Throughout my career, much of my work has involved building businesses from the ground up, entering new markets and creating new opportunities. I have done this as part of founding management teams, within established organizations and through entrepreneurial ventures of my own.
When I joined Anap Jets in October 2014 as Vice President of Sales and Marketing, the company had not yet taken delivery of its first aircraft. The management team was still being assembled, and we were putting the commercial and operational foundations of the business in place. We were building a new business in an industry where credibility, safety and established relationships mattered enormously. We were also introducing fractional ownership, a proposition that required prospective customers to think differently about private aviation.
The timing was difficult. Oil prices were falling sharply, Nigeria’s economic outlook was becoming increasingly uncertain, and we were entering a market where customers were accustomed to dealing with established operators. There were understandable questions about the timing of our entry into business aviation, particularly with a model that differed from the traditional private jet ownership and charter arrangements familiar to the market.
Anap Jets had been founded by Mr. Atedo Peterside, who had spent decades building a reputation in Nigerian finance. He founded Investment Banking & Trust Company, which ultimately became part of Stanbic IBTC, and had become closely associated with institutional credibility, financial discipline and business excellence.
When he moved into business aviation, some of that credibility travelled with him. But only some of it.
His reputation gave Anap Jets an introduction to the market. What happened after that depended on whether we could build a business that justified the confidence people initially placed in him.
I did not have the DAM Framework when I joined Anap Jets. I developed it later, while building BMGA Enterprise and reflecting on lessons from different stages of my career. My experience at Anap Jets was particularly influential, exposing me to the practical challenges of establishing a new business, earning customer confidence and building a sustainable commercial proposition.
The DAM Framework examines how organizations create Desire by giving people a reason to care, build Affinity by giving them a reason to stay, and achieve sustainable Monetization by capturing value from the relationships they have earned.
Desire: translating credibility into relevance
Anap Jets did not enter the market simply as another private jet company. From the outset, the proposition was framed around business utility, efficiency and financial prudence. The early “Fly Smart” campaign positioned fractional ownership as a smarter way to access private aviation rather than as an indulgence or status symbol.
As the executive responsible for sales and marketing, I was helping establish the commercial foundations of a new business. That meant translating the proposition into terms prospective customers could understand, building relationships with prospective clients and key stakeholders, and ensuring that our positioning was reflected consistently across customer engagement.
The challenge was that the market had to be persuaded to think differently about both the product and the aircraft itself.
At the time, many Nigerian private aviation customers were accustomed to larger aircraft and often associated size with status and safety. The Embraer Phenom 300 challenged that instinct. It was smaller than many of the aircraft customers were familiar with, but the story we told was about efficiency, practicality and fit for purpose. That required more than conventional selling. Much of my role involved helping prospective customers understand why a smaller aircraft could, in fact, be the more intelligent choice for the journeys they were making, particularly for regional business travel. Anap Jets became the first customer to take delivery of the Phenom 300 in West Africa, an important milestone for the company and its market-entry strategy.
One of the things we did deliberately in the early days was use the relationships and reputation that already existed around the founder to introduce the company into the market. We couriered physical letters to business leaders introducing Anap Jets and the Phenom 300 and followed up by email. More importantly, when we began meeting prospective clients, Mr. Peterside attended many of those meetings with me personally.
His presence mattered.
He did not behave as though his reputation in finance entitled the company to automatic acceptance in aviation. Despite having already built a highly respected institution, he approached Anap Jets with the hunger and discipline of a first-time entrepreneur starting from scratch. He sat in waiting rooms with me for meetings. We explained the proposition. We answered questions. We made the case for why Anap Jets should matter. While we wanted those conversations to lead to sales, we knew that many prospective customers would need time to understand the proposition before making a commitment. Those conversations also gave us valuable market intelligence, helping us understand what appealed to prospective customers, where they had reservations and what we needed to explain more clearly.
Talent was another important consideration, and Mr. Peterside took a deliberate approach to identifying the people he believed the business needed.
When Mr. Peterside appointed me Vice President of Sales and Marketing, I had no prior experience in business aviation. My background spanned luxury, FMCG, country branding and law. I once asked him why he had chosen me over candidates with more extensive aviation experience. He explained that he believed the skills I had developed were transferable, but more importantly, he felt I understood the customers Anap Jets was trying to reach. I was familiar with their expectations, the standards of service they were accustomed to and the importance of building relationships with them. Aviation knowledge, he believed, could be acquired. The lesson was not that industry expertise was unimportant. Mr. Peterside understood that building a new business required the right capabilities, not simply people with conventional industry credentials.
My responsibility was to translate my understanding of the customers and their expectations into commercial relationships for a business that had yet to establish itself in the market. Introducing fractional ownership required more than identifying prospective customers. It meant engaging business leaders, understanding their priorities and concerns, and earning the confidence necessary for them to consider a new approach to private aviation.
As our earliest customers came on board, their endorsement provided another source of credibility. With their permission, we could reference their decision to become Anap Jets clients, giving prospective customers additional confidence in a relatively new business.
Mr. Peterside’s reputation opened doors. The credibility of early customers reinforced the proposition. Anap Jets still had to give people a reason to care about what was behind those doors.
Affinity: turning credibility into organizational trust
The company could borrow credibility from its founder at entry, but it could not borrow operational trust. That had to be earned through consistent delivery of our promise.
Reliability, safety and service were central to earning that trust. We worked closely with Embraer and placed considerable emphasis on the quality of our technical partners, pilot training and maintenance standards. We also established clear operating processes to ensure that consistent service delivery did not depend solely on individual effort.
Customers were not simply purchasing access to an aircraft. They were trusting the company with their time, their safety and often highly sensitive schedules.
Given my responsibility for customer experience, I worked closely with the team to identify and address points of friction, both before and during flights. We paid particular attention to service delivery, including flight attendant training, catering and the overall onboard experience. These details mattered because they determined whether the service lived up to the promises we had made.
Anap Jets was positioned around efficiency rather than luxury, but the service still had to meet the expectations of private aviation customers.
Fractional ownership was the initial entry point. Later, once the company was able to operate commercially, additional products, including charter services and jet-card-style access, gave customers other ways to engage with the business. That evolution also reflected something we were learning commercially: not every customer wanted or was ready for the same level of commitment.
As we understood our customers’ requirements better, the business was able to broaden its offering. The introduction of the Legacy 600, alongside the Phenom 300, allowed Anap Jets to accommodate different travel needs, including larger groups and longer journeys.
Monetization: capturing value as relevance and trust strengthen
At Anap Jets, we were pursuing revenue from the outset. We could not afford to wait until the market fully understood fractional ownership or until every prospective customer was ready to commit. The challenge was to build the business commercially while continuing to establish its relevance and earn customer confidence.
That experience reinforced an important distinction I would later incorporate into DAM: generating revenue and building a sustainable business are related, but they are not the same thing.
That has implications for how progress is measured. Revenue and sales matter while Desire and Affinity are being established, but they should not be the only measures of success. If you judge an early market-building period primarily through Monetization metrics, genuine progress in relevance, trust and preference can easily look like underperformance.
Mr. Peterside often reminded us that we were running a marathon, not a sprint. That perspective mattered because the pressure to generate revenue was real. We had commercial targets to meet, but we were also introducing a proposition that required customers to change established habits and make significant financial commitments.
A prospective customer could understand the proposition and see its value yet still need time before making a decision. Part of my responsibility was knowing when to pursue a sale and when to continue building the relationship. That experience changed how I think about KPIs. Commercial targets must reflect the realities of the market and the time required to convert interest into business.
Financial discipline was equally important as we considered the company’s growth, including decisions about expanding the fleet. The company would not overextend itself by purchasing aircraft without corresponding customer demand.
The same discipline applied to our commercial arrangements. Agreements had to be signed, and payment was required before services were delivered. We were pursuing growth, but not at the expense of the financial discipline needed to sustain the business.
During the period I was there, Anap Jets could sometimes be perceived as more expensive than alternatives. But we knew that price was only one part of the decision. Customers were paying for reliability, safety, service consistency, convenience and the reduction of uncertainty.
Anap Jets has since grown into a well-established player in Africa’s business aviation industry, with a larger fleet than when I left. That growth was far from guaranteed when we started.
Looking back, Anap Jets reinforced an important lesson for me: reputation can give a new business an advantage, but what ultimately matters is what the organization does with that advantage.
I remain grateful to Mr. Peterside for the opportunity to work alongside him as part of Anap Jets’ founding management team. That experience reinforced my understanding of what it takes to build a business from the ground up, particularly the discipline required to balance immediate commercial demands with longer-term ambitions.
As I developed the DAM Framework while building BMGA Enterprise, I drew on lessons from my time at Anap Jets and other stages of my career. Those experiences reinforced my understanding that building an enduring business requires more than securing customers and generating revenue. It requires creating reasons for customers to choose you, earning their trust through consistent delivery and developing the commercial discipline to sustain those relationships.
That is ultimately what the DAM Framework seeks to explain: organizations do not build enduring value simply by entering markets or acquiring customers, but by earning the relationships that make sustainable growth possible.
AUTHOR
Gbemisola Abudu is the Founder and Managing Principal of BMGA Advisory, where she advises corporations, investors, founders and governments on market entry, expansion strategy, localization and long-term value creation across Africa and global markets. Her work sits at the intersection of strategy, culture, capital and institutional development, with a focus on how organizations build relevance, strengthen relationships with the markets and communities they serve, and translate opportunity into enduring value.