The Journey of Creating Opportunities in Tech with Ayotunde Ayoola and Mark Smith

Mark Smith: 0:37
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?

Ayotunde Ayoola : 1:32
Fantastic, you can just call me Ayo.

Mark Smith: 1:35
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.

Ayotunde Ayoola : 2:28
Yes, it is, it is so good.

Mark Smith: 2:30
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.

Ayotunde Ayoola : 2:43
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.

Mark Smith: 3:25
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.

Ayotunde Ayoola : 3:31
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.

Mark Smith: 4:29
Nice, nice, how long has your company been running?

Ayotunde Ayoola : 4:33
Officially registered in 2021, but we've been doing unregistered actions for about three, four years.

Mark Smith: 4:43
Okay, and how many?

Ayotunde Ayoola : 4:44
staff. We are currently about 15.

Mark Smith: 4:47
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?

Ayotunde Ayoola : 5:28
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.

Mark Smith: 6:27
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?

Ayotunde Ayoola : 6:37
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.

Mark Smith: 7:18
And from a are you using Azure DevOps as your kind of tool to manage project work?

Ayotunde Ayoola : 7:25
Yes, yeah, I'm a DevOps person. We just finished a DevOps journey recently, in April. Yeah, I love it.

Mark Smith: 7:32
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?

Ayotunde Ayoola : 8:13
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.

Mark Smith: 10:36
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?

Ayotunde Ayoola : 10:48
Yeah, Do you know this? We worked in the same company at some point.

Mark Smith: 10:54
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.

Ayotunde Ayoola : 11:06
Yes, I'm on there. I mean, I'm on there, yes.

Mark Smith: 11:08
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.

Ayotunde Ayoola : 11:33
Mm-hmm, I'm telling you that's, that's the way it is. The explosion is massive, is massive.

Mark Smith: 11:37
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?

Ayotunde Ayoola : 12:03
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.

Mark Smith: 13:36
Tell me, tell me about becoming an MVP. How did that come about?

Ayotunde Ayoola : 13:41
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.

Mark Smith: 16:08
Roundabout. How many did you put in your spreadsheet that you sent through? It was a lot.

Ayotunde Ayoola : 16:14
It was at least every month. I had nothing less than three, four engagements.

Mark Smith: 16:18
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?

Ayotunde Ayoola : 16:38
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?

Mark Smith: 18:18
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.