Zaccheus Akinadewo: Building Entrepreneurship on Faith, Grit, Reinvention

He left a decade-long corporate career because, he says, God instructed him to go. What followed was a failed partnership, financial hardship, a car sold to fund ministry, a family tested by adversity and the eventual emergence of Graza Media. Today, Managing Director, Graza Media Limited, Zaccheus Akinadewo is building not merely a business, but an institution designed to outlive its founder, writes Adedayo Adejobi

The office is almost unnaturally white. White walls. White furniture. A quiet, immaculate elegance that gives the room the atmosphere of a place where decisions are made and destinies are altered. At the centre of it sits Zaccheus Akinadewo, Managing Director of Graza Media Limited, dressed in a three-piece suit, composed and regal, his bearing carrying something of the old-world authority of royalty.

There is little in the room to suggest the chaos that once surrounded the beginning of his entrepreneurial journey. But the story is there, beneath the polish.

Before Graza Media Limited became a growing business with ambitions beyond advertising, Akinadewo had been instructed to leave the security of employment and the familiarity of church service. The instruction, he says, came from God.

“I left because I was instructed by God to do so,” he says. “God had impressed upon me that after spending 10 years in the Church and in the office where I served and worked respectively, it was time for me to move on.”

 So, in 2016, after a decade with Gems Communication and a decade in the Church, he left both.

 What followed was not the smooth beginning of an entrepreneurial success story. It was a season of partnerships that collapsed, money that disappeared, school fees that could no longer be paid and a family that had to reorganise itself around financial uncertainty.

 He had started a business with four others. Within six months, the partnership failed.

 “I was the only one without another job, while the others still earned salaries, leaving me struggling financially,” he recalls.

 There was another problem. He owned only 35 per cent of the company.

 “I had only 35 per cent, which made me function more like an employee while the other partners became more like my bosses.”

 Eventually, the partners decided to liquidate the company. Akinadewo was paid three months’ salary and asked to leave. It was the end of one chapter. It was also the beginning of Graza Media Limited. Yet, entrepreneurship would soon expose him to a hardship more personal than the collapse of a business.

 At his lowest point, he could no longer afford to feed himself properly or meet his family’s needs. His wife became the family’s breadwinner. His children had to leave their former school because the fees were no longer affordable.

 “I eventually sold my car to survive,” he says.

 The car sale would later acquire an entirely different meaning, because it was not simply an act of survival. Part of the money was used to secure land for the Church.

The land was paid for by Zaccheus through an agent, and a church building was eventually erected. But there was a problem: The landlord had a deep objection to selling property to members of Akinadewo’s white-garment denomination.

 The church could not worship there. For six months, the congregation held services in Akinadewo’s home. The dispute over the property eventually became a police matter when the money was not refunded.

 The irony was painful. He had sold his car to pay for a church property, yet he could not worship on the very land for which the money had been paid. Eventually, he told the members that if they wished, they could find another denomination.

 Meanwhile, the business was struggling.  It was a period in which the lines between ministry, family and entrepreneurship almost disappeared. Every problem seemed to arrive at once.

 His wife, however, remained. She had already sacrificed alongside him for five years while their home was being built, only to find herself carrying the family financially after the business crisis.

 “She supported me financially, emotionally, and in every other way,” he says.

 At one point, she suggested that he update his CV as a Chartered Accountant and look for employment. 

It was no doubt, a practical advice from a woman confronting the same storm.

 But Akinadewo’s response to the crisis was not to abandon the instruction that had brought him there. It was to go deeper into it.

 “The one year I spent at home, financially dependent on my wife, became one of the most significant periods of my spiritual growth,” he says.

‘I studied, prayed, fellowshipped and spent personal retreat time at Redemption Camp.

 “I didn’t question God because all these happened on both fronts.”

 For Akinadewo, the distinction is important. He does not describe his journey as one in which he merely decided to take a leap of faith. He describes it as obedience.

 He had left because God instructed him to leave. When the first partnership collapsed, he says, he realised that he had not fully trusted the same instruction.

 “Eventually, I had to leave both situations and start afresh in a place where I knew nobody but God.”

 That period would also change the way he understood trust.

 People whom he expected to answer his calls sometimes ignored him. Others, unexpectedly, offered assistance and have remained connected to Graza Media.

The lesson was not to distrust people. “I still trust people, and in many cases, I trust them deeply,” he says. “However, I have learned that some people may disappoint you regardless of how much trust you place in them.”

There was another lesson: write everything down.

 “Whenever I enter into any agreement with anyone, everything must be properly documented and put in writing for clarity and posterity.”

 The wounds of the failed partnership also brought a more difficult lesson on forgiveness.

 One person took over some of the company’s assets, a development that hurt him deeply because, according to Akinadewo, the process did not follow the proper channel.

Then came another instruction. “God specifically instructed me to pray for that person to succeed,” he says.

 He obeyed. “And that became the beginning of great things for Graza Media Limited.”

 Today, that experience informs the way he runs the company. Graza’s early difficulties taught him to place client satisfaction at the centre of operations and to resist the temptation to sacrifice quality simply to reduce costs.

 “We are willing to invest more when necessary to deliver the desired result rather than cut costs, delay execution, or compromise on quality.”

His leadership has evolved in the same direction.

 Staff salaries, he says, must be paid unconditionally on the 30th of every month. “I understand the importance of financial stability and peace of mind for employees and their families.”

 He also wants employees to think beyond their job descriptions. He delegates responsibility, gives people room to make decisions and intervenes only when necessary.

 The ambition is bigger than building a profitable advertising company.  He wants to build an institution.

 “I want to build a company where everyone has the opportunity to succeed, grow professionally, and develop into a leader,” he says. “My vision is to create an environment where staff can rise through the ranks and, with the right capacity and commitment, eventually become Managing Directors of any of the companies within the Graza Media Limited group.”

 The next phase is already taking shape. Spectacular digital advertising is underway, while Graza Farms and Graza Properties have opened the door to a broader business group.

 Within four years, he wants Graza to have moved beyond advertising.

 But the businessman is also a pastor, husband and father, and his hierarchy is unusually explicit. “God comes first, family second, ministry third, and business last.”

 It is a structure that he says has helped him maintain balance. Delegation allows the business to function without his constant physical presence, even as his responsibilities now take him across different parts of Nigeria.

His mornings begin early. At 6am, he studies about six chapters of the Bible, prays for the Church, his wife, his family and himself, then exercises before heading to the office.

 There is little room for frivolity. There is, however, room for books.

Akinadewo reads between 60 and 70 books a year, an appetite that reflects the same philosophy he brings to business: growth requires deliberate preparation.

 For him, success is also a matter of multiplication. “Success is not measured by money alone, but by how many people are able to advance because of your success.”

 Graza currently supports at least 12 children from disadvantaged backgrounds, sponsoring their education from secondary school through higher institutions.

 It is perhaps here that the businessman and pastor become indistinguishable.

 Strip away the title of Managing Director, the three-piece suit, the immaculate office and the expanding business group, and Akinadewo’s desired legacy is remarkably simple.

 “I want to make heaven, and I want my life to be remembered for positively impacting others.”

 He wants to be remembered as someone who helped draw people “from the kingdom of darkness into the light” and pointed them towards Christ.

 For a man whose entrepreneurial story began with an instruction to leave security, whose first partnership collapsed within six months, whose family survived a season of financial hardship and whose car was sold to fund both survival and ministry, the ambition is not merely to become bigger. It is to become enduring.

 “I envision a company that can stand the test of time and operate successfully without depending on the constant presence of its founder,” he says. “My goal is to build an institution that can outlive its founder and continue into the third and fourth generations.”

 Outside the immaculate office, the machinery of business continues: contracts, clients, employees, expansion and the relentless demands of enterprise.

 Inside, Akinadewo’s story is less about the luxury of arrival than the discipline of obedience.

 He was told to leave. He left. What followed was not security. It was uncertainty, disappointment, sacrifice and, eventually, growth.

 And if the man in the three-piece suit now appears entirely at home in the magnificent white room around him, perhaps it is because he remembers what it cost to get there.

 “God is faithful,” he says.

 For Akinadewo, that is not a slogan at the end of a success story.

 It is the thread running through the whole thing.