If you have been following the BellaNaija Style Women’s Month campaigns and our weekly LIVE conversations #BNSCONVOS, you can agree that each session has been insightful with the spotlight on amazing women sharing lessons from their journey with us.

Hosted by BellaNaija Style‘s Lade Adisa, the finale was just as amazing with three (3) outstanding African women joining us to discuss the topic: “What Does Success Mean to Women in 2024?”

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When Lade asked Ink Balogun, a pioneer in Nigeria’s digital media industry who has led Aso Ebi Bella (asoebibella.com) since 2017 and recently launched the indigenous 234 Games (234games.co):  “As the leader of a successful online community, we know that you see a lot of GenZ and millennial women challenging traditional narratives of success. What are you seeing now in areas like entrepreneurship and social impact?”

She said:

I’m just really happy to celebrate Nigerian women, our resilience, our focus, and our determination are unmatched. We are top-tier! We set trends that the whole world follows and adopts eventually.

In the space of entrepreneurship, I see women of different ages find new outlets for creativity and that is really inspiring. I mean look at Veekee James, Hilda Baci, and I don’t even think they are 30… We have new voices coming out everyday.

Also for older people, if you feel your time has passed, that is not true, there is always time to reinvent the wheel and to pick up your inspiration. Nigerian women inspire me because we are setting the trend, we are the prototype!

When Clara Chizoba Kronborg, an award-winning media & social entrepreneur was asked to share some strategies she has used to overcome societal expectations and achieve success on her own terms seeing that she’s broken barriers in terms of media ownership, she said:

First of all, success is very subjective, it’s about being very authentic and as a Nigerian/African woman living in the diaspora, where you have to really own who you are 100% to be able to thrive and be able to have a strong voice and express yourself in the way that it should be.

How have I done that? It’s honestly by being myself and realising who I am: who is Clara? what’s your purpose, and what are you put on this earth to do? The moment I realised that, I knew that the only way for me to navigate that is to stay true to my person so that I don’t have to apologise when I walk into a room. I need you to see that this is me, this is all of me, and you’d take it as it comes.

The moment I embraced my personality, it made things a lot easier. I also leveraged networking to be honest and when you are authentic, people know when you are fake, people can see through your boo ha ha… Build a strong reliable network!

For the media work that I do, I’d honestly say it’s the team and the work they put in. I’ve been able to build a strong team who believe in my vision and I cannot thank them enough for it… Everything that I’ve built and leveraged so far I got from being true to myself, knowing who I am, and just holding fast to it.

When Joyce Jacob, a renowned Celebrity Makeup Artist with an eye for striking yet subtle makeup looks and the Director of Hair & Makeup for the 2nd season of Netflix‘s glamorous hit reality series YOUNG, FAMOUS & AFRICAN, was asked to share how she defines success for herself within the very diverse and saturated beauty industry, seeing that her career path highlights the need for artistic expression and career branding, she said:

For me, success is getting to the place where you are comfortable. When I say comfortable, I mean comfortable in your craft, comfortable in your talent, and comfortable in what you have to offer to the world…

Success is when you don’t have to work too hard. You know, I don’t have to bend over backwards; when I don’t have to do clickbait… You can actually just sit in your talent, sit in craft, and be confident that the bookings are going to keep rolling in; you’re going to stay booked and busy, and you’re going to keep achieving your dreams, for me that is success.

And also not getting carried away, cause in my industry it is so easy to get carried away. I started over 10 years ago, 2009 to be specific… and the industry has grown so beautifully. It’s been a beautiful thing to see and you can get carried away…

Part of my success has just been staying true to myself and it’s the #1 advice I will give to anyone starting a business… Just stay true to yourself, stay true to your signature, stay true to your craft, and I promise you, you will be successful.

Your work at Aso Ebi Bella celebrates African culture, how can we use entrepreneurship and digital platforms to define success beyond traditional stereotypical metrics and integrate cultural identity and social impact into our goals and why we should do these things?

Authenticity is where you find yourself, uniqueness is where you find yourself, not echoing other people’s voices but finding your own.

…GenZ and Gen Alpha you have the benefit of “being African” being cool now. We (Millenials) didn’t have that… and honestly we suffered from streotypes (a lot of misrepresentation) and it really took us defining what we want.

When it comes to women specifically, I love what we’ve done because things like fashion and even cooking have been looked down on. After all, women provide these services for free.

We provide them as part of our energy and giving beauty and light to the world; but us being able to say “No, take us seriously, this is a business, this ties into our identity, this says something, this makes money, this provides inspiration,” is so important.

We’ve even seen designers from international runways pick one or two inspirations from us, and it’s not like we need that validation but it shows that we have a unique authentic voice to bring.

So finding your voice, having the discipline to streamline it into a business and run a team around it, and staying true to yourself and improving your craft is really key… You also have to evolve while staying true to yourself.

I think it’s really important and I’m inspired by what I see going on currently.

— Nkechi (Ink) Balogun

What are some of the biggest stereotypes you’ve encountered as a successful African woman and how have you defined success for yourself in light of these expectations?

The biggest stereotype and I think most women can relate to this is “Oh she’s successful, someone is bankrolling her, someone is behind her, etc”. It’s just always someone else other than the person that’s truly behind the craft and that for me is the number one stereotype.

People don’t believe that it can be you all alone and I don’t know why this stereotype is always there but it’s disgusting and it’s false. You’d be surprised at how much you can achieve by yourself if you truly just put your mind to what you want to do.

You are enough and you should believe that you are enough! You don’t need to have anyone bankrolling or sponsoring you.

— Joyce Jacob

Your Guinness World Record attempt highlights the power of perseverance, what message do you have for young women facing challenges on their path to success? You’ve also moved from country to country and travelled to over 30 countries which is amazing, how has perseverance played a role in all of these things and your breaking the barriers to success?

It’s easy to tell someone to persevere, “you have to persevere and keep going”, but it’s easier said than done.

First of all the Guinness World Record attempt, I didn’t just wake up overnight and want attempt to break a record interviewing 94 people for 55 hours non stop. It was the most insane thing I’ve ever done in my life and it’s still ongoing and we hope to bring the news to life soon. However, perseverance is a big key… but it’s easier said than done.

If you want to achieve something, you just have to wake up and you go from it because no one is coming to save you. If you want to do it, you have an idea, you have a concept, go for it!

… How it works for me: I have an idea, I send an email out, and if I don’t get a response after 24 hours, I will be knocking at your door. Also if you say no to me, that’s okay. If you say go and restructure and come back, I will restructure and I will come back. That’s the way it is.

I don’t take no for an answer. If it doesn’t work for us, that is okay, I move on to the next person… and if you say no, I knock on another door. I keep trying again because I know one day, somebody will see the vision and say yes and that person becomes one of the team. I keep finding and looking for the person who sees the vision of where I am heading to.

There’s no perseverance without you putting action into it, it’s okay if it gets hard, cry if you have to but don’t stay down, pick up yourself and move forward. You need to find a way to get to the next level, if it takes calling the person that helps you feel the fire, call them… Build your step-by-step action and keep going.

— Clara Chizoba Kronborg

Watch the full interview for more inspiration:

Learn more about our speakers here.

Catch up on previous episodes of our BNSCONVOS here.