Austin Avuru, Nigerian geologist, Entrepreneur, and the much respected cofounder and former Chief Executive Officer of Seplat Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), graced an interview by the Afropolitan Podcast recently, and it turned out to be a masterclass on Entrepreneurship, Business, Life, Legacy, and Philanthropy. It is one of those podcasts you have to listen to repeatedly to ensure not to miss the tiniest detail, as almost every sentence from him was an eureka experience.
Austin spent over 40 years in the Nigerian oil and gas sector and was Managing Director of Platform Petroleum Limited and in 2010 became the pioneer CEO of Seplat Ltd, a company he co-founded. Under his leadership, Seplat was dually listed on the London Stock Exchange and Nigeria Stock Exchange, a massive feat that has scarcely been matched ever since. He retired as CEO of Seplat in 2020 and remains on the Board. He is also the Chairman of AA Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to creating social-economic change in education and healthcare, Executive Chairman of AA Holdings, and the author of “Politics, Economics & the Nigerian Petroleum Industry” and co-author of “Nigerian Petroleum Business, A Handbook”.
As stated earlier, the interview was a masterclass, and below are a few timeless lessons related to Personal Finance, Investment, Entrepreneurship and Legacy that we were able to extract.
On Building a Successful Business from Scratch:
"Building a successful enterprise should never be complicated. It should never be a difficult Job. If it is difficult and complicated you are probably not doing the right thing. If you stay focused and your execution is disciplined execution and you start with your vision with clarity, and then you take it one step at a time you would marvel at the results that would come out of those simple steps". Austin Avuru is one of the most real Entrepreneurs you would find, who do not make entrepreneurship look so complex. He kept emphasizing that building a great business from the ground up is not complex, but is simply building one step at a time, brick after brick. He also emphasized the role of disciplined execution in building successful businesses. It is not just about the strategy and PowerPoint presentations; it is about executing with a high level of discipline.
Entrepreneurship is fundamentally about identifying, analyzing, and solving significant, real-world problems to create value, improve lives, and build sustainable, often profitable, businesses. Successful entrepreneurs pivot from viewing challenges merely as obstacles to seeing them as opportunities for innovation and impact. "An enterprise is not successful unless it is solving a problem. Whatever you choose to do that provides a solution to a particular problem and you are disciplined will ultimately be successful". If you have been thinking of how you can start that business whose idea has been on your mind, with no clear direction on how to start, this here should be an eureka moment for you.
On Listing Seplat on the London Stock Exchange and Building Businesses that outlive Founders:
"We really were not listing the company on the London stock exchange at the time to make a lot of money. We were listing the company (Seplat) to save it from ourselves. We found out that most Nigerian enterprises, managing success is always their biggest problem. So we needed a platform that would impose a certain minimum governance standard on us. So once we listed the company there were things we could not do. Years later when we had some little internal crises it was that governance standard that saved the company. Stay disciplined, don't get carried away. It is so difficult to manage success". Many African founded businesses never make it past their founders' existence. Most times, even for successful businesses that make it past the first few years and had begun to thrive, once the founder dies the business dies with them or a few years after them. This and more were what Austin and his co-founder wanted to solve by listing the company to "save it from themselves". There are other ways to achieve this, but listing a business on the Stock exchange can be said to be the ultimate. Once that is done, the management of the business has to be guided by a board of directors, with clearly outlined corporate governance standards that are well regulated including by the Exchange's rules and the Securities and Exchange Commission's rules. These water down the reliance of the business' existence on its founders.
"All failed businesses that did not survive two generations failed as a result of corporate governance problems. Without a governance structure the enterprise will eventually fold up". If you are an entrepreneur building a business to last, the wisdom shared here is pure gold.
On Scaling Your Business:
"Your business can remain small and can fund your lifestyle, but it is when you try to scale it that it becomes complicated and tricky, because then you borrow money to scale up, then you expand your workforce, then you bring in more people, it starts getting complicated. Again that is where discipline and focus come in. Again managing success, when there is money on the table, the partners are looking at money instead of looking at the expansion plan, and you could be quarrelling over how to spend that money or to steal it from yourselves, and then the business goes bonkers. There are partners in businesses here in this country (Nigeria) that are richer than the company itself... the partners are struggling to see how much each of them can get out of the activities of the company, and then they become individually very rich but the company is going down. Those are some of the things that come with managing success not being easy. When you have the right governance in place, it is easy for you to know the difference between turnover and profit, and to know that what you are entitled to is a share of the profit, the rest of it is not your money. Once you get to that mindset then you can grow your business- You now know what it is to plan for the expansion, what it takes, and even when you borrow how do you pay back. Once you go to sleep knowing that I must repay my debt, it's the first step. If you go to sleep believing that if I don't pay even if we go to court I will be fighting the banks for the next five (5) years and I will not repay, that business is on its way down".
On Selecting the Right Partner in Business:
"In any business there are three key things- The prospect of the business itself, how quickly can my products get to the market so that there is revenue, who is the counter party (who am I doing business with?). If the last box is X walk away. If the partners cannot work together they destroy the business, doesn't matter how good the business looks. Pick your partner in your best judgement, there is no rule about it. It is so critical that partners or shareholders in a business are aligned on where they are going and how to get there, otherwise you would be wasting your time".
On Family Office And Legacy:
"A Family office (different from a Family Business) is the same thing as a Private equity firm. But a Private equity firm will take money from investors who trust you to invest the money and make returns to them. A family office is the same thing but it does not take money from investors, you are using your own funds for your investments. A family business is any other business run by the family. A family office is an investment vehicle using your own funds. So when I was planning to retire from Seplat I decided two things. I don't like writing a Will because it can be contested when you are gone. So I said whatever I own I will aggregate all of it into a trust that is a business, and those who would have benefitted from my Will then are beneficiaries of that Trust. So there is nothing to fight over; you don't even have to work in the business. And if you are a beneficiary whatever is available to be distributed you would get your share of it... Your dividend. Before I retired from Seplat I set up the company, hired a Chief Investment Officer, then transferred everything I own personally into this Trust (Family Office), set it up properly with an administrator, then I came in as Executive Chairman. All I get there is a Salary, I am paid for working there like any other person there. Every revenue from my investments comes into the family office. We run it like any other company, annual reports audited, and so on. We drew a line around where to invest, mostly Oil and Gas, Real estate, Agriculture, Listed Equities, and Bonds. Then we also run a philanthropy that is quite robust. So we get our revenue, what is the overheads, how much are we putting into philanthropy, and what is left, then we decide how to apportion those investments. That's how we run it and the structure is very clear. Even if I wasn't there it would be clear to everybody. Starting from this year we started what we call "distributions", so that once we start doing it if I stay long enough it will become such a tradition that even if I wasn't there the beneficiaries would know what the distributions look like, there is nothing to fight over".
On Life:
"Whenever you look to the past with nostalgia there is something wrong. You should look to the past and wonder how your parents managed, with reference to how great things are in the present". Although he was responding to a question on his earlier years starting his career in NNPC, his response resonates across life generally. As the holy book (Bible) says, "The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day". Life should generally be lived this way- one should not have to look back with nostalgia and feel that better days are behind. With reference to specific moments or situations, of course it is understandable. But better days should always be ahead, and we should strive to live life that way. The same way it is an anomaly as a nation to always look back and feel that the previous generation had a better life than the current generation, and the trajectory might probably be similar going into the future. This is the story of many African countries, but it is an anomaly. We all should strive to live progressively better until we attain our goals and beyond.
And in living life progressively better, remember what Elon Musk recently said at the Davos summit, "Be optimistic about the future. For quality of life, it’s better to be an optimist and wrong than a pessimist and right".
On His Biggest Mistake while Building Seplat:
"The biggest mistake I made building Seplat was a couple of people I hired I should never have hired. Let me tell you, when you are interviewing to hire people, be very careful. Especially when you are hiring into real top decision making positions. The most eloquent people that will talk you smoothly through what they have done and where they were, especially those who have gone from one company to another... be careful".
Hope these timeless lessons serve to help you move a step further in the achievement of your personal finance, business, investment, and life goals. Many thanks to the Afropolitan podcast hosts for bringing this gem our way, and asking the right questions to extract as many wonderful and life-changing lessons from him within the hour spent together. Thanks to Austin for being real and simple in his delivery.
Check out other similar articles on Lessons on Personal Finance and Investment below:
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- Warren Buffett’s Timeless Investment Lessons Every Investor Should Know
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