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Hello and welcome to the show. If you've been enjoying our relationship so far, if you've been enjoying the episodes, then when you're done listening to this one, please leave a rating and a review. Okay, apologies, today's an out and about recording, so expect to hear the usual interruptions. Although today I don't think I'm close to any chickens, so we shouldn't get any interruptions from chickens.
So today we're going to look at building a powerful personal brand. But before we do that, I'd like to talk about something that has come up in the news, or at least the kind of news that I follow. There's a podcast that I listened to called Tech Point, Tech Point Africa podcast. I think that's the name, Tech Point Africa podcast. But they usually have Tech Point in all their branding, so if you just take your podcast player and type in Tech Point Africa, Nigeria, something like that, they should show up. And in that news, they spoke about a Kenyan company that is a FinTech, that just raised funding for their series B, and they're able to raise $20 million. Now the reason why I'm bringing this up today is just to let you guys know that a lot of the stuff that we talk about here on the podcast is not just theoretical. It's highly practical, it's real world, it's stuff that is going on. So when I'm making the podcast episode about how to sell your FinTech ideas in Nigeria, it's not because I'm trying to be high for lootin'. It's just that this is stuff that is going on right now, so people are actually doing that. So you have bright young boys and girls in Nigeria and in Kenya, coming up with interesting FinTech ideas and raising good funding for it. Because $20 million, it might not be much in terms of dollars, but by the time you come back home to the African continent, exchange rates, you multiply that,
and it's quite a good chunk of change to start your business idea. Now the company in question, I didn't note down the name because I was doing my usual. When I'm listening to podcasts, I'm just out and about driving. Oh by the way, when I'm listening to my podcast and I'm driving, I'm not using headphones, so don't do anything silly. I'm using Bluetooth through the car speakers and then going for a stroll, stuff like that, so I didn't write down the name of the company. But I do remember that the problem that they're trying to solve, that's the Kenyan company, is they're trying to make insurance accessible to low income farmers.
Because we don't have a culture of insurance in Nigeria and apparently we don't have a culture of insurance in Kenya either. And with the kind of losses that low income farmers face, okay let's bring it back to Nigeria, you know, banditry, full -on -e issues, you know, they come and destroy your farm crop. What else? You know, you get the whole idea. Oh and then climate change,
changing weather, you know, all those sorts of things. So the losses that the low income farmers are making is quite high and then there's nobody in the space, whether it's a government or private actors, that are making good on these losses. So that is what this fintech, there's a problem that this fintech is trying to solve. Now they mentioned on the podcast, you know, which is quite true that in this part of the world, you know, we don't send insurance, you know, God is in control of everything and I'll sort myself out if anything happens. So if you go and tell low income farmers that hey buy our insurance product and then people are just going to laugh at you. Because well first off, what are you saying? What is insurance? So what this fintech did was they partnered with banks in Kenya and with government agencies so that the insurance premiums, you know, the monies that would be paid and all what not are priced into seedling price, fertilizer, you know,
things of that nature. Now because I'm not in that space, I'm not an agric person, I don't know the details of how this sort of thing works, but I just wanted you guys to see that the things that we're talking about here are live and practical. And one of the recommendations that I gave in the episodes where I spoke about selling your fintech ideas in Nigeria, you know,
I did talk about how you should partner with local agencies because it gives you access to other stakeholders and a wider customer base. So you can see that people are carrying out these ideas live. So these young boys and girls in Kenya, oh and by the way, the reason why Tech Point was talking about it, Tech Point Nigeria was talking about it was because they also plan to do operations in Nigeria as well to get low income farmers on insurance products. Yeah,
okay, yeah, so one of the things I spoke about is how you could partner with banks and you can see it live and direct that people over in Kenya, well obviously without listening to the podcast. Who knows, maybe they listen to the podcast. That is one of the strategies that they are trying to do, they are partnering with banks and they are partnering with governments so that they can gain access to low income farmers who are underserved in the financial value chain. So yeah, so that was me just sharing the news, just to let you guys know that all the things we talk about here on the podcast are topical, they are timely,
they are applicable, it's not just theory. So maybe you might listen to a podcast episode and think, hmm, this doesn't apply to me. But rest assured, I'm looking for concrete topics and I'm trying to answer concrete questions. So rest assured it applies to someone and the best that we can do is to take these principles and theories and even if it doesn't apply to us now,
see how we can find corollaries that apply to our own business context today. So now that we're done with the news and that is out of the way, let's go straight to the question on building a powerful brand. Now, for those of you who have been listening from the beginning, you know because I have strut it time and time again that the whole point of this podcast is not to come and talk about things like brand. In fact, I am the anti -brand guy. So brand is primarily, is not my primary focus. But however, whenever I am out in public engagement,
whether it's one on one trainings or things like that, the question ultimately comes up, how do I build a powerful brand? So as much as I am the anti -brand guy and I try to stay away from talking about brands, I always get the question about brands and so I guess I can avoid it. And some of you may have been listening to the podcast. We have over 830 episodes now.
I'm sure some of you have listened to a couple, maybe a few dozen or maybe a hundred and you're thinking, why is this guy not talking about brand? So today's your day. I'm going to talk about brand. So the reason why I don't talk about brand on the podcast is because I think it is not the most important thing that you need to get your business going. Also because I think that sales and business development already has implications for brand perception anyway. In other words, if you do sales right and you do business development right,
you are already reinforcing your brand. So that's my own thesis. And so we are going to examine that today to see how sales and business development principles can help reinforce your brand. So I'm talking about brand but in a way I'm wearing around about and I'm talking more about sales and how that can influence your brand. So if you've been listening to the podcast for any length of time, you know that I
keep talking about how sales practices and principles have implications for brand. And one of them is uniformity and consistency. And that's a problem that lots of people face. You know, when you go and you get a brand person first, these are some of the mistakes that you make. You go ahead and then you create this wonderful, compelling brand. Then you start your actual business and interact with customers. And then the customer experience and all what not now becomes that odd with this brand that you guys created in the strategy room or at your board meeting or whatever. Let me give an example. The few of yous are back in Abuja. I
was queuing to buy fuel a couple of days ago. It was a two hour wait, but luckily, okay, no, not two hours. Let's say more like one hour 30, one hour 45. So luckily I was queuing at night and this was a filling station that I was going to sell late into the night. So we was cool and it wasn't too hot and uncomfortable. And then a NEPA truck pulls in. Well, first of all, it's not NEPA. It's now called the Power Holding Corporation of Nigeria. So for those of you who are not Nigerians, those are the people who are responsible for our power infrastructure to make sure that we get electricity. So the thing comes in and it's the brand clearly is on is there on the truck and it says PHCN. So not even PHCN, it says I'm AEDC. That's the Abuja Electricity Development Corporation. Now power has been really crappy around where I live in in a boat in Gherki in Abuja. And so the thing pulls in on the queue and then all of a sudden the attendants start hurling insults at the AEDC officials. And of course the brand is there on the truck saying AEDC, but everybody keeps calling them NEPA. So you see what I mean? I'm sure billions of Naira.
Okay, maybe not billions. Millions of Naira was probably spent on coming up with the PHCN branding and with the AEDC branding. But on the streets, everybody is still calling you NEPA. Then people are harassing them because the logo on the truck was a beautiful logo and then he had that, what's it called? Something about the you and everything. You know how everybody today when they're coming up with brands, they try to make the brand all you focused on. You know that whole thing. And well anyway, I'm not legitimizing what was happening because even though we have misgivings towards our public utility companies, it doesn't give you the right to start harassing NEPA officials and water board officials because they're in the Nigerian space like we are.
They're suffering the same sorts of inequities that we are. So they are angry just like we are. So the fellow on the queue, QA also for two hours just like us was also angry. So it doesn't give you the right. So lots of money spent on the brand. Let's see what else on the brand positioning, but it doesn't adequately reflect the reality that is on the ground. But if, let's say AEDC decided to do what it is I
recommend, which is engage a sales professional first. With sales professionals, you're able to pick out where the customer experience is flawed, where things are breaking down, where you need to improve. Because these are things that you need to work on before you can drive revenue and would have been able to come up with a much more honest brand positioning at the end of the day. Because if my guess is if they had a sales professional first to come in and to look at the whole thing,
it will be obvious that these companies AEDC, Ikeja, Distribution Company back in Lagos and all these other companies are dealing with insurmountable problems to try and deliver electricity to people. And I think if they come up with a engage the services of a sales professional first, whatever branding that they would have come up with later on would have been built around themes or ideas of working harder to service you or working harder to improve your life or whatever. And that actually is much more honest brand positioning that customer service people, that their engineers and people like that can actually rally around.
Because you can actually say that we are working hard to service you or working hard to improve your position and working hard to whatever. Because it would have been a much more honest narrative that would have come out of trying to solve problems on the ground rather than sitting in a boardroom under air conditioner and thinking what should our brand positioning be. And then you spend millions of Naira and then come up with something and then it's ineffective. Now,
I deliberately picked the worst possible example to go with on purpose just to show you how wrong these sorts of things can get. That you have corporations because now AEDC, Ikeja, DC, Power Holding Corporation, what people now call NEPA, they are actually private companies. But it shows you the extent to how bad things can go. That private corporations can spend plenty of money bringing brand and public relations people. You come up with wonderful campaigns that have no relations or what's that word, no relations. Yeah,
let me stick with relations, no relations to what it is actually is going on the ground. So that's one of the reasons why I recommend that you get a salesperson first because we salespeople, we're not pying the sky, we're not thinking about high -financy things. As is just, okay, we're here, what's the problem, where the revenue shortfalls, who are the customers, what are the problems we're facing,
how can we solve all our problems. And in the midst of trying to solve all these problems, we get a lot of data that is going to be useful for the brand people later on. So if you're calling a meeting with your branding folks, you say, this is who we are, these are the customers we service, these are the problems that we solve, these are the challenges that we have,
this is where we want to go. You can come up with a much more honest narrative. So that's more for all thesis. But in a micro context, in a smaller way of breaking it down, if you're doing good sales and business development practices, you're going to get a uniform and consistent process. So if you run an electricity company like my brothers and sisters in AADC, then there's going to be a uniformity or consistency with the engineering crew,
with the customer service crew, with the people in corporate office, with head office, because we can't solve sales problems if everybody is singing from the wrong script. So we actually have to make sure that everybody is singing off of the same script, the same framework, the same processes. And then if you do sales right, it leads to an improved customer experience. And like I said, you get all the data that you need from trying to run sales motions and business development practices,
because going out, you own the customer relationship, you're trying to figure out who the customers are, you're trying to figure out what their problems are, you're trying to figure out the best way to pitch your product and your service. You get a lot of data that can help you inform what logo should I use, what color will resonate with these people, what kind of font will resonate with these people, what kind of tagline should we use that these people, sorry, by the way, when I say these people, I mean our customers, what kind of tagline should we use that will resonate with these people and stuff like that.
So how are we going to go about our marketing positioning? So it's only when we try to do sales right that we get all of this information, all of this data on our ideal customer profile, then we're able to work on our branding and our market positioning. Okay, so 15 minutes. Now let me give you guys some concrete steps on things that you need to do to build a powerful brand.
Okay, yeah, so let's look at some concrete steps. So number one, define your niche and expertise because there's no point in building a brand in vacuum. So all these other brands that you guys like, whether Coca -Cola or Nike or Apple, they have a clear idea of who it is that they're trying to target. So when Apple is coming up with all their brand positioning and things like that, Apple is not bothered about me because when I
say me, I mean me, Tavish Amar is an individual, because they know that somebody like Tavish Amar, when it comes to tech, I'm a prostitute basically. So right now I'm using the Xiaomi 13C. I really love its capabilities, really powerful phone, solid phone, and I suspect that I will use, buy another Xiaomi when I'm moving on from this one. But I've used everything. I've used Nokia, I've used Samsung, I'm using Xiaomi,
I've used, okay, I haven't used Techno, but I'm prostitute when it comes to phones. So I move up and down. So Apple is not concerned about me. The branding, their positioning, their targeting, their everything, you know, is tied towards, is trying to attract a certain kind of person. Gosh, how I like explain this. Okay, you know what, let me not say the wrong thing and then I get into trouble because maybe it sounds like I'm insulting iPhone users. But you guys get the point. So Apple is not worried about me. They are not trying to come up with branding or advertising or positioning that is going to capture people like me. So because they know the niche, the market they serve, the customer they serve, it helps them to come up with very precise and clear branding. So you need to know that. And running good sales plays helps you with that.
Because it's when you go out into the market and you try to chase a couple of people that you realize that, you know what, these kind of people like our product, these kind of people don't like our product. So in future, let us ignore men between the ages of social so on, so living in this part of the city in Nigeria who earn this kind of income. And let us only target women and senior citizens between the age of this and this,
earning so on, so living in this part of the country and blah, blah, blah. So all these things, the demographics and the psychographics, they're important in coming up with your brand. So define your niche, define your expertise. And in my own opinion, please do not define your niche and your expertise in the boardroom. Don't sit down in your house with your business partner or with your husband or your wife and then academically try and define who your niche is. Come up with a guess. Now,
okay, for this business that we're going to do, we're going to target blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then go out in the market to try and see that you might drum off some business. You will discover that your people where you make the most money from and that you have the best relationships might not be the same kind of people that you thought of when you were sitting down in your room or in the boardroom or when you were meeting with your investors or other stakeholders or whatever. So define your niche, define your expertise. Then another tip that I'm going to give is that you guys should be creating content consistently. Move on social media because it's also one of the things that helps to define our brand. And in my own opinion, the content you should be putting out should be to showcase your expertise because we're trying to become a trusted resource.
If you're one of these people who wants to put out entertaining content, you want to be pointing and dancing and TikTok and stuff like that. Yeah, that's also part of building a brand, but it's not something that I have expertise in. You know, I don't dance, I don't point, I don't work. So I can give advice on that. So that's the kind of content I think you guys should be putting out. Then one thing that I want to point is regarding social media is that we should be deliberate with our social media. So that means when I say deliberate, I mean come up with an idea and come up with a plan. Don't jump from one thing to another. So back with this whole thing of trends and everything.
If you are pointing and dancing today, trying to put out expert content tomorrow, then putting out memes next tomorrow, and then taking pictures of what it is that you eat and then sharing pictures of your children on Saturday and Sunday. That's a little bit all over the place and doesn't lead to a consistent brand. So you need to be deliberate and come up with one thing, one core idea and then just push it from there. Now I'm going to use the worst possible examples again that I can come up with just to prove a point. Now let's look at former President Trump for those of you who are Americans.
And then for those of us who are Nigerians because we know what's up, what's going on in America, what's going on over here. Let's use current President Tinumbu. Now it is obvious that Trump is deliberate about social media. He knows who he is talking to and that determines the kind of content that he puts up. So whether you like Trump or not, it is very clear that he is deliberate about what he puts up. Now our beloved President on the other hand, doesn't seem to be, you know, they don't use social media in a deliberate manner. So between the two, I'm not saying one person is good and one person is bad, but I'm asking the question,
between Trump and Tinumbu, those of you Nigerians who are listening, who has a clear brand? Does Tinumbu have a clear brand? The answer is no. Does Trump have a clear brand? The answer is yes. So regardless of whether you fall, when it comes to political affiliations or whatever, the whole point about social media is that we need to be deliberate and we need to be very clear who am I talking to.
That will now inform how it is that you use social media to enhance your brand. But then again, if you're like a current President, you know, Tinumbu and coming up with a brand is not important because you have other plans for trying to achieve what you want to achieve. And I guess you can shirk the whole branding thing. But for those of us who are in private practice,
corporate practice, business practice, we can't run away from these issues. We have to be deliberate about our branding and our market positioning. Then we should also be networking to try and build our brand. We're trying to build professional alliances and collaboration. So we have to be deliberate about networking. Then when it comes to brand building, really have to be authentic. And you know, that's where the AEDC, former network companies, that's where they fall flat. You know, there's no authenticity there. They're talking pie in the sky.
They're talking aspirational. This is what we want to do and everything. But they're not being authentic. They're not having an honest conversation using their own perspectives. So in your own business, don't fall into that whole trap. Use your own perspective. And don't copy other people and make sure that you're talking about stuff that is relevant to your own audience. So,
okay, I started off in the wedding photography space. So let me go back to my constituency. There are wedding planners who try to do a premium brand positioning and all those sorts of stuff. So like, why are you forming premium brand positioning when you're the kind of company that your clients, the halls that they use are? Maybe these halls in Garuki, maybe like those halls in area 8 or area 3, area 10, those kind of small halls. And you're putting premium positioning. I
mean, who are you kidding? That is not a premium experience. Be authentic. If that is the kind of market that you're serving, that particular kind of demographic. Sorry, by the way, I'm not trying to talk down to... Okay, let me stop there before I get cancelled or say something wrong. What I'm just trying to say is I'm not trying to talk down to anyone. I'm just saying that let's be honest, let's be authentic.
If you're not doing premium nothing, then don't try and put premium messaging as part of your branding and market positioning. Let's keep things authentic to our perspectives, to our experience, to your own lived experience and things like that. So don't copy anybody. The people who are doing premium brand positioning, the bigger halls in wedding halls, who say to those halls that sit 2500 people and you're able to call Davido to perform for the audience and things like that at the wedding. You know, those kind of wedding planners, yes, they're doing positioning themselves as premium brands. You know, it's okay for them because it's authentic to them because it is part of their perspective and part of their lived experience.
If you're not there yet, then don't try and make that as part of your brand positioning. Keep everything authentic. It also will make your marketing communications much more clearer. If you're positioning yourself as premium brand, but the market that you serve is actually the area 8, area 10, area 3 crowd and they see premium. They will think, ah, this guy is expensive, this girl is expensive and they will run away. She actually might be shooting yourself in the foot by doing that whole premium branding positioning thing when actually you are not.
So, if you're not there, who say to massive event hall, importing musicians from Lagos, kind of wedding planner, watch area 8, wedding planner, area 3 wedding planner, you know, then just keep your branding, keep your messaging, keep it authentic. Let me put it that way. Okay, over 20 minutes. Let me bring things to a stop. So anyway, that's it for today. Let's see, summary. What did I say? Anyway,
in summary, I just said that sales has implications for how you do branding. So do good sales and business development practices first. When you have all the data on who is your customer, how do you start conversations, where do your customers live, how do you build relationships with them, what are the kinds of conversations that you have. When you sorted out all these things with your sales team, then you can now call a branding person to say, Olga brand specialist,
Madam brand specialist, please help us come up with branding, document, brand positioning, everything. And this is all the information that we have for you. Then those people will be able to do a very good job because they have all the information they need. It won't be people sitting down under the AC and guessing about what the brand should be. It will be because you've done good business and you know because you've been, you know, your shoes are on the ground. You're interacting with your customers. So you know for a fact that these are what your customers like. This is what they care about.
This is what they hate. This is what they wish people could do better. You'll not be able to come up with a solid business brand or the personal brand. But remember that you also have to be deliberate about it and we should also be authentic about it. So let's not copy what other people do. Another person's brand looks really nice. It doesn't mean it should be your brand, their own experience, their own customers, their goals,
their shortcomings, their relationships are different from yours. So thank you very much guys for your time and attention. Remember to follow me, connect with me on WhatsApp. The phone number is 080 -64662140 and the country code is 234. Then connect with me on socials, especially LinkedIn where I spend most of my time. My name is Tavishima Ayede. I'm the host of the show. You can confirm the spelling of my name from the link we are currently listening to this episode. My email address is there in case you're an email person as well. So thanks for your time and attention. I'll catch you guys at the next episode.