One of the strengths of my neurodivergence is pattern recognition. Aggressive pattern recognition, I see it everywhere and as a result it enables me to spot business opportunities and things like that almost everywhere. One of the earliest patterns that I sprout to a conclusion around when I was 21-22 years old was the idea that to be a billionaire you have to be at the top of a food chain.
You have to have gotten in early in something that was going to be successful. My example would be Mark Zuckerberg. The success of all the other people who started different types of social media platforms after him only made him richer.
That type of thing. It's almost like after a certain level of work your growth becomes automatic. It's weird sometimes when people are talking about being a billionaire.
Why is Elon Musk still trying to be a trillionaire? The work can help but he's not working hard to do that. He has to work harder to actually lose money than to become a trillionaire that he's just become now. Honestly, it's muscle memory for him at this point.
It's not work anymore so he's not wanting to become a trillionaire and becoming one. I think the only place, the only time you get that desire is if you want to be a millionaire and maybe a little reduced if you want to be a billionaire. But after that, I think after 500 million, money will no longer really be the motivator.
What do I know? But I've heard it from people who have made that money so that's what they say. And I believe them because why lie? This pattern came full circle for me when in uni I did Loom. Loom Ponzi schemes were reigning, MMM and the rest.
I did Loom. Loom was this one on Whatsapp. You know there's this circle, you join it, you be the other circle and you keep going in and inside you get paid.
Millennials and some Gen Z will know what I'm talking about. And so I scrapped 1000 Naira so that I could join Loom. I didn't even have a smartphone it was my roommate Pascal that had to join a group on my behalf and when I could scrape ah god I was broke as shit.
When I could scrape together 1000 Naira, I finally scraped it and gave him and then I realized that I'm probably the last person on earth to join Loom. Because as I said, as I joined that's how everything finished. Loom did not pay anybody that I heard of you know.
And that Ponzi scheme collapsed and that was 1000 Naira but for me you know the Loom money that I was expecting to come through from it would have done, imagine 1000 is big for you so imagine what 8k would have done for you. So I was really hurt by it and then I realized nobody becomes, most billionaires that I'm thinking of you know started something. They were at the top of the Ponzi scheme.
I wasn't getting ideas to start a Ponzi scheme. My idea was to get in early. If I'm going to sink my teeth in something I should not be one of the last people to be entering.
I should be one of the first. And then I just you know thought about this and it registered somewhere in my mind and I forgot about it and I went on to live my life. And then it was until that time in 2022 that I listened to that girl's podcast she sent to me and I'm like what is this stuff? Whatever this is I like it.
I want it you know to be able to just talk and then put it out of mood to listen. I know that's, I can't even add music. I'm mad.
So I wanted whatever that was I wanted to do that. And so I came into podcasting with passion from the angle of passion. I was doing my thing saying things that I wanted to say and I would say I even encountered early immediate success when I was from people around me.
You know the podcast was growing but it was a thing where I sent it every episode I sent it to my contacts to listen to that. I still do it send episodes to my contacts and then they in turn share it. So there's a there's a string of people who listen to my podcast and also knew me personally and I always have arguments in my dms with them about some of my opinions because my opinions then too were you know unorthodox and not even that it's still unorthodox.
The problem then was my delivery. You know I was very very rash and you don't know. See the younger you are the more you're not seeing how big life is.
So when you're focused on something you're just radical about it. I was always very radical and rash when speaking and I still attract a lot of attention. And so from a place of passion I began to now think about it as a thing that could potentially give me money and especially when all these other podcasts were coming around what views could do.
And for a while that was really my focus for a long time. So I thought I would call up until this point the midpoint of the existence of the podcast and I remember that period is when I was always like heavy on making videos at least like those were not really the style I wanted to. It's just that podcast came into this country and and took a different shape for it to be able to go mainstream and which is the televised interview shape.
You know that one-on-one connection with the audience. I don't want the audience of my podcast to be like fans watching something that they are not they're not talking to them. I want it to be very very even if there's a guest it should still feel you know like the conversation but unfortunately you cannot talk you know but you feel a certain level of connection beyond just the message that is passed that you want to come back next time because you know there's a depth of connection there.
And I don't think those interviews do that you know it's almost like the Adora versus the Adored. So we that are watching those talk shows are Adora and the people on TV are the Adored. That dynamic I don't want that.
But that's what became popular so I was trying to you know do that dynamic to making doing interviews I'm trying to get celebrities on popular people on my show you know and I had a lot of friends and family that would always be be very very encouraging you know trying to say oh yeah I know this person I know this person yeah you should probably call him so I wasn't really thinking what is this podcast about and what are we saying it was like yeah maybe this guy will make me go viral and then maybe after I go viral I can start saying I can start you know doing it the way that I really enjoy it which does not make sense because most times people are doing what they want to do and then when they become viral and start having all this external attention and pressure that is when they change to fit the public you know so I was basically chasing the public to no real success. So it was like flipped I just said I'm just gonna just gave up on looking at the podcast as a business opportunity. I already have a sort of income that I'm comfortable with so so I should be able to take off the pressure from from my podcast and I just do it for fun.
It was almost as soon as I do that somebody said aha he has done it and turned off his switch or on a switch and then the podcast has become has become more valuable and the new ideas here's the thing when you put fence and barriers eh around your life that is when you actually have more freedom let me explain when I was doing videos the idea of podcasting was broad for me when they say podcast in my mind I'm thinking towards video and I'm also thinking about distribution on Deezer, iHeartRadio and I'm also thinking of distribution on YouTube and Instagram and some of these video platforms so it was broad and so my creativity had too much surface area and not enough depth but when I decided look one of my favorite forms of recording podcast or working with podcast is audio is the idea of audio and how much connection it can foster I decided whatever I'm doing podcast where it's going to be audio only and in that way my creativity would work in depth in terms of how to make audio better and it's almost like instead of working in this large surface area you come out a little square and you start digging and you see that under that square is a whole new world that you can explore and it's more fulfilling to do so and that's what I found with audio you can if you can make it rich make it exciting you reward the people who stay for that format of content and that's what I want to do the success of the Good Living Podcast with the with the amount of growth it gained around that period then I knew that there was a mark there was a there was a market for this there's an audience for this I wasn't just doing this for with a few people you know they could actually be hundreds of thousands of people listening to stuff to content in this format they just haven't been exposed to it yet and then I saw the business opportunity in it and then I remembered you know I talked to myself this is me getting in early in something yeah podcasts are everywhere now you know trust me it's in Nigeria that podcasts are everywhere in one format yeah podcasts are everywhere in other places but in this country nobody really is doing it the way I intend to and that way works there's a guy they call Alex Lumberg he has a company called Gimlet. Gimlet is a podcast production company just like Good Living just Google Gimlet or Google Wondery or Google Noiser now these are podcast networks from other countries hugely successful but I've seen the blueprint of these people and how it always starts with passion and then the opportunity is just too too good to be ignored and underestimated because it is not the numbers around podcasting are not popular the numbers are there but advertisers and all this but nobody's really looking at that field like after it's almost like this hidden gem thing otherwise it's really difficult and I've given up on really explaining the opportunity to people I might be saying this to them but I'm like what's the point you know so I've given up on doing that I don't know if you notice even when I wanted to do interviews on Good Living I was always looking to talk to professionals like people from different distinct unique walks of life I don't know how much I express this that I'm expressing now but but there is evidence of it so I had a list where I said I wanted to have lawyers, doctors, these people that people of different profession, mortuary attendant, prisoner you know with different experiences in life because I was trying to target niche audiences via podcasting and really create a connection with them each of them and thus I wanted to do interviews with these people and then I now realized how a podcast network works and I realized that I could do this by launching different podcasts targeted at them as opposed to deviating from the essence of Good Living which of the Good Living podcast which is this and going out on my way to do interviews you know and starve my core audience why do that when I can simply create a new podcast it may take time it may take energy and effort and all that but the people are there it's just to package the content and get it to them that's what I want that's what gives me fulfillment and then it's a business model that already works so for me starting the podcast network felt like a business opportunity that coincides with my life purpose and this business opportunity is just about maturing in my lifetime and that's how I've decided to chase it you know I've launched a few different podcasts at this point when I'm speaking to you now we have a podcast launching in July my wish and plan is that I have the whole season down before it starts coming out in July that's what I want to do for all the podcasts like I have a period of production which is this year between now and the end of the year I consider that to be my period of production I will be collecting episodes editing episodes scheduling them you know working on marketing and stuff like that for all these different podcasts but in the meantime there's a lot of work to do at this moment Real Matters only starts airing on the 20th of this month of July and I've only got one quarter of the episode one quarter of the season scheduled so I still got the majority of work to do the podcast launching in September as well I have two episodes down so I think that one gives me more favorable timeline that's the one that I can actually get that and Nigerian weight loss stories those are the two that I think I can have the full season down and really watch and to be fair those are the ones that I have much more faith in because Real Matters only is a podcast that has already existed yeah it may do better but I don't think that's exactly what's going to bring our first sponsorship or anything like that next up I'm traveling I'm making a couple of trips one to talk to the hosts of possible hosts of some future podcasts to get stories for Nigerian weight loss stories because the format of that one is not one single host it's different stories from different people I need to see my lawyer also so we can understand the legal implications of my business and how to navigate that side of things if you have a contract with these people that I'm working with the podcasters and these are that you know to develop structures and systems efficiently with proper legal backing and after that trip I think I would have tied up the knots and be ready for the release of Real Matters only and then what would eventually be the full announcement of the podcast network the essence is to really use this podcast to unbox and deconstruct my thought patterns around the network and maybe while I'm talking or from even insights from the listeners I can I can get ideas you know we can walk through this together it'll be fantastic for you guys to see the beginning and the eventual success of it fingers crossed because one thing doing was the NYC series you know being able to go back to a point in time where I was recording how things were going on in real time and recapture those feelings and appreciate how far I've come that's something I'd like to do often I think many people should do is yeah posting pictures does that but you know if you're recording it in writing or in words coming back to it coming back to this episode when when there is some uncertainty and I know there's a lot of difficulty in front I mean how fulfilling is it going to be that's the essence of this stuff and I'm trying to I'm going to try to be as honest what's going on right here