Meridians, an indigenous networking group has taken the industry by storm announcing its strong presence with a bang, with a large membership network in such a short period, the company is demonstrating its resolve to surpass every expectations of their members by rewarding them handsomely for their hard work in bringing people to the network
In this interview, the chief executive officer of Melisfon Inc, Dr. Gift Madu speaks on the vision of the Meridians, why the company is gradually taken over the networking business in the country, its unique concepts that distinguishes them from other networking companies operating in the country.
Franklin Ihejirika who was at the company’s first bronze and Gold category awards in Lagos reports

Excerpts

What is the reason for this award today?
The reasons for this award is for excellence, because of the efforts the members of Meridian has put in promoting Meridians and in our compensation plan, we have a structure where if you promote meridians to a certain level, you will be rewarded with some incentives, some awards and some of these awards are what you just saw, that happened today.

What is the Meridians all about?

Medians is a limited liability company that offers services that touches the heart of the world, now if you visit our website, www.medians.org, you will see the menu on the contacts that gives you information about the services we render. We have four beautiful service that touches the heart of the world, number one is the trade and skill acquisition. The trade and skill acquisition is actually designed to train people in different walks of life, helping people to acquire skills, short-term skills, like production of soap, detergent, Izal, insecticides, custards, manufacturing of biscuits, perfumes, paint making, bead making. We actually believed that with such skills, people can survive in this hash economy, especially at a time were everybody needs to acquire new skill in order to survive. Women who got nothing doing at home can actually acquire our skill and it will actually make them to survive in this time, we also have on the platform, the quarterly free medical for those who are members of Meridians, our attention mostly is on the optometry, all the medical service we give is on something that has to do with your health, but is not every kind of health problem that we pay attention to, we give attention to minor cases, there are cases you refer, all the people working with us are full-fledged medical doctors with their MBBS. Here we are not talking about those that sell products, herbal stuffs, we are not talking about people who come into such programmes and in the two to three years the become doctors, no we are talking about those who have their MBBS, those who pass through the college of medicine, they are the doctors working for us, when you visit the head office of Meridians, you will see for yourselves what is there.

Meridians has been in existence for only a short period and within that time, you have managed to spread your tentacles throughout the federation, how did you achieve that?

Okay, many people never know the power in networking, me am an experienced networker, the power of networking is great. If I tell you something, by the time you know it, that information I pass to you now will go round the country at a speed you can’t imagine, now if I talk to two people and the two people talk to two people, now you have four and the four talk to another four and now you have eight, the number keeps multiplying, the figures you will be talking is astronomical. I read many books that has to do with the concept in network marketing, many big organisation today are adopting that concept, is coming into business, banks are also going networking, financial institution are going into networking, although in this part of the world, we came to know this networking from products, most of you are familiar with these companies, but the principle in it is what we are talking about. You know networking is not a company, networking is an industry, there are companies in the industry, so Meridians is a company in the industry, when we brought out our services, we also felt that one way people will come to know about what we do is to pass through that channel called networking, I tell you, you tell your brother. Now the picture is that you become a member of the Meridians with a token of N4000, that is all that is expected of you, now when you come in with that N4000, what benefit have you got, did you just bring the N4,000 and dump for Meridians. No, you brought N4000 and Meridians say you are entitled to their services, like the medical service, the trade and skill acquisition and everything, we have the leadership and human management. Already last week seven professors have submitted their write up through our director of operations Mr Chuks who also has a background in Finance, he graduated from UNIMED, has his Masters in UNILAG and stuffs like that. Now when he went, he has gathered the templates for us, for the leadership and management training, that one is special also. We believe that if you know how to make money, you should also know how to handle money, there are many people who have made money and the money flies away, so if you know how to make money, you should also know how to manage money, so leadership and management is a serious matter.

What is responsible for the rapid growth of Meridians within a short period?

The rapid growth of Meridian within a short period is networking, although the leadership also played a role, not from the members, but the administration, from the people responsible for the programmes. Networking used to be the main thing before in Nigeria before it collapsed, and People still have misgivings on the issue of networking,

So what did you do to rekindle the interest of Nigerians in networking?

The world is getting better and people are getting more connected to knowledge, the way it was yesterday, the speed of those collapse you said is not the same way is happening now. Basically what happens in the industry is that when a company comes up in the industry, people start promoting the programmes. After sometime, new programmes can come and challenge the existing one and there will be a massive rush to the new one. If you talk about the major network companies that have been in Nigeria, none of them has fizzled out, Meridians is registered with the Federal Republic of Nigeria as a Limited Liability Company and you are making some profit and some people who are also with you there are benefiting, there is no reason for drying up, most of the company that came and fizzled out did not stand on a sincere ground and some of them, their business plan does not have the ability to sustain the movement for a long time. Ours will not suffer such because integrity, sincerity is there . Many people came to Meridians because they heard the name Dr Madu, is not easy for somebody to accept something you bring, 90 percent of people who joined, joined because the heard the name Dr Madu. I have about 17 years experience, I started networking in 1998 with Forever Living Products, from Forever, I went on to Tianshi, and GNLD and so on, and later, I was frustrated and I hated networking. Every networker gets frustrated at a point, because you are not achieving your target of what you wanted to achieve, you know is not easy to talk to somebody and convince the person. Let’s say you talk to one person, he tells you get away, you talk to another, he calls you a hungry man and ask you what are doing there, you to talk to another, he calls you 419. I have talked to a woman who told me this an end time business, mark of the beast 666, when you talk to 100 people on your list and they turn you down don’t you think you will go home and drop your bag and start asking yourself if this is what you should be doing. Rejection can come, that is what Raniel Yanel Yanels called rejection rocketing, that you can be rejected several times, that you talk to somebody about programmes like this and he tells you that if this is the last programme on earth, i will buy broom and start sweeping the street, how will you feel, so some of the things that discourage people also includes demotion.

You started about six months ago and you are giving out all these things, so where is the money coming from and the guys who are in the network, how do they make their money?

When somebody get registered as a member, there is no promise of money, you are not promised you will make money, is not a guarantee for any reward or award. You only got the reward and award because you did the networking, the only promised attached to your registration as a member of Meridians is the services and Meridians now say, if you would like to talk with somebody and the person becomes a member, then some percentage of the money goes to you, like marketing incentives done by companies. If you get registered as a member of Meridians, you are entitled to their services, so if you talk to somebody to come and join Meridians, Meridians recognises your efforts for talking with somebody, some people have the ability to talk to 100 people, they can expand their tentacles and periscope. Meridians have actually designed a structure that will reward your efforts in advertising Meridians, instead of Meridian taking that money to do advertisement and spend that money on billboards and things like that, we also see that we can use it on humans, you can be our billboard, the advertising agents, so when that is done, theses are the rewards that come from you advertising Meridians. Take note, your registration does not guarantee your earning, even the form you fill is written there that your registration does not guarantee your earning or reward of any kind, you only got money because you did the networking.

Now what will be the future of Meridians since the render only these four services?

We also have new plans of bringing in new life that will keep the programme coasting. When a business man comes to the market with his products, he does not bring out all he has, he brings some of the products and when they are about to saturate the markets, he brings new things to create new excitements. We know the point at which Meridians can be saturated and we bring in new ideas, new innovations, Peter Draka, American behaviorist said you either innovate or die.

List out the four products you offer to your members?

The four products we sell are the trade and skill acquisition, you can be following our activities and see how we are carrying out these services all over the country. We just finished the conference of our national leaders yesterday, each of them have selected two leaders, they will go back to their states and work with a medical doctor and those who are trained skilled people. We have actually organised it in a very beautiful way, you will see these things happening again and again all over the country on the platform of Meridians. Follow us from next week, you will see the skill acquisition we will be rolling out and trainings, we also give people certificates.
On the skill acquisition, the essence of this skill acquisition is to create emerging entrepreneurs, if you know how to make bar soap, liquid soap, disinfectant, custard and paint, you can on your own right there on the comfort of your home and package a product and goes to a particular local area which forms your Niche and start dropping that soap on plastic bottles or whatever, then you start making some money. With that, you cannot go to any company knocking on their gates that you are looking for job, with the skill acquisition, you can on your own make income, create jobs, be resilient, be alive.
The second one, we are not saying that we are St Nicholas Hospital or Eko Hospital, but there are some health challenges we can source the consultants officially, the people who are in the field, because we have a little large pool of funds, so we use it to fund that and as an institution, we can bargain and source them at lower cost and we now say since our people has to work hard in Meridian, health has to be factored in because if you are not healthy, you cannot work well.
The third one is the leadership and management
If you come to Meridians, every person you meet there is a consultant practising in a renowned field of what you claim. So we want to give them business sense on how to run business.
The fourth one is on social responsibility: in you operations, you can say in the environment I operate which way can I help so that people will know that you are friendly to the host community, that service we think out as a people who can impact on the host community forms our social responsibility and that we do on our own as we are and compare notes. we did all these things within two months because the power of networking is involved.
How does Meridian empower people in this hash economic situation?
If you can be at home to learn how to do liquid soap, mosquito repellent, custard and all the people teaching them are drawn from the industry, they all industry practitioners, but we have to pay them, so we as a company has larger advantage to use our pool of funds and network to draw them, if you go as an individual, can you use N4000 to get somebody that can teach you paints, custard, mosquito repellent. Are you going to get somebody that will look into your sight and tell you whether you have sight problem from the N4000, no, and we have four consultants from the industry leaders, the give you the best of equipment to check you sight and cut lenses that will correct the sight problem at N4000. What about leadership and management training and all that. If you give somebody fish to eat, you have only fed him for one day, tomorrow he will still be hungry, the principle we apply here is teach me how to catch fish and you have fed me for the rest of my life. So what we do here is to teach people how to catch fish and then introduce people who will benefit from our services, by those tokens and they rejoice. Look at their faces, they are happy, so how best can you reward somebody than to teach him how to catch fish and if you teach him how to catch fish, you have fed me for the rest of my life.

Where is your head office or your operational base?

Our head office is at no 4/ 6 Owoduni street, off Omotayo Ojo by Oshope plaza, Allen avenue Ikeja, directly opposite Omotayo hospital, Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria