Only my mother believed in me when I wanted to start events planning —CEO, Blingz

Akintola Ayinde is the brains behind Blingz event awards. A graduate of computer science from Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, the native of Oyo State is the head consultant at BAA events, among other endeavours. He speaks with ROTIMI IGE about his upcoming ‘Unriddle’ conference, among other topics.  

How did it all start for you?

Basically, I started in my secondary school, I can clearly remember my first event in 1994, JSS1 at Abadina college. I packaged a picnic for my friends at the University of Ibadan SUG swimming pool and from there, started doing class parties. I later went to Wesley College of Science where I became popular for planning boarding house shows. When it was time to graduate, my mates had dreams of studying law, medicine and co but I had no clue about what to study but I knew I had love for what I was into at that time. However, I had to study something so I opted for Computer Science, which was a general course that can be useful in all professions.

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Tell us about your first major event?

It was in my first year in university, this attracted social clubs to me and I joined the Enigma club where I got more experience in planning events because I was an active member from my first year. We planned two events per semester. I left the club in my fourth year to start my own events company which I kick-started with the club awards in 2009. I had the first and best red carpet event at that time, after which I followed up with another successful edition in my final year..

Getting back to Ibadan after my service year, I knew I was settling for events but some of my family members did not believe that one can take that up as a profession. However, my mother believed in my dream and gave me an office space to start my business.  I knew it wasn’t going to be easy so I went back to the drawing and decided to start from the scratch, laying a new foundation for my brand. I introduced an event and entertainment magazine called  ‘Blingz’; in the process of publishing my first edition, I learnt a lot about printing and that gave birth to my printing company Blingz Printz Nigeria. Studio one17 was also launched because I needed multiple sources of income to fund my events before getting sponsors. I tried many other businesses before I decided it was the right time to launch my event awards in Oyo state.

What inspires the ideas for your events?

I will say God and my environment. I won’t lie to you, sometimes I will put down an idea and later I will be trying to figure out how I came up with the idea, but I give God all the glory and I also give kudos to my team, who have been supportive in making the ideas a reality.

Why did you come up with the ‘Unriddle’ conference?

My love for Ibadan is 100 per cent, the reason I named my magazine ‘Blingz’ was because most people  know Ibadan to be the ancient city of brown roofs and that’s all. So I decided to showcase the ancient city’s shining parts. to answer your question. After the successful maiden edition of the Blingz event awards which aimed at  recognising, rewarding outstanding performances and  inspiring others to improve their own performances, we discovered that the event industry in Ibadan was lacking a lot which was affecting the performance of most individuals in the industry. We noted that these industries have become an important means of developing other states, so we decided to introduce a free conference tagged ‘Unriddle’, as our social responsibility to provide solutions to entrepreneurial problems, putting the new generation of entrepreneurs, who are on the rise due to lack of jobs on the right path, in order to increase the success rate of entrepreneurs in the state. As we all know, they are important to the growth of the economy, their innovations can improve the standard of living and also create jobs for a prosperous society. And since the award is credible, it will go a long way using the awardees to impact the next generation of entrepreneurs.

What should the attendees be expecting from the conference?

The theme is ‘entrepreneurship and growth, businesses, strategies and survival’. We will be discussing strategies to improve businesses in this environment and they should expect best of networking, finding solutions to general problems. I know the panellists for the conference are capable, people voted for them because they believe they were the best in their categories and if they are the best, they are in the best position to transfer what made them to be the next generation of entrepreneurs.