Hundreds of millions of people all over the world have a dream of what they want to do with their lives. As a result, they enrol in specific university courses in the hopes of pursuing their dream careers.
While many sometimes graduate and go on to practice what they studied, many others graduate and end up being dealt with something they never bargained for.
But this amazing success story of an individual who deliberately put himself in a similar situation of ending up doing something he never studied in college will blow you away!
This is a remarkable tale of a person who had a passion for saving lives and went on to study medicine, only to apply his passion for saving lives in another industry after his graduation and totally nailed it, built a multi-million dollar business, and became a symbol of success for thousands of people around the world to learn from!
His name is Ifiok Nkem and he’s a key founding member of a multi-million dollar technology company in Nigeria called SnapiLABS, which is serving over 40,000 customers in the world!!
Here’s how he went about it:
Ifiok Nkem’s Early Years And Education
In the 1990s, Ifiok Nkem was born in Rivers State, the oil and gas capital of Nigeria. He was raised in the confines of the capital city, Port Harcourt, and over time growing up, built a passion for saving lives, which led him to study medicine and surgery at the University of Port Harcourt.
He always had a highly intuitive mind, and so, was constantly finding solutions to problems and always looking at great possibilities and the big picture of things, which led him, while practising medicine, to find visionary ways of providing great solutions that could one day change the world and have a significant impact on businesses and people’s lives, especially those in low-income countries.
Ifiok told the Guardian in an interview that “I went to university to study medicine because of my passion for saving lives. During my clinical years, I got to discover that the number one risk factor for most chronic illnesses in Nigeria is low socioeconomic status and most of the delays in health care delivery are also linked to this factor. Delay in getting to the hospital, delay in starting treatments, inability to complete treatments, and follow-ups; all linked to low socioeconomic status.”
The interview was yet another great proof of his desire to save and change people’s lives no matter where and how his solutions could reach them.
To do this, he had to start a great journey.
Ifiok’s Journey Into Tech Entrepreneurship Begins
Ifiok was a graduate student studying medicine with several other students in his university, but while he did this, he never lost sight of his lifelong ambition, which was to save people’s lives, but initially had no idea that his purpose to save lives would be through the advancement and dissemination of technology, rather than medicine.
As he advanced nearly halfway into his medical training, he recognized that low socioeconomic status was the significant cause of most chronic conditions in his home country Nigeria.
Ifiok told the Punch Newspaper in an interview that “I realised that most of the delays in healthcare delivery and high mortality rate are caused by low socio-economic status. People encounter delays in getting to the hospital, even when they eventually do, there’s a delay in getting treatment. At the end of the day, when treatment commences, there’s the inability to follow up. These, for me, were avoidable circumstances”.
He continued by saying that “The second factor is illiteracy, which is also linked to low socioeconomic status. This particularly led to a massive brain shift for me when I was in 400 Level, and it continued till I was out of the medical profession. The shift was from saving lives to empowering lives to impact society at large. That is why now, I and my company create training and software products that empower businesses and these businesses, in turn, empower other people.”
But as he realized that his purpose and mission to the world was not to just save lives as a medical practitioner, but to inspire people and change economies with the use of technology, he experienced a wake-up call that lit his intuitive mind with a passionate fire and drove him to pursue a career in technology where he gets to consistently build and launch products that can genuinely change people’s lives.
SnapiLABS’ Beginnings
With a mind that stays searching for simple solutions to great problems, Ifiok wrote down his ideas on how to use technology to better people’s lives by developing different technology solutions that would solve a problem for them while also generating revenue.
With this in place and a passion to see his dreams come to fruition, Ifiok set out to start his company after writing down his thoughts, but with just $100 and a borrowed laptop computer from a friend because he didn’t have one at the time to help him kickstart his goals.
In the process of building up his business, Ifiok applied for the yearly grant awarded by the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Program to innovative businesses that have a great chance of placing the African society on a great path for success and was recognised for his efforts which caused him to be selected and awarded a $5,000 grant to significantly aid the growth of his company.
Ifiok Nkem used these resources to create a number of web applications that addressed real-world issues. He also created a strong team of people who shared his vision and aspirations, believed in his ambitions, and wanted to work with him to make them a reality.
The company SnapiLABS was thus founded as a result of the popularity of a lot of the products they built.
With a structure in place, Ifiok and his team set off on a mission to develop products that allow people to use technology and innovation to accomplish more in their lives, companies, and communities, and as a result, the tech solutions have grown to have over 40,000 paying customers in 47 countries while generating more than $5 million in revenue in less than two years.
As a result of the immense success that SnapiLABS achieved, Ifiok has worked for high net worth individuals, companies, and organizations, including the Nigerian and Angolan government. He has also travelled the world, and in the process, has educated, mentored, and inspired thousands of people and companies, especially showing them how his technology solutions would help them take advantage of the internet’s power to expand their businesses and attain exponential growth.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, when most people were forced to stay at home, his company’s digital goods and services saw a large increase in demand as they provided a direct solution to problems that plagued a large part of the businesses and individuals who rushed to use them.
SnapiLABS’s Top Products
Ifiok’s SnapiLABS has developed a number of popular products over the years that have had a significant effect on companies, individuals, and societies, including:
- Videotours360 Software: In minutes, users can CREATE & SELL Interactive & Immersive Virtual Tours & Stores using a software tool.
- VidJack: This brand new patented technology legally hijacks and transforms any YouTube or Vimeo video into a profit-generating machine by incorporating interactive elements (CTAs, Email Gates, Share Gates, Reviews, Gamification, eCom Widgets, and more) that burst traffic, leads, and sales in minutes. Any consumer can sell and receive payments right inside any YouTube or Vimeo video using VidJack.
- ViralLeadFunnel: This game-changing marketing technology uses an incentive-driven viral marketing approach to help clients turn 350 percent of their traffic (versus the daily average of 2.35 percent) into hot buyer leads.
- MarketGee: Users can “Develop, Market, and Sell” information products and online classes, membership and coaching services, software, and physical products using this web application, which requires no coding skills, no heavy lifting, and no multiple monthly subscriptions.
- Socicake: Socicake is a traffic suite that allows users to 10X their social media traffic, interaction, leads, and sales.
- DesignBundle: This is a 10 in 1 design app for marketers that is cloud-based. It allows them to quickly create high-converting designs such as Facebook ads, social media covers, posts, ecovers, business cards, mockups, pdf books, and more. It includes over 3 million stock images, fonts, and other graphic assets, as well as 3000+ ready-made design models.
- Ada Bundle Software: ADA Bundle is a ‘first to market’ SaaS platform that enables website owners to boost usability and become completely ADA compliant in minutes.
- Local AgencyBox: Local AgencyBox is a full business-in-a-box solution that includes everything required for everyone to earn money by assisting local businesses in creating a profitable online presence. Video marketing, social media marketing, mobile apps, websites, messenger bots, content creation, and SEO marketing are among the topics covered.
- Uduala: Uduala is a SaaS platform that assists eCommerce entrepreneurs in finding winning e-commerce goods, advertisements, viewers, videos, resources, and everything else they need to conquer Shopify.
- LeadGrow360 Software: LeadGrow is a full do-it-yourself device that creates high-converting lead funnels in under 60 seconds with 100% free traffic!
Today’s SnapiLABS
After years of building a remarkable business, SnapiLABS now has over 40,000 paying users in 47 countries and has generated over $5 million in revenue in less than two years. The business has received a lot of local and international publicity and has been featured in a number of influential publications as a result.
SnapiLABS was also welcomed into the Launch Academy, one of Canada’s top ten startup accelerators, which will help the company disrupt the North American market.
Ifiok Nkem Today
An accomplished individual with so much more targets to reach, Ifiok Nkem wakes up daily with a glow on his face knowing that he’s impacting thousands of lives round the clock through his tech solutions.
Ifiok has also trained an immense number of people spanning the thousands and was recently acknowledged for his great contribution to the entrepreneurship sphere through his inclusion as a member of the Forbes Business Council.
To Conclude
Success is possible if you set your sight on a goal, work day and night to achieve that goal, and never lose focus even if you realise that the goal you set was actually made for you to achieve in another industry and not the original one you thought you were going to reach it in.
Ifiok Nkem’s life story is just that, and understanding that his underlying drive is to change the fate of societies and the people living in them, you too can take the same approach and someday build a million-dollar company that has a far-reaching impact on the lives of countless individuals.
