Wale Ayilara is one of the Big Boys doing well in the Real Estate sector. He plays big. Many other real estate players respect him so much because of the freshness of his ideas and the refreshing perspective he brought into the industry. He is a young man with a lot of ideas. He has always restated his position that the real estate sector in Nigeria requires a breath of fresh air and that things need to be done differently, to be able to get different results. He started Landway from scratch and he has been able to build the real estate company into the big brand it is today. He plays big in the Lekki/Ajah axis.
He was recently our guest on City People TV Instagram Live Chat with City People Publisher, SEYE KEHINDE during which he revealed a lot about how his company, Landway, coped with the challenges of Covid-19 lockdown. It is inspiring and educative.
Share with us how the last few months of Covid-19 lockdown has been. How have you coped?
The last 3 months has been very, very eye-opening to the new ways of doing business. It has helped us transform our entire business operation general.
The last 3 months has really helped us research more about our business operation. It has helped us bring out the best in the situation. We have been able to do a lot of research and we are amazed at the amount of information we have been able to come up with.
Immediately the Covid-19 lockdown came, what went through your mind at that time?
Well, from my own personal experience, I have been this kind of person, who always prefers to always see the advantages in every situation. That is my personal philosophy in life, to always see the opportunities in every challenging situation. For us, we didn’t focus too much on the challenge, our research was basically was: what are the opportunities in it for us.
So, we focused so much on the positive, rather than the negative. Our work immediately started from what is the best thing that can happen for us, during this time and how can we maximise the experience and its impact.
Immediately it happened, we didn’t feel like oh, something bad has happened and all that. We just started designing a business continuity plan.
So, we went into research and a lot of personal education of each and every stakeholder. Immediately, the lockdown was announced, immediately we started seeing it coming. We channelled all our operations to VIRTUAL. We started designing ways as to which our clients, our realtors, and even the office can operate virtually.
So, we have got a virtual platform that we were supposed to release later on this year. So we had to fast track the whole process and we had to start operating through virtual inspections, virtual meetings, so we have put a lot of that into place. All of that has helped us and it has helped us come down on cost. That is basically how we coped with the lockdown.
