Nancy Oblete is a marriage and relationship coach, a master practitioner of Neuro-Linguistics Programming, a public speaker and a teacher. She believes that the approach to marriage coaching should be holistic, taking into account financial growth, behavioural, trauma and addiction challenges, in addition to their relationship dynamics, to assist couples in having and maintaining a stable and happy home. Her teaching starts from the core, addressing the human factor and psychology.
Nancy Oblete, Marriage Coach
Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life – so we can get to know you better.
My name is Nancy Oblete. I am passionate about seeing marriages succeed. I believe in the marriage institute, and my drive is to help as many married couples build and maintain a fulfilling relationship. I am a wife to my best friend Francis Oblete, and we have two (2) girls.
I am a Sierra Leonean but have lived all my life in Nigeria. I usually say that although I lived in Nigeria, I only began integrating into the Nigerian system and culture in my University days. Before then, we lived a very sheltered life; we only ate Sierra Leonean meals. We had many Sierra Leonean families around us, whom I consider my relatives. I knew very little about the Nigerian culture until I got married.
I love to learn – it is one of my highest values. I have spent most of my adult life learning about humans, emotions, relationships, psychology and the mind. A lot of what I have learned has been through self-study.
Other than reading, I love to teach (I find myself teaching almost everything I know to my kids and others). I also love swimming and hiking.
What inspired you to create this business – Panacea Ville International, and what is your ultimate goal or mission?
As a teen, my parents hit a bump in their marriage. Our home was unpleasant. It was a cold war, and during that time, I spent a lot of time in church or my pastor's house as an escape. I remember making a promise to myself that I would do whatever it took to have a home my children would enjoy being in. Of course, I had no idea how to make it happen – all I had was a resolve.
My resolve and Christian faith helped me navigate dating. When we were about to get married, my church had a premarital counselling program run by a couple, Innocent and Talatu Usar. The husband, Mr Usar, was then pioneering Neuro-Linguistics Programming (NLP) training in Nigeria. We had to pay a token to undergo this premarital counselling class. A lot of members in the church were unhappy about paying and also that the couple were not using strictly 'spiritual' tools. But going through those very tedious eight weeks was the best decision we could have taken.
We learned so much, but the best gift from the process was that it left us with an open mind and a desire to keep learning and growing together.
We soon discovered that our counselling was unique; many of the issues other newlyweds were battling with, we didn't experience. We found ourselves often asking didn't you talk about this in your premarital counseling? To which the answer was always no.
A year later, our mentors asked that we understudy them and become co-facilitators. We accepted because we saw it as an opportunity to keep learning.
We soon saw another challenge; we wanted to belong to a group of married couples to aid our learning but couldn't find a couples group to join. Also, we had done Neuro-Linguistics programming. We had understood behaviour and how the unconscious mind works and impacts our results in every area of life.
In 2016, we decided that since we didn't have a group to join and also because many of the conversations around marriage lack the understanding of how our unconscious mind, emotions, environment and upbringing impact our relationships, we decided to start Panacea Ville. Our vision is to create a one-stop home that helps couples build and maintain a happy and fulfilling marriage.
Can you provide an overview of the products or services offered by your business?
Our products and services target mainly three classes of couples:
Couples within their first decade who find it challenging to agree and work as a team.
Couples who are unhappy in their relationship and do not know how to turn things around.
Couples intending to get married.
Our services include an online premarital program, one-on-one intervention coaching and group coaching. We also have a group couples program to help couples handle conflicts better.
What measures do you take to address customer feedback and improve your offerings?
Our business is client-focused; we design programs and effect changes to give the couple the best results. We take our clients' feedback very seriously.
What strategies are you employing to grow your business, and what milestones do you hope to achieve in the near future?
We use social media as one of our primary networking tools. We have a podcast on Spotify and Google podcasts called Marriage Panacea. Also, in partnership with BridgeAfrique Home Of Bliss Incorporated, we have a YouTube series, 'Rings That Bind', where we interview couples enjoying marital harmony to share their story to inspire newlyweds and couples struggling. We have a Facebook community.
In the next couple of years, within Nigeria and Africa, I see Panacea Ville becoming a household name for marriage education, relationship healing and conflict management. Because of our track record, I also see an increased demand for our coaches, specifically to help couples at crossroads find their way back to a loving and happy relationship.
How does your business engage with the community or your target audience?
We engage across multiple channels, which include private sessions, group Coaching, Workshops and Seminars, Faith-based programs, Podcasts and live broadcasts through our social media handles.
What challenges have you faced in running your website/business, and how have you overcome them?
The major challenge is Visibility and Presence, making ourselves easily ‘findable' by those seeking our products and services. To this intent, we built our website based on-demand services, integrating the LMS model. Going further, we embarked on some small-level promotions and publicity. We believe some of these little efforts translated to being seen by your magazine.
Tell us about your most significant career achievement so far.
For me, it is seeing a couple that before our encounter couldn't agree or who had too many fights say thank you as they now use their disagreement for deeper intimacy and find love again in each other's arms – nothing beats that.
If you could change one thing about your industry, what would it be and why?
I wish in Africa, we had more research and data to help factor in our unique experience and culture into how we look at relationships. All the research findings and data we use are from the West. They have been great resources because humans are similar in many respects. If we had studies that considered factors peculiar to us, I believe it would make our understanding of couples' relationships in Africa more robust.
Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.
When I graduated from the university, my focus was to build houses. We are a great team – my husband (also a construction professional).
In 2014, we invested in a business that didn't go well and lost all our savings. We were down and out, and there were no jobs in sight. Our mentor, Mr Usar, invited my husband and me to join the level-one NLP training for free. He told us it would be beneficial and help us bounce back. Although I had attended a few of his events, we didn't understand what NLP was and how it would help, but we took the course.
Public speaking was still a very new concept in our clime. The only people I knew who spoke publicly were Pastors, but here I found myself in a class rediscovering myself, connecting the dots in my life and getting equipped with tools that will help me and others too. Right in that class, I committed to go all the way and do the remaining two (2) levels.
It turned out that the training didn't just help us deal with the challenge we were facing then, but I began to see ways to express dreams I had pushed aside or never acknowledged. The most significant gift from my NLP training was that it left me hungry to know and be more. One of our mantras during the course was, ‘I am a massive learning machine.’ I became a passionate learner with an unwavering focus – I wouldn't be here otherwise.
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