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