He recalled when he started the Natural Wellness Organisation in 1996 how he hesitated because he started on the framework of helping humanity. Then it was alien to begin the race of entrepreneurship on the platform of charity. Many people tried to discourage him because start-ups which were aimed at serving humanity hardly survived. But, he fired on, since his desire was to touch lives and affect his generation positively.
He was satisfied that his Start-up would touch lives positively and affect his generation. ‘I knew the movement would make the world a better place for all of us’ he opined. So he chose to live his dreams notwithstanding the deluge of discouragements.
The start-up was aimed at obesity, which was fast becoming a global pandemic, even in the advanced regions of the world.
The pandemic of the overweight and the obese had spread to Africa, and Ayodele was determined to stem the tide at all cost.
His strategy was to get people into their ideal weight in order to get rid of debilitating ailments attached to obesity. In his view “the obese are susceptible to heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, high blood pressure and damages of various organs” to cure a lot of ailments, the obese need to be in an ideal weight.
This was the genesis of Ayodele Natural Slimmers Club International which took off at a cubicle at 54, Allen Avenue in Lagos, Nigeria. It took off with barely $25, then, which was to rent the cubicle from Jackmatins, a company that was into a virtual office.
Isac had to produce a lot of herbs which he dried and packaged in paper packed for a long time.
He combined the herbs with his consulting and marketing skills. But his greatest asset was the efficacy of his herbs which brought loads of testimonial from his clients which were coming from various states in Nigeria and holiday makers from abroad.
In a bid to acquire more skills, Isaac had to travel to Galway in Island, College of Naturopathic Medicine, where he studied Naturopathic Medicine to learn the art and science of natural medicine.
On coming back from Ireland, his horizon had broadened, he expanded the Natural Slimmers Club to Natural Slimmers & Naturopathic Clinic. ‘We also expanded to 45 Allen Avenue, Afolabi Aina Street, off Allen Avenue and two other locations in Lekki, Lagos, Abuja, Ibadan, Calabar and Onitsha. We were to spread to every state in Nigeria and have network of branches abroad of which we already had a virtual office in the UK’.
The cost of rent and maintenance of these branches was monumental. This led us to Wellness my Mail. We had to leverage on the newly introduced GSM facility and the effective courier service in Nigeria then to run a Tele clinic which gave us global outreach beyond bounds.
We also had to move to Ikorodu where we treated the less privileged free of charge in addition to our global tele clinic that was expanding.
All these did not mean that everything was rosy. We had some ups and down. Along the line we veered to other start-ups that failed woefully due to lean resources and paucity of funds.
The other directors were not prepared to risk their funds to support the organisation, in fact they wanted to earn from the company from day-1 without investing a dime.
The failed start-ups included but were not limited to a health resort decentered work branches, solar energy project, which did not work, principally because of lack of engineering and other relevant skills. There were more than 10 projects at the last count which did not work.
One start up that remained consistent was the tele-wellness project which had become a global discourse.
To pave way for the zenith moves on the tele-wellness start-up, I had to go embark on further studies in Atlantic International University, AIU at Honolulu, the capital city of Hawaii and gateway to the United States where I obtained the Doctor of Science degree in Public Health.
Since then, life got better in the tele-wellness project which has become the toast of the Nigeria and a host of African countries, United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Spain among others.
Since then, ‘we expanded to general health using natural integrative medical approach, being the president of Natural Integrative Medicine Practitioners in Nigeria.
Thousands of people have through this reposed unimaginable confidence in the efficacy of natural medicine as a saving grace as they got well in Ayodele Herbals from diabetes, obesity heart ailments, fibroids, low libido. Infertility and infectious diseases among others.
We set up a wellness movement to reveal the innate power in the human brain and cells that can ward off diseases of any type and make humans more useful to themselves and people around them.
‘The movement was not meant to be wellness movement alone, but a movement that wrapped up all that can make people see the best in them and discover that all humans are vulnerable, they all have flaws, all of us have our pains and that even the rich also cry.
We all feel inadequate for wellness, wealth, good relationship and love. We always feel that our ideas would fail and that we will individually become a subject of ridicule in the world.
We feel we are not wanted, therefore we will not stand up to speak, we will not engage in any business start-up, and we won’t start that project that would have catapulted us to the top.
So we sit down. We hesitate to take a step. And therefore we rut away with our ideas and our brilliant concepts go down the drain. We later see someone else with similar idea, but not as brilliant as ours, doing very well with the idea’.
Have you ever pondered to think deeply about how the ancient people got rid of most of the ailments and diseases we now battle unsuccessfully to cure?
The simple truth is that they understood the scientific law of cause and effect. They knew that if there was no cause there would be no effect. They succeeded at tracing the root cause of the disease to their environment. They traced it to their foods and drinks and the lifestyles they lived.
This was adopted by the fathers of modern medicine that your food is your medicine and your medicine is your food. Sooner or later we will become what we eat and drink and the type of lifestyles we live will affect our health positively or negatively. It is a matter of time.
I salute the expertise of medical doctors. They have saved the people with the use of drugs, surgery and other allopathic medical ingenuity. But the root cause of your disease is purely dietary and lifestyle and until this is seriously inculcated into treatment of the unwell, holistic wellness will continue to be a mirage.
This is the new normal of Herbal Medicine we are advocating.