Not sure I’ve ever told anyone this story, but I just remembered my 2nd year in the university when I lost over 30k on sports betting.
Oh, I’m ahead of myself right now.
The story starts from when I won N24k one weekend with just N1,000.
Aside from my scholarship and managing my parents’ business, that was the largest money I’d ever made on my own.
This was 2013/14 and we were in the middle of writing exams, I was living with my friend Somto and that weekend we balled hard.
But what’s even crazy was the next weekend I won another 25k with N1,000 and the whole hostel heard it. Bought beer for all the boys. Come and see hailing!
We even cooked one special pot of vegetable soup to celebrate.
I thought I’d arrived.
In such circumstances, the natural thing is to increase your stakes.
If I’m making N25,000 with N1,000, I could easily make N50,000 with N2,000, N125,000 with N5,000 or even N250,000 with N10,000.
I think it was the Devil talking to me.
Because just before the next semester began, I lost over N30,000 within one weekend.
My school fee was N20,100. I almost dropped out.
Thank God I managed to make it up and pay it though.
Well, why I’m sharing this story is because my friend Gbenga just showed me how to make as much as N400,000 every month on sports betting websites like NairaBet, 1xbet and Bet9ja without placing a single bet, without owning a betting shop and without predicting any game.
According to him, it takes just 3 hours to set up and he explains how he does so in this short video. Click the link below to watch it.
I knew Toyin Omotoso from when I attended Akin Alabi’s YECO event while serving in Ibadan in early 2019.
Started following him, Ronald Nzimora, Biola Kazeem and most of the people who spoke at YECO. Turned on notifications too.
But it wasn’t until late 2019 when he put out this tweet talking about learning Spanish did I get to finally interact with him.
I started with teaching him Spanish 2hrs a day 2 or 3x a week, but by sheer divine providence he took it upon himself to teach me copywriting, sales, advertising and the entire marketing caboodle.
In 2020, I ended up becoming his protege, became the in-house copywriter and Digital Content Manager for 7Star Support Systems Nigeria, and collaborated on several projects too.
All this might not sound like much to most of you but going from teaching Spanish for 2k/hour to working with one of the greatest marketing minds in the whole of Africa, and still making money off of it for me is something you only get to see in movies.
It’s been a crazy ride this past 1 year but below are the 19 things I learned from working with @toyinomotoso in 2020.
1. Everything Is For Sale.
Pet rocks. Sparkling water. Small e-books with all kinds of information. Waist trainers. Diet plans. Exercise routines. People will buy anything, as long as it’s important to them and they can afford it.
That little piece of knowledge you have that seems common to you could be the difference between poverty and massive wealth for you. Someone somewhere needs it. And they’ll pay you for it if you can make it available to them.
2. The Offer Is King.
“I’ll make him an offer he cannot refuse.” – Don Vito Corleone (The Godfather)
Lots of salesman and marketers talk about different tactics and strategies for making a sale, but nothing beats an irresistible offer.
Your customers want to believe your product or service is the best offer (or at least the second-best) they are getting from the market.
Your irresistible offer is how you get the customer and also how you crush your competition.
3. There’s A Marketing Angle In Almost Every Story, It’s Your Job To Find It.
Everything has become an opportunity for me to learn since I started working in marketing over the last year. Books, movies, conversations, experiences etc.
These days I’ve learned to find a marketing angle even in the most mundane stories. This helps with creating powerful leads and story arcs.
People also love it when you share a story with them about an experience they can relate to.
4. Principles Are Everything.
To achieve anything worthwhile in any endeavour, it’s important to understand the principles and roots first.
Those principles form the foundation and everything is built on them. Which is why as a salesman, it’s important to always have it at the back of your mind that even if everything changes, human nature never does.
Human nature is what drives every emotion, which drives every single sale and purchase. You’re making a mistake if you don’t pay attention to how people behave.
5. Focus.
a. Focus on what’s important and ignore every other thing. There are all distractions towards your end goal.
Instead of doing 20 low-quality things, how about you just focus on 2 and make them the highest quality possible?
b. Focus on your strengths, outsource every other thing if you can afford it. This will free up time and energy for you to focus on what’s important. If you can’t afford it, then keep working till you can.
c. Most people are lazy and distracted today. You can become a god in your chosen field if you just ‘outfocus’ them.
6. Listen.
Has someone ever told you you’re easy to talk to?
Well, the truth is you might not even be easy to talk to in the actual sense, but once people notice you listen to them, they believe you’re easy to talk to.
Plus, you pick up more from listening than from talking. People naturally open up to you when they know you’re willing to listen to them talk about their problems. Sometimes, they don’t even want a solution or an answer to their problem, they just want to vent. Most people eventually figure it out themselves.
Listening is also how you become a better copywriter and salesman. You learn about your prospect’s problems by listening and paying attention.
7. Just Do It.
Start first. Make mistakes. Correct them. Keep going. Learn along the way. You never what it’s going to be like until you take risks.
I think I should do this more 😁
8. Stay Curious: You Start Dying The Day You Stop Learning.
Your job as a copywriter/salesman means you have to keep learning till the day you die. You are required to know about a lot of things and how they work.
That’s how you create winning ads. That’s how you create better presentations. That’s how you create powerful leads. That’s how you get better clients. That’s how you do great work.
Read books. Research different topics. Watch instructional videos. Listen to podcasts. Try new things and new experiences. Always be looking to learn something new every day.
9. Quality Over Quantity, But Quantity Begets Quality.
Every day in this digital marketing world, we hear a story about someone who has made hundreds of millions of dollars from putting together an incredible offer. But nobody asks how many times they had to try or how many different things they had to do or how many projects they failed at or how many duds they had put out before or how many years it took them to get to that level.
The truth is to get to the level where you consistently put out quality work, you might have to put out a lot of mediocre work at the beginning. But consistently improving on them and getting better is how you eventually win. Which leads me to the next lesson.
10. Practice, Practice, Practice.
Ask Ronaldo, Ask Kobe Bryant, Ask Michael Jordan. Consistency is how you win. Which is why you have to keep practising every day.
11. Just One Good Offer + One Good Sales Copy Can Change Your Life.
“Just one good sales letter is what will change your life as a copywriter. It changed my life. It changed Ronald’s life. It changed Akin Alabi’s life.” – Toyin Omotoso
12. Garbage In, Garbage Out/What You Sow, You Reap.
What you consume is what you give out. Consume quality and you give out quality. Consume garbage and you give out the garbage.
13. There’s Money Everywhere.
But first, you need to understand the difference between you and the guy who has money is value. And then when you do, add value too. That’s how you make money.
14. Attention Is Scarce But Money Is Plenty.
People will pay through their nose for what they are interested in, but first, you need to find out what is this thing they are interested in and then figure out how to get their attention.
If you can get their attention, manage to hold their interest and then give them an irresistible offer, they’ll chase you down with their wallets open.
15. Strive For More.
Toyin Omotoso once sent out an email where he said he gave himself a target to be one of the best guys doing marketing in Nigeria when he first started. Years later, he feels he should have set his goals higher. I’ve never forgotten. This has stuck with me ever since.
16. Research Is Everything.
Know your market. Know your product. Know your competition. But you can only know all this through research.
Everything required to sell depends on excellent research and it’s on you to do it.
17. The Road To Success/Greatness Is Long, But A Mentor Takes You There In Twice The Time And Probably Half The Effort.
There are a lot of great people on here and in real life I see as mentors and learn from. Some of them I’ve never met physically and will never meet. But that’s not a barrier because the Internet has made it easier to access their knowledge through their books, articles, posts, and materials they put out.
Which is why it’s important to study for the masters or anyone who has succeeded in something you’re interested in.
There’s a reason why they succeeded. If you are humble enough to learn from their experiences and implement, someday you might become a master too.
18. Invest In Yourself.
People get to a certain level, make some good money or get some fame and decide to relax, but Toyin Omotoso has spent around N2million (that I’m aware of) between January and now on new materials just to continually upgrade himself.
If someone at that level keeps adding to themselves, then who am I to stay stagnant?
He once told me the reason why I give you all these books is that I know you’ll read them. That’s my inspiration.
19. Positioning Is Everything.
Everything about your approach to life changes the day you discover this.
There’s a reason why someone would see you and think you’re too cheap and not want to work with you or buy what you’re selling because they think it’s not worth it.
Positioning affects your relationships, your product and service offerings, how people see you and even how they regard you.
People like Toyin Omotoso entirely changed the game for young people.
Aside from opening our eyes to how enormously profitable the sales and marketing industry is, you have to think about the different roads he’s helped pave: Consulting, Advertising, Media Buying, Affiliate Marketing, E-Commerce, Persuasion, Personal Development etc.
I mean, you look at young copywriting geniuses like Andy Mukolo or affiliate marketing mavericks like Bruno Nwogu, or kings like Emmanuel Adiotu & Yusuf Adedeji crushing it in E-Commerce and how much he’s influenced them and then you’d understand.
Lupe Fiasco once said, “Hip-Hop saved me.” Well, Toyin Omotoso saved my life.
So, thank you for the opportunity to drink from your fountain of unending knowledge and learning at your feet. Thank you for everything, Baba mi. Every day I feel like I won the lottery.
And here’s to many more years, Maestro’s Maestro. 🥂
Also, I think I was lucky enough to be in this position. Many people reading this would wish they could. But not to worry, you too can learn from the master himself when you click on the link below 👇🏿
There are five stages of awareness in your prospective customer’s mind which determines whether or not they buy what you’re selling to them.
In order not to waste your time, money and effort, it’s important to know these stages before trying to convince them to buy what you sell.
They include:
1. Completely Unaware.
2. Problem Aware.
3. Solution Aware.
4. Product Aware.
5. Most Aware.
• Completely Unaware
At this stage, the prospect has no idea how your product can help them, but it’s even worse because he/she doesn’t even know this problem exists.
So, how do you help someone who doesn’t even know they have a problem?
This is why this stage is the hardest because you’re dealing with cold traffic who aside from being unaware might not know you also. So, you have to educate them first, then convince second and then sell to them by proving the usefulness of your solution.
Imagine selling sanitary pads to a 10-year-old who hasn’t even hit puberty yet, talk more about having a menstrual cycle. They know nothing yet.
The only reason they might even know anything about menstruation is if they have older siblings or female relatives who teach them about it or they’ve been exposed to external sources of information like friends, neighbours, schoolmates, social media or Integrated Science class.
Can you see it still boils down to education first?
This is how the Devil was able to convince Eve in the Garden of Eden.
He had to tell her about a problem, then tell her the solution and then convince her to try it out.
The blow at this stage is your prospect might never be your customer. Probably because you no longer sell sanitary pads by the time she’s mature enough to use them.
So, as a sanitary pad salesman, you can only teach her enough to be able to understand, and then hope she buys your brand of sanitary pads when she’s old enough. That is if you’re still in business.
But if you’re able to convert your prospects in this stage to customers, then this is the most profitable stage of all.
And why is because when you educate someone and then sell to them, you make them a customer for life. That is unless you or your competition fucks it up.
Because asides from educating them, you also sow in them the seeds of brand loyalty.
Which is why this is usually the starting point of the customer’s lifetime value (ie their age, how long they’ll keep buying from you and how much you can make from them over that time).
• Problem-Aware
Your prospect is aware of their problem, but they don’t know there’s a solution out there.
You become their messiah by showing them a solution.
Take a typical poor village girl in a deeply rural community who uses rags to stem her blood flow during her cycle.
She knows about her cycle and the time of the month, but does she know there’s a better, cleaner and more hygienic option out there than dealing with the messiness the rags cause her every month?
This part has to deal more with convincing and a bit of education. Although the only education you do here is how your product works and how it solves their problems.
• Solution-Aware
Your prospect in this instance knows they have a problem and there are solutions out there.
But either they don’t have access to these solutions because they don’t know what products can give them the solutions they want or they can’t afford it or it isn’t accessible to them.
Here, your job is easy because you just have to sell a solution to someone who is in dire need of it.
The only resistance you might have here is pricing (if you’re serving a market without lots of money). And this isn’t easy to overcome because even if people are willing to pay through their nose for something important to them, not being able to afford it becomes a major barrier.
Think of health care and how many people are just one chronic ailment away from financial devastation.
The poor guy who knows he should go to the hospital, but opts for over the counter drugs or self-medication because going to the hospital would be more expensive.
Another issue here would be accessibility and distribution.
Think of Mo Ibrahim’s Celtel and how they built a wireless cellphone market in Africa (a post for another day).
If someone knows they have a problem, they know there’s a solution and they can’t have access to it, then there’s going to be a huge loss of money, time, effort and manpower. Even intangibles like self-esteem come into play here.
Your second job is to get the solution (which is your product) to them by any means necessary.
• Product-Aware
Here, your prospect knows their problems, knows there’s a solution, knows there’s a product or products that offers the solution. But there’s a problem.
They don’t know if this product is the right fit for them.
Your biggest job here is convincing them on why your product is the best option for them or at least the second-best option in their current situation.
• Most Aware
Here, your prospect is sophisticated.
They know about their problems, they know about the solution and the products on the market that can solve their problems.
They even know the differences between these products – price range, hierarchy (what’s better), the different options, cheaper alternatives and all.
They’ve probably used some of these products already and are disillusioned with the results they got or are lowkey looking for something better. Or even if they aren’t particularly looking, they might be swayed if something better comes along.
Here, what drives the sale is the OFFER.
How do you make them an offer they can’t refuse?
How do you make them an offer that speaks to their specific needs?
How do you make them an offer that appeals to their sentiments or the depth of their pockets?
This is where you have to dig into your inner Don Corleone to close the deal.
It’s important to know the different stages of awareness before sitting down to write a sales copy or crafting a marketing campaign so you don’t waste your time and money on duds.
To start with, there’s a community called WallStreetBets on Reddit (a forum like Nairaland).
And the common discussion on WallStreetBets is financial investments and the stock market.
So, a group of users managed to find out a hedge fund called Melvin Capital had taken a substantial short position in GameStop (a gaming company).
But what’s a hedge fund?
A hedge fund is simply a group of people polling their funds together and letting an investment manager manage this money by using it to invest in different ways or categories.
And what’s a short position?
A short position is simply predicting the price of a company’s stock would go down.
Say the current price of rice is N25,000 and I believe it will go down to N12,000 in a few weeks. Maybe because I have some information about the harvest season or inside information from the Ministry of Agriculture or whatever.
But then I don’t even have a single bag of rice. So, what do I do?
I go to my friend Chinedu and ‘borrow’ his bag of rice on credit. I sell it for N25,000 and hope to buy it back in a few weeks when it goes down to N12,000 or less and return it to Chinedu.
Now the upside of taking a short position is limited, but the downside? Infinitely limitless.
And what does that mean?
Let’s say supposing the bag of rice doesn’t go down to as much as N12,000, I still make a profit (N25,000 minus whatever I sell it for). If it goes below N12,000, I simply make more.
But what if the price never goes down and instead keeps going up?
What if the bag of rice becomes N30,000? Buying the bag of rice and returning to Chinedu will cost me a loss of N5,000.
What if it becomes N32,000 or N45,000 or even N50,000 or N75,000?
I’m bleeding heavily from the losses at this point.
Now, conventional wisdom will advise I hold on and wait for the price to go down. But what happens when Chinedu wants his bag of rice?
The few weeks I promised him is up already and I’m supposed to return it. Or maybe he hears about the increase and decides to cash in by selling. Or maybe his wife and children are hungry and he needs his bag of rice to feed them.
What do I do?
It’s none of Chinedu’s business. I just have to find a way to return his bag of rice however I deem fit.
This is exactly what happened to Melvin Capital.
Because GameStop stocks had been falling for quite some time, they were betting on the idea the stocks would keep going down.
Knowing this, retail traders from WallStreetBets piled into the stock.
And the result was simple. As usual, when lots of people are buying into a particular stock, the prices go up.
In this instance, the stock prices would go up causing Melvin Capital to lose their money and the traders to gain. But that’s not where it even ends.
A short squeeze will also happen.
This is when those who bet against the stock are forced to buy back into their positions to avoid losing more money. And what then happens? The stock’s price keeps rising like yeast 😁
At this point, the guys on WallStreetBets are turning thousands of dollars to millions.
Whereas Melvin Capital will go on to lose their initial short position of $55 million and still incur more losses of up to $2 billion before being bailed out by another hedge fund.
Spectacular something I tell you!
This is the point where Chinedu reports me to his DPO friend at Maroko Police Station and I’m forced to sell my car just to return his bag of rice.
Another spectacular something! 😁
Well, the truth is shorting despite how many billionaires it has made is crazily risky. Simply because it has a limited upside but an infinite bottomless downside. And everyone hopes the price of the stocks they’ve bought will keep going up, but there are a couple of reasons why you might decide to take a short position.
It could be intuition. Or it could be inside information. Or it could be forecasting based on management or product rollout or government policies. Or just plain old prediction. There’s a lot of reasons. But it’s crazily risky.
GameStop went from around $3 in early 2020 to over $300 a few weeks ago. It’s now trading at around $50. A crazy rise and fall.
Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was known as the “Prince of Tunnels” “King of Drains” “Master of Tunnels” “King of Tunnels”. But how did he come by these nicknames?
A short story.
You see, after the US Drug Task Force clamped down heavily on the Caribbean drug trafficking routes into the United States, it had become harder to get drugs in. Border security was also tightened. And so, there was a need for alternatives.
So, what to do?
Enter Joaquin Guzman, leader of the Sinaloa Cartel, popularly known as “El Chapo”.
El Chapo understood the US was the biggest market for the cartel’s drugs and if they wanted to remain in business, they had to find a way to surpass all the security measures already imposed. They needed solid shipping, logistics, and handling.
So, to do this, he contracted an architect and tasked him with the job of building tunnels.
But from where to where?
From Mexico to the US, you dummy 😁
Sounds impossible, yeah?
But not to a resolute mastermind like El Chapo.
He’d eventually go on to build an estimated 100 tunnels on the US-Mexico border. Some of them would take as much as 16 months and cost up to 5 million dollars.
Sounds like a lot of money to you, I know.
But for someone who was ranked by Forbes as the 1,140th richest man in the world in 2011, with a net worth of around US$1 billion, 5 million dollars was just operating expenses. He was even named in Forbes magazine’s annual list of billionaires four times.
These tunnels weren’t just crude holes in the ground like underground coal mines, they were so sophisticated that they were lit by an electrical system, dug so deep that ground-penetrating radar couldn’t detect them and one even had an entrance covered by a pool table that lifted from the concrete floor by a hydraulic system.
Stuff of genius!
El Chapo would go on to become the most powerful drug trafficker in the world and the biggest drug lord of all time. He brought in more drugs into the United States than any other trafficker in history.
Although not as prominent in popular culture as Pablo Escobar, the U.S. DEA strongly believes he even surpassed the influence and reach of Pablo Escobar.
But we all know what happens to drug dealers. El Chapo eventually met his fate when he got caught and sentenced to prison.
And so we’d have thought this would be the end of his tunnels, but no hombre.
In 2015, he escaped from his jail cell through a TUNNEL in his bathroom.
Another tunnel, Mr. Guzman? 😁
Aside from his legendary tunnels, he also moved drugs through trains and canned food.
I’ve seen it somewhere before that druglords and gangsters can teach us more about business than college or business school professors and I think that’s true.
Because while the rest of the world (internet marketers 😜) was focused on funnel building, El Chapo was focused on tunnel building. And can you blame him?
A wiseman once told me “The way up is down,” and looking at El Chapo’s story, I believe him.
In 2007, after spending an estimated $150 million developing the iPhone in secret, Steve Jobs was concerned about how to market it.
Steve Jobs knew that just creating a great product was one thing, but promotion and distribution were also key. This was why he had always been very bullish on advertising because he understood just how powerful it was.
He also understood how much publicity paid advertising could give a product. But he knew the best kind of advertising was always word of mouth.
So, what to do?
As a student of psychology, he’d spent his time continually studying people and their actions.
By doing so, he’d come to understand the importance of having people standing in long lines scrambling to get your products. Those long lines communicated three things:
1. Scarcity & Social Proof
People are hardwired to want the things they can’t have.
Just like how women are attracted to men who other women are attracted to, people are intrigued by something or someone in high demand.
A long line of people waiting for something or someone indicates one thing – VALUE.
The question people not on the line would ask themselves is “why is everyone gathering to get it?” And “if everyone is on that line, then why am I not on it?”
2. Publicity
The media would see those long lines and write articles and stories about it. News channels would send their reporters to cover it. People would see their friends and family members on TV standing in those lines. And then they’d eventually come out to join them too because what the heck? Lol
3. Promotion
Strong publicity would eventually lead to strong promotion as everyone starts talking about it.
Even your competitors who would jump on this to try to make fun of you would end up spreading the gospel of your business unconsciously. And we all know what they say about publicity, whether good or bad.
This is a bit of an urban legend, but rumours are that before the first iPhone went on sale on June 29, 2007, Steve Jobs would go ahead and hire scores of people to stand in strategic positions on the lines in front of Apple stores.
Thousands of people were pictured lining up outside Apple and AT&T retail stores days before the launch date.
The iPhone was released and was a massive success.
Apple sold one million units 74 days after its release. Many stores reported stock shortages within an hour of availability.
Apple would go on to sell 6.1 million units before they discontinued its production the following year.
But this was not going to be the last time Apple would use the power of long lines to sell their products.
Before releasing the iPad 2, Apple knew they needed long lines – even longer than those who queued for the original iPad.
So, what to do?
Apple deliberately masterminded those long lines by refusing to allow pre-orders.
Not allowing pre-orders meant one thing – people would rush out to get them.
And the result?
In its first month, the iPad 2 sold 2.4–2.6 million units, and an estimated 11.12 million units by the third quarter of 2011.
Steve Jobs might have started it, but nowadays some die-hard Apple customers even go ahead and hire others and pay them to hold their place in Apple store lines.
In the early ’60s, The Beatles were one of the hottest bands in the UK.
But just like today, the biggest music market was the US. And breaking into the US music market was super hard. Almost impossible for foreign artistes who were virtual unknowns at the time.
So, what to do?
Enter Brian Epstein. The manager of The Beatles.
Brian Epstein knew they needed to make a big splash if they wanted to be taken seriously in the US.
And from his experience with elaborate stage setups, he knew he needed to plan something big.
So, before they left the UK, the first thing he did was to hire hundreds of young girls. Teenagers mostly.
Then he hired amateur and mostly unknown actors who were instructed to dress up as police officers, paramedics and ambulance drivers.
He then went ahead to rent police cars and ambulances like moviemakers do.
Combining all of this, he created one of the greatest stage setups of all time.
On the day The Beatles left the UK to the US, around 4,000 “screaming fans” gathered to say goodbye.
Out of these 4,000 fans, most of them were the hired teenage girls.
The instruction given to the girls was pure hysteria – lose your minds once you see The Beatles.
They were told to just scream and go gaga.
How hard is that for teenage girls? Lol
The instructions given to some of the girls were to faint. And then at this point, the paramedics would dash in with first aid boxes, medical toolkits and stretchers to carry them off into the ambulances. Lmao 😁
In photographs of some of these stage setups, The Beatles would be on stage with fans screaming. In other photos, they’d be stepping off a plane with fans waving.
While in some others, they would be coming off a bus to thousands of adoring fans holding signs or wearing stickers like “I Love John” or “I Love Paul” or “I’m A Beatles Fan.”
As the cameras were rolling and the girls were fainting, the police officers were instructed to try to control the crowd. But not so much so it would look like the crowd overwhelmed them.
Remember, none of this was real.
But the packaged videos were so damn convincing that several weeks before the Beatles would arrive America they were sent to every major broadcast studio and the anticipation was fever crazy.
The raw genius of this man 😁
The result?
When the Beatles arrived in America, over 3,000 fans welcomed them at the airport.
And two days later, when they made their television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show, it is estimated that 73 million Americans in 23 million households watched them live. About 34 per cent of the American population at that time.
Biographer Jonathan Gould writes that, according to the Nielsen rating service, it was “the largest audience that had ever been recorded for an American television program”.
Even though the first girls who fainted for them were acting, eventually thousands of young American girls and girls all over the world would go crazy and faint over and over again for them
The Beatles would go on to become the best-selling music act of all time, with estimated sales of 600 million album units worldwide.
They also held the first-ever stadium rock concert – 55,000 tickets sold out within hours.
Over the last year, I had the good fortune of learning and working in sales and marketing with some of the most brilliant people I’ve ever met in my life.
It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I learned so much from there that I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.
I’ll be sharing 6 of the things I learned within a year, and I’m hoping they help you build your business, increase your sales and revenue and also improve your life.
1. Selling Is Like Having Sex.
The same way women give up the cookie to men they feel comfortable with or men who inspire adventure, excitement or danger in them is the same way your customers will react to you.
It’s either they trust you enough to buy from you, or you inspire so much excitement in them that they are willing to buy whatever you’re selling even if it looks like a rash decision.
If they trust you and you also inspire them, a double win for you.
2. Sales and Marketing Opens Your Eyes.
I have no idea if the forbidden fruit Adam and Eve ate in the Garden of Eden was an apple, or if it was sex (as many people have argued over the years), but the one thing I’ve noticed is that sales and marketing is the real-life forbidden fruit.
No one spends some time in sales and marketing and stays the same. It’s like taking the red pill and unplugging from the matrix.
It goes as far as affecting your speech pattern, body language, and even your social interactions.
Sales and Marketing completely changes your thinking as you slowly begin to understand how every single sales process is simply human interaction. And at the root of this interaction and what ultimately powers it is emotions and human nature.
3. Human Nature Hasn’t Changed.
Faster Internet Speed. Faster servers. Smartphones. Computers. Electric cars. But human nature hasn’t changed since the time of Jesus.
Whatever emotions Julius Caesar or Martin Luther King felt when they were alive was felt by cavemen too. Those emotions are also being felt today too. Know this and know peace.
4. Everyone Wants Something And So Appeals Have To Be Personal.
Appeals are crucial to every sales process. A married 30-year-old will be more inclined to get insurance for his family, whereas a 25-year-old bachelor who’d rather a Ferrari.
Understand this & simplify your sales processes.
PS: I’m the 30-year-old who wants the Ferrari though 😁
5. Words Are Everything.
As you sell, you begin to understand the nuances of communication and the raw power of words.
Words will build people and nations up. Words will start wars. Words will get you laid. Words will put money in your wallet and bank accounts. But words will also kill you.
Like fire and water, play with words at your peril.
6. Everything Is For Sale.
People usually say everything has a price. But I think the proper thing to say is everything is for sale.
Gary Dahl selling over a million pieces of pet rocks for $4 each? A tissue for $5,300? Hair for $1 million? Waist trainers? A domain name for $16 million? Mess for $4 million? A glass of water for $455? More than 100 million units of the hula hoop for $1.98?
If you don’t believe me, you can go to the link below to see some of the weirdest things people have bought for money.
Which is why I’m still wondering why you haven’t launched that your brilliant idea because you think it might fail.
But there’s a caveat though. Just like having sex, the timing, delivery and emotions have to be right.
PS: Maybe sales and marketing open your eyes, or maybe it gives you a third eye. Or maybe it just opens the third eye you’ve always had, but I just know you begin to see things differently.
I saw the first 3 episodes of Bridgerton about a week ago and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So much so that I binged the remaining episodes early on a Sunday morning.
Lots of series don’t manage to hold my attention, so I’m guessing it’s because I saw a kindred spirit in the Duke of Hastings, but I’m more inclined to believe it was because of Lady Whistledown.
You see, Lady Whistledown on Bridgerton is an excellent example of how propaganda works. It’s also an example of how great copywriting, marketing and advertising should be like. And here’s why:
If you’ve seen the movie Glengarry Glen Ross, then you’ve certainly heard about the AIDA formula in sales and marketing.
AIDA stands for Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action, and it’s an acronym developed in 1898 by advertising pioneer E. St. Elmo Lewis which describes the steps a prospective customer goes through before deciding to buy a product, brand or service – from the very first moment they become aware of that product, service or brand to the actual moment they buy it.
1. Attention (grab attention)
The first stage of the sales process is making your prospective costumer aware of the product.
In a small town where everybody knows everybody, gossip is always plenty. But the balls needed to condense all of that gossip, and take shots at everyone (royalty included) the way Lady Whistledown does it is nothing short of incredible.
The members of the community are shocked. Viewers are shocked. Attention is grabbed.
Round 1: Lady Whistledown wins.
2. Interest (hold interest)
There’s a part of the Bible which says something like “Blessed is a man who finds favour in the eyes of the king,” and as just as expected everyone on Bridgerton tries so hard to win the favour of Queen and King or anyone associated with them.
Well, in reverse Lady Whistledown manages to make everyone try so hard to win her favour.
She holds the interest of an entire community so much so that everyone is scared of getting on her bad side.
The women are scared of ruin. Families are scared of scandals. Everyone wants to please her.
She even manages to take the spotlight off the Queen. Genius stuff!
But that’s not where it even stops.
The show creators even manage to turn a story about the marriage trials of members of a family into a more layered story with multiple nodes courtesy of Whistledown’s scandal mill.
And just as the townspeople, we are all steady waiting for the next edition of Lady Whistledown’s papers.
Round 2: Lady Whistledown wins again.
3. Desire (create desire)
The first law of desires states that “desire can neither be created nor destroyed, but can change from one form to another.“
Just like the Bible passage where Jesus says what corrupts a man doesn’t come from the outside, but from the inside, desires are not really created, just harnessed.
Take for example, a woman who cheats on her husband.
She might not necessarily wake up one morning and announce she wants to cheat on her husband.
Instead, she might have been lonely, bored, neglected or sex-starved for some time.
Or she might have just been wondering what a strange prick would feel like. A typical tale of guilty pleasures and repressed desires.
As an excellent student of psychology Lady Whistledown understood this.
People have always desired new things, which is what events and gossip provides in ample amount.
People (even the bad ones) also desire to be seen in good standing by their neighbours.
It was simply a case of gasoline and a lit match.
Round 3: Lady Whistledown again.
4. Action (make your prospect take action)
Lady Whistledown knew she needed two things: Fame & Her subscribers’ monies.
Isn’t that what we all want? 😁
But first, she needed to tap into their desires and get them to take action. To do this, she had to give them what they wanted to be able to get what she wanted.
In this instance, give them the hottest, juiciest gossip and take all their money in return. A case of quid pro quo.
This is a formula that never fails to work. Give your customers what they want and they’ll make you infinitely rich.
PS: I’ve also been thinking but what if Lady Whistledown was a man?
Ask yourself this: Would the town have taken those papers seriously if it was from a Mr. Whistledown? Of course not.
And why so?
Because from time immemorial, gossip and tittle-tattle has always been associated with women. No offence. Men seen as gossips and rumour mongers are rarely taken seriously, whether by fellow men or even women.
This is why it’s important to understand your audience thoroughly. Know what moves their pulse and what makes their heart race and you’ll be certain to take all their money.
PPS: If you are new to copywriting/advertising/sales/marketing, you should see Glengarry Glen Ross.
I remember moving to the new apartment where I currently live in early 2020.
As usual, in getting to know the area you’d have to move around a bit – go to church, shop for groceries and all.
This was sometime in February and I remember going to buy a pack of Good Morning Oats from the mini-mart at the end of the street.
The lady managing the place said a pack was just N550 and I bought two.
Oh, if you were hoping for a story, nothing happened.
It’s just 8 months later, the same pack of Good Morning Oats were selling for N1,300 for just one.
So, within 8 months I was spending the same amount of money which could get two packs of Good Morning Oats on just a single pack. And I still had to add an extra N200 to it. My God!!!!
That’s the simple definition of inflation.
The reality is, millions of Nigerians have to battle with this increase in food prices and basic expenses without being able to increase their income.
In Fela Kuti’s Overtake Don Overtake Overtake, he explained it as follows:
My friend wan come buy fan Him dey sweat for him dey sleep for room Him dey fall level of tree The fan na seventy-five naira My friend him dey follow salary Him dey try to save and save and save Every time he nearly buy the fan Government go add ten naira more Every time he nearly buy the fan Government go start one activity Till the fan reach two hundred naira My friend nearly die, he never die
This is what inflation feels like for the average Nigerian. And the only way to beat inflation as a Nigerian is not to save a percentage of money in your account but to earn in dollars.
But many Nigerians don’t believe it is possible to earn in dollars while living in Nigeria. Unless you own a bureau de change or you work offshore for one of the big oil companies or you’re consulting for one of the Big 5.
In actual reality, thousands of everyday Nigerians regularly get paid in dollars.
The shocking thing is they don’t just earn in a dollar, but they do so completely online.
Below is a shortlist of the numerous ways you can start earning in dollars in 2021, and if you play the game right, you could be the next dollar millionaire in Nigeria.
1. YouTube
I know, I know, I know.
Everyone and their grandmother does this nowadays.
“Hello, guys. Welcome to my YouTube channel. And on this channel, I’ll be…”
Aren’t you tired of hearing this? I swear I am too.
But the question should be, are they doing it right?
Or maybe, are they getting paid for doing it?
I can assure you most of them aren’t. Because instead of understanding how to create content and monetizing their content, they just do anything and hope for the best.
But when did hoping for the best work for anyone?
I used to be sceptical about doing anything video related, but with how cheap data is nowadays, more Nigerians are watching a lot of videos online.
So, if you play your cards right, you could create multiple income streams (some even passive) from YouTube. And they include the following:
1. Getting Paid By Google For Advertising.
YouTube’s Partner Program allows creators on YouTube to earn money by monetizing their channels with video ads.
These ads generate a certain amount of money, depending on factors like a video’s watch time, length, ad quality, number of clicks each ad receives, ad blockers, and viewer demographic.
The actual rates an advertiser pays varies, usually between $0.10 to $0.30 per view, but averages out at $0.18 per view.
Google pays out 68% of their AdSense revenue, so for every $100 an advertiser pays, Google pays $68 to the publisher.
So, on average the YouTube channel can receive $18 per 1,000 ad views.
For example, Ask Dr Malik has a video with 2.8 million views on his channel.
Now let’s imagine this to be ad views. Do the maths: 2.8 million ÷ 1,000 = 2,800
Now, 2,800 × $18 = $50,400
But that’s not where the real magic is.
The magic is in converting this to naira. So, $50,400 × 480 = N24,192,000.
That’s a neat N24million!!!!
But we know the values above are hypothetical because when it comes to ads, the major factors which determine pay are views (of the ad) and clicks. The more views and clicks you can get, the more money you can make.
This is something which also affects the growth of your YouTube channel and increases your video views. It’s a concept in advertising called social proof.
People are drawn to watch videos with large views.
“Part of the reason why people click on a video is that they see it has so many views. People are drawn to click on popular things, like the bandwagon effect.” – Paul Kousky
So, you see, the more views you get, the higher your chances of getting more views and also the possibility of making more money.
2. Getting Paid To Review Products.
Channels like Ask Dr Malik’s don’t make money through ads alone.
With a subscriber base of over 100,000, they get to review products for a good fee.
Other income sources on YouTube are: 3. Sponsorship Deals.
4. Endorsements by brands and companies.
5. Affiliate Marketing by promoting products with an affiliate link and getting a commission from each sale.
6. Product Placements and Influencer Marketing where they get paid to post products on their channel for a fee.
So, what do you need to be able to earn money from all these income sources on YouTube?
All you have to do is come up with at least 1 or 2 new engaging videos every week.
The key is consistency.
The truth is you have what you mostly need to succeed right now. So, what’s your biggest barrier?
Lighting? You can get ring lights for as cheap as N5,000 on Jumia.
Camera? What do you have in your hand? A smartphone, you dummy. Some of the biggest YouTube stars started with their smartphones.
Editing? Most YouTube channel owners do their video editing themselves. It might be a little tough at the beginning, but very interesting once you get the hang of it.
And if you’re wondering if YouTube can be a sustainable career, kindly Google PewDiePie, Paul Kousky, Roman Atwood or Miranda Sings.
Of course, for thousands of YouTube Channel owners, they make nothing or very little money. However, there are also many YouTubers living comfortably off of the earnings from their YouTube channels.
Well, you can differentiate yourself by clicking here to watch a short video which shows you how to build a profitable YouTube channel quickly and also how to monetize it so you can start earning in dollars.
Just as a side note, when it comes to earning money on YouTube, making your first dollar is the hardest thing.
But just like every part of life, winning takes care of everything. Success breeds success.
The more subscribers you have, the more clicks you’ll get on your ads.
The more clicks on your ads, the more popular you become, and the higher the likelihood of different companies and brands offering to be your partner, plus sponsorship or merchandise deals.
And the more popular your channel becomes, the greater your chance of making millions off YouTube.
It’s a chain reaction.
But it starts with you starting.
Well, you can take the first step to earn dollars on YouTube by clicking here to watch a short video which shows you how to build a profitable YouTube channel quickly and also how to monetize it so you can start earning in dollars.
Because this post is quite exhaustive, I’ll be posting each of this dollar earning strategies one after another. So, stay tuned for more.
