Meet Tricia ‘Business fixer’, the Nigerian Entrepreneur Helping SMEs Become Profitable

Tricia Ikponmwonba is one of Nigeria’s top shot business growth coaches, with a reputation for cutting-edge sales generation strategies for small businesses. She has helped over 120,000 entrepreneurs and Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to navigate Nigeria’s challenging business terrain through her consulting brand, TriciaBiz.

In the beginning

Tricia, also referred to as the business fixer, was born into wealth and fed with a silver spoon until after primary school, when her father’s business crashed. Gradually, all the privileges she had become accustomed to vanished, and a new life emerged, one that was full of difficulty and painful experiences.

Going off to high school, Tricia’s dad couldn’t pay tuition for his three children at once. As the youngest of the three, Tricia found a resourceful way – albeit deceptive – to buy her worried father sometime. She would cunningly beat the school system and sneak into the premises to avoid being probed at the school entrance for tuition payment receipts. This way, her dad could manage to pay the fee for her two sisters while hers could hold till mid-session, hoping that the school doesn’t suspect a foul play.

Tricia’s journey to success Tricia found her current path in 2017 after dedicating over ten years of her life to working for multinational brands in Nigeria. She served in various capacities, such as digital marketing, experiential marketing, Bluetooth marketing, public relations, and advertising. She was tired of the 9 – 5 routine and hungry to take on new challenges, but she was indecisive about the next move until she stumbled on a report that gave her clarity on her future.

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She says; “SMEDAN (Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria) had done some report in collaboration with the National Bureau of Statistics on entrepreneurship in Nigeria. It’s like 70 pages. I don’t know what I was searching for online, and I found it, and I began to read it. There was a number I saw there that struck me. It says there were about 32 million Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises in Nigeria as of 2013. And of that number, about over 90% are micro-businesses, not even small businesses. Medium businesses were not even up to 100,000. And the report listed a couple of reasons why many of them were still micro businesses. I was like, this is a jackpot.”

Tricia’s journey to success

Tricia found her current path in 2017 after dedicating over ten years of her life to working for multinational brands in Nigeria. She served in various capacities, such as digital marketing, experiential marketing, Bluetooth marketing, public relations, and advertising. She was tired of the 9–5 routine and hungry to take on new challenges, but she was indecisive about the next move until she stumbled on a report that gave her clarity on her future…

Editor’s Note:

Please read the complete piece in our latest edition HERE. Flip to page 79.