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Hello and welcome to the show. Today we are going to continue on the difficulty of selling your fintech ideas in Nigeria. But before I continue, the TV stations, the blogs, you know, they've been all awash with the recent world. What's that thing called Guinness World Book of Records? Yes, the recent attempt by a Nigerian chess master who has been trying to raise money for his charity for children in slums in Lagos. And it's been a news item.
Lots of people have been writing about it. And these days, you know, whenever I open my my LinkedIn, you know, those are the sorts of things that I see over there. You know, people commiserate, I'm sorry, not commiserating. What's the word, you know, when you're trying to congratulate someone basically and everybody's new jacking on getting on that bandwagon. Now, before we get into today's today's question, I'd like to make a comment on those of you who are looking who, well, first of all, who are trying to use contents to promote your business.
Now, using content to promote your business is a very good idea. I mean, because after all, that's what I do over here on the podcast. I'm counting on the fact that I'm going to be addressing business questions that are relevant to people who are trying to, you know, people in the founder space, the SME space, people who are trying to get a business up on going and people who are self-employed. And I do that by making content,
not just audio content, written content, stuff on Instagram. So it's a good idea to promote your business Now, news jacking, which is taking advantage of things that are currently popular or in the media, is a viable strategy for how to build your businesses. But I think people go about news jacking the wrong way and this chess story is an example of how. So this fellow is doing his thing and yes, we're all Nigerians and we're proud.
But somehow you think that by writing a post about what is going on in the news, what is trendy and all that is going to bring you more eyeballs on your business. Now, unfortunately, a lot of the people who are trying to news Jack are writing about this story and it's not something that is even remotely related to your core business. So I am a sales coach, I'm a business consultant, I'm a business growth podcaster and I
only talk about business problems. Go figure. Anyone who comes across my material is going to see my mastery and my knowledge of the subject matter and think, OK, this might be a decent boy to do some business with. Hopefully they give me a call. That's how it works. But if you run an engineering firm or a sales firm or you're a Carpenter, how does talking about trendy things in news like a Guinness Book of Records world attempt by a Nigerian, how does that help to grow your business?
So people are trying to news Jack on things that are not related to their business in any way. And so you put up this post, but there's no reason for the person to associate you as a specialist in something. There's no reason for the person to check this post that you've written on this attempt for another Guinness Book of World Records. There's no reason for the person to look at that or maybe click through to your website.
There's no Nexus, there's no connection. There's absolutely no reason. And so you are news jacking the wrong way. Another thing, people who rely on news jacking for content, you'll find that their content production is sporadic. Now let's go back to me because I'm making content that is business focused and I'm answering business questions. I have reason to be on the mic every single day because business questions will never finish.
So I always have reason to be on the mic. When you want a news Jack, you know things are trendy in news cycles, but you know they only come around every once a month or something. So war in Gaza, you news Jack and then you do two or three pieces, but you can't do that forever. Things go quiet then let's see what else what happened next. I can't remember One more thing you use Jack, then things go quiet, then Guinness Book of World Records Nigerian is attempting it.
Then you use Jack. You see that your content production is going to be sporadic and it's also going to be disparate and disconnected from what it is that you actually do. So if you run an engineering firm or a project management consultancy, writing about all these things just because they are trendy, it's not doing anything in a way that brings eyeballs to your business. However, if you're able to newsjack in a way that highlights your skills or highlights your knowledge base,
then that's a different thing. If you have a project management consultancy and you're going to write about the war in Gaza showing how militants can use project management principles, you know, to help the guerrilla warfare, or the Israeli government can use project management principles in humanitarian efforts on either side of the battlefield. Can you see how you are news jacking, but you are using your skill set to like your news jacking, but you're using the news to throw attention on your area of speciality and your skill set?
That is the way to do it. So if you write about Tunde Onakoya and him trying to break the world record and you're talking about how you can use project management principles to defeat opponents, because part of the record is not just that you play for 24 hours, but that you play for 24 hours unbeaten. And he had a partner to help him break the world record, another chess player, but the fellow was American. So if you're going to write about how you can use project management principles to do the whole thing, look, I don't know anything about project management, so I'm just freestanding here.
I'm just guessing. But if you can do that, then you are news jacking in the right way. So please, if you must news Jack, it's not every single thing that you should write upon, tweet upon, blog upon, but if you must tweet, blog, write, make a podcast about whatever it is that is trending in the news. The proper way to news Jack is to see how you can lend your knowledge, your skill set, your expertise, your whatever to enrich or to pull out some insights or well, pull out some insights, inject some insights.
You get the whole idea. That's that's the proper way to news Jack to comment on the news, but in a way that reflects back on you, to show your own expertise and make you seem like you are a credible professional to work with. So a lot of you news jacking, please just give it a rest or if you must do it the right way. Another funny thing about news jacking is this because everybody is news jacking, now that I open up my LinkedIn or now that you open up your whatever, everybody's talking about the same thing Now.
Do you think you are going to stand out in business if you are talking and sounding exactly the same way that everybody is? It's a sea of sameness when I open my LinkedIn now because that's all everybody is talking about. I told somebody this, I don't think the person kind of gets my gist, but just look at it this way. If everybody is talking about the Guinness World Book of Record attempt, you open up LinkedIn. That is all you see.
So excuse me, but then you have a couple of folks like me, for instance, who are staying true on mission and writing about other things I want to write about. It is precisely at times like that, that our content stands out the most because everything is a sea of same. When was Gaza, everybody was writing Gaza. So if you're scrolling Gaza, Gaza, Gaza, Gaza, Gaza, Gaza, Gaza, and then next thing you know, my profile comes up.
Pattern interruption. You notice because I'm talking about something different. I'm not part of the sea of the same, so that's also another reason why you guys should be careful about newsjacking. You end up being part of the sea of the same. So in my own opinion, newsjacking it's not a bad idea. It's a good idea. A bunch of you are just going about it wrong. Learn how to newsjack the right way. Check Google. Just enter it in Google, enter it in ChatGPT or whatever AI
resource you use strategies for newsjacking and then follow those strategies instead of writing on Gaza today, world record attempt tomorrow. Who knows, maybe tomorrow there might be something out in the news about, I don't know, maybe the president having an affair and then you comment on that as well. And then maybe next month if famous pastor dies, then you comment on that as well. I mean, that's not hard to go about news jacking.
Anyway, let me go ahead and answer the question because we've done 10 minutes and this was not the main reason why I hopped on podcast today. So the difficulty of selling your fintech ideas in Nigeria, One of the problems that people have in the fintech space is a saturated market. But now some people say maybe, maybe not. But then again, I guess it's because it's a new space. But The thing is, you're paying attention to the blogs, what else?
The podcast, you know, it sounds as if new startups are starting up every other week or every month and there are loads of names that you can talk about in the Nigerian space. I mean, so like in the payment space, the space stack, the slaughter wave, and I mentioned that Paga has been around for a very long time. Feels like they've been around for forever. I don't know how long we've been around here. Then in Remytown, there's Quick Teller World Remit.
Let's see what else wealth management carry wise. OK, been seeing the advertisements here and there, Bamboo rice vest and you can go on and on and on. And tons of these companies and these are the ones that seem to have stuck around. We're not even talking about the ones that you hear about today and then they're gone tomorrow. So some people say no, it's not saturated. Some people say it's saturated. Well, but anyway, it's not a bad idea to learn how to differentiate yourself no matter what business area, what business segment, industry that you're playing in.
So assuming that we do have a saturated market when it comes to fintech ideas in Nigeria, then how do you stand apart? And these are a couple of suggestions. Number one is to try particular kinds of niches. Yes, we have discussed this in the previous episode where we spoke about how to stand. What was it? OK, I can't remember the exact way that worded it, but I think it was about how to stop yourself from being commoditized or something like that.
So one of the ideas that we explored in that episode was trying out a niche. And so you can try out a specific niche because most people, when they want to try and solve business problems, will be as general as possible. And a whole lot of these start up ideas, you know, seem to sound very general. Like for instance, all the start-ups that are trying to solve the problem, the problems of, you know, people in the UK, people in the US trying to send money back home.
I mean, they're all trying to solve the same problem essentially. So how do you make yourself sound different from the next company which was set up precisely to solve the problem of you're in the UK, Mumsy is in Niger, Popsy is in Niger, dependence are in Niger. You want to send money back home, How do you do it? So one way is to go niche. You know, instead of going abroad, go niche. People have looked at it different ways, Try things like maybe OK, only mobile money or maybe only POS or maybe only micro loans.
But let's look back to this, this whole thing of sending money back from the UKI mean, who knows, maybe if you niche according to regional affiliations, if that's the thing, I'm not even sure if that will be ethical or something. But let's say you happen to be known as that company who in Nigeria focuses on the east and maybe the eastern part of Nigeria and maybe the, the, what's up? What was that place called? You know, like Benin, you know,
I do something central, I can't remember. But let's say, you know, that part that focuses on maybe like I do people. And then you go all the way down to evil people and then you know, Donnie, and you know that part of the country. So that's one way of niching down because you'll be known as that company for Nigerians in diaspora who are trying to send money home, not by the general populace, but by evil people, by Delta people, by Edo people, by Asian people, by Adoni people,
by equary people, by, you know, all those sorts of things. For those of you who are not Nigerians listening to the episode, those are tribes or ethnicities that belong to a certain part of the country. So you know, that could be one way that you can leash and self set yourself apart. So leashing down, that's one way. And so I lost my train of thought, what was I going to say? OK, well, we've looked at niching down. OK, Yeah.
So I have one of the reasons why we have, we might have lots of fintechs. One of the reasons why we can explore lots of different niches, at least for now in Nigeria is because we have enlarged on bank population. So there's lots of opportunities there. And then with this population, we have people that have diverse needs. There's some people who are trying to sort out payments, you know, an internal thing like today went with Wi-Fi to the market, GTB card, you know,
normal, normal, it got declined twice and then dispenser or blah, blah, blah. So maybe that's a problem that you might try to solve, payments internal. Then there's the whole thing of what's it called? Not remittance, I can't remember what it's called. You know, this whole thing of people abroad trying to send money back home, that's a problem that you can try and solve. And there's also wealth management. So the bottom one I'm trying to say is that Nigeria, we have a large population, lots of these people are unbanked and people are having different problems.
So there are lots of ways that you can leash down South. Yeah. So niching, yeah, you can focus on geography, you can focus on on the served segments, which is kind of what I was going for when I was talking about people from a certain situation of the country. Because like when you see all the adverts and stuff like that, you know, it's obvious that when people are talking about. Anyway, let me stop before I say something that is politically incorrect.
So you can also focus on demographics. Am I trying to solve problems of people in rural areas or people in or, or the youth? Look at people's and financial needs. Are you going to niche down on micro loans segments or you never know. You can even come up with some fintech thing that is around Sharia compliance. You never know. You guys are smart, you guys and girls are smart, you know, you fintech people. So go ahead, give it a think,
see what kind of interesting products that you can come up with that actually solve problems that exist. Then another way of differentiating yourself is sorry about that has to come up with differentiated value propositions. OK, I'll put this, OK, OK, value prop basically is the reason that you give why people do business with you. So one of the reasons could be that you are more user friendly than the rest. Like GTB, they rolled out the banking app, that was the new banking app and the new interface.
Anyway, that was a while ago, a couple of months ago. And that was their thing, that it's supposed to be more user friendly. And I've heard lots of people attest to the fact that it is user friendly. But for me, I don't really see the difference because I have GTB, I have Access Bank. I think they're the same. I mean, the user face I think is user interface is the same, but people are going on and on about how the new GT app seems to be intuitive, you know, things like that.
So that can be a way that you differentiate yourself. There are some people who try to differentiate on low fees and cost, you know, where the lowest service provider is, where the cost effective, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah is not something that I prefer. Or rather I don't think it's something you should start with as a value proposition. You know, that we're cheapest or you save more or you know, something. I don't think we should all start off their way in businesses.
Then two or three episodes ago, I also spoke about how you can use partnerships to distinguish yourself and also gain access to other people's customer base. And the example that I gave was the app that partnered with the bank. And I remember the name of the bank now Sterling Bank. So they partnered with Sterling Bank, they came up with some app. So the app is not Sterling Bank's app. So the fintech boys and girls, they have the app and they're supposed to get access to several federal government grants.
So you're getting the grant. This app is in partnership with Sterling Bank, but you're not signing into your Sterling app to access the whole thing. You're signing into these people's app. And I spoke about how, you know, there are a couple of problems because one of my guys who was a photographer, he showed it to me and you know, he's glitchy. And in fact, he was even wondering whether it's a scam. And we checked online, seems like it's legit.
But I told the guy just going to the branch and talk to someone who might be someone who'll be able to help you sort this thing out. Anyway, business differentiation is not necessarily my area of speciality. So I'll leave it to you guys to go and check the interwebs, go and check Google and come up with ideas about how you can differentiate your business. If you're starting a fintech, there are some older ideas that we've explored on the podcast.
You know about how you can differentiate yourself through the sales process. And one of the reasons why I say you can do that is because if you sell different, you sound different, you appear different, then people will just assume that you are in fact different. So sometimes selling different from how everybody else sells can make you appear different. So when you're done listening to this episode, check previous episodes.
You might have to scroll a bit because you have done over 820 episodes so far. So thanks for your time and attention. Connect with me on WhatsApp. The phone number is 08064662140. The country code is +234. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn. My name is Tavishima Ayede, I'm the host of the show. You can confirm the spelling of my name and my e-mail address from the link. We're currently listening to this episode.
Thanks for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode. Sorry for the long rant about news jacking, but it's something that you guys seriously ought to consider. Like if there's any of you who are thinking of starting your fintech and you're using news jacking and you're using it wrong and I run into any of you in person, you don't want to give you guys a knock on the head because it's it's lame news Jack, but news Jack the right way.
Just use Google and you know, use Google, exercise your creativity and you find ways about how you can use news jacking strategies to work for you. So thanks for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode.