Building 101 (PT 3): Lessons from a Nigerian Founder

Since Buhari banned Twitter in Nigeria I have wondered how exactly I am going to get our solution to the most active audience I have ever seen in Nigeria. If you are reading this and you are not Nigerian I doubt you would understand. Twitter has a spirit that moves people to create virtual communities. People share each other's businesses, show support, crowdfund, and read the insightful threads posted. Since the ban, a lot of people are no longer very active on Twitter. Many fully-funded scholars from Nigeria and other African countries are very active on Twitter. They share useful tips, cold email templates, and current scholarship opportunities. Heck, they even shared my Scholarship Hack 1.0 event. Anyways, we will be all right.

Just in case you missed the Scholarship 1.0, you can check it out. I have included the video here, just because I am awesome.

After the success of Scholarship Hack 1.0, we decided to do Scholarship Hack 2.0 just because we are awesome. We set out early to get a facilitator. We also ensured we kept in touch with our growing email list. We even started to get replies. These very little things make me really really happy.

And filled with expectation because of our initial positive feedback, we went about the second event in a somewhat absent-minded manner. We took a lot of things for granted. If you are reading this, I want you to know that I genuinely want others not to have my negative experiences. When we successfully raise funding, I will let you know too, along with everything we did wrong. I am not perfect. I just really like to reflect on the things I do and make amends for future actions.

Where was I? Yes, yes, the event. We did not send the bulk SMS like clockwork like we did the last time. We also did not resend all our emails to the subscribers who did not click. ConvertKit is my plug for email marketing by the way. We spent too much time preparing our copy that we did not pay enough attention to our publicity. This resulted in a lower turn out than the first event.

I have learnt not to be too excited to really do the things that matter.

Just in case you are wondering just how badly the event turned out. You can check out the recorded webinar below.

And no, the webinar itself was great. We just did not have the number of attendees we had anticipated.

The second mistake we made was pitching our copy wrong. We targeted on the spot sales instead of leads. You can target on the spot sales if your product or offer is so good someone actually makes a request to but immediately. In almost every other case, you take down customer information and follow up the leads. We tried selling on the spot. And guess what? Nobody bought. And we had zero leads because we did not give out a link with which interested participants could drop their details.

Always get the customers details even when they just ask for payment link or account details. What if they face challenges and are unable to complete the transaction? 

The good news is that I and the team have learnt from the experience. We are loking at the bright side of it all. We have a community of close to 500 people we have identified as interested in opportunities. We have gotten four subscribers and one of them is a premium subscriber. We are everyday seeing that our dream is possible and this in itself is a blessing.

Remember that you will not get everything right the first time. How you choose to respond to the things that eventually happen is more important than the things that happen.

I have some good news. We are going ahead with Scholarship Hack 3.0 this Sunday and hosting Scholarship Hack 4.0 next week Saturday. Having a network of scholars has been the highlights of our journey so far.

I hope you find the courage to fail at the things you really want to do so that you stand a better chance of success in the future.

I will write you again soon.

Cheers,

Osita.

PS: Here is a throwback of my pitch of the Flourish Opportunities Network (FON) to the Enugu Youth Entreprenuers Network (EYEN) last year. Then it was called Thrive. Try not to laught too much.