely don't know what I'm talking about. This is Enugu and where I am is called, is it Enugu state? No I'm not from here, I'm not gonna talk too much about places that I don't know. I've got a special guest today, one of the best YouTubers here in Enugu state and she's gonna be the one to take me around today. Hi, why do I have to call you before you come because I'm already introducing you. Hello guys, hello, hello, hello the Mayans, the Mayan army, it is me, your girl, Tibera here with, what a Maya, in Enugu, can you tell us what his t-shirt is? The cold city? The cold city state of mind, he's here in Enugu, live and direct and on today's episode, I'm here to take him to one of the youngest guys doing great things here in cold city and like he rightly said, Enangir is not about Legos or Abuja, we also have Enugu and we are doing wonderful things here, so today we are at Rosette paint, Rosette is a company making premium paint here in Nigeria, like if you're looking for anything paint, building, real estate, whatever, Rosette is a place to look for and the interesting thing about this company is that it is owned by a young guy. A young guy from where? A young guy from Enugu state. He's an African too? He's an African. That's impressive. He's an Igbo man. Igbo Kwenu, please, my title, one day, I can't even remember my own name, do you know I have a chieftain's title now, one name, the number, say Igbo Kwenu, yeah, but hey, I got a lot of people who don't know anything about Enugu, if you have to say something about Enugu, what are you going to say? I would say that Enugu first of all is a state in the south eastern part of Nigeria. And it's also a state known for its serenity, cleanliness, and everything, ambience is of this state. So if you're looking for a place to relax, a place to unwind, after the co-busters and houses of Lagos and Abuja, this is a place to come and Enugu is taking over, so if you're looking to invest, please come home, because there's something we're saying Igbo, Aku luono, so please bring the Aku, Aku means wealth, so bring the wealth back home. Come and do something here. I think Enugu has to employ you as their ambassador because within one minute you sold the whole city. That's what I do. Fantastic. That's what I do as Tibera, that's what I do as Tibera. Check her out on her YouTube channel, the link will be in the description box. Make sure you subscribe, don't disappoint me. I mean, she has over 6,000 subscribers, you know we can make that magic happen by making her get 10,000 subscribers. I don't want to talk too much. Can you take me to meet this young gentleman? Before we go there, I have something from Rosette from UK, so I think you should wear this, right? It's like I'm a brand ambassador now. Yeah, he's a brand ambassador. Rosette, you have to pay me for this one. Hey! Okay, you know I support African businesses, so I'm just gonna wear this one just to support the business. Wow, Maya. All right. So, what comes up with this, sir? Maya, this is the man I've told you about, the MPC of Rosette, so this is what the Maya. Wow, Maya, good to meet you. Yeah. It's nice meeting you. My pleasure. Everyone is talking about you. Oh, thank you. It's been three hours in Enugu and everyone is telling me that if I don't meet you, I can't leave here. Oh, wow, wow. What is so special about you that everyone is telling me to meet you? Well, first of all, my name is Casey Ogie. Okay. Yeah, I'm an architect and I happen to be the CEO of this company, Paint Rosette, and so many other companies that we have under this particular building. I mean, you manufacture paint or you just distribute paint? Yeah, we produce here, we manufacture here. You produce here? Yeah, yeah, we produce here. Are you the CEO? Yes, I'm the CEO. The CEO of the company, yes. We produce here. We first of all started with importation. We imported part of it, then 100% importation. Then from there, we started the local production, 50-50. Then now, we almost have zero importation. We are doing all the productions here. And we have two stages of production. We have the primary production going on here. We have the secondary production going on here. And we have outlets outside of Enugu. We have in Lagos. We have in Abuja. We have in Oweri. We have in Portacort. We have in Uyo. We have in Asaba. But all those places, you have the secondary production going on there. But here, we have the primary production and the secondary production going on here. What I mean by primary production is this is where we do the production of the paint, the main production. Then the tinting, the tinting process is the secondary production. We move from here in white colours, in white containers, in containers to all our outlets. Then they do the tinting, which is another process of production before it gets to the customer. Let me understand. Yeah. The people who are producing the paint, are they Africans? Yeah, they're all Africans. We're all Africans here. We don't have any expatriate here. Yeah, we're doing it. Starting from even our technical team here, even before we started production, the installation of the machines, we're all done by Africans. Wow. We've not had to bring anybody in here to do any solution for us. Before you take me to your factory, I would love to get to know who you are before I start. But the sun is really shining. It's okay. I can take you to the factory. No, before you take me to the factory, can I find a place and sit down with you and talk to you about who you are and then from there take me to your factory. Okay, so let's go to the factory. Brahma, I have heard a lot about you. Somebody introduced me to you. Yeah. But personally, I don't know you. And my audience are from different parts of the world. Yeah. So I just want you to tell me who you are and where you from. Okay. My name is Keseoji. I'm an architect. I'm from Ibea State. But I live, I'm based in Enugu here. And that's where I do my businesses. And there may be some other places where we have our branches. So the paint company, I'm sure that's the one you've heard about. Although we have other companies, we have the KKH contractors, a construction company because I'm an architect. So I still do my business. Then we have the door company. We import doors. Then we have other companies, the Rosettes Oil and Gas. We're into oil and gas and all that. We have a real estate company. But then we have the paint company that everybody is talking about now. That's the paint Rosettes. I happen to be the CEO of the company. We have our branches, a lot of places like in Lagos. We have in Abuja. We have in Asaba. We have in Potacot. We have in Uwere. We have in Uyo. But these are outlets that we have those places. So this is the head office. You are an architect, right? Yes, I'm an architect, yes. So after school, you practice? Yes, yes. Where? Yeah, in Enugu here. In Enugu. Yeah, but as an architect you get jobs. You do jobs a lot of places. You can go to them. What really inspired you to start a painting business? Well, I think it should be what inspired me to become an entrepreneur. Okay. Because right from time, I've always known I had a lot of people linked up to my vision and my dream. And I was able to discover it when I was younger. Okay. And when I was even in secondary school. Because I had to settle where some business is doing. I had a barben salon running. When you were in there? When I was in secondary school, yes. Barben salon? Yes, I had a barben salon. Yeah, I had a shoe mending factory. Just a mini small, mini shoe mending factory. Then I went to, I had a radio mechanic shop as well. So I knew I wasn't going to be on a paid job, on anybody's payroll. So, because a lot of people need to be employed. So, and I also got it clearer when I got into school. And we asked why we wanted to be architects. Because one of the things I told them was I needed a job and some other businesses where we can employ people. Reduce the unemployment rate in the society. We have a lot of issues in Africa. So, that was one of the responses that I gave to them. I wanted to do that. I wanted to do that. And some other things that would be able to make me employ more people. Yeah, and also I was inspired more when I got into the business of architecture and found out that a lot of people, almost every human being in the world has an option of colors. You can attest to that when you ask a little child what color was your favorite color. They already have their colors. So, even as a little kid, they have their colors. And we decided to have a paint company, a paint product that should be able to give everybody the option of the color that he wants. So, what I mean by that, it's made us to research even deeper and deeper and found out that most of the paint companies around the world restrict customers and people to the colors that they can produce. So, we needed to do something more to be able to produce any kind of color so that any person will have a place in our company to pick the colors that you want. And that's why we did a lot of research on all the products available in the market. We found out that there are so many things that need to be done for Africans. And we also found out deeper on the technical part that there are some short-changing of the qualities of products coming into the country, even the ones that are being imported. So, we had to work on those ones, analyze all the products in the market and they created a formulation for ourselves that is an improvement on every product that is in the market. And that's why you heard about a product. So, which means that you're doing something in Africa for Africans? Yes, for Africans. Because most of these companies outside Africa that bring their products to Africa they don't really know the environment very well. So, they don't know the heat, they don't know the weather in Africa. So, we needed to study it very deeply and we'll be able to take care of that. And we have done that already. I want to understand, before you achieve this, did you live in Nigeria all your life? I've lived in Nigeria all my life. I've traveled abroad, I've had reasons to travel to a lot of countries in the world. We have seen all those products and all that. I bet, I don't think I've ever stayed outside Nigeria for more than a month. My business is here in Nigeria. So, you're trying to say that it's possible in Nigeria? Yeah, sure, why not? It's very possible. It's very possible. What you're doing right now, having a paint business, do you think it's worth it? Yeah, yeah, it's worth it. It's worth it. It's worth it. Yeah, it's good. Yeah, that area, yeah, it's very good. Like every business, like if you study a business very well and know how to go about it, you should be able to find out that every business has a level of profitability in it. But then, the profit is not the key. The key thing was to make sure that our people get the best quality, our people get employed, and our people get the options that they have in colours, and our people get the durability that they want, that they pay for. They pay a lot. They pay for all those important products, they pay a lot. So, and when you pay a lot, you have a product that after like a few years you have issues with the product. It doesn't have quality. It doesn't have enough, the right dosage of anti-fungi and the weather resistance that everybody needs. So, we had to work on all these things and be able to, it's not on the profit. The profit margin is low compared to what they're doing but we have the satisfaction that our people are getting what they want. How many people have you employed so far? So far, I think we should be about 122 or so. Yeah, all our branches, yeah, 122 now. That's a class counting because we hope to take a whole lot of people. Amazing. I would love to go check out the factory. Let me see what goes on in the factory and how are the next customers. Okay, okay, no problem. Maya, you're welcome to our factory. Thank you. Like I said, this is the primary production section. Alright. So, we produce, we mix all the additives and the chemicals and all the raw materials together here and yeah, I do the meeting here to get the product in white before it goes to all our outlets for secondary production before the customer takes it except the customer that wants to take it in white. Okay. So, we actually have a smart production going on here. What I mean by that is we don't need too much space to be able to produce, run our productions because we don't produce the colors and keep. We produce in white. So, once the product is going down, we should be able to find out and we'll run more productions and start and keep. So, we don't have any space to keep all the colors, different colors like other paint companies are doing. So, this is actually a very big innovation on our own parts and it's helping us. Can you show me where you do the smart production? Yeah, this is where we do it. This is where we mix all the products, all the raw materials. So, you're going to get a white paint from there? Yeah, you're going to get a white paint from there. You take it to the printing room. From the printing room, the customers can take it from there. So, everything is from start? From here, then to the printing room, then to the customer. Yes, yes, yes. That's beautiful. That's there, yes. Wow. I know you're a young entrepreneur. Yeah. And I have so many young entrepreneurs watching us right now. So, I just want to know, what are the kind of challenges that you face as a young entrepreneur starting this whole business here in Nigeria? Yeah. The truth is that Maya, it wasn't easy because we are in Africa, we know how difficult it is for an entrepreneur to start in Africa because if it were other parts of the world, you'd be able to have access to funds. But in Africa, it would be very difficult. It was actually that difficult for us to start. But we had to start. Okay. What was propelling us was bigger than the constraints that we had when we were starting. Yes. Actually, here in this factory, we are saying we mixed products with bare hand here. That was how we started. We started with bare hand. Yeah, we stared it with bare hand here. That was how we did it. We didn't have machines. There were no machines. But we had to start. So then, like I said, I have a construction company and I was patronizing myself. I was buying all the products myself. When it wasn't to the standard that we needed to take to the market, I was buying all of them myself. But we needed to start. And when it was what we wanted, we started taking it to the market. We started telling people about it. So we had challenges. We also had some challenges from big companies per se that were on the side of bullying us because they didn't want us to come out because they didn't want us to come out. They saw us as a very big challenge and it was tough as well. But there's one thing that I think I really want to know. Does African governments really support young entrepreneurs? Maybe there could be policies by some governments and all that. But the truth is, up to now, we've not been able to assess any of those facilities or anything. Any assistance from them. But it doesn't detail us. We are moving and we are pushing forward. That's really inspirational, bro. I think your life alone is inspirational to so many people. But I just want to know, yeah, we have so many young Africans who are trying their best to be an entrepreneur. If you haven't missed it for such young Africans, what would that message be? Yeah, they have to just keep on. You have to follow your dream. You should be able to know where your areas of strength lie. And you should be able to follow it. And the most important thing is you don't have to, in Africa, you don't have to wait for the government. You need to start. Wow. You need to start small. And most importantly, from what I've seen recently, I've seen the government's their help. That's when you must have started. Okay. So it's always very difficult for you to meet the government and explain what you want and they will give you assistance. Maybe, no, no, you need to start. Then you can tell them, maybe possibly, maybe you can be lucky and you assess the front. My brother, where do you find a reset page? Okay, this is the head office. Okay. Then we have outlets in Lagos. We have in Abuja. Okay. We have in Oweri. Then, Porta Cots, Aba Uyo, Asaba and Aba Kliki. Then, we are very active as well on social media. On Facebook, on Instagram and Twitter. Then our website is up and running as well. Are you selling only in Nigeria? We are selling. We have customers buying from outside the country, but we don't have outlets outside the country. So you're looking for? Yeah, yeah, yeah. If we can have people from outside. I mean, you just have to tell them. Yeah, if we have people, you know, from Ghana, like anybody that is interested in being a distributor in Ghana, other parts of Africa, then we can do that. We have the capacity to do the production. Do you think that, I mean, let me understand. Yeah. You achieved everything in Nigeria? Yeah, of course. Yes, of course. You think it's possible to make it in Nigeria? Yeah, of course. It's very possible. We are making it here in Nigeria and we're making it big. Yeah, but you need to start small. Exactly. Then we time, give it some time, be on it, be serious with what are doing, be consistent, then work on the quality, and with time, you see a lot of people buying your products and referring to other people. And that's it. If you had a chance to change one thing in Africa, what would it be? Oh, the way we see ourselves, you know, that they cannot do with spirit in Africa. Something has to be done about it. Something has to be done, especially in our youths, you know. We just have to believe that we can do it. And we have to start. Yeah, that's what I... Why do you think Africans don't believe that they can do it? Yeah, because, most times, when you see the value of maybe some foreign products, you see that something is wrong. When we can actually have the better products down here, and everybody is thinking that it has to just come, it has to cross the border for it to be a very quality good. So that mentality has to change. We have the best going on in Nigeria and in Africa. And we are good. If we talk about the installation, the machines installation, we had reasons to bring those our expatriates to come for the installation of the machines. But we decided to do it here. We did all the installations and we have not brought any of them here. Africans, we can do it. If we believe we can do it. We can do it. We are doing it and it's working. Brother, I want to say thank you so much for talking to me. I really appreciate your time. You know, I'm not a brand ambassador for this company, but I think each and every African out there needs to support an African business. That is why I'm here. I'm even wearing their t-shirt. Bro, you didn't give me any money to be here. You heard about me. You have big passion for Africa. Exactly. Yeah, you're working so hard. And I came in here. So, hey, if you're living in Nigeria, you have to support this brother's business by buying the paint. If you are living outside a country and you want to do business with him, I mean, it's time. You know, they've already launched Intercontinental Trade. It's time for you to trade with a different African country. Let's make it possible. Let's everybody know that Africans can actually do business together. No matter where you're coming from, we all come together. That's one Africa. I'm a huge boy, Mr. Ghana, baby. And don't forget to like the video. Don't forget to share and don't forget to subscribe and be part of this awesome family. I'm going to see you in the next one. Aya Maya.