Young and In Charge: Okang Ashiwel Ochui

I have been trying to come up with a suitable introduction for our first Young Person of the week fo the year 2013, but the words just seem to coming out wrong, maybe this has to do with the fact that he is a master of words. Meet Okang, our young person of the week, Lawyer turned consultant, what struck me the most about this interview was this statement 'I needed my law degree as a foundation for where I knew I was going to end up'. A lot of young people can relate to this statement from different angles, I, like Okang, personally needed my law degree because I needed a good foundation for what I wanted to eventually do with the rest of my life.

TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOURSELF?

My name is Okang Ashiwel Ochui. I’m from Obudu in Cross River State. Second son of four; Second Child of five. I am, in addition to being the Senior Customer Experience Consultant at MVRCK Consulting, a Writer, Lawyer, Poet, Blogger http://ashiwel.wordpress.com and shower time rock star (Laughs). I consider myself sapiosexual, a creative person, a lover of the Arts. Someone asked me the other day what kind of music I’d be if I was a melody, and I said I’d be a slow jazz song with no words, or a Beethoven symphony played on African instruments.

WHAT WAS GROWING UP LIKE?
Growing up was an eclectic mix of experiences for me. I grew up in small-town Obudu, where almost everyone knew everyone's parents or knew someone who did. It wasn't an affluent childhood; in fact, we lived it mostly below the poverty line. But there was laughter, and friendship, and songs around the dinner table with the neighbors' kids, and there was family; you know, the simple things that make life worthwhile. My parents were book lovers, and I inherited those book genes, reading everything I could find in sight including my Mother’s midwifery textbooks and Everywoman at the age of nine. And she would explain to me as best as she could whatever I had read and did not understand. It was all of those experiences that laid the foundation for the man that I am today.

TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND?
I went to a secondary school called Suleja Academy (now Federal Government Academy, Suleja) in Niger State. Like each of the school’s other nine hundred or so students, I was on a six year scholarship. The Academy was the country’s only Centre for Gifted and Talented children at the time. After secondary school, I was accepted into the University of Abuja’s Law Program, earning an LL.B degree in 2008. I went on to the Nigerian Law School Lagos that same year, and in November 2009, I was called to the Nigerian bar and awarded the BL Degree.

SO WHAT IS MVRCK CONSULTING ALL ABOUT? WHAT DOES IT MEAN AND HOW DID THE NAME COME ABOUT?
MVRCK Consulting is a Design, Creative Ideas and Customer Experience consulting firm. We help businesses create amazing customer experiences, corporate identities and branding. We also work with them on brand strategy, advertising, the design and production of marketing collaterals, and creative product and packaging design, The average Nigerian has become more exposed, more educated, more globalized. His tastes have become more refined, his expectations more demanding. And because the products and services available to him have become so alike that they fail to distinguish themselves by their quality, efficacy, reliability, assurance and care; the shrewd business must no longer rely on the above factors alone to win and keep customers but must give a unique identity to its products and create emotional associations with consumers. They must make brands of their products and services. Brands add emotion and trust to these products and services, thus providing clues that simplify consumers’ choice. It is these added emotions and trust that help to create a connection between brands and consumers, and consequently ensuring consumers’ loyalty to the brands. And that is what we do at MVRCK, we make brands.

HOW DID YOU GO FROM LAW TO CONSULTING?
Well, it was a quite natural progression for me, considering that I was gunning for experience in that area. I needed my law degree as a foundation for where I knew I was going to end up, but I also knew I hadn’t the patience for the slow pace of litigation as practiced in the country. I wanted to practice law at the speed of thought and not at a pace determined by endless adjournments and crowded cause lists. I arrived at this conclusion after about one year of legal practice. It was becoming increasingly apparent to me that I was headed for a career in consulting so I decided I needed to get as much experience as possible in as many related fields as possible. My first job after Youth Service was managing an upscale private hospital in Abuja called Kelina Hospital. I was Head of Operations there for about one year, after which I moved on to manage the offices of the overall event manager for the Nigeria at 50 celebrations who were working on a really huge project at the time that didn’t happen. In July 2012, I went off to Lagos for an internship at Alder Consulting. Before and during the period, I had begun to consult for friends, family, start-ups, small businesses and religious organizations, so it felt quite natural to set up a consulting practice at the end of it. That is pretty much the story of my transition.

WHAT IS YOUR TYPICAL DAY LIKE?
Most days usually begin with an email checking routine. Then I go online to read and do research. I follow a considerable number of magazines from Forbes to The Economist on Twitter and I usually read as much as I can daily. If we have a project, I begin to shape its general direction in my head; to give it creative direction, to coordinate the various members of the team working on it because sometimes, we can have them be in different cities and we have to sync them up. But generally, it is hard to define a typical day for me. Today doesn’t end until I go to bed.

WHAT DO YOU LOVE MOST ABOUT YOU WHAT YOU DO?
The fact that it is challenging, and creative and allows you to solve problems. The simple joy of being a part of someone’s success, the smile of the satisfied client. Those are the reasons I keep going.

WHAT’S BEEN YOUR BEST WORK EVER?
Well, we try to obsess over every single project we have worked on and to treat it like this will be our make or break project. So, technically, they have all been our best. However, my favourite projects will be the Havillah and Red Fever Projects. We had out-and-out creative freedom with those so we just took them and had a lot of fun with them.

WHAT ARE THE DIFFICULTIES INVOLVED?
Well, we have our slow days and it gets financially challenging a lot of the time. I can’t tell you how many times we have been in the red, which is a nice way to say, broke. It’s a crowded market and it’s hard to win premium clients, especially because we are young, and because they generally prefer to work with the big names. Then there are clients who ask for the impossible, for example, good design will not cure a fundamentally bad idea, and all the great ideas in the world are of no use if the client won’t implement them and do what it takes to make them successful. People also make you offers based on business centre prices. They go, “Seriously? We can have this done in a cyber café and printed on conqueror paper for N5,000!” But then again, difficulties are a part of everyone’s journey, so…


IF YOU WEREN'T DOING THIS, WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE BEEN DOING?
Hmmm, I think I’d probably want to work for one of those consulting firms, like KPMG or Ernst & Young. Chances are too that I’d be with an NGO, out there in the field, making impact, saving lives; anything that involves real problems that need creative solutions and long work days.

HAVE YOU EVER FELT LIKE GIVING UP ON MVRCK CONSULTING?
(Laughs) Of course! That usually happens when I'm drowning in an ocean of bills.

WHO OR WHAT INSPIRES YOU?
Simple things like friendship, laughter, music. My experiences, my mother and little sister. You know, beauty inspires beauty, and ideas inspire more ideas. So when I come across those, I often feel very inspired.

CONSIDERING THE LEVEL OF SUCCESS YOU HAVE ATTAINED, YOUTHS OUT THERE WOULD BE ITCHING TO KNOW HOW OLD YOU ARE.
Err… (Laughs)… I’m in my mid-twenties.

ASIDES WORK, WHAT DO YOU DO FOR FUN? 
Am I allowed to say work? (Laughs). Oh well, I write and I like to get together with friends every now and then. Sometimes I go see a movie, or go on an unplanned trip. But when work is fun, you tend to get lost in it.

ADVICE TO YOUTHS THAT WISH TO FOLLOW IN YOUR FOOTSTEPS.
The best advice I ever received came from my very senior friend, Mr. ‘Deroju Basorun and I’ll share it with everyone who wishes to walk this sometimes strenuous path. He said: the worst thing you can do to yourself is to let a little accomplishment make you feel accomplished. I also remember that Mr. Leke Alder said to me: “You cannot grow without reading…you have to keep reading broadly and extensively”. I have tried to let those words guide me ever since and I think they might prove useful advice to anyone who wishes to follow in my small footsteps. Finally, I’d like to add that you must disregard the clichéd thinking-outside-the-box buzz phrase and realize that there is no box at all. All of the “boxes” I have ever encountered since we began this were created by the same people wishing to think outside the box.


As always, let the pictures do the talking, pictures of some of MVRCK's final product.

Okang can be reached on:
Phone: +2347033114838
Email: wordsculpture@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/okang.ochui?fref=ts
Twitter: https://twitter.com/iamashiwel
You can also check out his blog http://ashiwel.wordpress.com