Building Her Empire: Why Passion Isn’t Enough for Success

Hello and welcome to the podcast. Tonight's recording is one of those late night recordings, so forgive me if it's little mellow. Washa, it's been a long day and I can't remember if I published anything earlier. And I had this really interesting conversation with another listener of the podcast, also a lady, and she wanted some business advice for the 24 year old Nigerian woman starting Business Today. Well, actually that was the first question.

Pretty much she wanted to know that if she wanted me to just put myself back in that my frame back when I was 24 years old and Carl would have started in business. And then she quickly changed and said, OK, any any advice for a 24 old, 24 year old and gentleman starting a Business Today? And yeah, so that's what I'm going to talk about. And so essentially this is a conversation that I had with Ayomide. I'm going to use your OK, well,

your real name, but not the full name. So I can still preserve some anonymity for you. So yeah. So anyway, I am Emilia and I, we had a really, really interesting conversation. OK, I think in the last podcast episode, I mentioned to you guys that anyone who wants to have a conversation with me, who wants to connect with me can just call, send me a text message or wants that message on 08064662140. And I think I also mentioned that I'm OK with answering questions for free.

Just let me know straight up in the message that you send that that's what you're looking for. You want some free advice, Noah Hala? And if you do, I'm going to answer one question and one question only. So for Ayomidi, this was one question. If you're a 24 year old woman, what advice would you give for 24 year old Nigerian woman today? Oh well, anyway, something like that anyway. So let's see. So I'm just looking through the messages.

All right. OK. So she mentioned that she just came across the podcast, I think 2 days ago, as at the time of the conversation, she had just come across the podcast, I think 2 days prior. And she decided that she was going to listen to a podcast episode every single day before she goes to bed. And she likes the episode because it touches on life experiences. And because of that, Ayomi Day, I want to say thank you very much because I consider that a privilege that you would make me a significant part of your personal and business development journey.

Another reason I'm going to say thank you, Ayomi Day, is because quite frankly, my audience is about 70% dudes, guys, men. At least on Spotify, that's the only place where I can get detailed analytics. So it's been bugging me for a while. Not really bugging me per SE, but I've been wondering what I can do to raise the number of women who listen to the podcast. And for those of you who've been listening for a while, I'm sure you'll notice that there was a time when, you know, I did a bunch of stuff, try to be much more inclusive with my language,

with my examples, you know, things like that. And it didn't seem to work. So I just went back to being me. So it's nice to know that me just picking up the microphone and just me still being the same old me, that there's a woman who can relate. So thank you very much, Amy De for letting me know that I still that I have some female listeners out there. So anyway, the main question that she had let me just finish this Briambo.

Now the question was if I could put myself in the shoes of a 24 year old lady who's trying her best to become financially independent. So she wanted to know based on my experience, what would I say to this lady? What would I tell her to start with and why? And my answer was this. So my advice for a 24 year old lady, actually it's the same as my advice would be for a 24 year old man. The reason why my advice wouldn't change for a man or for a woman is because the principles are the same.

It's just the application that is going to be different. And the example that I tried to give was with virtue. So OK, this, I explained it to my kids, virtue habits that how do I put it now? Virtues are things that habituate you towards the good. Virtues are things that you do, habits that you have that if they're ingrained, will always Orient you, will always point you towards the good. And of course, vices are habits that point you towards what is bad.

And courage is a virtue. So everyone is supposed to be courageous. Men are supposed to be courageous, women are supposed to be courageous. But the way that men express courage is different from the way that women express courage. But everybody has to be courageous. So that's the reason why whenever people ask me questions like this, you know, what would you say to a woman? What would you say to a man? Man says, you know, essentially the same thing.

Because the things that we have to do, whether in life or in business, pretty much the same. We all have them. There's only one true north. The principles are the same. The application will be different. So the first thing I would tell a young lady, and that's what I've been telling your ladies for a very long time on this podcast, is you want to be financially independent. I know you don't want to hear this, especially things since lots of ladies think that sales is slimy or sales is one kind,

but you have to learn sales. It doesn't matter. Oprah Winfrey, you think she didn't have to sell more? I would. You think she didn't have to sell? Who else? So I'm a little sleepy right now, so I can't remember, can't come up with any other female examples. But you know, whichever woman, whichever woman, forgive me that you like that has been successful in business. I mean, she has had to sell something. So you can't start your business journey and assume that you are going to be any different.

You have to learn how to sell. So that's my advice to young ladies, also to young men. So for ladies, you have to learn sales. Now your media have been talking about the number of different ideas, some of them tech related. And of course, in the chat that we have been having before we had this phone call, you know, I've been hinting that, you know, you have to narrow down because you're interested in too many things. And from a sales perspective,

you can't build 234 things at the same time. It's just not possible. It's because you are limited in scope. You're limited in time because you only have 24 hours and you only have 7 days and you only have 4 weeks and you only have 12 months. And then you're also limited by the fact that, well, it's you, at least the beginning is just you. Now eventually when you can hire a team, you can scale beyond yourself. But at the beginning, it's just you.

And there's a limit to how much you can do in eight hour working days for five days of the week, for four weeks of the month, for 12 months of the year. So you have to pick 1, So land sales and then focus on getting traction. Now when we say traction, what we mean is revenue. That means money coming in or users because IO Media was also talking about some tech related stuff that she likes. So if on the tech space, revenue is going to come later, later,

later. I mean like Facebook, the money didn't start in the beginning. In the beginning was all about traction. How many users? How many users in America? How many users in Niger? How many users in Brazil? How many users in Australia? How many you know like that, like that, like that, What share you're going to have focus on either revenue or users and that's traction. So for 24 year old females, you want to be financially independent.

That's what you need. Sales, good sales skills. What's the point of sale skills? Traction. If you're setting up a product or a service where we're getting money right from day one, then you're focused on revenue. If it is something where you're going to have to cultivate a user base, then traction is, you know, all the, what are these things called? Forgive me, I'm tired. All these metrics I heard that people are used to, used to in the tech space.

How many daily active users, how many weekly active users, monthly active users, you know, blah, blah, blah, How many unique signings, you know, all those things. So that is the quickest way to find financial independence and that's what I told her. Again, let me repeat because I know that there's some other young ladies here. When I omit this situation because I know she can't be the only one, it is just a matter of, you know, statistics.

There's no way that she's the only young lady here who is thinking I have 3456 ideas and I can't be financially independent with all of them. You can't do it if you're juggling two or three things at the same time. Like I said, you are limited in time, you are limited in effort. So my recommendation for you 24 year old females, pick one for now. Now when it came to picking, we worked through a number of things because for those of you who've been listening for a long time, you remember that I have a framework for building a business in three easy steps.

Now, when I say 3 easy steps, it doesn't mean everything is everything is soft, everything is smooth. No easy, you know, just means we can put it, we can make it simple to understand what a lot of work is going to be required. And the first step, I've been saying it for a couple of days now, is first of all, I want to make sure that we select the right idea. The second step is we're going to validate it to make sure that there is some demand that people want to buy this product or the service.

Then after that, we're going to create a selling system. Now, Step 1, when it comes to picking the right business idea, you look at a couple of things. Lots of people say passion and please young ladies, I need 24 year old listening right now. I beg, forget that passion thing. It sounds cool, it sounds nice, it sounds sexy, but forget that passion thing because this is the thing about passion. And I told her at your meeting,

the thing about passion is in the beginning, you like it. It makes you all right. It helps you relax, it keeps you cool, it keeps you calm. When you now have to start doing this thing as a business, money has entered the matter. You will now be chasing people for money. And when that thing happens, the dynamic switches. This thing that used to be your love, this thing that used to be your passion will become your burden.

You will curse it. You will hate it. The example I gave for, I mean, there was, I mean, there's people who like baking cakes. So in the beginning you like baking cakes. The thing gives you joy. You have a nasty day at work, your guys like this, blah, blah, blah. You're quarreling with your husband. But then when you enter into the kitchen and you turn on that oven and you're baking that cake and you create a masterpiece,

you feel all right. You feel calm. But then when money is involved now and you go through all this house, you bake this cake and then you agree 250K for somebody, the person paid you 100K180K. First you deliver the cake. Now you're chasing the person for your balance. Which kind joy are you deriving again? Now you're deriving stress before you make one for the law of it. And you feel OK. You know, you eat, you give to some of your friends and then you sleep, you wake up rejuvenated.

But now every day you're trying to bake, you know, like two or three. And then customers are ungrateful and they price you anyhow. Delivery guy will mess up your delivery. You know one thing, one thing, you know all these issues if you come in with this whole passion thing. Anyway, let me keep quiet. The only good thing about passion is when times get rough, sometimes you can dig in and say you can find a reason to continue because you love this thing.

But my own opinion, I don't think passion is a good way to come into this game. So I told her the much more realistic and practical thing to do is to focus on your effort. When I say effort, I mean there's some things that you already do easy. You do it very well, whether it's your passion or not. If they wake up, you're asleep right now. You like, you can't do that thing on autopilot. That's, and that's one of the easiest ways to come into this game.

You follow your effort, not your passion. What ideas do you do effortlessly? Whether people pay you or they don't pay you. So I asked her all these ideas. We're talking about tech, this, this, this, that, that, that, that which one? She said agriculture. When she said agriculture, I shock because, you know, Amy Day is a very, she's a very happy girl, you know, very nice, very full of life, very bubbly. If you see her DPS care Bears and the the care bears, the the pink one, one that has two hands on his chest, you know, so I was catching some kind, you know,

bubbly vibes. So she's agricultural. Oh, sure. I said agriculture. She said yes. I said, why agriculture? Are you from an agricultural family? And she said, yeah, my dad runs a pig farm. She has also worked for some farmers, some farmers. So she already has some ideas. And I said good, perfect. That is absolutely perfect. Hip hops already has a pig farm. What that means is our media already has social capital. Social capital means that she has relationships, relationships with Popsy, who is in that space as an entrepreneur.

She has relationships with the foreman on the farm. She has relationships with Popsy's associates. She has some know how. She has some subject matter expertise. Because of that, her learning curve is not going to be hard. Entering into that space. Learning curve just means you're about to come into a new space. You're about to come into a new business and you get some things where you supposed to learn before you begin.

Like me. If I'm going to go into this pig space that your media wants to go into, my learning curve, it goes deep, steep, really high. I'll have to learn plenty of things. I have to learn different species of pigs. Which kind of pigs do Nigerians like? How do you rear pigs? How do you know when pigs are sick? Like the things I have to learn plenty. But for her just coming in, what did she learn in the game? Now she already knows some of the fundamentals.

She can hit the ground running. Me, I have to do plenty of learning. So when So for her, now that she really has social capital, good. I told her that look, yes, me, I'm better than sales. I'm better at sales than her, but honestly speaking, you've told us or to start in the peak game today, assuming we don't get any kind of support like she's on her own. Me, I'm on my own and it's a competition on your mark gets ego.

She will brush me, she will dust me because she has subject matter expertise and I don't. By the way, some of you who struggle with sales, this is the reason why you struggle. You're trying to sell your way out of the fact that you're ignorant. It's not possible. If you don't know the thing, you don't know the thing and if you don't know it, you can sell it. And if you try to sell it without knowing it, you make some very, very you make some carrying stupid errors.

You sell something and under price it. And anyway, just take it subject matter expertise really, really important. So the fact that she said agriculture very good, pig farming especially very good because she's already in that setting. She don't data set up ever since she was small. So she knows what's up. She really knows. She knows the different breeds, she knows which ones Nigerians like to buy. She knows the ones that will survive in the Nigerian climate.

She knows how a pig is sick, she knows where to find veterinarian. So that's good. So because and your meeting has these relationships, she has this know how starting this kind of business will be easy. By the way, hope you guys can see now why I say we should start off by picking the right idea. So someone in our situation you can love tech all the you know all you can love tech from now to tomorrow. But the truth of the matter is,

if all your social capital and your subject matter expertise is in some place else, perhaps you should do yourself a favor and start in the other place. When you build it and all that business is standing now you can move on and start building other things in in tech or whatever it is. But please, this passion thing, let's forget this passion thing. I beg you. No help doesn't help anyone. What? This is about financial independence here, not about your passions.

If you like, start with your passion. Once you start harassing people for money, you will hate your passion, trust me. So forget about your passions, focus on what you're already good at, focus on your effort. So my advice to her was to focus on this agricultural thing first. The example I gave was just like Dan Gutier, people who like you know, who have 5-6 different ideas, they always like to quote Dangote and I'm like OK cool Dangote.

Perfect. Dangote didn't start everything at the same time. Now the gist I've heard is that he started first with trucking, that his uncle, his rich uncle gave him money to buy, gave him a loan to buy 9 trucks. So he started trucking from trucking, he started trading cement. From trading cement, he started importing cement. From importing cement, he started cement factory. From cement factory he tried, you know, you can see how things were expanding, expanding,

expanding. And then today refinery, as the refinery is beginning to become strong, the guy is now talking about what he now wants to open a port, the seaport. I can't remember where the seaport is supposed to be. But it's not everything at the same time. So he didn't start day one trucking, trading, importing, cement factory, sugar factory, spaghetti factory, you know, 1 by 1 by 1 by 1 by 1 one. By the way, just so you guys know, it's not everything that he did that worked because I

remember when I was in Kano, because, you know, he used to pass through Kano once in a while. I don't know if he lives in Kano, but I just know that because I lived on, I lived on hard Asia Rd. when I was in Carnal. So once in a while, you know, the guy's car would drive past. I know people would heal him. So around that time those is juice. Was it downside juice or something? You know, he tried the juice game. That juice thing didn't work.

So it's not all his ideas that worked. So yeah, those of you who like to celebrate downward thing, I want to be multi potentialite serial entrepreneur, blah, blah, blah. Like him. If the only builder came down follow his path. He didn't do everything on day one. He started somewhere when one when one was strong, one is stable, then the guy move. Now when we say stability, what we mean is this we means that your business has systems and standard operating procedures sops and also that you get cash flow.

So that's what stability means. You have systems in place and then you have cash flows and then also the business no longer needs you to be there 247. If you still have to be there 247, you're not ready to move. Because if you remove your hand from this business before everything strong, this first business will start to struggle. The second business, you won't be able to give it 100%. So I told her, so once you enter this pig thing, the pig farming thing, gas be stable first before you can remove your hand.

So systems in place, SOP is in place. So the cleaners, how are they cleaning the people who butcher, How are they butchering the people who run sales? How are they selling manuals in place for everybody? Accounting local how are we doing the accounting management and human resources, how are we managing and human resourcing guidelines in place for everybody. And then of course, cash flow. That means money coming in, money going out everything balance.

And then of course you set off things so that you're no longer needed there. 247 And this is how I explained it to her because if she try and remove her hand before everything is stable, magic will start to happen. Now my auntie runs a chicken chicken farm and trust me, magic can happen. You remove your eye, you remove your hand. By the time you come back they said ah Madam, 5 chickens were sick so we had to go and bury them.

That's how chickens start to disappear. When I said it, I or me they should begin their laugh. I said OK, it happens in pig farming too. She said yeah it happens. So I guess it's just one of those things. So if the business is not stable and you remove your hand, your pigs will start to get sick in court or who knows, maybe snake will come and bite one of the pigs in quotes and then they'll have to dispose of it. And I don't know if this is a Nigerian thing or a global thing.

But anyway, yeah, these are some of the things that can happen. So my experience to her, I say my experience, my guy, forgive me, my brain is low today. My recommendation, I mean, yeah, my recommendation to her, prioritize the pig farming because you have the know how, because you have the relationships. In fact, the know how and the relationships will also make financing easier if it comes to the point of raising finance because Epopsy has given her some piglets, you know, to start, you know, which is cool.

By the way, can you see why I say Nigerian parents are the best in the world? If it's in the UK, you know which kind? Your parent is giving you a gift, this is a loan and you will pay back. So we should value our parents. Nigerian parents are awesome. Nigerian parents will say ah, my daughter, I appreciate you blah blah blah. Take this loan of 10 M. Meanwhile, in Popsy's mind, he's giving you Aspire Dash. When you're ready to pay him back, you say no, no, no, no.

I never meant for you to pay you back. You're my child. I just want to support you in the UK. Forget it obviously give you 10 M to start business. Forget that you'll pay that money back. He's a loan. He's a loan anyway. So when she gets to the stage of trying to raise finances, these things will help. She's from you know, she knows the pigging background, she knows the family background. She knows the every every if me and her we approach bank business, plan everything.

By the time financiers or investors talk to her, they talk to me. Who do you think they will give money to? Yes, I'll be able to handle the sales things much more better, but they will know that OK, this young girl, clearly there's something that she knows us up. OK, this one guy, the guy sounds smooth, but he'd be like say this babe. So that's my advice. Pops has given her piglets. That's good. Shout out to Nigel. Parents, we go continue to bless all of you.

There are few of you, I think less than 5% who listen to this podcast who are 65 and older based on the stats that I've seen in Spotify. So mommies and daddies listening, thank you very much for all the support. Some of us, you know who are your children, we take a while before we settle down. You know, we run from pillar to post. We try too many ideas. Some things work, some things don't work. Thank you very much for your support and I try you do very well.

We pray for God to bless all of you. You continue to support your children, continue to support us. We appreciate you. Then let's see what else. Eventually we got to the whole thing about raising money and everything. And I told her, look, yeah, cash money is good. Getting your own land is good and stuff like that. Because, you know, now when it comes to animal husbandry, you know, The thing is, it's land intensive. So Popsy has his own pigs now and everything, so told them they can't be running.

I mean, in the beginning maybe they can be shared the same space, but eventually she'll have to go and get her own land. So I'd tell her that at least when it comes to sales and business development, there's this idea of the S. So my brain is slow to do MVP, minimum viable product. That's the smallest possible version of your products, smallest possible version of your idea that you can start with first. So in whole case you're starting with two piglets, 5 piglets, 10

piglets. She doesn't need to go and buy, I don't know, 1000 hectares. You can start by focusing on what you need right now just to get the current head. Abby, is it head that you call them when you have pigs to get your current heads sorted, right? So the example I gave was for my aunt, for instance, with the chickens. So at the beginning and she was using the back of her house. Eventually you outgrow the back of your house because of course your neighbors who complain,

even your children self don't like the smell. Then you're going to start renting land and you do that for a couple of years. And then after a while, what did she do? She bought her own piece of land, but then she didn't commandeer the whole piece of land. She does develop, you know, small and continued. Eventually the operations will grow and grow and grow and they'll continue to expand and expand and expand on the land.

So too many of you worry about raising your 50 million to start, bam, to start big. You know, relax, get the smallest version going first and you could scale up small, small, small. Now, because we're having a good time with the conversation with her annual meeting, I asked her whether she had any follow up question because remember I told you guys, if you want free advice, I will only answer one question. She said none at all.

I said no problem. Then before we had the call, I had told her that the call was going to be recorded. So we used Telegram for the call. And the reason why I was because, you know, in the past I've had conversations with people and I just realized that, OK, we spoke and then conversation ended, but I didn't leave them with anything tangible that they can refer to. So one of my clients put me on this Telegram thing because we're going to have some sessions and this is my client.

Well, not my client, my client's PA. The PA insisted that we have to do this thing on Telegram that she wants to record. I said OK, no problem. Be grudgingly. I said no problem. And once we tried it no more, I saw the wisdom because for my clients, especially my paid clients, by the time we're done with the session, I like to prepare. Excuse me, I like to prepare meeting notes, you know, just to keep track of all the things we discussed and then, you know,

key points, what we're supposed to do next, all those sorts of things. And man, the fact that there's an audio recording makes this thing a whole lot easier. So it limits how much writing I have to do because in the past I've been doing everything old school. As we're talking, I'm writing, I'm writing, I'm writing. So where was I? In Telegram. So we have this session on Telegram so that I your media will have the audio recording just so that she can digest this thing, listen to it over again.

Think of it as own personal podcast episode. So we stay on the call. I made sure that the audio downloaded well, first, because you know, I'm still new to this Telegram thing because the first time I tried using Telegram, we had the session by the time we finished the audio just disappears waiting up and I was able to find the audio. But to be on the safe side now, what I do is I just tell the people that, look, look, Chi chi, chi, hold on.

First, let me end this thing. Let me be sure that the audio has downloaded well, and then I'll now send it to you because I don't risk the person getting off the call like the first time. And then he threw the recording off. Then let's see what else. Also, just give us some general advice, you know, about using AI because he spoke about some concepts here that we couldn't go into in in a lot of detail. Like what else, like social capital, like what else?

Market validation, product market fit. No, sorry, no, not product, market fit, minimum buyable products, you know, on and on and on. So I told her that look, when you have AI tools, you know, it helps, you know, use Google Gemini, use ChatGPT and just just do as if you're talking to a person, you know, I'm a Nigerian team. I'm a Nigerian 24 year old female based in Ellorin, Nigeria. I'm thinking of starting a pig farm blah blah blah.

I spoke to a podcaster, he told me the start of with an MVP minimum viable product. You know what kind of minimum, minimum viable products are possible when it comes to pig farming And then send, they will give you some suggestions. Now, this is the reason why product market fit. I say product market fit. Sorry, forgive me, I'm slow today. This is the reason why I'm subject matter expertise, why you have to be the expert because if you're the expert,

you can tell when something work and when something won't work. So when you give Google Gemini that kind of prompt, it will give you some suggestions, maybe like 5 or 6, because you're the professional pig farmer, you know that? OK, option one, option three, option 5, it makes sense. Option 78 and 9 is total rubbish. And then option 4 is hallucination. You now select the three that can work because you're the pro. So we should have a good grasp of what it is that we're trying to get into.

So that also when we're doing research online, especially those of us who are going to use AI tools, you will know which one is a good suggestion and which one is rubbish. So yeah, that was it. We ended the session. I told her that I hope she's going to share the podcast with other people, especially more female, because over 70% of my audience is men and I have more women listening to the podcast, you know, for personal reasons.

But I'll talk about that later. So yeah, that's it. And then of course, I told her, look, I pay the bills by doing consulting and it's the people who pay me that make these free sessions possible. It's because I'm collecting money for some people that I can at least spend some time. I'll be talking to some of you guys for free. So I told her, you know, any business owners who are struggling with revenue targets, sales teams, tell them to contact me.

I'm always Adm away and yeah, that's it. So we ended the session, I gave her the audio and that's my summary pretty much for what a Nigerian 24 year old woman should do if she was starting Business Today. So whether you're interested in pigs or jewelry or whatever, the advice is pretty much the same. I remember the reason why I wanted to talk about this today, the reason why I wanted to talk about this particular 1 today was because in the last podcast episode, I think I spoke about,

you know, my experience with what was the nickname I gave her? What was the nickname again? Mary Kay. Yeah, my friends with Mary Kay. And after recording the podcast episode, I was wondering, people who listen to this thing, I don't think maybe I was woman bashing, maybe because, you know, I seen you on her. So I don't bash him too much or something. So I said, OK, you know what? I also had another promising conversation with a female.

So let me comb my share that one here. Yeah, exactly. So basically, I'm just trying to launder my reputation. So you should not feel as if the whole thing with Mary Kate, as if I was just bashing her Anyhow, you know, nobody like that. So this is an example of a different conversation with a young Nigerian female. And yeah, that one different. So yeah, I think that's it. And that's all for today. So if you'd love to connect with me, you can call, send me a text message or a WhatsApp message on 08064662140.

Remember, if you want free advice, I'm open. Just let me know in the very first message that you sent that you're looking for free advice and then we'll hook it up. But of course, I will only answer one question. If, you know, hook up a paid consulting session, that's not a problem. I have different options that range from anything between 400 all the way down to 15 K So any which way you're covered. Yeah, I think that's it.

Yeah. That's all for today. So thank you very much. I will catch you all some other time.