Latest / Earn Your Leisure / EYL #96 African Express feat. John Obidi
Transcript
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- 1:00Speaker 2: All right, guys, Welcome back to ey l Mama Africa. Yeah,
- 1:05Speaker 2: this is a Mayan episode. This is the first episode
- 1:09Speaker 2: where we are crossing the water. We did a couple
- 1:13Speaker 2: from Canada. Shout out to all of our guests in Canada.
- 1:15Speaker 2: That was our first international episodes but this would be
- 1:18Speaker 2: the first episode where we're actually going to a completely
- 1:21Speaker 2: different content Atlanta.
- 1:23Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 1:23Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So Africa, Shout out to Africa, Shout out
- 1:26Speaker 2: to all of the countries in Africa. Man, Yeah, we
- 1:29Speaker 2: got a lot of love and a lot of support
- 1:31Speaker 2: in Africa. We've charted on some of the top charts
- 1:34Speaker 2: in a variety of different countries everywhere from Kenya to
- 1:37Speaker 2: Zimbabwe to South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, all over Africa we've
- 1:42Speaker 2: been on the top charts at some point in time. So,
- 1:46Speaker 2: you know, a lot of people, we have a lot
- 1:47Speaker 2: of listeners in UK and all over and they're like,
- 1:50Speaker 2: you know, we love your content, but some of the
- 1:52Speaker 2: stuff that you're saying, it's only a lot of stuff.
- 1:54Speaker 2: You're saying it's only based upon American point of view.
- 1:57Speaker 2: And that would make sense because we're from America. But
- 2:00Speaker 2: being at the world is our oyster and we have
- 2:05Speaker 2: we have supporters and and and listeners all over the world.
- 2:08Speaker 2: We can't just focus only on where we live. So
- 2:11Speaker 2: one of the goals for this year was to broaden
- 2:14Speaker 2: the horizon and to get entrepreneurs and talk about content
- 2:18Speaker 2: from all over the world. And you know, covid actually
- 2:22Speaker 2: was a blessing in that regard because it helped us
- 2:24Speaker 2: actually get on our virtual wave and that obviously helped.
- 2:27Speaker 4: With getting some content.
- 2:29Speaker 2: So I put it on Instagram a few weeks ago, like,
- 2:31Speaker 2: you know, we want to do some entrepreneurs in Africa,
- 2:33Speaker 2: who should we reach out to? And we got a
- 2:36Speaker 2: hit up. A lot of people hit us up like
- 2:38Speaker 2: you should reach out to this person, that person, this person.
- 2:40Speaker 2: And one of the one of the most requested people
- 2:43Speaker 2: was John Obad Did I say that correct? And so
- 2:51Speaker 2: I looked on his page and yeah, he had a
- 2:53Speaker 2: nice following. I loved his content. He it looked real,
- 2:58Speaker 2: like real good. His page looked real good. I did
- 2:59Speaker 2: the research. I reached out to him and I'm like,
- 3:01Speaker 2: you know, would you be interested in having a conversation.
- 3:03Speaker 2: He hit me right back like yeah. And then when
- 3:05Speaker 2: I spoke, it was even better because he actually was
- 3:07Speaker 2: already a listener of the podcast.
- 3:09Speaker 4: I always liked that.
- 3:11Speaker 2: Yeah, it's always good to have guests that already are
- 3:13Speaker 2: familiar with the platform, so we don't have to explain it.
- 3:15Speaker 2: They already kind of know. So I'm like, this is dope.
- 3:17Speaker 2: So John is a superstar entrepreneur out of Nigeria. He
- 3:23Speaker 2: is an author, he is an international speaker, He's a
- 3:25Speaker 2: social media influencer. He's the founder of Headstar Africa. He
- 3:31Speaker 2: just hosted the largest virtual summit in Africa. Fifteen thousand
- 3:36Speaker 2: people were on that. He does everything. He's online business consultant,
- 3:42Speaker 2: teaches kids how to achieve success.
- 3:45Speaker 5: He's just programmer, web development, a little.
- 3:47Speaker 4: Bit of everything. He's everything.
- 3:48Speaker 5: We got We got everything, John, we got everything that
- 3:50Speaker 5: you've done.
- 3:51Speaker 6: Man.
- 3:51Speaker 4: So this is going to be a dope conversation.
- 3:53Speaker 2: We're going to talk about a lot of virtual stuff,
- 3:55Speaker 2: tech stuff, texts, real big in Nigeria, and we're going
- 3:58Speaker 2: to talk about of course the con in of Africa, Najeri.
- 4:01Speaker 2: You're gonna talk about economics, all kinds of stuff. So
- 4:04Speaker 2: I'm very excited to have this conversation. I'm sure Troy is.
- 4:07Speaker 4: Is going on. So John, first and foremost, thank you,
- 4:10Speaker 4: thank you for joining.
- 4:10Speaker 6: Us, thank you for having me.
- 4:13Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, so so yeah, John, let's get into
- 4:18Speaker 2: it first and foremost, Like I said, we are extremely
- 4:20Speaker 2: excited about this this episode. So founder of Headstar Africa, right,
- 4:28Speaker 2: and so I did some research. So Headstar is actually
- 4:32Speaker 2: it's a big thing. So what is Headstar Africa.
- 4:37Speaker 3: Headstart Africa is a mantoring platform. It's different things to
- 4:42Speaker 3: different people, but it started off as a mentoring platform
- 4:46Speaker 3: where I brought a couple of my colleagues to teach
- 4:49Speaker 3: Africans about business and personal development. So I started that
- 4:53Speaker 3: in twenty sixteen. It is a Facebook group right now.
- 4:57Speaker 3: It's about one hundred and forty thousand members, mostly Nigerians
- 5:01Speaker 3: and then a lot of Africans and then some sprinklings
- 5:04Speaker 3: from all around the world. So there we host our
- 5:07Speaker 3: webinars and we teach on everything on personal development, lifestyle
- 5:11Speaker 3: and business.
- 5:12Speaker 6: So that's what it is.
- 5:13Speaker 3: But we also have other expressions like our podcasts, our videos,
- 5:17Speaker 3: our interviews. We have a program called Night School that
- 5:22Speaker 3: holds every every Friday, so it's basically about business, business
- 5:27Speaker 3: and personal development. And we have other people on the
- 5:30Speaker 3: Facebook group there also contributing about what it's like to
- 5:33Speaker 3: achieve success in Africa.
- 5:35Speaker 2: All right, So that's interesting because yeah, I did some
- 5:39Speaker 2: research and like I said, I was watching a couple
- 5:41Speaker 2: of YouTube videos. So one of the things that you
- 5:44Speaker 2: spoke about in Africa specifically is the lack of infrastructure
- 5:49Speaker 2: and when it comes to the Internet and you made
- 5:52Speaker 2: an interest in comparison. It's like you said, for people
- 5:54Speaker 2: living in America, the Internet is like the ocean, but
- 5:57Speaker 2: for people in Africa, the Internet is like a body
- 6:00Speaker 2: of water. So that was very interesting. Can you explain
- 6:03Speaker 2: what you meant by that?
- 6:06Speaker 6: All right?
- 6:06Speaker 3: So in Nigeria specifically, so most people use internet in
- 6:13Speaker 3: a limited way, so you have to buy like data
- 6:15Speaker 3: plans of one gigabytes, two gigabytes, twins gigabytes, and so
- 6:21Speaker 3: most people use the Internet with the concept of scarcity
- 6:25Speaker 3: like this can run out. But in other countries, like
- 6:30Speaker 3: in the West, it's just it's mostly unlimited, especially when
- 6:33Speaker 3: you have fiber optic and so on, so it's unlimited there,
- 6:37Speaker 3: but here it's mostly limited only like the top zero
- 6:40Speaker 3: point five percent of people are able to afford unlimited
- 6:44Speaker 3: internet access.
- 6:45Speaker 5: Yeah.
- 6:46Speaker 7: So even with the Internet access, a lot of times
- 6:48Speaker 7: people get blocked from viewing things, which is something that
- 6:51Speaker 7: I'll discover when doing the research on you.
- 6:53Speaker 5: What's the story behind that?
- 6:57Speaker 6: Okay?
- 6:58Speaker 3: Okay, so okay, okay, I knew where I got that
- 7:02Speaker 3: from one of my TV interviews. So this thing I
- 7:05Speaker 3: call the third world fence, right, and so it's this
- 7:09Speaker 3: invisible fence where the Third world is kept behind this border,
- 7:15Speaker 3: and so we cannot actively participate in certain activities online.
- 7:20Speaker 6: So there are some websites we cannot visit.
- 7:22Speaker 3: Because people assume that a lot of fraud emanates from
- 7:26Speaker 3: third world countries, and so there are some websites that
- 7:28Speaker 3: we cannot visit. Some services we cannot access, like PayPal.
- 7:33Speaker 3: Now you'd be shocked that in Nigeria we cannot receive
- 7:36Speaker 3: money through PayPal, but we can pay but we cannot
- 7:38Speaker 3: receive money through PayPal.
- 7:40Speaker 6: We cannot use.
- 7:41Speaker 3: Stripe and most of the top tier payment processors. So
- 7:46Speaker 3: that's one of the areas of the third world fence. Also,
- 7:49Speaker 3: Nigerian cars are just not accepted on a lot of websites,
- 7:53Speaker 3: so we have to figure out a number of workarounds
- 7:56Speaker 3: just to exist on the internet. So that's what I
- 8:00Speaker 3: called the third World fence. And yeah, we've got to
- 8:03Speaker 3: keep on moving so we find ways to get around them.
- 8:05Speaker 2: So so what do you use that you have your
- 8:07Speaker 2: own like Nigerian payment system instead of Stripe or PayPal,
- 8:12Speaker 2: Like you have your own one from in Nigeria, Like
- 8:14Speaker 2: what do you guys use?
- 8:16Speaker 3: Yeah, we have Nigerian payment systems. We've got Paystack, We've
- 8:19Speaker 3: got Flutterwave. Those are the two biggest ones in Nigeria.
- 8:23Speaker 3: They do a pretty good job, but it's not quite
- 8:26Speaker 3: as expansive as say a PayPal or Stripe. So sometimes
- 8:32Speaker 3: a banking maybe the United States, might encounter our local
- 8:37Speaker 3: payment system Paystack and just not honor the transaction. Occasionally
- 8:41Speaker 3: that happens, but you know, we may do what we
- 8:43Speaker 3: have while we seek better options.
- 8:47Speaker 2: That's dope, I think, like I said, I mean, it's
- 8:49Speaker 2: important for people because we don't really a lot of times,
- 8:51Speaker 2: especially in America, we just get caught in our own bubble,
- 8:55Speaker 2: so we don't really even you know, think about like
- 8:57Speaker 2: how different it could be for somebody in a different country.
- 9:00Speaker 2: And it's like, we run our business and we use
- 9:02Speaker 2: PayPal and Stripe and we can we can collect payments
- 9:05Speaker 2: from all over. So if we was not able to
- 9:07Speaker 2: use PayPal or Stripe, and then especially like you say,
- 9:10Speaker 2: I mean in Nigeria, might not be a problem, but
- 9:11Speaker 2: if you collect the money from people in America or
- 9:13Speaker 2: in different countries, then that could be an issue. And
- 9:16Speaker 2: it's like now you've got to try to find other
- 9:19Speaker 2: alternatives to kind of collect money.
- 9:21Speaker 7: Like even doing the research for this, it was like
- 9:23Speaker 7: I made it made me realize how much we take
- 9:24Speaker 7: for granted, right, like me sending a video to Shatty.
- 9:28Speaker 7: It takes it's not even a thought. But where somebody
- 9:30Speaker 7: in Nigeria or in a third world quote unquote third
- 9:32Speaker 7: world country, It's like I don't have enough data.
- 9:35Speaker 5: I might not be able to send that to you.
- 9:36Speaker 7: You know what I'm saying, Like these things don't come
- 9:38Speaker 7: to mind when I'm thinking about it.
- 9:40Speaker 2: Yeah, So, but how do we define third world though?
- 9:44Speaker 4: Cause I don't want to use that term.
- 9:47Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know you probably would you know
- 9:49Speaker 2: know better than me, but it seems like a derogatory
- 9:51Speaker 2: word term, like what what's defined by third world?
- 9:55Speaker 4: Just a lack of infrastructure or.
- 9:59Speaker 6: Well.
- 10:00Speaker 3: Originally, I think I think the First World, second and
- 10:04Speaker 3: third World originally originally started from the Cold War a
- 10:08Speaker 3: long time ago. So I think First World countries were
- 10:12Speaker 3: allies of the United States, Second World where communist allies
- 10:16Speaker 3: of the Soviet Union, and I think Third World were
- 10:19Speaker 3: in between. But over time the meaning evolved to mean
- 10:23Speaker 3: developing or underdeveloped countries. Okay, yeah, but the initial meaning
- 10:28Speaker 3: of first second and third World was relating to what
- 10:32Speaker 3: alignment the different countries had during the Cold War.
- 10:36Speaker 2: So in Nigeria though, speaking about Nigeria, because we've heard
- 10:40Speaker 2: different things about Nigeria, We've had a few different guests
- 10:42Speaker 2: from Nigeria, and so can you kind of just paint
- 10:46Speaker 2: the picture for Nigeria for people that are not in Africa,
- 10:50Speaker 2: because it's an interesting country. It's the seventh most populated
- 10:55Speaker 2: country I believed in the world two hundred million people,
- 10:57Speaker 2: the most populated Black country in the world. It's the
- 11:02Speaker 2: wealthiest country sub Saharan does it? I believe in Africa
- 11:09Speaker 2: Africa sub Saharan Africa the wealthiest country.
- 11:12Speaker 4: It has one of.
- 11:12Speaker 2: The highest oil reserves in the world. I think like
- 11:18Speaker 2: in the top seven. It has the richest black person
- 11:21Speaker 2: in the world, Dan Goti. We spoke about him. So
- 11:26Speaker 2: it has a lot of things. It seemed like it
- 11:27Speaker 2: has gone for us, and it has a strong tech community.
- 11:30Speaker 2: A lot of people are interested in tech. But obviously
- 11:34Speaker 2: there's challenges as well obviously, So yeah, can you kind
- 11:37Speaker 2: of just you know, did I did I get that
- 11:40Speaker 2: right on the things that I said?
- 11:42Speaker 6: Yeah? That was correct, that was correct. Okay, that's correct.
- 11:46Speaker 6: So Nigeria is such a great land of opportunity, and
- 11:52Speaker 6: I think we have one of.
- 11:53Speaker 3: The largest populations of young people in the world.
- 11:57Speaker 6: So a lot.
- 11:59Speaker 3: Of the business transactions are dominated by tech. So there's
- 12:04Speaker 3: a lot of tech businesses going on. There's a lot
- 12:07Speaker 3: of tech entrepreneurs, there's a lot of startups, so the
- 12:09Speaker 3: startup scene is really big. And a lot of Nigerians
- 12:13Speaker 3: are really hungry for knowledge. So we are very aspirational
- 12:18Speaker 3: people and you're always trying to get better at something.
- 12:20Speaker 3: So the knowledge business is booming in Nigeria. People buy courses,
- 12:24Speaker 3: people are always getting training. I mean, it's it's my industry.
- 12:27Speaker 3: I do a lot of training and workshops and I
- 12:30Speaker 3: play in the space. So Nigerians buy a lot of courses,
- 12:33Speaker 3: engaging a lot of training, personal development, business, online marketing,
- 12:38Speaker 3: and not just from Nigerian trainers. Nigerians know a lot
- 12:42Speaker 3: of American authors and speakers and course creators, so we
- 12:48Speaker 3: learn a lot of content from even the American space
- 12:51Speaker 3: and the Nigerian space.
- 12:52Speaker 6: So it's a huge market.
- 12:54Speaker 3: And so if anyone were to be considering new markets
- 12:58Speaker 3: for their products, I mean, Nigeria is such a blue ocean, right,
- 13:02Speaker 3: so like in America, you might have a lot of
- 13:04Speaker 3: speakers and some niches might be saturated. But if you're
- 13:09Speaker 3: targeting a country like Nigeria and you have something that
- 13:12Speaker 3: can really give people value, teach them a skill that
- 13:15Speaker 3: could change their life, this is a fantastic market. So
- 13:19Speaker 3: this is one of the ways that Anguri is a
- 13:21Speaker 3: great opportunity. There are other sectors, but I can really
- 13:24Speaker 3: speak mostly about the sector that I play, and that's
- 13:28Speaker 3: the online space technology and we are really booming there.
- 13:32Speaker 3: So also open to collaborations because I mean, we're having
- 13:36Speaker 3: the Skype conversation now and it's a it's not an obstacle.
- 13:41Speaker 3: Distance is not a barrier. There's a lot of people
- 13:43Speaker 3: just like me who are doing fantastic work on Instagram,
- 13:47Speaker 3: on the internet, doing webinar, selling knowledge and it's a
- 13:51Speaker 3: really great time to be in Nigerian.
- 13:53Speaker 7: So, I mean, that's inundestand that you said that the
- 13:56Speaker 7: population is so young. When I looked at the median age,
- 13:58Speaker 7: it was eighteen. I'm like, that's eighteen years old. That's crazy.
- 14:01Speaker 6: So, like.
- 14:03Speaker 7: You live in Legos, but you're not from Legos, right,
- 14:06Speaker 7: Can you explained because I know it's a population of
- 14:09Speaker 7: nine million people, which is pretty much like New York City.
- 14:12Speaker 7: Can you explain what Legos is to Nigeria's for people
- 14:15Speaker 7: who have no idea what it is.
- 14:18Speaker 3: Yeah, So Legos is the tech capital of Nigeria.
- 14:23Speaker 6: So it's a lot like New York.
- 14:25Speaker 3: It's fast paced, a huge business community, a lot of hustle.
- 14:30Speaker 3: So if anyone wanted were to be trying to look
- 14:34Speaker 3: for the most vibrant business community in Nigeria, that will
- 14:37Speaker 3: be Legos. Abuja is the official capital, but Legos used
- 14:42Speaker 3: to be the capital a long time ago, but I
- 14:46Speaker 3: think that was before I was born. But now Abuja
- 14:48Speaker 3: is the capital, but Lego still retains that economic stronghold.
- 14:53Speaker 3: So the economy of Nigeria is largely tied to Legos.
- 14:57Speaker 3: It's got such a vibrant business population and a lot
- 15:01Speaker 3: of things going on here. So this is the place
- 15:03Speaker 3: to be if you're considering doing business in Nigeria, especially
- 15:07Speaker 3: regarding tech, this is the place to be.
- 15:09Speaker 2: All right, So we know we're earning your leision. What
- 15:11Speaker 2: everybody loves us for is like breakdowns and like step
- 15:14Speaker 2: by step tutorial. So we got we got the you know,
- 15:18Speaker 2: the land of delay and Africa so now let's get
- 15:22Speaker 2: into it. Let's give the people some detailed information on
- 15:24Speaker 2: what you do best. So we'll start with your most
- 15:27Speaker 2: recent venture.
- 15:28Speaker 4: So you did.
- 15:28Speaker 2: You had the largest online summit in Africa fifteen thousand people. Right,
- 15:34Speaker 2: So it's a whole business model. And that's interesting because
- 15:36Speaker 2: we haven't covered this yet. In the time of COVID nineteen,
- 15:40Speaker 2: a lot of people have been having online webinars, online summits,
- 15:44Speaker 2: online presentations, online everything online school. Yeah, so, and it's
- 15:51Speaker 2: turned into a revenue model or revenue stream.
- 15:54Speaker 4: You can make money on it.
- 15:55Speaker 2: So yeah, let's dissect yours. So all right, yours what's
- 15:58Speaker 2: called head Start Africa could summit.
- 16:02Speaker 6: Has started Summit.
- 16:03Speaker 2: Head started Summit. Okay, so yeah, can you can you
- 16:06Speaker 2: kind of walk us through the summit?
- 16:10Speaker 6: So head Started Summit.
- 16:12Speaker 3: Our theme for this year was reinventing yourself for the
- 16:16Speaker 3: new global economy. So there was a lot of pessimism
- 16:20Speaker 3: about the COVID nineteen era and so people were losing
- 16:23Speaker 3: their jobs. Some brick and mortar businesses had to close
- 16:27Speaker 3: for a while, and there was a lot of pessimism
- 16:30Speaker 3: and the mood was really low, and so we had
- 16:33Speaker 3: to teach people how they could reinvent themselves in the
- 16:37Speaker 3: travel industry, in the hospitality business, how people could reinvent
- 16:41Speaker 3: themselves for the new global economy because everything of the
- 16:45Speaker 3: necessity had to move online. And so I got seventeen speakers,
- 16:50Speaker 3: most of whom are my colleagues in the speaking industry,
- 16:53Speaker 3: and we held the summit for three days, six hours
- 16:55Speaker 3: every day from it was from like three pm to
- 16:58Speaker 3: ten pm every day for few days. And so we
- 17:02Speaker 3: had about fifty thousand people who actually registered for the summit,
- 17:06Speaker 3: but about fifteen thousand showed up. And this was a
- 17:10Speaker 3: different kind of summit. Most virtual summits take the easier route.
- 17:13Speaker 3: I mean, no disrespect, but that's pretty easy to record
- 17:16Speaker 3: it and put it up.
- 17:17Speaker 6: Schedule the content out. But we wanted.
- 17:20Speaker 3: To put it out there live, and so all the
- 17:23Speaker 3: sessions were streamed live to YouTube, and most of the
- 17:27Speaker 3: sessions averaged a live viewership of about three thousand live viewers.
- 17:32Speaker 6: So I haven't seen.
- 17:34Speaker 3: Those numbers ever, at least on this side. I would
- 17:38Speaker 3: have seen that anywhere around the world, but I don't
- 17:40Speaker 3: want to brag.
- 17:40Speaker 5: I'll justice done.
- 17:45Speaker 3: Until I can verify those numbers. And so, but there's
- 17:49Speaker 3: a science to that. So there's a way that virtual
- 17:52Speaker 3: summits can be monetized, and there's an entire business model
- 17:56Speaker 3: around that which I'd like to share with a lot
- 17:58Speaker 3: of people and how anyone can use that to blow
- 18:01Speaker 3: up their business, especially if you have a business that
- 18:04Speaker 3: is involved in teaching people something.
- 18:06Speaker 6: You sell online courses.
- 18:07Speaker 3: You sell books, you sell audio, and you want to
- 18:11Speaker 3: drive a lot of attention almost instantly to your business
- 18:14Speaker 3: and monetize all that attention. There's an entire business model,
- 18:18Speaker 3: a lot of things that we learned doing this, running
- 18:21Speaker 3: the summit and monetizing it, and that's what I would
- 18:23Speaker 3: like to.
- 18:23Speaker 6: Share with a lot of people here.
- 18:24Speaker 5: Yeah, so how long did it take to plans an
- 18:27Speaker 5: event like this? That's all?
- 18:28Speaker 7: I mean, fifteen thousand piece a lot. You have fifty
- 18:29Speaker 7: thousand registered. How long did it take to plan something
- 18:32Speaker 7: like that? And what goes into it when you're trying
- 18:33Speaker 7: to plan.
- 18:35Speaker 3: Right, So this normally would take me about a month
- 18:39Speaker 3: to plan.
- 18:40Speaker 6: But so here's the thing.
- 18:42Speaker 3: So it usual takes about a month, but we planned
- 18:46Speaker 3: it in ten days. So the President of Nigeria was
- 18:50Speaker 3: due to give a speech about whether or not the
- 18:53Speaker 3: lockdowns would be lifted and so I told my team that, look,
- 18:58Speaker 3: there's a good chance that the lockdown would be lifted
- 19:01Speaker 3: pretty soon. We've got to run this while everyone's still
- 19:04Speaker 3: at home. So I didn't want to take a whole
- 19:10Speaker 3: month to plan it out. I wanted to have the
- 19:12Speaker 3: summit run while everyone was still at home, so that
- 19:15Speaker 3: would have all that attention and they'll be at home,
- 19:17Speaker 3: everyone would tune in, would have all that attention.
- 19:19Speaker 6: So instead of a.
- 19:20Speaker 3: Month, we had to crunch it down to ten days,
- 19:22Speaker 3: and so we had to plan and execute in just
- 19:24Speaker 3: ten days.
- 19:25Speaker 6: Yeah, so just ten days. So what went into planning that.
- 19:30Speaker 3: First of all, we had to build an audience. We
- 19:32Speaker 3: had to run a lot of ads and let people
- 19:34Speaker 3: know that a virtual summit was happening. But not just
- 19:37Speaker 3: any kind of virtual summit. It was one that was
- 19:39Speaker 3: relevant to what was going on and that's the COVID
- 19:42Speaker 3: nineteen era, and one that was offering a solution to
- 19:45Speaker 3: the current problem, the economic realities of a lot of
- 19:48Speaker 3: people who were losing their jobs. And we also had
- 19:51Speaker 3: to invite people that everyone knew. We invited the most
- 19:54Speaker 3: recognizable faces in Nigeria for that virtual summit.
- 19:58Speaker 6: I think a couple of them were in the US.
- 20:00Speaker 3: Think like two of our speakers were in the US,
- 20:02Speaker 3: but most of the faces were recognizable. These are people
- 20:04Speaker 3: who have been given solutions in Angerira for a very
- 20:07Speaker 3: long time, and so people saw this as very credible.
- 20:10Speaker 6: Everyone registered.
- 20:11Speaker 3: But an important thing that went to the planning was
- 20:14Speaker 3: the choice of platforms. So a lot of people have
- 20:17Speaker 3: I've seen a lot of virtual summits happen on Instagram Live.
- 20:19Speaker 3: Instagram Live is not a great place to hold a
- 20:22Speaker 3: summit or any serious virtual event. And and you know,
- 20:26Speaker 3: in online marketing, we have a saying that do not
- 20:30Speaker 3: build your house on rented land, right, and most of
- 20:34Speaker 3: social media is rented land. So we have a lot
- 20:37Speaker 3: of people who lose their Instagram accounts or their facebo accounts,
- 20:39Speaker 3: and there's no way to recover that audience. They have
- 20:41Speaker 3: to start building again from scratch. And so those social
- 20:44Speaker 3: media is important. You've got to find a way to
- 20:47Speaker 3: offload those people that follow you online onto a platform
- 20:50Speaker 3: that you own and control, and that is your email list, right,
- 20:55Speaker 3: So that's the first thing that we did. So social
- 20:57Speaker 3: media it's a great place, but it's like a marketplace
- 21:00Speaker 3: where everyone comes, you do a business and you go home.
- 21:03Speaker 6: So while you're in that marketplace, you've got.
- 21:05Speaker 3: To be able to take as many people in that
- 21:07Speaker 3: marketplace home with you.
- 21:09Speaker 6: That's the analogy that I could use.
- 21:11Speaker 3: So we ran a lot of ads, put out a
- 21:13Speaker 3: lot of publicity on Instagram. But we said, look, in
- 21:15Speaker 3: order to get access to the live sessions, you would
- 21:18Speaker 3: have to register on a certain page, hit the link
- 21:21Speaker 3: in our bio, and so we started running that publicity.
- 21:24Speaker 3: So we use that to build a huge email list. Right,
- 21:28Speaker 3: So here's the flow. We use that to build a
- 21:30Speaker 3: huge email list. But here's another mistake a lot of
- 21:34Speaker 3: people make after putting them on the email list. A
- 21:39Speaker 3: lot of people who hold virtual summits depend on the
- 21:42Speaker 3: email broadcasts to bring people to attend. And if you
- 21:46Speaker 3: do a lot of email marketing, you would see how
- 21:50Speaker 3: low the open rates are a lot of times, so
- 21:53Speaker 3: a person might be opening an email when the event
- 21:55Speaker 3: is over. So you need to choose a platform that
- 21:58Speaker 3: sends instant notifications.
- 22:01Speaker 6: To your registered members.
- 22:04Speaker 3: Right, So we not only took their email addresses, we
- 22:08Speaker 3: put them onto this platform called Telegram. I'm not sure
- 22:10Speaker 3: if Telegram is a it's a huge thing in America.
- 22:13Speaker 4: Yeah, we do.
- 22:14Speaker 6: It's really oh oh cool.
- 22:16Speaker 3: So Telegraph, Telegram and WhatsApp are huge in Africa, really huge.
- 22:21Speaker 3: So but the greatest the best thing about Telegram here's
- 22:25Speaker 3: the best thing about Telegram, especially Telegram channels, because Telegram
- 22:28Speaker 3: has two sides of this, Telegram groups and Telegram channels. Right,
- 22:32Speaker 3: but Telegram channels, you can have all your subscribers receive
- 22:36Speaker 3: a push notification whenever you make a post.
- 22:39Speaker 6: That is very.
- 22:40Speaker 3: Difficult to achieve on regular social networks. So if you
- 22:44Speaker 3: made a post on Instagram, you have to hope that
- 22:47Speaker 3: someone would find your post while casually scrolling through their
- 22:51Speaker 3: news feed on Instagram or on Facebook. But with Telegram,
- 22:55Speaker 3: once I make a post, we have a number of
- 22:58Speaker 3: Telegram channels now about about thirty thousand people across all
- 23:03Speaker 3: our Telegram channels.
- 23:04Speaker 6: If I made it posts.
- 23:05Speaker 3: Right now, at least half of those people would see
- 23:07Speaker 3: it instantly because it sends them a push notification.
- 23:10Speaker 6: So that is the best approach if you're looking to
- 23:13Speaker 6: hold a live summit.
- 23:15Speaker 3: I mean, if you were doing something like a blog post,
- 23:17Speaker 3: you could put it out there and just hope that
- 23:18Speaker 3: they'd find it. But if you need people's attention now instantly,
- 23:22Speaker 3: you have to use a platform like Telegram, and so that's.
- 23:25Speaker 4: What we use.
- 23:25Speaker 3: So the flow was this, hit the link in our
- 23:27Speaker 3: bio register, they got the link in our bio, they registered,
- 23:29Speaker 3: we got their email, We send them follow up emails,
- 23:32Speaker 3: but we specified that they had to join the Telegram channel.
- 23:36Speaker 3: And so that's how we populated the Telegram channels. And
- 23:38Speaker 3: from the Telegram channels, whenever we had a live session,
- 23:41Speaker 3: we just broadcast.
- 23:42Speaker 6: The link and had this influx of people all at once.
- 23:46Speaker 3: And so people were wondering, how are you able to
- 23:48Speaker 3: gather all these eyeballs all at once to watch a
- 23:51Speaker 3: live broadcast, especially you know, this is Africa, when people
- 23:55Speaker 3: are using limited in connectivity, We're still able to be
- 23:59Speaker 3: able to bring them to watch hours and hours of
- 24:02Speaker 3: broadcasts live. And so that was the exact flow that
- 24:07Speaker 3: we used from social media.
- 24:09Speaker 6: Offload them to your email list. From your email list, get.
- 24:12Speaker 3: Them onto a platform like Telegram where they can receive
- 24:15Speaker 3: instant push notification, and then you'll have all those eyeballs
- 24:19Speaker 3: whenever you have a live broadcast. It's it's that simple,
- 24:22Speaker 3: nothing complicated about it.
- 24:23Speaker 6: It's that simple. So that was the flow.
- 24:26Speaker 7: Now the Telegram I'm trying to think it doesn't take
- 24:29Speaker 7: as much megabytes as a typical like if I was
- 24:32Speaker 7: watching on YouTube.
- 24:35Speaker 3: So the live stream doesn't happen on Telegram, it happens
- 24:39Speaker 3: on YouTube.
- 24:40Speaker 5: Okay, gotcha, right.
- 24:42Speaker 4: Telegram is just a notification.
- 24:44Speaker 3: Telegram is to pull them onto YouTube.
- 24:48Speaker 2: So all right, so that's the first part as far
- 24:51Speaker 2: as getting the people together. But you talked about as
- 24:54Speaker 2: far as the business model, how to actually monetize it,
- 24:57Speaker 2: because I'm assuming it's free, right like you did the
- 24:59Speaker 2: free it was free, yes, so how do you how
- 25:01Speaker 2: do you how do you monetize it? How does how
- 25:03Speaker 2: does that work?
- 25:05Speaker 6: Right?
- 25:05Speaker 3: So there are multiple ways to monetize it. The most
- 25:09Speaker 3: obvious way is by selling the recordings. So it's put
- 25:14Speaker 3: out there that you know, the live sessions are free,
- 25:17Speaker 3: but the recordings are not, and so you get all
- 25:19Speaker 3: that attention. Everyone watches the live streams, but they cannot
- 25:23Speaker 3: download the streams.
- 25:24Speaker 6: The recordings are then sold.
- 25:26Speaker 3: That's the most obvious business model that we use to monetize.
- 25:30Speaker 6: But there are other ways.
- 25:31Speaker 3: So we also sell classes, specialized workshops.
- 25:35Speaker 6: So the beauty of all that.
- 25:37Speaker 3: Attention is that once you have all that attention and
- 25:40Speaker 3: you're giving value to all those viewers. Anything that you
- 25:43Speaker 3: sell to those people carries a lot of weight.
- 25:47Speaker 6: So we had a.
- 25:48Speaker 3: Lot of our our guests who came on to speak
- 25:52Speaker 3: and they had affiliate programs for their products, and at
- 25:55Speaker 3: the end of their sessions, I would come on live
- 25:57Speaker 3: with them to help pitch.
- 25:58Speaker 6: Their products, they would sell and we would get a commission.
- 26:01Speaker 3: Right, So the affiliate business model was there, the sales
- 26:05Speaker 3: of the recordings was there, and then our own off
- 26:09Speaker 3: our own specialized workshops and classes that one also sold.
- 26:13Speaker 3: So we sold specialized classes in artificial intelligence, online sales, marketing, cryptocurrency,
- 26:20Speaker 3: and so on. We sold all those ones with the attention,
- 26:23Speaker 3: and those ones also drove revenue.
- 26:25Speaker 6: So though those are multiple ways.
- 26:27Speaker 3: If you also if you have a book, you have
- 26:29Speaker 3: a course, you have a specialized workshop, that's the best
- 26:33Speaker 3: time to sell that sort of thing because you've been
- 26:35Speaker 3: able to attract all those eyeballs to one spot. You've
- 26:39Speaker 3: been able to build a lot of credibility by giving value.
- 26:41Speaker 6: Upfront, so almost instantly, then no I can trust you.
- 26:44Speaker 3: And they're willing to buy almost anything that is of
- 26:46Speaker 3: value to them.
- 26:48Speaker 4: Now that's dope.
- 26:49Speaker 2: And yeah, going back to the WhatsApp thing, WhatsApp is
- 26:52Speaker 2: extremely big overseas. When I'm saying overseas and America, I
- 26:55Speaker 2: just I realized that when I started to, you know,
- 26:58Speaker 2: have different friends from different countries and even you, that's
- 27:01Speaker 2: how I contact you, and that's how we communicated WhatsApp.
- 27:04Speaker 2: And so when Facebook brought WhatsApp years ago for nineteen billion,
- 27:08Speaker 2: it was kind of weird because it's like they brought
- 27:11Speaker 2: Instagram for only one billion, but the communication channels and
- 27:16Speaker 2: other parts of the world because WhatsApp is not really
- 27:18Speaker 2: huge like that in America. But I realized that in
- 27:21Speaker 2: like Europe, Africa, pretty much everywhere outside of America, WhatsApp
- 27:25Speaker 2: is huge. It's a huge communication channel. And then Telegram.
- 27:29Speaker 2: Shout out to Ian and he's he does our stock
- 27:32Speaker 2: show with Market Monday is our stock show, and he
- 27:35Speaker 2: has a Telegram group and he's real big on Telegram.
- 27:38Speaker 2: So what you're saying pretty much is like you gotta
- 27:40Speaker 2: diversify even your ways of communication, Like you can't just
- 27:45Speaker 2: do anything through one channel. So it's like you use
- 27:49Speaker 2: Instagram as the first barrier to like because you know
- 27:53Speaker 2: that's where most people are, and then you and then
- 27:55Speaker 2: you move them from Instagram to Telegram, which is another
- 27:58Speaker 2: kind of social network kind of thing, but it's better
- 28:02Speaker 2: because now you can actually have push notifications, and then
- 28:04Speaker 2: from Telegram they sign up to the website, and then
- 28:08Speaker 2: from the website then they can watch.
- 28:09Speaker 4: It on YouTube.
- 28:11Speaker 2: Then from YouTube, if you don't watch it, you can
- 28:14Speaker 2: or you can jump off and buy the course or
- 28:17Speaker 2: go to the affiliate program. So now it's like seven
- 28:20Speaker 2: different steps in the whole process.
- 28:23Speaker 7: Yeah, and it goes back to what you said about
- 28:25Speaker 7: being on rented land, Like if Instagram stop, you still
- 28:27Speaker 7: got your Telegram group. If Telegram stop, you still got
- 28:29Speaker 7: your email, this on your website, if that stops, you
- 28:31Speaker 7: still got the YouTube. So being on rented land that
- 28:34Speaker 7: it works out perfectly for you.
- 28:36Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, nah, that's a vibe And yeah, okay, that
- 28:41Speaker 2: makes sense. So yeah, I mean that's that's kind of like,
- 28:43Speaker 2: you know, similar to what we see in America. A
- 28:44Speaker 2: lot of different people do affiliate programs. I was going
- 28:47Speaker 2: to ask you if you paid the speakers, but I
- 28:49Speaker 2: guess for the most of them, you didn't really have
- 28:51Speaker 2: to pay because they was going to be able to
- 28:52Speaker 2: make money on their courses that they sold on the.
- 28:54Speaker 4: Back end, right, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- 28:56Speaker 2: No matter where you are in the world, the same language.
- 28:59Speaker 2: The same language, man, we always speak the same language.
- 29:02Speaker 4: That's a fact.
- 29:03Speaker 7: I want to go back for just a second, because
- 29:05Speaker 7: before you could even have the email list and have
- 29:08Speaker 7: an event, you had to build your own brand, right
- 29:10Speaker 7: and that that took. That took some time. Man, Can
- 29:12Speaker 7: you talk about that how you built your brand? Being
- 29:15Speaker 7: from Nigeria and I mean, you found, we found you
- 29:17Speaker 7: and we and we're connected now, you know what I'm saying.
- 29:19Speaker 5: So like, how did this happen?
- 29:23Speaker 3: So I'd been doing a lot of workshops and seminars
- 29:28Speaker 3: in Nigeria, but in twenty sixteen, I decided to create
- 29:34Speaker 3: a Facebook group. And Facebook groups were not really big
- 29:38Speaker 3: back then. As a matter of fact, we didn't have
- 29:40Speaker 3: Instagram Live, we didn't have Facebook Live at the time.
- 29:43Speaker 6: It was just you know, just Facebook groups.
- 29:45Speaker 3: So I started building my Facebook community then and that
- 29:47Speaker 3: was Headstart Africa at the time. So the first month
- 29:52Speaker 3: or so, I think we had about seven hundred members.
- 29:54Speaker 6: Now it was grown to about.
- 29:55Speaker 3: One hundred and forty thousand members. That was January twenty sixteen,
- 30:01Speaker 3: twenty sixteen, and we grew it. I grew it mostly
- 30:05Speaker 3: using a lot of free training. So I used to
- 30:08Speaker 3: show up every Thursday back then for something called the
- 30:11Speaker 3: Smart Business Webinars, and I would just show up every
- 30:13Speaker 3: week putting out content for free. I didn't have a
- 30:16Speaker 3: business model. I just wanted to give a lot of value.
- 30:19Speaker 3: I think I eventually.
- 30:20Speaker 6: Started monetizing six months later.
- 30:23Speaker 3: But the fact that I was giving a lot of value,
- 30:25Speaker 3: giving a lot of game upfront, not charging anything, and
- 30:28Speaker 3: it was real, it was working. People would join the
- 30:30Speaker 3: group that would invite their brothers and sisters and their
- 30:33Speaker 3: mothers and fathers and children, and everyone began to join
- 30:36Speaker 3: the group and take a lot of notes every Thursday.
- 30:38Speaker 3: Every Thursday, the internet in Nigeria would just take a
- 30:41Speaker 3: pause and come and attend the webinars and take notes
- 30:43Speaker 3: because it was all free and it still is free.
- 30:46Speaker 6: But I was able to.
- 30:47Speaker 3: Start monetizing about six months down the line. Later that year,
- 30:52Speaker 3: we started to sell online courses and bring people to
- 30:55Speaker 3: our physical.
- 30:56Speaker 6: Events and all that.
- 30:57Speaker 3: But it's just been growing with consists value and giving
- 31:01Speaker 3: a lot of value to the community.
- 31:03Speaker 6: But one of the things that helped me really grow.
- 31:05Speaker 3: Was in learning to leverage what I call OPK and
- 31:09Speaker 3: that's what you're doing right now. Opking means other people's knowledge, right,
- 31:15Speaker 3: other people's knowledge. And that's when my brand really took off.
- 31:18Speaker 3: Because when when when it was just me teaching and
- 31:21Speaker 3: giving all that value, it was okay. But when I
- 31:24Speaker 3: was able to leverage other people's experience and expertise and
- 31:26Speaker 3: invite them onto the webinars to teach, it really took
- 31:29Speaker 3: off because I was able to leverage on the knowledge
- 31:31Speaker 3: of other people who knew a lot more than me
- 31:34Speaker 3: in other areas and real estate, Nigerian real estate, oil
- 31:37Speaker 3: and gas, uh, the digital landscape, tech, even fashion, health
- 31:43Speaker 3: and fitness and so on. So I brought all these
- 31:45Speaker 3: people and we had we had about one hundred episodes
- 31:48Speaker 3: of the webinars because I was able to leverage on
- 31:50Speaker 3: other people's knowledge, and that's how we grew and we
- 31:52Speaker 3: keep on growing by giving a ton of value upfront.
- 31:56Speaker 3: It's really easy to build a brand when you can
- 31:59Speaker 3: be of that consistency, scheduled consistency of giving a lot
- 32:03Speaker 3: of free value, kind of like how earn your leisure
- 32:06Speaker 3: it is currently doing giving a lot of game. I mean,
- 32:09Speaker 3: when I saw that episode with ash Cash, it was like, oh.
- 32:13Speaker 6: My goodness, wrested.
- 32:15Speaker 4: So I was like what, yeah, so good.
- 32:22Speaker 3: Yeah, I shot it out to a lot of people like, look,
- 32:25Speaker 3: this is possible, you know, so it's so cool. And
- 32:28Speaker 3: so when you have a lot of people from all
- 32:30Speaker 3: these countries, because you know, you're giving a lot of
- 32:34Speaker 3: great content, a lot of people just they give a
- 32:36Speaker 3: lot of content, but it's fluffed mostly to sell their course.
- 32:40Speaker 3: So they kind of keep, you know, most of the
- 32:42Speaker 3: game away. But you guys, just put it out there.
- 32:44Speaker 3: You just put it out there and give a lot
- 32:46Speaker 3: of value upfront. And so that value is really attractive.
- 32:49Speaker 3: And it's the similar model that I used to build
- 32:51Speaker 3: my brand, and we keep on doing that.
- 32:54Speaker 4: Yeah.
- 32:54Speaker 2: I tell people talk even before they come on the podcast,
- 32:56Speaker 2: like if they have a course to sell some time,
- 32:58Speaker 2: I'm just honest with them, like, look, I think that
- 33:00Speaker 2: the best way to sell anything today is to give
- 33:02Speaker 2: away free information. Because it's like now, no matter how
- 33:06Speaker 2: much you give like in an hour podcast, people most
- 33:10Speaker 2: of the time they're still not really prepared to just
- 33:13Speaker 2: open up a trucking company, like you know what I mean,
- 33:14Speaker 2: Like they still kind of have to have a little
- 33:16Speaker 2: bit more guidance so they can either seek more guidance
- 33:18Speaker 2: on their own or you've already established so much credibility
- 33:22Speaker 2: by giving away so much free information. They know that
- 33:24Speaker 2: you're serious, and they know that you actually are knowledgeable.
- 33:27Speaker 2: Now they have no problem paying. I always say people
- 33:29Speaker 2: don't mind paying for information. They just don't want to
- 33:31Speaker 2: be scammed. And it's like, you know what I mean,
- 33:33Speaker 2: Like I always feel like investments and yourself is the
- 33:37Speaker 2: best investment. Like I pay for courses and books all
- 33:39Speaker 2: the time. Yeah, I have no problem, and I paid
- 33:42Speaker 2: full price. I could have got in on discount. I
- 33:44Speaker 2: just paid full price for the course cause I wanted
- 33:46Speaker 2: to learn about like option trading in stocks. So I'm like,
- 33:49Speaker 2: why would I not pay? I'm not gonna if somebody
- 33:52Speaker 2: already put it together and it's bundled nicely. I don't
- 33:55Speaker 2: want to just searching through ten thousand different YouTube videos
- 33:58Speaker 2: and find one that's good, ten that's terrible. Herodicus, Buy
- 34:01Speaker 2: a course, look at it for a week, get it
- 34:04Speaker 2: out the way, then I'm up and running.
- 34:06Speaker 4: That's my thing.
- 34:07Speaker 2: Yeah, So let me ask you this as far as
- 34:09Speaker 2: social media, because you're a social media consultant, YEA, what
- 34:13Speaker 2: is some some tips as far as strategies for entrepreneurs
- 34:18Speaker 2: that you coach people on.
- 34:21Speaker 7: This episode is brought to you by P and C Bank.
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- 37:10Speaker 2: Because I know you said you had an interesting thing
- 37:12Speaker 2: I want to talk about as far as like cleaning
- 37:13Speaker 2: up your Twitter.
- 37:14Speaker 4: That was I never heard of that.
- 37:16Speaker 6: But oh, for goodness, you all really dug deep.
- 37:19Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, gota, we got to talk about that.
- 37:21Speaker 4: We got to we got to.
- 37:22Speaker 2: So yeah, before we talk about that, what are some
- 37:24Speaker 2: strategy for people that's looking to build their brand on
- 37:27Speaker 2: social media?
- 37:29Speaker 3: Okay, So, so first of all, there's a I like
- 37:32Speaker 3: to teach that there there's defense and then there's offense. Right,
- 37:35Speaker 3: So defense is you know, you know, we've all been kids, right,
- 37:41Speaker 3: and and we've all used the internet.
- 37:44Speaker 6: At some point for less serious concerns, you know. So
- 37:48Speaker 6: there's a lot of things that have happened in recently.
- 37:52Speaker 3: There's this there's this guy I think in the US
- 37:55Speaker 3: who's I think it was. I'm not sure I was Harvard,
- 37:58Speaker 3: but one of these universities rescinded his his admission because
- 38:04Speaker 3: of something racist he tweeted when he was really young.
- 38:08Speaker 3: A right, And so I like to tell a lot
- 38:11Speaker 3: of Nigerians that you know a lot of things that
- 38:14Speaker 3: you know you're doing in your youthful cluelessness will not
- 38:18Speaker 3: be forgiven when you get older.
- 38:20Speaker 4: You'll be judged retro retro actively for your neighbors.
- 38:22Speaker 2: We've seen it plenty of time. That's what you said.
- 38:24Speaker 2: That that was very poppak about the retro actor. You
- 38:26Speaker 2: will be judged retro actively for your days of ignorance.
- 38:29Speaker 6: Yes, you will be.
- 38:31Speaker 3: So I like to say, you know what, as soon
- 38:33Speaker 3: as you decide that you're going to be somebody, the
- 38:37Speaker 3: first thing you've got to do is go do a cleanup.
- 38:39Speaker 3: Like spend a week, spend a month, however long it's
- 38:41Speaker 3: going to take. Just spend every single day for a month.
- 38:45Speaker 3: It depends on how much of a rascal you've been.
- 38:48Speaker 3: You might take a maybe three months.
- 38:50Speaker 6: But spend every single day, hours a day, just cleaning up,
- 38:54Speaker 6: cleaning up, cleaning.
- 38:55Speaker 3: Up the photos you put you you put on Facebook,
- 38:58Speaker 3: when you were in high school or in the university.
- 39:01Speaker 3: You don't have to delete them. You could just set
- 39:03Speaker 3: the privacy options to only me. Facebook hasns that feature,
- 39:07Speaker 3: and recently Instagram just unveiled that feature where you could
- 39:10Speaker 3: just archive old photos. You don't have to delete them
- 39:12Speaker 3: in case you want to have them for your memories.
- 39:14Speaker 3: Just archive them if they're no longer in sync with
- 39:17Speaker 3: the brand you're trying to promote, right, And so we
- 39:19Speaker 3: also have.
- 39:20Speaker 6: With Twitter now with the interview that you saw.
- 39:23Speaker 3: At the time, I was promoting a free program that
- 39:26Speaker 3: was called Go Cardigan. But it seems like Go Cardigan
- 39:28Speaker 3: is out of business, so we might have to find
- 39:31Speaker 3: a substitute. But when go Cardigan was working, you could
- 39:34Speaker 3: just use it for free. Put in your Let's assume
- 39:37Speaker 3: you started building your brand in twenty and eighteen, you
- 39:41Speaker 3: could instruct go card again to delete all tweets from
- 39:45Speaker 3: twenty eighteen and earlier, just at once, and it will
- 39:49Speaker 3: take them all out and you could start it fresh.
- 39:51Speaker 6: Right.
- 39:51Speaker 3: So, I think there might be all that products out there.
- 39:54Speaker 3: I don't know, but you know, you can just go
- 39:55Speaker 3: search for tools that can help you delete tweets in bulk.
- 40:00Speaker 3: There are the ones too for Facebook, you might have
- 40:02Speaker 3: to google that. It's been a while I talked about it.
- 40:04Speaker 3: I'm muchu if they're still in business where there are
- 40:05Speaker 3: tools that can help it delete old posts from Facebook
- 40:09Speaker 3: or at least they help you make the audit easier.
- 40:11Speaker 3: But you've got to play that defensive strategy and take out,
- 40:14Speaker 3: you know, a lot of things that don't fit with
- 40:16Speaker 3: the direction that you're now trying to go in. So
- 40:19Speaker 3: when that's done, you need to now go on offense
- 40:22Speaker 3: and start building your audience. What most people need when
- 40:26Speaker 3: they're starting out is attention. And so that's why I'm
- 40:30Speaker 3: really passionate about virtual summits, because if anyone is coolest
- 40:33Speaker 3: about getting all that attention virtual summits, it's like it's
- 40:37Speaker 3: almost instant. You're able to leverage on the audiences of
- 40:41Speaker 3: other people who are probably already established and build your
- 40:45Speaker 3: list with that organize the virtual summit, give a lot
- 40:49Speaker 3: of value, and when the virtual summit, when the virtual
- 40:51Speaker 3: event is over, you retain that list, and because you're
- 40:55Speaker 3: the organizer, they've.
- 40:56Speaker 6: Come to trust you.
- 40:57Speaker 3: You can either choose to create more virtual events, or
- 41:01Speaker 3: you can start selling your own courses, your own training
- 41:04Speaker 3: and so on. So when you're starting out, what you
- 41:06Speaker 3: need is attention, and so you also need to build
- 41:09Speaker 3: that attention on the right platform. Like I said earlier on,
- 41:11Speaker 3: do not build your house on rented land. You can
- 41:13Speaker 3: use rented land to attract the attention, but build it
- 41:17Speaker 3: off the rented land, off social media, like on your
- 41:20Speaker 3: email list, on telegram. Some people do it on WhatsApp,
- 41:23Speaker 3: but I always recommend Telegram and if you can, on
- 41:26Speaker 3: a mobile app and so on. So that's the offensive strategy. Also,
- 41:32Speaker 3: I like to say it costs money to fund a war,
- 41:35Speaker 3: right it costs money to fund the war. And that
- 41:37Speaker 3: might sound a bit adversarial, but we are in a
- 41:40Speaker 3: battle for attention. There's an attention war going on, right
- 41:44Speaker 3: and so you know, there's the entertainers on one hand,
- 41:47Speaker 3: there's the traditional media on one hand, and so people's
- 41:51Speaker 3: attention right now, we're all over the place, and so
- 41:53Speaker 3: you have to figure out how to pull some of
- 41:55Speaker 3: that attention to the work that you're building.
- 41:58Speaker 6: And when you do it or get it's going to
- 42:01Speaker 6: take quite a while.
- 42:02Speaker 3: And so I like to tell people to have what
- 42:04Speaker 3: I call a not on it budget. A notoriety budget
- 42:08Speaker 3: is a percentage of whatever you're making every month that
- 42:12Speaker 3: should go into building your notoriety online, building your followers.
- 42:16Speaker 3: So you've got to spend on ads, paid advertising, right,
- 42:19Speaker 3: So spend on Facebook ads, And of course Facebook now
- 42:22Speaker 3: owns Instagram. So if you can learn how to run
- 42:25Speaker 3: Facebook ads through the Facebook Ad Manager, you can also
- 42:28Speaker 3: target people on Instagram. And there's this fantastic thing on
- 42:31Speaker 3: Facebook Ads now where you can target the people who
- 42:34Speaker 3: are most recently engaged with your Instagram profile.
- 42:38Speaker 6: It's crazy.
- 42:40Speaker 3: It creates this thing called the recency effect, and it
- 42:43Speaker 3: gives you an illusion of omnipresence. So it's like someone
- 42:47Speaker 3: comes over to earn your leisure and they see a
- 42:50Speaker 3: fantastic post and they double tap. They leave Instagram and
- 42:52Speaker 3: go over to Facebook and they see your ads are like,
- 42:54Speaker 3: oh my goodness, I just saw this guy's on Instagram.
- 42:56Speaker 3: Now they're on Facebook, right. So it's called retargeting, and
- 42:59Speaker 3: Facebook you to do that. It allows you to connect
- 43:01Speaker 3: your Facebook to your Instagram and so people who just
- 43:04Speaker 3: recently either commented on your post or followed you or
- 43:07Speaker 3: even double tap, they start seeing your ads all over
- 43:10Speaker 3: the place and you can use that attention to sell
- 43:13Speaker 3: or at least build your audience. So that's what you've
- 43:16Speaker 3: got to do. You've got to have that budget to
- 43:18Speaker 3: help me keep on building. So you can use the
- 43:20Speaker 3: organic approach to build, add that to the paid approach
- 43:24Speaker 3: and ensure that you're always having an evergreen ad running
- 43:28Speaker 3: to keep on getting that attention and building your tribe.
- 43:30Speaker 3: So if you have a thousand people in your email
- 43:32Speaker 3: list today, is going to keep on growing. Maybe by
- 43:34Speaker 3: next week or next month it should be a two thousand,
- 43:37Speaker 3: five thousand.
- 43:38Speaker 6: It's just going to keep on growing, all right.
- 43:40Speaker 3: And then, of course, you know, unless you're a charity,
- 43:44Speaker 3: you've got to find a way to monetize that attention.
- 43:47Speaker 6: But before monetizing, you've got to give great content. So
- 43:50Speaker 6: content is.
- 43:51Speaker 3: Another aspect that people have to really focus on. One
- 43:54Speaker 3: of the easiest way to put out content these days
- 43:57Speaker 3: is through podcasts because a lot of people are not
- 44:00Speaker 3: yet comfortable with putting their face on camera, right, So
- 44:04Speaker 3: I might say YouTube and all, but a lot of
- 44:06Speaker 3: people are not comfortable with doing that yet. So asker,
- 44:08Speaker 3: you know what, if you're just starting on all right, cool,
- 44:10Speaker 3: start out with a podcast because there's a way that
- 44:12Speaker 3: you can influence people with your voice that you will
- 44:15Speaker 3: be unable to do in just writing. So podcasting is
- 44:18Speaker 3: a fantastic way, and of course the fact that podcasts
- 44:21Speaker 3: can be syndicated on a great number of platforms. So
- 44:24Speaker 3: we have the Earn Your Leisure podcast. It's on YouTube,
- 44:27Speaker 3: it's also on Spotify's on Apple Podcasts and all the
- 44:33Speaker 3: other so people can find it on all these other places.
- 44:35Speaker 3: So a lot of the traffic you'll be getting from
- 44:37Speaker 3: the natives of all these other platforms, those who like YouTube,
- 44:41Speaker 3: if you tag the videos correctly, they find you on YouTube,
- 44:43Speaker 3: they find you on Spotify, they find you as a
- 44:46Speaker 3: recommended podcast on iTunes and so on.
- 44:48Speaker 6: It just keeps on growing. So that's a great way to.
- 44:52Speaker 3: Get people engaged, know who you are, and also help
- 44:54Speaker 3: to build the no Liken trust factor. You're putting all
- 44:57Speaker 3: that great value on your podcast and then you keep
- 45:00Speaker 3: on giving out that content to your tribe. Selling becomes
- 45:03Speaker 3: really easy. You can sell in a good number of ways.
- 45:06Speaker 3: You can do coaching, you can do consulting, you can
- 45:08Speaker 3: do online courses, can sell ebooks, you can sell audio programs.
- 45:13Speaker 3: There's no limit. It's just like printing money on demand.
- 45:16Speaker 3: But you have to be able to give that value
- 45:19Speaker 3: upfront to ensure that people know that you have something
- 45:22Speaker 3: of value and like you said, that you're not a scam,
- 45:26Speaker 3: and that especially you're going to be there for the
- 45:29Speaker 3: long term, because that's what concerned people have, like, all right,
- 45:33Speaker 3: you have a course, you look okay, but are you
- 45:35Speaker 3: going to be here for the next five years or
- 45:37Speaker 3: will I come back here next week and your Instagram
- 45:39Speaker 3: profile is gone?
- 45:40Speaker 5: Yeah?
- 45:41Speaker 6: Right? Who want to be able?
- 45:43Speaker 3: Yeah, So people want to be able to know that
- 45:45Speaker 3: you'll be there for the long term. And that's why
- 45:48Speaker 3: if you look really closely, those who make the most
- 45:51Speaker 3: money selling courses and books there are those who have
- 45:54Speaker 3: been in the game for about three.
- 45:57Speaker 6: To five years. That plays a huge role.
- 46:00Speaker 3: The longer people have been in the game, the more
- 46:02Speaker 3: people just trust what they have. Oh, this guy has
- 46:05Speaker 3: been round for about three to five years, has been
- 46:06Speaker 3: round for about ten years, right, so they just have
- 46:08Speaker 3: that the more you the longer you've been in the game,
- 46:11Speaker 3: the more people just trust you. And so when you're
- 46:13Speaker 3: communicating your your your content or your courses or however
- 46:18Speaker 3: you're communicating your brand online, you've got to exude this
- 46:21Speaker 3: aura of trust and long term availability that you're going
- 46:25Speaker 3: to be here for a long time, right, and so
- 46:26Speaker 3: when they see all that, selling is really easy.
- 46:28Speaker 6: But a lot of people like to do it backwards.
- 46:30Speaker 3: A lot of people who just did They text me
- 46:32Speaker 3: like John, I just release the book, how do I
- 46:33Speaker 3: sell it?
- 46:37Speaker 5: Listen to as.
- 46:42Speaker 3: Go with the ash Gashes go lit to the ash Gash.
- 46:45Speaker 6: So, but that's the other way around. You've got to
- 46:47Speaker 6: start with building.
- 46:48Speaker 3: An audience, nurturing that audience with great content, and then
- 46:52Speaker 3: you can sell to them.
- 46:53Speaker 2: Now what you said is extremely important. We talk about
- 46:55Speaker 2: that on the podcast before. Whereas a lot of small
- 46:56Speaker 2: businesses get online and they create social media pages and
- 46:59Speaker 2: they have have like two followers, and then they like
- 47:01Speaker 2: running fifty percent off ads and commeriens like you haven't
- 47:05Speaker 2: even built the following yet, Like who's who are you
- 47:07Speaker 2: selling to? And it's like, yeah, you have to build
- 47:10Speaker 2: a community first, sell on the back end. That's that's
- 47:13Speaker 2: my theory.
- 47:14Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, that works. It works.
- 47:17Speaker 7: Yeah from a technological standpoint, because I saw the word
- 47:21Speaker 7: the letters VPN and it brought back some old memories, Manu.
- 47:25Speaker 3: So those yeah when you said that when they talked
- 47:29Speaker 3: about the Third World friends, but you're bringing it up again.
- 47:31Speaker 7: Yeah, only because I need people to really understand your point. Someone,
- 47:34Speaker 7: So if you don't know what a VPN is, a
- 47:36Speaker 7: virtual private network in the wild cowboy days of downloading
- 47:40Speaker 7: content of hackers would use that to to make sure
- 47:44Speaker 7: that people couldn't tell where their address was, and it helped.
- 47:47Speaker 5: I didn't use it again too.
- 47:48Speaker 7: We started doing crypto and it was weird because a
- 47:51Speaker 7: lot of the exchanges wouldn't.
- 47:52Speaker 5: Let you buy if you were a United States citizen.
- 47:56Speaker 7: So I was like, all right, well I'm gonna get
- 47:57Speaker 7: a VPN and then you could have your VPN, have
- 48:02Speaker 7: it changes your IP address, And now Troy Millons lives
- 48:04Speaker 7: in Brazil and he can now trade on this platform.
- 48:07Speaker 7: How is it used in Nigeria to the benefit of
- 48:11Speaker 7: the people and how can you know? I mean, how
- 48:12Speaker 7: can they use it and why did they use it?
- 48:15Speaker 6: Yeah, same way.
- 48:16Speaker 3: Like sometimes if you're trying to visit a website from Nigeria,
- 48:20Speaker 3: it just says that this website is not available, and
- 48:23Speaker 3: I'm like, Okay, I use the VPN and now an
- 48:26Speaker 3: American and voila, it's available now. So so that's how
- 48:31Speaker 3: we use that to get around that. And also a
- 48:35Speaker 3: lot of services that are blocked to Nigerians. We use
- 48:40Speaker 3: VPNs to get around those those restrictions.
- 48:43Speaker 6: So I guess it works.
- 48:44Speaker 3: It works everywhere, so and yeah, mostly to also anonymize
- 48:49Speaker 3: your activity online, all right, but for the most part
- 48:53Speaker 3: is used to get access to a lot of services
- 48:55Speaker 3: that are geo blocked normally.
- 48:57Speaker 5: We'll find a way.
- 48:59Speaker 4: Let me ask you this.
- 48:59Speaker 6: You find a way.
- 49:00Speaker 4: I saw it.
- 49:01Speaker 2: I saw on your page or somewhere where you talk
- 49:03Speaker 2: about like website and then like different ways to create
- 49:06Speaker 2: a web like cash machine.
- 49:08Speaker 4: That's what caught my attention.
- 49:09Speaker 2: So it was like you had like six different things
- 49:11Speaker 2: a by the website, like fundamentals of and then recommended
- 49:14Speaker 2: platforms generate traffic, and then setting up your cash machine,
- 49:18Speaker 2: Like how do you turn a website into a cash machine?
- 49:20Speaker 4: What does that mean?
- 49:23Speaker 3: Oh wow, that was a presentation that I did, I
- 49:26Speaker 3: think in two thousand and fourteen. Okay, sorry sorry, but
- 49:31Speaker 3: that really well website cash machines.
- 49:34Speaker 6: So the so the website is the home. Your website
- 49:37Speaker 6: is the home of your business. And so I there's
- 49:41Speaker 6: an analogy that I like to give.
- 49:42Speaker 3: Everyone lives in some kind of accommodation, whether it's a
- 49:46Speaker 3: house or an apartment or a condo, but you have
- 49:49Speaker 3: a roof over your head in real life, but online
- 49:52Speaker 3: you don't have a roof over your head. And that
- 49:53Speaker 3: doesn't make any sense. So you've got to have a
- 49:57Speaker 3: place online that presents you to the world and everything
- 50:01Speaker 3: that you do.
- 50:01Speaker 6: So even if you're still figuring out.
- 50:04Speaker 3: What you want to do, at least have your name,
- 50:07Speaker 3: your surname dot com. At least just put it out,
- 50:10Speaker 3: just register it while you're figuring it out. And then
- 50:13Speaker 3: so another thing people start wondering is, alright, John, you
- 50:16Speaker 3: know I'm not a techie like you. I'm not a
- 50:19Speaker 3: programmer like you. I'm not a web designer like you.
- 50:22Speaker 3: Is it gonna cost me a lot of money to
- 50:23Speaker 3: create a website? Am I going to have to start
- 50:26Speaker 3: learning to design a website? And if you would ask
- 50:28Speaker 3: me this question and maybe two thousand and five out
- 50:32Speaker 3: have set you know what you need to get a
- 50:33Speaker 3: programmer or a web designer. But in twenty twenty, twenty twenty,
- 50:37Speaker 3: you don't need to be a web designer to have
- 50:39Speaker 3: a website.
- 50:40Speaker 6: There's a lot of.
- 50:41Speaker 3: Platforms that make this really easy for anyone to design
- 50:45Speaker 3: their own websites really quickly, right so one of them
- 50:48Speaker 3: is WIS. I think that's the one that most newbies use,
- 50:52Speaker 3: wix dot Com, So anyone can just get on and
- 50:54Speaker 3: wis has a free plan, so if if you're watching this,
- 50:57Speaker 3: you can just go there, test out the free plan
- 50:58Speaker 3: and if you like it, maybe some right, but with
- 51:00Speaker 3: the free pline you get to use all the web builder.
- 51:03Speaker 3: And the beautiful thing about wigs is that they use
- 51:06Speaker 3: they have templates, a lot of templates, so there are
- 51:08Speaker 3: templates of predesigned websites, fantastic, world class designs. They can
- 51:14Speaker 3: just click and make any of their templates yours. Change
- 51:17Speaker 3: the logo, change the graphics, change the text, and it's
- 51:21Speaker 3: all yours. So you don't have to be very creative,
- 51:24Speaker 3: you don't have to know the concepts of design and
- 51:27Speaker 3: all that. They just make things really easy for you.
- 51:30Speaker 3: So everyone should be able to create a website. And
- 51:32Speaker 3: so what if you're doing e commerce? People will be
- 51:35Speaker 3: asking like, okay, do I need to create an online store? Well,
- 51:38Speaker 3: these days there are platforms for.
- 51:39Speaker 6: Just about anything.
- 51:41Speaker 3: Right, So we've got Shopify, which is really big in
- 51:44Speaker 3: America and also in Nigeria now, so anyone can just
- 51:46Speaker 3: get on Shopify and create and accounts and have an
- 51:52Speaker 3: online store. And I think because of the COVID nineteen era,
- 51:56Speaker 3: Shopify was doing some kind of a discount some time ago.
- 51:58Speaker 3: I'm not sure if it's still on, but they were
- 52:00Speaker 3: giving out a sixty day free trial, which they'd never
- 52:03Speaker 3: done before, So maybe just go check if it's still on.
- 52:06Speaker 3: If it's still on them, you can use Shopify for
- 52:08Speaker 3: sixty days before they start charging you, so you can
- 52:11Speaker 3: get on there, put your products on there. If you're
- 52:13Speaker 3: in the US, you can connect Stripe, you can connect
- 52:16Speaker 3: PayPal and start receiving money from your online store. If
- 52:19Speaker 3: you're in Nigeria, you can subscribe to Shopify and Nigeria
- 52:22Speaker 3: and connect Paystack, and so it makes that really easy.
- 52:25Speaker 3: In the old days, people have to build all these
- 52:27Speaker 3: structures from the ground up. But now you have Shopify.
- 52:30Speaker 3: It's a pre built online store. Just create the name.
- 52:33Speaker 6: And make it yours.
- 52:34Speaker 3: So once you have that your website set up, you
- 52:36Speaker 3: can just choose whatever business model that you want to
- 52:39Speaker 3: connect to it. So I previously mentioned content, You've got
- 52:42Speaker 3: to have that content that nurtures people, the visitors to
- 52:45Speaker 3: your website, and you can sell just about anything on
- 52:48Speaker 3: your website.
- 52:48Speaker 6: You've got different business models.
- 52:50Speaker 3: You've got print on demand, you've got digital publishing with Amazon.
- 52:55Speaker 6: There's just so many.
- 52:56Speaker 3: So on that podcast, which is a website cash machine,
- 53:00Speaker 3: I was talking about the different business models that people
- 53:03Speaker 3: could use to monetize their website. There's this beautiful thing
- 53:07Speaker 3: that I don't know if a lot of people know
- 53:09Speaker 3: about it. It's called print on demand pod where you
- 53:13Speaker 3: could have an account with a website like print full
- 53:19Speaker 3: or t spring and you can.
- 53:22Speaker 6: Have your yeah we know those, Well, you can just
- 53:26Speaker 6: have them.
- 53:27Speaker 3: Ship your branded T shirts to people all over the world,
- 53:30Speaker 3: T shirts, hoodies, and you know, you just make your
- 53:33Speaker 3: money off of their their platform. They take the cost
- 53:36Speaker 3: of production and send your profit.
- 53:38Speaker 6: You know.
- 53:38Speaker 3: So all of these need to come together on your website.
- 53:41Speaker 3: So the website has got to be the home base
- 53:43Speaker 3: of your operations.
- 53:44Speaker 6: And those are really easy and cheap to create these days.
- 53:47Speaker 7: So I know you you're the founder of head Start Africa.
- 53:51Speaker 7: But smart b Camp is that a subsidiary of it?
- 53:55Speaker 7: Or are they working in conjunction with each other? What
- 53:58Speaker 7: is that exactly?
- 53:59Speaker 3: Smart Beaca was the original name when I created the
- 54:01Speaker 3: community in two thousand and sixteen, So I renamed it
- 54:05Speaker 3: to head Start Africa in two thousand and I think
- 54:09Speaker 3: late twenty seventeen.
- 54:11Speaker 4: Okay, okay, so it's the same thing.
- 54:14Speaker 6: So it's the same thing, but that was the old name.
- 54:15Speaker 5: Okay, gotcha.
- 54:16Speaker 4: What about an app? You have an app? Huh School
- 54:19Speaker 4: of Wit.
- 54:19Speaker 6: Yeah, yes, the School of With is my app.
- 54:22Speaker 3: I put out a lot of personal development content that
- 54:26Speaker 3: addressed the challenges of people growing up in Nigeria.
- 54:31Speaker 6: And trying to find their way and find their place.
- 54:34Speaker 3: So the School of With app is where I put
- 54:36Speaker 3: out most of my personal development content. It's also out
- 54:39Speaker 3: on my Facebook community Headstart Africa, but I put out
- 54:42Speaker 3: a lot of it on my mobile app, School of Wit,
- 54:45Speaker 3: so you could get it on Android, on the Google
- 54:48Speaker 3: Play Store for Android, on the App Store for Apple.
- 54:51Speaker 3: And that's why I just put out that expression of
- 54:53Speaker 3: mine because there's a lot to me.
- 54:55Speaker 6: I mean, as you were.
- 54:56Speaker 3: Mentioning, I'm I'm a programmer, web designer, online marketing experts, speaker, consultant, coach.
- 55:01Speaker 6: Percent of it's a lot of things.
- 55:03Speaker 3: So I had to find all these different expressions so
- 55:05Speaker 3: that I could still I could still not confuse people.
- 55:09Speaker 5: So so prior to COVID right.
- 55:12Speaker 7: The head Start of Africa obviously was a mentoring program.
- 55:17Speaker 5: Was it all.
- 55:18Speaker 7: Virtual or was there times where you're going into places, schools,
- 55:24Speaker 7: businesses to present?
- 55:27Speaker 3: So we used to have physical events, but most of
- 55:32Speaker 3: it was virtual, and that's because I was looking for
- 55:35Speaker 3: a way to reach a lot of people within the
- 55:38Speaker 3: shortest possible time.
- 55:40Speaker 6: Nigeria is huge, It's it's huge.
- 55:43Speaker 3: And in order to make the sort of impact that
- 55:46Speaker 3: I wanted to make, I had to leverage the internet,
- 55:48Speaker 3: and so we did less offline and more online.
- 55:52Speaker 6: So we ran a lot of ads targeting other cities
- 55:55Speaker 6: in Nigeria.
- 55:56Speaker 3: There's so many cities in Nigeria, you know, the East,
- 55:58Speaker 3: the North, the way as the South, and we could
- 56:02Speaker 3: aggregate them and bring them onto our Facebook community and
- 56:05Speaker 3: make a lot of impact there.
- 56:07Speaker 6: So we did do some offline work, but most of
- 56:09Speaker 6: it was online.
- 56:10Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, so the population being so young, sometimes
- 56:13Speaker 7: it's tough to realize your potential. I want to know
- 56:15Speaker 7: your thoughts on seeing foreigners coming in into to the
- 56:19Speaker 7: beautiful country of Nigeria and you know, trying to develop
- 56:23Speaker 7: and create infrastructure.
- 56:23Speaker 5: What do you what are your thoughts on.
- 56:24Speaker 2: That foreigners like Chinese, it's a really Chinese to Chinese.
- 56:30Speaker 4: We could just get straight straight to the point.
- 56:32Speaker 2: It's a it's a hot topic that we've covered, we've covered,
- 56:34Speaker 2: We've yeah.
- 56:35Speaker 5: Just gonna call him out.
- 56:36Speaker 2: We might, we might, we might as well not sugar coated.
- 56:40Speaker 2: We covered it a few times. Well, we covered it
- 56:41Speaker 2: once on the podcast, but first chall shot out to him,
- 56:44Speaker 2: he's not He worked in Africa, but he's not from Africa.
- 56:47Speaker 2: And actually on that post, a lot of people were saying,
- 56:49Speaker 2: you should have got somebody from Africa.
- 56:51Speaker 4: Actually common on that.
- 56:52Speaker 2: It's a real big thing that we've seen in America
- 56:54Speaker 2: where people are concerned. They're concerned with the level of
- 56:58Speaker 2: involvement that China is playing on continent as far as
- 57:00Speaker 2: development loans and things of that nature. So you are
- 57:04Speaker 2: in Africa and you're in Africa, so what's your take
- 57:07Speaker 2: on it.
- 57:09Speaker 6: Well, here's the thing, right, It's.
- 57:14Speaker 3: I think that every country or every group of people
- 57:18Speaker 3: tries to do what they can in their own best interests, right,
- 57:22Speaker 3: And I think that the Chinese are doing what they
- 57:25Speaker 3: think is best for them. I mean, no one's naive
- 57:29Speaker 3: to think, oh, you love Africa so much, right, the
- 57:34Speaker 3: Chinese are doing what they think is best for them,
- 57:36Speaker 3: and I think that any other group of people would
- 57:42Speaker 3: see an opportunity like that and likely want to get
- 57:45Speaker 3: in on it. It just seems like the Chinese are
- 57:48Speaker 3: way ahead of that.
- 57:49Speaker 6: Now.
- 57:50Speaker 3: They're able to muster the creativity required to negotiate with
- 57:55Speaker 3: government and whoever the stakeholders are to make certain things happen.
- 58:01Speaker 3: We may or may not agree with a couple of
- 58:03Speaker 3: things that they're doing, but they're getting things done. The
- 58:05Speaker 3: same access that the Chinese have to Africa is the
- 58:08Speaker 3: same that the United States has to Africa, or that
- 58:11Speaker 3: the United Kingdom, which colonizes Nigeria right it has to Africa,
- 58:16Speaker 3: or Russia and other countries. But it just seems like
- 58:21Speaker 3: the Chinese have a clear cut plan, They have a goal,
- 58:25Speaker 3: and they are really persistent at it. And so I
- 58:29Speaker 3: think that the approach for everyone else should be what
- 58:34Speaker 3: do we want? What can we do to get our
- 58:37Speaker 3: own piece of the pie? Because there is opportunity in
- 58:39Speaker 3: Africa right for for a lot of for for for
- 58:42Speaker 3: a long time. The narrative to the rest of the
- 58:45Speaker 3: world about Africa is that you know, it's severely underdeveloped,
- 58:49Speaker 3: and you know, I had a I had someone come
- 58:53Speaker 3: from the US once and she said, Oh, my goodness,
- 58:56Speaker 3: you guys wear jeans.
- 59:00Speaker 4: Crazy. That's crazy.
- 59:01Speaker 6: That's the perception.
- 59:03Speaker 3: But we are really advanced, like technologically, socially.
- 59:08Speaker 6: In the media and movies. I think we have the
- 59:12Speaker 6: third largest.
- 59:15Speaker 4: Movie in the world, yeah.
- 59:18Speaker 3: Nollywood, right, And so while a lot of countries are
- 59:22Speaker 3: still seeing Africa as the dark continent, the Chinese are
- 59:25Speaker 3: They've seen the opportunity and they are advancing, and so
- 59:29Speaker 3: I think it should be a clarion call to everyone
- 59:32Speaker 3: else to be like, you know, this is where opportunity
- 59:34Speaker 3: is at. And I think Akon tried to do something
- 59:37Speaker 3: like that, is still doing something like that in Senegal,
- 59:41Speaker 3: his country, and his I've seen him on a lot
- 59:45Speaker 3: of shows and podcasts in the US talking about the
- 59:48Speaker 3: huge opportunities that are right there in Africa, you know,
- 59:51Speaker 3: and we know that where there are a lot of problems,
- 59:55Speaker 3: you have a huge opportunity.
- 59:58Speaker 6: To be a hero.
- 59:59Speaker 3: It could it's so easy to be a hero where
- 1:00:02Speaker 3: you're in a place where there's a lot of problems.
- 1:00:05Speaker 6: Right.
- 1:00:05Speaker 3: If there weren't all these problems, I would not be
- 1:00:07Speaker 3: a star today. I'm a star in Nigeria because there
- 1:00:12Speaker 3: are a lot of problems, and I came and I
- 1:00:14Speaker 3: saw the problems. I'm like, wow, so which one do
- 1:00:16Speaker 3: I pick? You know, And so you just pick one
- 1:00:20Speaker 3: problem and dedicate your life to solving that problem. It's
- 1:00:23Speaker 3: so easy to be a hero. It's so easy for
- 1:00:25Speaker 3: lights to be identified in the midst of a lot
- 1:00:27Speaker 3: of darkness, and so where a lot of people see darkness,
- 1:00:29Speaker 3: the Chinese are looking like, wow, that's opportunity. We can
- 1:00:32Speaker 3: build roads, we can build trains, and you know, it
- 1:00:35Speaker 3: looks like a colonization of Africa. But I think what
- 1:00:39Speaker 3: they're really doing is they're looking for where the opportunity is.
- 1:00:42Speaker 3: And I think that everyone else in every other country,
- 1:00:44Speaker 3: if you're looking for opportunity, Africa is the place to be.
- 1:00:47Speaker 3: I mean, most of America is developed, most of the
- 1:00:50Speaker 3: West is developed, but Africa it's so easy to be
- 1:00:53Speaker 3: a hero. It's so easy to be a king of anything,
- 1:00:56Speaker 3: because you'd be playing in a space that maybe nobody
- 1:00:59Speaker 3: has done before. Right now, Am I the most brilliant
- 1:01:02Speaker 3: person in my field?
- 1:01:03Speaker 6: I don't think so. But I'm one of the first.
- 1:01:08Speaker 3: To do things in this way, right And because I'm
- 1:01:11Speaker 3: one of the first, I look like, you know, some megastar,
- 1:01:13Speaker 3: but it can be done by a lot of people,
- 1:01:16Speaker 3: So I wouldn't really bash the Chinese that much, you know.
- 1:01:20Speaker 3: I mean it looks a certain kind of a way,
- 1:01:23Speaker 3: but I think it's just business right. If any of
- 1:01:26Speaker 3: that country came here first, they will probably have the
- 1:01:29Speaker 3: advantage too, so everyone else has to just.
- 1:01:31Speaker 6: Off their game, Nigeria inclusive.
- 1:01:33Speaker 2: So let me ask you this before we wrap it up,
- 1:01:36Speaker 2: because you know, specifically African Americans in America and Africa
- 1:01:42Speaker 2: and Africans in Africa not always were kind of distant,
- 1:01:47Speaker 2: like you mean, it was. It's language barriers, sometimes it's
- 1:01:50Speaker 2: cultural barriers, but ultimately we all come from Africa. No
- 1:01:54Speaker 2: matter where you are, if you if you're black, whether
- 1:01:56Speaker 2: you're in Brazil, Jamaica, New York City, Toronto, we all
- 1:02:01Speaker 2: originally come from Africa at some point. So it's a
- 1:02:04Speaker 2: two part question. I want to ask you social media. Obviously,
- 1:02:07Speaker 2: I'm sure you're seeing what's going on in America right
- 1:02:09Speaker 2: now with so much stuff Black lives matter and you know,
- 1:02:12Speaker 2: the police and this has been going on for a
- 1:02:14Speaker 2: long time, so a I want to just see, like
- 1:02:17Speaker 2: are people even interested in like what we're going through
- 1:02:20Speaker 2: in America, Like, what's the vibe like for the movement
- 1:02:23Speaker 2: that's going on here in America out there where you're
- 1:02:25Speaker 2: at in Legos. And also are there opportunities because that's
- 1:02:30Speaker 2: one thing that Akon talked about is like black people
- 1:02:32Speaker 2: should come to Africa and it's like all right to
- 1:02:34Speaker 2: say that, but are there realistic opportunities for people that
- 1:02:38Speaker 2: may not have ever been to Africa to come and
- 1:02:40Speaker 2: to you know, lend their their areas of expertise and
- 1:02:44Speaker 2: to develop business, to buy real estate. Like so yeah,
- 1:02:47Speaker 2: two part question, but yeah, what's what's your thoughts on that?
- 1:02:51Speaker 6: Right?
- 1:02:51Speaker 3: So the Black lives I mean, you know, Nigeria is
- 1:02:56Speaker 3: the largest all black nation in the world, right, so
- 1:03:01Speaker 3: Black Lives Matter was a huge deal still is a
- 1:03:03Speaker 3: huge deal in Nigeria. When Blackout Tuesday was going on
- 1:03:07Speaker 3: and you know, all that was happening, a lot was
- 1:03:10Speaker 3: going on in Nigeria too.
- 1:03:11Speaker 6: A lot of Nigerants were.
- 1:03:12Speaker 3: Posting and a lot of Nigerians got to know what's
- 1:03:14Speaker 3: happening from other Niggeans who were reposting, and so it's
- 1:03:17Speaker 3: it's it's it's a huge cause of concern. And also
- 1:03:19Speaker 3: because Nigerians, you know, are there are a lot of
- 1:03:22Speaker 3: Nigerians in the US, so we know what We always
- 1:03:25Speaker 3: know what's going on, right, we always know what's going
- 1:03:27Speaker 3: on if you if you hear any you know, any
- 1:03:30Speaker 3: any black person in the US with an African accent
- 1:03:33Speaker 3: is very like a lot of Nigerians there. So yes,
- 1:03:39Speaker 3: it does concern us as much. And and what a
- 1:03:43Speaker 3: lot of people need to know is that Nigerance and
- 1:03:45Speaker 3: I think a lot of Africans too, they're very welcoming people.
- 1:03:47Speaker 6: We are crazily welcoming.
- 1:03:50Speaker 3: Of foreigners, right, and so if you're if you're from
- 1:03:54Speaker 3: another country, people want to know what it's like there.
- 1:03:57Speaker 3: They welcome you, they want to give you directions, you know,
- 1:04:00Speaker 3: they want to help you point out the best places
- 1:04:01Speaker 3: to eat or to do things you want to do
- 1:04:04Speaker 3: a business. It's a very welcoming environment. So I think
- 1:04:07Speaker 3: that you know, a lot of people have been here
- 1:04:09Speaker 3: themselves and have experienced it. I think that the best
- 1:04:12Speaker 3: way to know about something is to actually go there
- 1:04:14Speaker 3: and experience it.
- 1:04:15Speaker 6: So once the lockdowns.
- 1:04:17Speaker 3: Are over, take a trip, you know, take a trip
- 1:04:20Speaker 3: see the place, you know, if you can get a guide,
- 1:04:23Speaker 3: go around, visit where the hot.
- 1:04:26Speaker 6: Spots of business, are.
- 1:04:28Speaker 3: It's a lot of great places places to visit. There's
- 1:04:30Speaker 3: a place called the co Creative Hub. It's a it's
- 1:04:33Speaker 3: a place in Lagos. When Mark Zuckerberg came to Nigeria,
- 1:04:36Speaker 3: that's one of the first places he went to visit
- 1:04:39Speaker 3: to know what was going on on in the.
- 1:04:41Speaker 6: In the tech scene.
- 1:04:42Speaker 3: So if you want to know where tech is that
- 1:04:45Speaker 3: in Nigeria, just go to the co Creative Hub in Lagos.
- 1:04:48Speaker 6: Speak with them. You'll see them.
- 1:04:50Speaker 3: Some of the most brilliant young people in Nigeria. They're
- 1:04:53Speaker 3: all clustered there. It's a it's a hub of it's
- 1:04:56Speaker 3: an innovation hub.
- 1:04:57Speaker 6: Right.
- 1:04:57Speaker 3: So there are other places too, in late was where
- 1:05:00Speaker 3: you can find a lot of opportunity.
- 1:05:01Speaker 6: There's a lot of.
- 1:05:02Speaker 3: Upcoming tech companies that are looking for investors and are
- 1:05:06Speaker 3: really looking to go global.
- 1:05:07Speaker 6: They're just so much.
- 1:05:09Speaker 3: But regarding that barrier, there's there's really not much of
- 1:05:12Speaker 3: a language barrier. Nigeria's first language is English. That's our
- 1:05:16Speaker 3: official language. You know, when a lot of Americans hear
- 1:05:20Speaker 3: me speak English or like, have you been to America,
- 1:05:23Speaker 3: I'm like, I've never been to America.
- 1:05:24Speaker 6: This is how we talk.
- 1:05:28Speaker 3: Like a lot of people that expect me to talk
- 1:05:29Speaker 3: like the guys in Black Panther.
- 1:05:34Speaker 6: Of the Black Panther have not been slipped away.
- 1:05:38Speaker 5: We don't know easy to tell.
- 1:05:40Speaker 2: You know you've never been to America. We got we
- 1:05:45Speaker 2: gotta do a sweet we gotta we gotta come to
- 1:05:47Speaker 2: Africa for sure. Then we gotta get you to America
- 1:05:50Speaker 2: for sure.
- 1:05:50Speaker 7: Speaking of that, man, I'm noticing the Tyler Perry book
- 1:05:53Speaker 7: behind you. I'm thinking growing up, who were your biggest influences.
- 1:05:57Speaker 7: Was it Western figures or whether Nigeria and people that
- 1:06:01Speaker 7: that you looked up to in your field.
- 1:06:05Speaker 3: Well, my father was a pastor, so I looked up
- 1:06:09Speaker 3: to a lot of Biblical figures.
- 1:06:11Speaker 6: So a lot of figures in the Bible.
- 1:06:14Speaker 3: So when I was a kid, I was were unable
- 1:06:17Speaker 3: to afford like comic books. I was able to watch
- 1:06:20Speaker 3: cartoons like later in my life, but as a kid,
- 1:06:22Speaker 3: I couldn't watch cartoons. So my superheroes were people I
- 1:06:26Speaker 3: read in the Bible. The Bible was free, so I
- 1:06:27Speaker 3: could just read the stories in there. So there were
- 1:06:31Speaker 3: Bible figures. But regarding business, when I was a kid,
- 1:06:35Speaker 3: I wanted to be a doctor. And then I grew
- 1:06:37Speaker 3: up and I heard of this thing called the computer,
- 1:06:40Speaker 3: and then I wanted to be like Bill Gates. And
- 1:06:43Speaker 3: then I grew up, and you know, it just began
- 1:06:45Speaker 3: to evolve. But in my adulthood, some of my key
- 1:06:48Speaker 3: figures like Elon Musk, really really revolutionary, visionary, Tyler Perry,
- 1:06:56Speaker 3: you can see his book right here, Build Something Fantastic.
- 1:07:00Speaker 3: Oprah Winfrey what she has been able to do with
- 1:07:02Speaker 3: her media platform as a as a black woman in
- 1:07:08Speaker 3: a media industry dominated by white males. So that was,
- 1:07:11Speaker 3: you know, a fantastic case study to look at. So
- 1:07:16Speaker 3: I was really influenced by by all these figures. And then,
- 1:07:19Speaker 3: of course, because I'm a huge fanatic of personal development,
- 1:07:23Speaker 3: I love people like Brian Tracy and Eric Thomas. Oh,
- 1:07:32Speaker 3: I've got his books, I've got his t shirts here
- 1:07:35Speaker 3: with me, I've got his dooties, I've got all the
- 1:07:38Speaker 3: gear I love et Then John Maxwell is a Titan
- 1:07:47Speaker 3: in leadership, and Robert Kyosaki. Those are my those are
- 1:07:51Speaker 3: my early influences I was. I was a huge fan
- 1:07:53Speaker 3: of personal development. The guy who wrote Think and Grow,
- 1:07:55Speaker 3: Rich Napoleon Hill. He's pretty big in Angeria too. So yeah,
- 1:08:00Speaker 3: those are my early influences.
- 1:08:02Speaker 6: But et Man.
- 1:08:03Speaker 3: I discovered et in twenty twelve and Wolf that was hot.
- 1:08:08Speaker 2: We've been getting we've been getting closer and closer to them,
- 1:08:10Speaker 2: so I'm pretty sure we'll have him on the podcast
- 1:08:12Speaker 2: this year. But John Man, it's been a pleasure. It's
- 1:08:16Speaker 2: been an absolute pleasure. And you know it's interesting because
- 1:08:20Speaker 2: so the flu not flu flu Annie tried? Did I
- 1:08:24Speaker 2: say that correctly? Was that you know flu annie f
- 1:08:29Speaker 2: u l a n I full then northern Northern Nigeria, right, yeah,
- 1:08:38Speaker 2: So yeah, my dad he did like an ancestry DNA test,
- 1:08:43Speaker 2: so they tracked they tracked his DNA to to that tribe.
- 1:08:47Speaker 2: So so they said he had sixty sixty percent Nigerian.
- 1:08:50Speaker 4: So I guess I have some Nigerian in.
- 1:08:51Speaker 5: Me, so.
- 1:08:58Speaker 4: Okay.
- 1:09:00Speaker 2: So so yeah, so we definitely we're coming to Africa.
- 1:09:04Speaker 4: That's a fact.
- 1:09:05Speaker 2: We we We've already been invited to Ghana, so that
- 1:09:10Speaker 2: has to happen. And then as I said, I mean,
- 1:09:12Speaker 2: you know, we have a large listenership. We know you now,
- 1:09:15Speaker 2: So Nigeria is the biggest, biggest So when we when
- 1:09:19Speaker 2: we mindfall, just make a whole trip out of it
- 1:09:21Speaker 2: and go to like eight different.
- 1:09:22Speaker 5: Countries, we'll take a month of us.
- 1:09:24Speaker 4: Yeah, why not.
- 1:09:25Speaker 2: So when we go to Nigeria, we go to We're
- 1:09:28Speaker 2: gonna hit you up, man, We're gonna hit you up,
- 1:09:29Speaker 2: and hopefully you can show us around town.
- 1:09:32Speaker 6: Sure.
- 1:09:33Speaker 7: Yeah, so Troy, Yeah, shout everybody on patreon dot com.
- 1:09:36Speaker 5: That is our proud to pay program. You know that,
- 1:09:39Speaker 5: tiar four and five.
- 1:09:39Speaker 7: Because you access to the number one online business school
- 1:09:42Speaker 7: in the world. I saw that Harvard is not doing
- 1:09:44Speaker 7: SAT scales anymore.
- 1:09:45Speaker 5: You don't need any of that.
- 1:09:46Speaker 7: You don't need any of that to get be a
- 1:09:48Speaker 7: part of e y L University. And with that membership
- 1:09:51Speaker 7: comes access to our private real estate Facebook group, which
- 1:09:54Speaker 7: is incredible. It has a book club, it has a
- 1:09:57Speaker 7: movie club, it has to break in back sessions with
- 1:09:58Speaker 7: our brother MG the mortgage go uh, it's incredible. Shout
- 1:10:01Speaker 7: out to him and shout out to everybody that's supporting
- 1:10:03Speaker 7: the merchant on your leisure dot com.
- 1:10:04Speaker 6: Man.
- 1:10:04Speaker 5: We got new shirts coming in. We got the earnest shirts.
- 1:10:07Speaker 5: We got the e y L University chest patch, so
- 1:10:11Speaker 5: be on the look out for that.
- 1:10:12Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a fact. So yeah, thank you guys for
- 1:10:14Speaker 4: rocking with us.
- 1:10:16Speaker 2: Yeah, we will be in Africa listening to afrobeats that's heavy,
- 1:10:20Speaker 2: and that's heavy in New York right now American period
- 1:10:22Speaker 2: afrobeats is heavy, Yeah, for sure.
- 1:10:27Speaker 4: So thank you guys for rocking with us. We'll see
- 1:10:29Speaker 4: you next week. Peace Peace,