ONO BELLO: TAKING HER FUTURE IN HER HAND

Ono Bello, an ex-model is an online entrepreneur who doubles the running of her online fashion and lifestyle magazine, onobello.com with PR consultancy. Joseph Dinwoke  of Brojid.com  relates how she started and how she has been making headway.

She started out her career with different media houses like This Day and Arise Magazine, which afforded her opportunities to be groomed and from which she garnered varied experience to run her on media enterprise.

She left a paid employment to start her own media enterprise, PR UNO, which admitted has not been easy. “Making the transition from a paid employment to now paying salaries wasn’t easy.” Further, she reveals, “this business is tough and it is very competitive industry but three and a half years into it, I am happy I made the decision to start it up.”

She was motivated to start PR UNO when she noticed that many PR firms in Nigeria have misunderstood what PR is all about; thinking that PR is all about putting their story in different media platforms.

Though, there are other online media platforms, publishing style and fashion, she explains that unable is different from them in that it “is properly structured; it is a website and not blog with everything properly categorized. Secondly, our write ups are properly structured, supported by good quality photos. Thirdly, the layout is glossy just like what you will find anywhere else in the world.”

Despite challenges associated with her career, she is undeterred as she continues to do her best and has remained optimistic about the result she will get. “I am putting in the hard work and I know that with God on my side, it will be testimony.”

As a start-up, she needs to gain the confidence of her clients and has achieved it through a strategy. Hear her: “When I started, I took on projects without getting paid for my services for a long time, but a lot of people looking from outside wouldn’t know. I had to do that because I need to gain the confidence of my clients and potential clients.”

Despite her strides, she is still craving for knowledge from other entrepreneurs because according to her, “I know they have a lot to tell me that will encourage and help me take it further.”

With the success of her online media enterprise and others like Linda Ikeji and Bella Naija, which are run by female online entrepreneurs one wonders what makes females more successful than their male counterparts, she offers and explanation, “I think it’s because women think quickly and are great at multitasking. So we can do many things at the same time, which is an important skill in business. Another thing might be men are not patient enough to actually nurture and grow the business. It takes a lot of patience.”

She has had a quite impressive clientele such as Lanra Da Silva Ajayi Couture and 2010 Elite Nigeria look.

Ono Bello is motivated by success. She goes after it and that’s what propels her. It’s for that reason that she said, “ No matter the number of times I fail I never give up because the feeling of success is the prize for me.”