From KPMG Nigeria to building a household name in Nigeria’s event industry, Michael-Ojo continues to shape the business of experiences, hospitality and event culture across Nigeria and beyond.
From consulting to building one of Nigeria’s most recognised cocktail and experiential hospitality businesses, Jumoke Michael-Ojo has spent 14 years navigating the realities of entrepreneurship. As Mandies Cocktails earns its fourth Cocktail Company of the Year recognition and Michael-Ojo is named to the Event Industry Power List for a second consecutive year, she reflects on building a business, reading a changing consumer, reinventing herself and thinking beyond the next milestone.
You left a career at KPMG to build Mandies at a time when entrepreneurship was a very different proposition in Nigeria. What did you see that others perhaps didn’t?
I saw an opportunity to build something that didn’t yet have a fully defined category. At the time, cocktails were largely treated as one component of an event rather than as an experience or a specialised business in their own right. I believed there was room to change that.
But I also think entrepreneurship requires you to see beyond what currently exists.
If you only build around what the market already understands, you may create a good business, but you may not create a category.
Leaving KPMG was therefore not simply a decision to become an entrepreneur. It was a decision to bet on my ability to identify an opportunity, build around it and educate the market along the way.
That was a very different kind of risk from what I was used to in consulting.
In Consulting, you advise businesses. With Mandies, I became responsible for building one. And that distinction changed me.
Fourteen years is long enough for an entire market to change. What has changed most dramatically in the Nigerian consumer?
The Nigerian consumer has become far more sophisticated. People are more exposed, more informed and more willing to question what they are paying for. But sophistication doesn’t necessarily mean people will spend more across the board. It means they are becoming more selective about where they spend. That distinction matters.
People will pay a premium when they perceive meaningful value whether that value is quality, convenience, status, emotional connection, experience or simply the feeling that something has been thoughtfully designed for them.
This is why I don’t believe Nigerian businesses should approach the consumer simply through the lens of price. The more interesting question is: What makes your offering worth choosing ? That is where many businesses still have work to do.
Mandies has won Cocktail Company of the Year four times, across different economic and industry cycles. What has allowed the business to remain relevant?
We have never assumed that what made us relevant yesterday automatically makes us relevant tomorrow. That mindset is important. A business has to be willing to examine itself repeatedly.
What are customers expecting now? What has changed? What are we doing because it still creates value, and what are we doing simply because it is familiar?
That last question is particularly difficult for established businesses.
Success can create its own form of complacency. The danger is that you become attached to the formula that made you successful rather than the principles that made you successful.
For us, the principle has always been to create a strong experience and remain responsive to the market.
The expression of that principle can change. The principle itself shouldn’t.
What is the difference between surviving for 14 years and actually building something enduring?
Survival is largely about resilience. Endurance requires relevance. You can survive difficult years by cutting costs, working harder and waiting for conditions to improve. But if you want a business to endure, you have to keep earning the right to exist in the market.
That requires reinvention. It also requires accepting that the business you started may not be the business you eventually become. I think founders sometimes become emotionally attached to their original idea. But businesses have lives of their own. Your responsibility is not necessarily to preserve the first version of the company. Your responsibility is to preserve the value it creates while allowing the organisation to evolve.That has been one of the biggest lessons of my journey.
You have spoken about reinvention. What has had to change most the business, the market or you?
Me.
The business can only evolve as far as the person leading it is willing to evolve.
In the early years, entrepreneurship is often about proving that the idea works.
You are doing everything, selling, managing clients, solving operational problems, building the team and protecting cash flow. But there comes a point when the founder has to ask a different question:
What does the business need from me now that it didn’t need from me five years ago? That requires personal reinvention.
I had to move from being primarily an operator to becoming more intentional about leadership, strategy, people and the long-term direction of the business.
And I continue to evolve. I don’t think a founder ever really arrives.
What has entrepreneurship taught you that no corporate position could have taught you?
Consequences. In corporate life, you can make an excellent recommendation and someone else ultimately owns the execution. As an entrepreneur, the decision comes back to you.
If you hire the wrong person, you deal with it.
If you misread the market, you pay for it.
If you invest at the wrong time, you learn from it. If you make the right decision, you also have to build the systems to make that decision valuable.
That experience has made me much more comfortable with uncertainty. I have learned that leadership isn’t about always knowing the answer. It is about being able to make a decision with incomplete information, learn quickly and take responsibility for the outcome.
What do you think Nigerian entrepreneurs sometimes misunderstand about growth?
We sometimes confuse visibility with growth. Because social media has made visibility measurable, it is easy to start believing that attention is the same thing as business performance.
It isn’t. A business can have enormous visibility and weak economics. It can have a large audience and poor customer retention. It can be culturally relevant and operationally fragile.
Real growth has to eventually show up in the fundamentals, the strength of the product, customer relationships, people, systems, margins and ability to create value repeatedly. I think the next generation of Nigerian businesses has to become much more sophisticated about that distinction. We shouldn’t just be trying to build brands people know.
We should be building organisations that can last.
What does the evolution of Nigeria’s event industry tell you about the country’s wider economy?
It tells me that there is a significant economy around experiences that deserves to be taken more seriously.
Events are often dismissed because people associate them with celebration and entertainment.
But behind a major event is an entire network of businesses and professionals in hospitality, food and beverage, fashion, production, technology, logistics, design, media, entertainment and creative services.
What we are seeing is the gradual professionalisation of that ecosystem.
People are specialising. Consumers are demanding more. Businesses are developing clearer propositions. And there is increasing recognition that experience itself has economic value.
I think the opportunity now is to move from an industry that is largely relationship-driven and personality-driven into one that is also increasingly system-driven, knowledge-driven and institutionally stronger. There is enormous room for that.
You are now recognised on the Event Industry Power List for a second consecutive year. What does recognition mean to you at this stage of your career?
At this stage, recognition means less to me as a personal achievement and more as an indication of contribution. I am grateful for it, of course. But after 14 years, what matters to me is the body of work behind the recognition.
I entered this industry in 2012. I have watched businesses emerge, disappear, evolve and reinvent themselves. I have watched consumer expectations change and I have had to change with them.
So being recognised again is a reminder that longevity itself has value.
There is something powerful about remaining committed to a craft long enough to see an industry transform around you. I also think recognition comes with responsibility. If you have accumulated experience, you should be thinking about what you can contribute with that experience, not simply what you can gain from it.
What does being an industry builder mean to you?
It means understanding that your success does not exist in isolation.
Every business contributes, in some way, to the environment in which other businesses operate.You create standards. You train people. You influence consumers. You introduce ideas. You create opportunities.
And eventually, people who entered the industry after you may build on something you helped establish.
That is what industry building means to me. It is not about being the loudest person in the room. It is about leaving the room different from how you found it.
You have spent 14 years building Mandies. Do you think founders should build one thing deeply or pursue multiple opportunities?
I don’t think there is a universal answer.
The more important question is whether the opportunity is connected to your capabilities, your resources and the stage of your life.
There is a temptation today to build many things because entrepreneurship is often presented as a portfolio of exciting ideas. But focus has enormous value. You need enough time with a business to understand its economics, its customers and its potential.
At the same time, founders should not be afraid of evolution. Sometimes the next opportunity emerges from the capabilities you developed while building the first business. So I don’t think the choice is necessarily between focus and diversification. It is about sequencing.
You don’t have to build everything at once.
What does ambition look like to you now, compared with when you started?
When I started, ambition was largely about achievement.I wanted to prove that I could build something.
Today, ambition is more expansive.
I think about influence, institutions, people, ideas and the kind of opportunities I can create.
There is a point in entrepreneurship where the question changes you think about legacy, but not legacy in the abstract sense.
It makes you think about what remains when you are no longer the person doing everything.
What would you say to a young Nigerian woman contemplating the leap from a secure career into entrepreneurship?
I would tell her not to romanticise entrepreneurship. It can be incredibly rewarding, but it is also demanding.
Don’t leave a job simply because entrepreneurship looks glamorous from the outside. Leave because you have developed a conviction about something you want to build and then prepare yourself for the work required to make that conviction real. Build your financial understanding. Learn how businesses actually make money. Understand your customer. Develop a skill that gives you leverage. Build relationships.
And perhaps most importantly, don’t measure your journey only against other people’s timelines. There is no prize for becoming successful quickly and burning out. The real opportunity is to build a life and a business that can compound.
After 14 years, what are you building toward now?
I am building toward significance, and I don’t mean that in terms of being famous. I mean building businesses, ideas and platforms that have a life beyond a particular moment. Mandies is one chapter of that journey.
The experience has given me capabilities, relationships, perspective and a much deeper understanding of business and people. I want to take those lessons into the next chapter.
I am interested in building things that solve meaningful problems, developing people, contributing to industries and creating opportunities that did not exist before.
The first 14 years taught me how to build a business but I think the next chapter is about asking a bigger question: What can I build with everything I now know?
If you could distil 14 years of entrepreneurship into one lesson, what would it be?
Don’t confuse the version of yourself that started the journey with the person you need to become to finish it. Your original vision may get you started, but your ability to learn, adapt and grow will determine how far you can go. And I think that is where the most exciting part of the journey begins.