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In this edition of My Family, My Business, Bisade Kanuwi, the chief financial officer (CFO) of Schubbs Dental speaks on his choice to stay in the family business despite opportunities to earn more with his qualifications and experience.
Tell us about Bisade Karunwi
Bisade Karunwi is an ‘ideas’ person, an introvert, a CFO, a numbers guy by trade. He also writes, and he has a book coming out very soon.
It was my initial goal; having two parents that are doctors. It was straightforward to me that I was going to be a doctor but the thing is I got to secondary school and I took the wrong guy for chemistry class.
And so after that, even when I got to Uni, I went to this event where they just keep talking about what you can expect out of your medical career and how long it would take and I’m thinking, wow, that’s a long time but I wanted to see how many chemistry exams I would have to take, you know, given my insecurity when it comes to just that chemistry subject.
After that day, when I found out that there was going to be lots of chemistry, I just dropped out of the pre-medical course and then I started in Accounting; I wanted to do something in the business school and ended up doing a double major in accounting and Finance. That has now led me to where I am today. As far as career-wise, I sort of peaked because sometimes I get like recruiting interviews from recruiters on LinkedIn and they’re all just offering the same thing. “Oh! Another role as a CFO (Chief Financial Officer) or role as a CFO.”
I would rather spend my time working on my family business in the capacity of a CFO because our business would probably not be able to afford somebody like me normally, so I’m glad to at least be able to contribute value to the team, offer finance and not just that accounting perspective.
there is something blessed that comes with working for your parents in their old age and you helping them out
I actually like teaching my team how to think in financial ways and also in accounting.
Now that you mentioned your family business, can you tell us about it?
We have three Dental practices in Lagos; one is in Apapa, one is in Ikeja and one is Ikoyi. We also have a sister company which will spun off, that deals with supplies, logistics and training for dentists.
So we use just that company to serve our needs and then they also serve the needs of other dentists who want to order materials; dentistry is material heavy, so there’s always some feeling that somebody needs those dentistry materials, so we import those on behalf of many dentists in Nigeria.
So three practices and one sister company and we all just sort of work together in a very close ecosystem. Most of the revenue but this is that company comes from our clinics.
We use it as an opportunity to maintain certain standards within the industry at least for people that order from us, so we don’t just order cheap materials from China; we say like we’re ordering the stuff that we would use ourselves.
We like to work to a very high standard, and hold the rest of the industry to that standard as well.
Did you always want to join the family business? Was that always the intention?
I can say yes to that question and that takes me to where I was a kid. I didn’t really know what it was but I loved playing around in the lab. My parents made me like a Schubbs ID badge from when I was like five years old, very curious, but like I said, I wanted to be a medical doctor.
I feel like I just tumbled into the position that I’m in right now, never intended to, the only thing is just my mathematics understanding and scores have always been very high. It’s just the easiest thing for me to do. So, you know me doing this job, I really just like not doing anything with 90 percent of my time.
I can finish my work in five minutes and then spend the rest of the day working on personal projects and stuff. So that’s sort of how my parents have structured it because they want us to do like they did and even surpass them.
So they say, “alright do this job, when you think the side thing that you’re doing becomes big enough to occupy your whole time, then you can resign.”
I’ve been pursuing many different entrepreneurial efforts for quite a long time.
Is it safe to say that you’ve always felt an obligation to join the family business, given what you just described? Or did you always know that you were going to end up in the family business?
I could never figure out why anyone wants to spend their life looking into people’s mouths. So, like that side, Dentistry was never even like an option for me but I’m grateful because at least in the one that I know, Finance, I’m able to add value right, and I had situations where other medical related businesses have come to me to just like “hey, what are we doing with our accounting? What should we be doing?
I’m not in love with my job, but it’s something that I can do.
Do you think it’s important for people who have family businesses to work outside of the family businesses before they join the family businesses?
Yeah, because nepotism doesn’t pay anyone right? So just like “oh I have this job because of my dad”. I think it’s a good thing to go out, do some other work and then come back and take over the family business and you find that a lot of people when they start thinking of wanting to settle down and things like that, then they start thinking, and you know at some point, their parents have been begging them, “when are you coming to take over the business.”
But it took a while because a few months ago, I just had this realisation, I was reading a book about Einstein and in the book, he worked for his parents for a long time, and DaVinci also.
There was just something in me that just said ‘no’, that changed in me when I heard that, it was just like there is something blessed that comes with working for your parents in their old age and you helping them out.
I used to feel like I’m underemployed; work is not that hard, it’s not that challenging, you know, but to be honest, most of the time, all it requires is your presence for people to do what they are supposed to do right?
I just decided I am going to show up every day and take that blessing as it comes.
I think you mentioned something about the fact that one of the reasons why you work in your family businesses is because you know that your business ordinarily will not be able to afford your services. And so do you ever compare with what you could be earning if you are outside of the family business do you ever think about that?
Oh my goodness! I do that all the time. And sometimes, I will get to this place where I’m just like “aarrgh, I could do so much more on the other side”, and then, you hear of people who are making untold sums of money; I’m just like I could have done that job.
And sometimes, I now have to reality-check myself and say, “you know what, the things that the business pays and covers on my behalf, that even with the amount of money these guys are getting paid that they won’t have been able to afford those things.”
If one is looking at cash, I’m on the losing end but looking at benefits, then, I have the highest insurance package for myself, my wife and my son. Little things like that tip the scale in terms of family business.
I stumbled on a book recently titled “The Myth of the Silver Spoon” by Kristin Keffeler and the writer actually just emphasises the fact that young people who work in family businesses usually feel the fear of falling short of family expectations. Do you feel this pressure to outperform your parents?
Not really; the reason I don’t feel that pressure is because I’m not like working as a dentist. If I was working as a dentist, I might feel like “men, if I’m just an average dentist or not a good dentist, can I really carry this whole business on my shoulder?”
But you know, I’m in finance, nobody knows what I’m talking about anyway. So when my parents ask, “how’s it been with our business?” they’re not looking for a specific answer but I will be able to say everything is under control and you can believe that and know that okay, so long as that’s been taken care of.
So in a nice way, I don’t feel that pressure just because I’m sort of operating in my own niche and I’m doing work that only I can do in the company, there’s nobody to come and say you could have done this job better.
At some point, I’ve had many mid-life crises, at some points, I used to panic; especially my dad when he was talking about selling the business and I was now thinking to myself, “I tied my career to these people. If they sell the business and those people say we don’t want to support a CFO, we think it’s too much”, and I’m just thinking “oh! Where will I go, who will employ me.”
I would feel that pressure if I was a dentist but I’m in finance and I know that while I’m sitting here, looking at the business, the business will not just come and pack-up overnight; and I see the numbers every day.
What are the unique characteristics that set your apart from other dental practices?
An eye for detail, and an eye for technology. Schubbs does not scream on technology; we have the best dental chairs, the best equipment. We have equipment that no other dentists in Nigeria have. If you go to another dentist now, they will do an x-ray to get your teeth and what’s going on with you.
Now, at Schubbs, we will also do an X-ray but we’re doing it with the panoramic machine that sorts of go around your mouth to give almost like a three-dimensional picture of what’s going on in your mouth and that kind of technology is miles and miles ahead of just regular x-ray technology that some dentists who don’t have the capital to pay for those types innovations.
You are obviously going to get better care at Schubbs because we have the best technology consistently and then we change our chairs every now and then.
On technology and attention, my mom represents the attention to detail, you can’t buy a chair in this company without my mom’s input and my dad is more focused on the qualitative nature of the practice and he is himself into training younger dentists who sorely need to be trained.
I think in those two parts, we definitely set ourselves up apart and that’s where our competitive advantage lies.
So how do you think next-generation family business leaders can create legitimacy around their positions in their family businesses? How do they earn the respect of their peers, not just because they are ‘Oga’ or Madam’s child?
Okay, how I see it is that either way, it just sort of depends on how you carry yourself. Because if you don’t have a lot self-esteem, or a healthy amount of respect for yourself, or you don’t have I think what it is also is a lack of spiritual awareness to be able to think that at this time, at this place, this is where God has placed me; whether it is a preparation for where I’m going next.
Before I started working here, men, I was a freelance kind of guy. Right, I’ll come, dump the idea on you, whatever the idea is, and I’m out; I don’t care about executing ideas.
The job has been so grounding for me because not only do I have to come up with an idea, but I also have to show out how to execute it and then execute it. And then some days, I just come to work, even if there’s no work or a real thing for me to do, just the value of me just being present, is something.
“So they’ll call, are you in the office, I’m like, yeah, I’m in the office beautiful. Okay, okay, just checking because we need this file, come up with some excuse.” But anyway they literally just want to know that I’m here when I’m supposed to be here.
So my mom, maybe 99.9 percent sense retired, so all the issues come to my desk right now. I’m actually the CEO and CFO at the same time.
How have you implemented the use of technology in the business? Did you get any push back from your parents?
One of the biggest innovations I think that we did, at least for the finance department, was migrating to a cloud-based accounting software.
I think when I first came in; the other thing was like getting the right team in place.
So when I first came in, there was a guy who was really just a glorified bookkeeper but before that meeting I asked everybody to come up with, generate their financial statements, and I said “bring it to the meeting”. I’, looking at everybody’s statement, we accountants all know what income statement looks like but this guy, I got to his own, I was trying to understand and was asking other guys what that was; so getting rid of that guy was part of my job and hiring somebody to replace him which has been fantastic for us because this guy works directly under me and he’s just so diligent and he’s been so on point for many years.
He’s fixed a lot of issues as far as accounting is concerned, you know, he’s actually quite amazing and one of the best hires; we actually gave him staff of the year twice in a row. Shuffle the year so, you know.
So we adopt technology very quickly, especially at the dental front and my dad is a huge techy person.
I was just saying that the only tech I’ve had any say on was just moving us to a cloud based accounting system.
Other than that, I will get a call from my dad saying, “Oh, I sent an invoice to your inbox. You guys should pay for it today. I need this thing by…” and so we’re looking at it and we were like “wow, this is expensive,” but I can’t go and tell my dad that I don’t think we can.. and he’s like, “I don’t care, pay for it” and we have to then sit down and try to just figure out how to buy this technology and all other stuffs.
My dad is living his dreams; it’s one thing to have the best practice, it’s another thing to actually be passionate about dentistry and it’s a third thing to actually run a successful dental practice that can afford to pay for any cool technology that comes up in his mind. That’s his concern, and to me, he’s in a heavenly place right now.
So do you think that owners or families staying in the business is a source of competitive advantage versus hiring a professional business manager?
Oh, yeah even now, we are trying to to hire a manager and over the years, I’ve just seen people left and right who are just not up to the standard for a long time, you know, so it helps like when you have kids and you know, just all of us have moved back home, you know and it’s nice, the fact that we all here.
My sister’s office is downstairs, and she’s a lawyer but she has traded her law degree for a graphic designer thing that she’s trying to do.
So it’s like you’re free to do your stuff, but when something happens, right you’ll get a letter from an in-house lawyer.
Recently, we found out some company having defrauding us, and so I just called up my team, internal control guy and we were able to come up with comprehensive reports of which somebody else, some business manager may not even had noticed that there was a fraud happening within the organisation, so it’s definitely an advantage here.
So given that obviously there’s a heavy family involvement in the business, how do you make it work without family feuds? How do you deal with the emotion of the family and the complexity of the business?
I’ve always found thatI over time learned how to call my mom or my dad; “Okay, I have this decision that I need to make and I need some insight or some perspective.”
So we’re there, we have this thing where like, yes, we’re talking all fun and games and then all of a sudden we started talking about the business; “saying we should not do this, we should do that, we need to do that, etc” and I go from playing around to actually taking notes on my phone of what they’re saying that I need to do, that kind of thing.
So I know that they’re just grooming me and I had the thoughts of like, you know what, I actually realised that I can never actually leave this business; you know that process of transitioning from serious conversation to business conversation and back.
So how do you handle conflicts with your parents especially if there’s a clash of ideas; you think the company should go in a particular direction and they think differently?
My parents are very annoyingly intelligent. I feel sometimes almost like by the time they break down the scenario, say why this is this and why we have to go in this or that direction, I would have already come, thinking my direction is correct, but then, they don’t think like Finance people right?
They just think like business owners, and I’m hoping to get to the point at least with this business where I start to see it as more than just a numbers thing.
Privately held wealth has great potential to benefit society but only if held by people able and willing to do good with it. So my question is, how does the Karunwi family or Schubbs Dental do good with their wealth?
Okay, I think one of the things, like when we’re processing salaries and stuff like that, you know, what we tend to do is, for example, we send an amount of money to a Sickle Cell clinic.
We just sort of look for ways, or there’s somebody who has a foundation and we agree with their cause, then we can support them.
We also support missions, which might be in other countries.
Read also: Cosmas Jr. Maduka – Respect in business is earned not granted
Okay, that’s very interesting. So what is your philosophy about being a better leader? Like, how do you carry others along?
I think one is, Nigerians tend to do this thing where within a very short amount of time, they want to be suddenly familiar.
I had a message from some guy, because we had had a conversation, at an event where we saw each other. He’s one of the guys that works with my team, not really an accountant, but just into regular accounting.
Anyway, he sent me a message on a Monday saying “hey, bro”and I have to be like “guy, I am not your bro.”
You know, because we rushed into familiarity, I was just like okay, let’s take a step back, let’s not call each other “Bros” because I’m young. I can’t be with him, I can’t accept that.
So I think just knowing where the boundaries are helps people think and focus more on the work.
I gist with my staff a lot and everything, but it’s always a serious thing when work needs to be done.
You hear what people say, work hard, play hard, so we all have a really good vibe here, but whenever somebody steps across that line of familiarity, you have to get checked.
What’s the best financial decision you’ve ever made?
I sold all my shares in my chest. I don’t own an equity portfolio; not because, if I’m being true to myself, I’m not the kind of person who makes money on the back of somebody else’s efforts.
I’m not the kind of person that will make money by just doing your job and I’m an innovator.
So I like to create the space, so for example in a couple of weeks, I’m launching a social network, and I’m not on any social network because I hate all of them, but I’ve turned that feeling and used it to innovate and now I’m creating a platform where I’m like, yes I can thrive here and then if anybody else is interested in joining me, if you’re like me, then you might find this valuable as well.
Selling all my shares and then just investing them in a business that I’m starting myself.
I believe it’s better for young people not to gamble their money on the stock exchange. I mean like back when I first moved, GT was trading at 70 naira and as at last week, they’re back at 70 naira.
That means I invested then, thinking time will do the work for me. I’ve lost a tremendous amount of money already with the inflation that has been taking place; so I don’t worry about that.
Even if I’m broke because I’ve invested in a business that I’m trying to get off the ground, it ‘s better than to be broke from just waiting and doing nothing.
You’re waiting, you’re not developing your skills, you’re not challenging yourself.
It’s like a whole lot of things, almost like you invest and you’re just “oh, that’s all for the day.”
And also this my social networks, is something I’ve been working on for many years and I also think it’s like if you’re going to spend a long amount of time living in Nigeria and taking care of family, I think the pressing (investment) one anyone can do with their youthful years is to create some form of cash flow for yourself.
Because it’s the cash flow that will save you, that will allow you to borrow from yourself in the future and pay yourself back.
And that’s okay, but once you’ve created one form of cash flow, you don’t have to stop there.
You can create another one investing, you know, people flip real estate; that’s what Fisayo’s husband does.
He buys real estate that the bank has repossessed and then he fixes it up or does all this stuff but anyway, that’s how he makes money, you know, and like it’s good
Once there’s a cash flow there’s some funds, that kind of thing will sustain you.
Somebody was saying the other day, how tax consultancy is a very big business in Lagos but most of the tax consultants you find are these very old men that used to work either for FIRS or so and they’ve created this cash flow for themselves.
If you’re getting 10 or 11 clients and collecting about 1.5 million per client, then you’re very comfortable.
And you know, nobody likes to even rush tax people because everyone wants to know their liability right now; whenever you are ready, or sometime in the future, bring it back.
It’s a laid-back job and great cash flow. So that’s what I say, just spend your time and energy thinking about creating cash flows and you know along the way, the hope is that you’ll find something that you’re passionate about right then you can really invest in that thing but a lot of times you don’t know.
For example when I started my transplants, I kept a blog and I just didn’t know that there was a writer inside me that wanted to be born.
And because of all the feedback from the quality of my writing, I wrote a book; I had the courage to write a book because people say I can write; and what do writers do? They write books.
So I wrote a book and I have an outline for two other books in the pipeline and I’m going to continue writing books.
What’s the title of the book?
It’s called “Surviving Cells”. I’m making it a fictional story, but I’m trying to use it to write a novel that really showcases sickle cell and all the many ways that it ravages our society. That’s sort of what the book highlights and then I add content from my blog which I kept during my stem cell transplant.
That content is going into the book as well; one, for anybody who’s struggling with sickle cell of any level to see that there’s a way out, two, different ways that I have to adapt over the years and then just how it feels after your transplants is all healed and everything; you know, my reflections on life after a chronic illness is pretty much. That’s all the book is about; I hope you’ll find it interesting.
Finally, if there’s one person in the world you’d like to have dinner with, who would that be and why?
Let me put a caveat, when I’m a billionaire, I want to have dinner with Beyonce.
And why?
(laughs) to see if I can steal her from Jay Z. After the whole thing, I will just tell her I was just joking.
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