AWEC Alumna Success Story: Nonyelum Arinze on Pivoting Her Business During the Pandemic

Nonyelum Arinze

The coronavirus crisis, which emerged as a global pandemic in March, has had an uneven impact across Africa. For many, it dramatically redefined everything, including our day-to-day actions.  

For entrepreneurs, things are no longer business as usual. Such is the case for AWEC Alumna, Nonyelum Arinze, who, after 3 months, was close to being depressed from shutting down her business indefinitely as a result of the pandemic.

Barely two weeks before a lockdown began across much of Nigeria, she’d spent a formidable chunk of money renovating and refurbishing her business premises, Ben & Glad’s Haven, a children’s daycare centre operating out of Enugu, Nigeria. “I was super excited at the prospect of doing business in a brand new environment. But after closing the doors to the centre, I was heartbroken, sad and despondent because I had very little money left to take care of the bare necessities and I wasn't even sure if that would last for a month.Thankfully, my family, friends, and fellow AWEC Sisters were of great encouragement to me, and it helped a lot.”

As days turned into weeks, Nonye knew staying idle wasn’t an option. AWEC Fellows helped to boost her morale but they also challenged her to readjust her perspective and look for opportunities around her. After all, there was only so much she could do with online classes for babies, toddlers and preschoolers…

Nonye turned to her love for food and physical fitness! Her biggest dilemma thus far was that the former outweighed the latter, meaning she always gained more weight —a constant battle where her fitness journey was more of a roller coaster. So she set herself a challenge: to be and stay active as much as possible. Within two months she’d dropped two dress sizes and felt and looked leaner. On sharing her excitement with friends, they encouraged her to become their coach, create a workout program and monetize it. 

Within days, her new business, Workout Accountability Buddies, was born. Through the community group she created on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, her program grew to nearly 50 people within a very short space of time.

Taking it even further she leveraged her passion for reading and cooking to establish Reading Buddies and Kitchen Buddies. 

Her active groups have seen fantastic results; with mantras like ‘Creativity’ and ‘Out of The Box Thinking,’ buddies have learnt to make better food choices, realising that healthy eating doesn’t have to be “boring and tasteless.” They have seen remarkable weight loss transformations with clients on average dropping 1 to 2 dress sizes. The Reading Buddies are also held to account; they have a rule that any book that has been read half-way through cannot be carried over into the next month. It’s forced some members to pull all-nighters so as not to disappoint the team. The results? They’ve managed to read 3 to 4 books on average a month.

Nonyelum Arinze and The Buddies Enterprises

The buddies are made up of entrepreneurs, working professionals, full-time mom’s and business owners and it is the strength of the community that keeps them motivated and disciplined. 

Nonye is ecstatic but still surprised she launched The Buddies Enterprise —the name she’s given to cover all three new ventures; “Sometimes I ask myself, ‘how did all this happen Nonye?’ This has really helped to sustain and keep me active, physically, psychologically, and financially (no matter how small) while my Childcare Center remains closed because of the pandemic. What would have happened if I dismissed the ideas? I'm pretty sure I'd still be bitter, angry and depressed.”

Looking back on what has been a traumatic experience for her in the last few months, Nonye is cognisant of the fact that her response and resilience through the challenges were largely down to the lessons she learnt from her AWEC journey. “My thought process as a business owner has changed a lot and I have AWEC to thank for it,” she reflects. “At first, I was skeptical about charging people or asking them to pay fees, I was always afraid to broach the topic, but I’ve learnt to never mix business with personal affairs.” 

Her AWEC experience has spilled over into her family too. Nonye is the last born and the first entrepreneur. She has encouraged one of her older siblings —who has harboured a business idea for years— to start. “She finally decided to launch her business after a lot of pushing, and right now she is so busy taking orders.”

The economic impact that the world is experiencing is unprecedented but there are countless stories of entrepreneurs re-evaluating their businesses and pivoting through the crisis. 

The word “crisis” in Japanese is written with two symbols signifying “danger” and “opportunity.” The truth is that every crisis, while deeply unsettling, also contains the seeds of opportunity. AWEC’s e-learning programs were created with African women entrepreneurs like Nonye in mind - to empower them with the skills that foster confidence, resourcefulness and resilience no matter what they are facing. 

In Nonye’s words, “AWEC is really changing lives; it has certainly changed mine.”