[0:08]So I started making videos from my parent's house in January 2019. I just woke up one day and decided, I'm going to be consistent for 30 days. I'm going to put out one video every day for 30 days. I don't know where the idea came from. I just knew that I needed a challenge and that's where I wanted to challenge myself. At the time I had like 1,500 followers, so I told myself that if in this 30-day period, my following can just go from 1.5 to 2K, I've blown. Like I'm good, that's what it was in my mind. But I was about to be tricked into a life that I knew nothing about. In that one-month period, my following went from 1,500 to 5,000 people. Stop shouting. It basically tripled. So what that means is I went from a guy who was literally nobody on Instagram to somebody who was getting a hundred DMs every day, hundreds of comments, people recognizing me in public and all of that. All of this happened almost overnight. And I mean, I kind of liked the attention and I loved the fact that people were welcoming my ideas. Because before then, I thought for you to get popular on social media, you had to be creating, you know, you had to be doing entertainment stuff or funny stuff, but I was just making videos talking about life and sharing my learnings. And people were really loving it, so I did it more. After the 30-day period, I continued making videos consistently. About some months into doing this, I discovered that there was a fancy term for this thing that I was doing. It was called content creation. I didn't know what content creation was, I was just making videos, right? And I think one of, another turning point for me was some months later, I was around 9,000 or 10,000 followers. I got an email from a company and they said, Salem, hi Salem, how much do you charge to promote? And me I'm like, charge. Wait, you mean like, I don't have to be doing this for free. Like I can just keep doing what I already do, making videos and then slip of a brand or business in and I get paid. And that's when I found out about another fancy term. I'm sure you know what it is. Influencer. I didn't know that that's something people did as a career. But I was about to do that because money, I mean, what if it was you? You know. But these two extremes, these two things that I learned, these two careers that I learned about content creation and being an influencer, led me to something so important that has become the center of my life and my career that I didn't see coming. And that's what I'm going to be talking about today. Community building. My topic is how communities save lives. So in case you were expecting me to talk about how to grow your Instagram, not today. Invite me another time. So like I was saying, I went from this guy who was nobody on Instagram to somebody who was interacting with hundreds of people daily. And you know, I really loved replying comments. So if if I had up to 300, even if I had up to 300 comments, I would respond to everybody one by one. And sometimes I would even tap on their profile to just find out a little more about them before I reply their comments. You know, just so I can respond to them in a personal way and call their name, you know, and stuff like that. And to be honest, I was just I didn't realize that that was a strategy for community building. I was just so grateful that people were watching my stuff, so I felt like the least I can do is tell them, thank you. The least I can do is create a connection with them. Sometimes they would also, you know, when they would post a comment, I wouldn't let it just end there. I would, you know, send them a message, ask a question, why do you think this? Um, just follow up questions to every comment that I would get. And one day, I put up a post on a random day, I put up a post, and the caption just had three words. Three words, what's bothering you? And in my mind, what I wanted to do was just interact with my audience, have them tell me their challenges, their problems. I wasn't planning to solve anything for anybody, do you get? Like if somebody in the comments had been like, I need 5 million, I'd be like, God will do it for us, so. You know, so I was just trying to offer empathy, to listen to my audience, know what's on their minds. You know, for to also know what content to create because that's something we do. 30 minutes, like less than 30 minutes after that post came out, there were over 200 comments on that post. And I got overwhelmed. I started feeling like, God, who sent me? Am I Jesus? Why did I ask people what was bothering them? Who really sent me? And so I did what the adults responsible thing to do was, I switched off my phone. And I put it away because I was getting overwhelmed. I came back to it like one hour later because I couldn't get off my mind. I really love my community members. So I came back to the post and saw that something really interesting had begun to happen. People who came to the post, because the caption was just three words, so there wasn't much to consume. The first place they went to was the comment section. And when they saw people talk about their problems, they offered help. So members of my community without me having to do anything, were helping each other. Someone would say, oh, is this what you're going through, send me a DM, I can help. This person will say, oh, is this what you need, let's fix a Zoom meeting. Oh, do you live in Abuja? Let's meet at Socioplace, you know, this other day. And so many people were connecting among themselves. And for the first time, I realized that this community that had grown around me because I was making videos, this community was no longer about me. It had taken on a life of its own. And I also learned that people need community. It wasn't just this fancy thing, you know, that we talk about, it wasn't just this thing about, you know, trying to have plenty followers on Instagram, trying to be an influencer. You know, how we say I want I just want to have an impact. It was, it was meeting real life needs on this platform that we consider a vain platform, Instagram, everybody's just coming to pose, you know, in a yard, in a I don't know if I'm allowed to say that here. Yeah, I won't say it. You know, and it was this vain platform, but there were these people having their real life problems solved. And it just got me really curious and I had I said to study about community because I'm like, what is what is going on here? Why are people, you know, why why is this such a strong need for people? And in my, in the process of my research, there's something I came across, which I learned previously, but I learned all over again for content reasons. I learned about Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Your students are Convenant University and probably learned about that before. But if you don't remember, I don't judge you. Me too, I didn't remember. So I went to read about it. You know, when you read, when you read something for exam, it's different from when you read it for real life. So I was studying now for real life because I was about to write a book. And so I was studying Maslow's hierarchy of needs. If you don't remember what it is, Maslow is this cool scientist from like a hundred years ago, who decided to study what are the most important needs of man. What do you need the most to have a happy life as a human being? And so he arranged those needs in a hierarchy, you know, of which things were most important. And the number one thing on Maslow's, um, list was physiological needs, that's food, shelter, have without which obviously you're going to die. The second thing on Maslow's needs, or Maslow's list was safety needs. So your need for shelter, security. Guess what the third thing on Maslow's needs, or Maslow's list is? Community, sense of belonging, love. And I that need is met in community. So now how does all of this connect to you living in 2022? There's somebody here, I'm not professing. There's somebody here who, you know, you're probably a third year accounting student and her, I said I was not professing but like, if the shoe fits. There's somebody here who's probably a third year accounting student and you've taken up an interest in photography.
[9:05]Too specific.
[9:10]And you're in year three, but you already know that when you graduate this school, you know want use accounting do anything. And then there'll be somebody who, you know, you're studying electrical engineering. Maybe you're good at it, maybe you're bad, but there's nothing else that excites you and gets you off more than blockchain technology. Now here's what I know about you. You know get how you going explain that thing to your African parents. They don't want to hear it. The only thing on their mind is, I said to school to study accounting, when you study accounting, you do icon, you do masters, you work at PWC. They already have the path laid out to you. And then this thing that you're deciding that you want to pursue, they don't understand it. They cannot make out that path in their head, you know, that leads from where you are now to a successful life where you're not begging them for food. And there's a chance that even you too, you cannot make out that path, but you know that the work you do is important. You know that this thing you're passionate about is what you want to do. You've seen people like Tom and Ke, like, I want to do this, but I don't know the way there, I don't know, you know, the road that leads from where I am to where she is. Nobody can explain it to me. I can't explain it to anybody. But this is what I want to do. What do you do in those times? You know there's all this talk about how we don't need validation. People say, you know, you need to validate yourself, self love, self-sufficiency, self-absorption. Which is what it is, but in a way, we all need some level of validation. It's a need. We need someone to tell us that we're not crazy. We need somebody to show us that, you know, okay, maybe you're even crazy but like me too, I'm crazy with you. Do you understand? And now, here's where we make a mistake. We want that validation from our families, because they're the ones who know you the best. They're the ones who have been with you since you were born, they've they know your history, you know, they know you want it to be them. You want it to be that when somebody's validating you and telling you that you're important and telling you that your work matters, you want it to be them. But sometimes, that is just not possible. I'm here, I'm doing a TED talk. My parents still don't understand my career. It's still very difficult to explain to them. I had a friend, a friend of mine, the first time she told her dad that she doesn't want to, you know, she doesn't want to get a government job. That she wants to be an online coach. He's like, ah, I didn't know you were into football. So he was so far removed, like he is so far removed from her reality that when he hears the word coach, the first thing that comes to his mind is football. So imagine her explaining to her dad, after the millions he spent on school fees, that you want to go and do work online. How do you convince him? So I want to tell you today, I want to give you permission to find validation outside of a constitution and find it in community. You need to make friends and create connections with people in circles who have the same interests as you. Now, those people may not know your entire history, those people may not know about, you know, all your life and your, where you're coming from. But you find that your creativity just finds better expression around them. You need those people, you need to cherish them. Your career depends on it and often times your life, your life depends on it. But if you're stuck, if you're here and you're insisting on getting that validation from, you know, an institution, rather than rather than from community, here's a mistake that's going to happen to you. Or here's, you know, a roadblock that you're going to experience that will lead you to make certain mistakes. You will start to make the mistake of, you know, thinking that you can go alone, which is a mistake because we live in a world where you have access to so much community on LinkedIn, on Instagram, on Reddit. How many of you know about Reddit? There's a subred for any niche you can think about, including orange color fish lovers. You know, there's Cora, there's so many places to connect with people who have similar interests. It's a mistake for you to decide to go alone. Another mistake you might decide to make is to fight, to say it's me against the world. Nobody gets me. You know, you might, you might go all Kanying about it. Do you have a Kanying budget? So maybe that's not the right thing to do. The third mistake you might make is you might get into a rabbit hole of trying to explain. Like I said, sometimes the reasons why your parents are not supporting you, it's not it's not you, the problem is not you. It's the career they don't trust, because they don't know anybody who's successful in that area. Do you understand? So they feel like they need to protect you from that. So you, you also need to protect yourself from that belief that you don't have it in you, cuz it's bad vibes. Even though they love you, you need to create the atmosphere where you have what you need in order to grow your craft. Like I said, they don't believe, it's not you they don't believe in, it's the career. Which reminds me of an episode of the Big Bang Theory, where Sheldon tells Howard, Does anybody watch Big Bang Theory? Sheldon tells Howard, you're good at what you do. And Howard says, so you believe that I'm good at what I do. Why you always giving me stress about it? Why you always picking on me? And Sheldon says, ah, I see the confusion. I never thought you were not good at what you do. I just thought that what you do is not worth doing. Which is how a lot of our parents feel. And not just our parents, sometimes our old friends, people who know us. You need to accept the fact that there is some validation and reassurance you need that you will not get from some institutions, and you're better off maximizing your strength than trying to improve on a weakness. Because the return on investment for, you know, you're putting the same amount of energy into trying to get these people to understand, into trying to explain. There's just no time, that time you should be committing to moving forward because there's work to be done. There are connections to be made, there there's progress to be made, there's so much you can be doing, but if you're waiting till these people understand, till these people validate you, you'll be waiting for a really long time. So I want you to choose community. Rather than trying to find, trying to convince anyone, find people who are already aligned with your vision, people who already believe in what you believe in. How do you want to convince your dad that crypto is the future? Where will you start from? If you're going to wait till he agrees with you, you're going to waste so much time. Right? So find these communities, cherish them, build them, join them, be a resourceful member of those of those communities, create those communities, cultivate those communities because someone's life depends on it. And sometimes that person will be you. So like I said earlier, or like I sang when I forgot the lyrics, it gets cold at the top. Make sure somebody loves you. You could be alone in the spotlight, make sure somebody cares for you. Always be there for you. It's no fun alone. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
