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Shout out to Africa, to all of the countries in Africa too, 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 is 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 that the world is our oyster and we have we have supporters 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 Obidi. Did I say that correct?
Yeah you did.
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 on him. So I reached out to him and I'm like, you know, would you be interested in having a conversation to 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.
So 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 an influencer. He's the founder of Headstar Headstar Africa. He just hosted the largest virtual summit in Africa. Fifteen
thousand people were on that. He does everything. It's online business consultant, teaches kids how to achieve success.
He's just a programmer, web developer, a little.
Bit of everything. Everything.
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 content of Africa Nigeria. You're gonna talk about economics, all kinds of stuff. So I'm very excited to have this conversation. I'm sure Troy is a 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 Headstart Africa, right, and so I did some research. So headstart is actually it's a big thing. So what is Headstart Africa.
Headstart Africa is a mentoring 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 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 I, 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 interesting 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 bottle
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 theory behind that?
Okay okay, so okay, okay, I think 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. 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 call the third World fence.
And yeah, we've got to keep on moving, so we find ways to get around them.
Yeah, 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 as expansive as say a PayPal or Stripe. So sometimes a bank in maybe the United States might encounter our local payment system pay Stack and just not honor the transaction. Occasionally that happens, but you know, we may do with 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 collect payments from all over.
So if we was not able to use PayPal or Stripe, and then especially like you said, 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.
We even doing the research for this was like, I may it made me realize how much we take for granted, right, Like me said a video to Shaddy, it takes and 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, yeah, So but how do we.
Define third world though, because 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 seemed like a derogatory word term, like what what's defined by third world? Just a lack of infrastructure.
Or well, originally, I think the 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 I think 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, well.
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 believe 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.
In Africa some 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, go Ti. 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, 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 by courses, people are always getting training. I mean, it's my industry. I do a lot of trainings 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 lives, this is a fantastic market. So this is one of the ways that AGRA 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 not.
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 interesting 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 explain 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 one 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, 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 on your legion. What everybody loves us for is like breakdowns and like.
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Step by step, Suittorio. So we got we got the you know, the land of delay in Africa. So now let's get into it. Let's give to 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, yeah, so it's a whole business model. It's in resting 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 ye. 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 was called head Start Africa Summit, head Started Summit, Head Started Summit. Okay, so yeah, can you can you kind of walk us through the summit?
So head Start 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. Man, 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.
It was from like three pm to ten pm every day for three 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, at least on this side.
I would have seen that anywhere around the world. But I don't want to brag.
I'll just talk about this until it's 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 summits 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 on 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. So here's the thing. So it usual tastes 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 lockdowns 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.
I 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 Angeia 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 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 Facebook 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 rite in 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 in 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. People, a lot of people who hold virtual summits depend on
the email broadcasts to bring people to attend. And if you do it 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 it is a huge thing in America, but it's
really oh oh cool. So Telegraph Telegram and what's up a 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 newsfeed 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 post 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're 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. 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 were 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 internet connectivity, we're still to still able to bring them to watch hours and hours of broadcasts live. And so that was the exact flow that we use 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 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, the live stream doesn't happen on telegram, it happens on YouTube. Got right, Telegram that telegram is to pull them onto YouTube.
So yeah, all right, So that 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 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 of 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 like ca and 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. 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 in other parts of the world, 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 Ian 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 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 stopped, you still got your Telegram group. If Telegram stop, you still got to email this on your website. If that stops, you still got the YouTube. So being on rented land, 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're at in the world, the same language, it's the same language.
Man.
We always speak the same language,