Life, they say, is full of surprises. Cyrille Bahmou, a business consultant, had a taste of these surprises early on in his life. His story is not just another grass-to-grace tale; it has a unique ring that sets it apart. Bahmou experienced the heights of wealth, and the depths of poverty and then rose like a phoenix to help entrepreneurs navigate the pitfalls that nearly trapped him for life. Vanessa Obioha writes about the transformative life of this business consultant.
Bahmou was once a prosperous businessman, enjoying the trappings of a good life. Luxury cars? Check. Beautiful house? Check. Media fame? Absolutely! He commanded attention everywhere he went in Cameroon. Life was sweet as his businesses flourished and brought him greater wealth. But suddenly, life spun a surprise on him. Like a domino, all his accumulated wealth started to crumble one by one. In a weekend, he lost everything he built in seven years, leaving him penniless.
"From my exalted position as a CEO with a workforce of over 72 staff in Cameroon and offices everywhere in the country, I found myself on the roadside of the expressway Sango-Ota Idiroko-road selling cooked noodles to night travellers," he recounts.
His downfall was baffling. He described that time as the worst experience for him and his family.
"My family and I began experiencing nightmares, living in an uncompleted building, sleeping on the bare floor with less than N300 daily profit to feed a family of four. Unable to afford diapers for our son, we forcefully disciplined the young boy of less than one-year-old on toilet habits and cleanliness. It was tough."
At this nadir point of his life, Bahmou began to reflect on his struggles. Certainly, this was not the life he envisioned for his family. The more he thought about it, the more miserable he became, crying most nights for a miracle, almost on the edge of depression.
Somehow, he encouraged himself with the thought that diligence in his small business could eventually pave the way out of his financial struggles. After several attempts, Destiny finally smiled at him. Just like it took a weekend to lose his wealth, it took a miraculous Sunday to connect him to a destiny helper that turned his life completely around.
"To change a man, you need to change his mind. My mentor took me through a process of mind transformation whereby I stopped thinking like a grasshopper and began to see possibilities everywhere. He made me understand that building lasting wealth requires me to discover my passion, and I embarked on that journey, and that is what is making me who I am becoming today and doing what I am currently doing."
"The truth was that when I met this mystery man, my expectation was that he would either get me a job or assist me financially so that I could take care of my financial needs. I was worried the man was giving me books and talking to me about attending seminars. At that point I told my wife, this may not be the messiah we were looking for after all. We are talking of money he was talking of books and seminars. I almost stepped out of that divine connection", Cyrille further explained, adding: "Thank God I persisted and this has paid a dividend that has been beyond my imagination. He did not give me money; he gave me what was more than money. He assisted me to activate the wealth within me that enabled me to eventually capture the wealth outside", Cyrille further said.
Today, Bahmou is a business consultant who runs a business consultancy firm called Charis Business Intelligence Consulting. Through this platform, he helps businesses grow nine times faster and become 50 per cent more profitable. His own failure in business propelled him to embrace this new role.
"It takes someone who has travelled that road to guide others," he explains. "Navigating through the rough and tumble world of business start-up is the common experience of every business owner. Starting a business is the easy part; the increasing numbers of business start-ups today are evidential to this fact. The hard part most business owners never realise until it is late is that making a business succeed, become profitable and remain relevant over time requires a lot of work and most business owners are not able to do that until they collapse. From what I have been through, seen and experienced, I gave myself the mission to help business owners and entrepreneurs to grow their businesses while avoiding these pitfalls."
To achieve this, Bahmou encourages his clients to have a mindset that prioritises paying customers over everything else.
"From the analogy of what blood is for the human body, so is money to a business system. I will rather put it this way: what blood is to the human body, so are paying customers to a thriving business."
He points out that the main purpose of establishing a venture should not primarily be to make a profit but "to identify the needs of people (customers) and provide solutions. Therefore, the pursuit of profit should not be the drive of the business owner but to identify the people (prospects) and meet their needs with your tailored products and services. Thus, turning them into paying customers."
Bahmou understands the importance of information and, therefore, advocates for data collection to enable a businessman to operate successfully in any market. While this will help his clients stay ahead of his competitors, Bahmou offers a caveat.
"Competition should not be the concern of any business owner, but the application and the improvement of his value proposition will make the business thrive. The point here is that as human beings, we will all have our peculiarities due to the uniqueness of our fingerprint; this is the key differentiator so is our business value proposition."
He recalls a client who once had issues in the real estate business. "I discovered during our consulting session that she did not know what value her business was offering to her prospects. So, we began to address that, and I made sure that all her communication material portrayed this fundamental aspect. Today her business is doing awesomely well."
Additionally, Bahmou emphasises the importance of marketing research. He breaks this down into consumer segmentation, purchase situation analysis, and direct competitor analysis. Exploring these factors, according to him, will make a business grow.
Given his experience in business, Bahmou believes that a business owner should have a clear distinction in how to handle money. "The understanding of the use of money is very crucial. There should be a clear distinction between your money as the owner of the business and the money belonging to the business. The business owner is a steward. His primary function is to serve, and thus administrate the resources of his business as a separate entity completely different from him. He should be able to see his business as another entity whereby its survival depends on how well it is taken care of.
"Therefore, it is very important to put in place as a business owner a financial structure and policies by which you have to comply with and be financially disciplined as to maintain the balance between what money belongs to you as a person and that of the business. Do not think for one second that the cash flowing into your business belongs to you. No, it is the company's money. Secondly, put yourself on a salary whereby you consider yourself being a staff in your own company. This will help you to be financially disciplined and empower the business to run as a separate entity."
Budgeting, he adds, is also crucial to business growth. "I define budgeting as telling your money where to go rather than sitting down and wondering where it went. A proper budget will keep you at rest. It is very difficult to adhere to it, but once you succeed in this simple but life-rewarding financial principle, every other principle of financial education will fall in place."
Apart from budgeting, Bahmou advocates for emergency funds. Given life's unexpected turns, he advises business owners to always set money aside for unforeseen contingencies. For clients who have gone through a similar "grace to grass" story like his, Bahmou offers sustainability practices that can help them manage their resources and maintain long-term growth.
"Systems and structures in business make the business. As a business owner, you can't afford to think of growth and sustain it when you have not put the right structures and systems in place. One major reason for my failure in business back then was that my business outgrew me. I thought the business was big and solid, whereas it was established on a sand foundation. I can't make that mistake today, and it will be stupidity to the uttermost. Charis Business Intelligence Consulting, aka Charis BI, the current business I am now running, is established on a very strong foundation," he said.
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According to Bahmou, there are three essential structures that business owners should have. They are the legal pillar, financial and marketing pillars. These pillars address the issues of financial discipline and a magnetic way of attracting new customers that stay and refer your business to other customers.
Having turned the lemons life served him into many jars of lemonade, Bahmou's perception of financial freedom is instructive. He puts it this way:
"Financial freedom to me today means being able to afford all my needs, bless the world around me, make a difference in the lives of the people I love, and affect my community at large without any fear of lack."
Cyrille rounded off: "For all this, I am eternally grateful to my mystery mentor who has refused to allow me to reveal his identity freely; who initiated a 360-degree shift in my thought process. I later discovered that he runs a foundation quietly dedicated to rescuing those who have lost their purposes and visions and bringing them back to the original pathway. With my experience with my mentor, I have discovered that real wealth is not limited to cash; the real wealth is inside and until you change your mindset, you will be underachieving God's best".
"I have made up my mind that I will commit my entire life to help other individuals who are possibly now at their wits' end to turn on their internal switch and to pursue mental renovation instead of just pursuing material things. That is the higher pathway".
