Demystifying Overnight Success

[Music]

so

about two years ago i made a choice to

you know come out of retirement and get

back on tv i know it sounds funny

i’d barely done anything as an actor but

it’s a decision i made

truth is it was one that i

was skeptical about for obvious reasons

at the time i had a pretty comfortable

job

i was working from home i had a decent

salary

i only had so many concerns but

there’s a path that i decided to pursue

um

even before i left school and my mind

never left that park

an opportunity presented itself and i

took it the rest is history

now truth of the matter is virtually

every other day i have people ask me

just about the same question

so they get to see me on tv and the

average person who sees me on tv hasn’t

seen me on tv

at least a decade and there’s one

question i always get asked

how did you do it i mean it’s like you

came out of nowhere and you’re on this

massive show that’s making waves on the

continent

in summary what they assume

is that i’m an overnight success

and every time i get asked that question

i smile because

i understand where it’s coming from you

see i realize there are a lot more

especially young people in nigeria now

who are disillusioned

by the state of the country you have

more young people who are

interested in making the quick buck who

believe that

it’s possible to sleep one day that

broke

and wake up the next day

multi-millionaire now this isn’t me

saying it’s impossible

this is me saying it’s unlikely that

that will be the success story

every young nigerian will tell

so today i will share a bit of

my overnight success story but anyways

this

was me um

roughly two years ago i was a mechanic

and i could barely speak english in fact

most of the time i spoke

in english life wasn’t particularly

pleasant

i mean i have found memories of my time

as a mechanic but

let’s just say some things are best

forgotten

and this is me now i am the

thank you thank you thank you thank you

so i am a director in

a multi-millionaire company i manage

the greek arm of the company yeah

i mean aggregate is everything

it’s been

it’s been an experience um

i’m the perfect example of a rags to

riches story i mean it’s pretty obvious

i only need to say so much so what i’m

going to do here today

is i’m going to share with everyone the

secret of my success my overnight

success

as it were and i promise you everybody

especially the young people

if you take my advice because this is

advice again i said

please i i cannot do lawsuits

i’m begging i don’t have money if you

take my advice trust me you will become

an overnight success

it worked for me it’s possible or likely

could work for someone else

so here’s my first point or my first tip

as well start small

[Music]

but think big uh but i have a close to

that

be ready to settle for less and i’ll

explain why

i went for this audition again fresh out

of school i knew nobody i didn’t even

know mr alcason

i got there nate on the first day and

they turned me back at the gates and i

was disappointed because

i mean big dreams but i went the second

day and

i got my chance to audition

did i have expectations yes were my

expectations

met at the time not necessarily

but here’s the thing there’s something i

learned in school about

performance and it applies in

a lot of what we do media showbiz

whatever you want to call it

see there’s there’s a mentality some

people have and this

runs through even everyday society that

they are small roles

and that they are big roles

in the theater what they taught us is

that there are no small roles

every rule is just as important as the

other

we’re having tedx mina today i’m a

speaker yes

i seem to be one of the important people

okay

but you have the guys behind the camera

i mean if you didn’t have the guys

behind the camera

people will be watching us on youtube if

you didn’t have the guys who’s

organized the logistics that i probably

wouldn’t be here

so everybody is just as important as

everybody else it’s one of the first

things i got to learn

and it’s my first secret of overnight

success

now i did get a lead role

in my first job out of school as

incredible as it sounds

i knew nobody i only had the experience

from school

but i got the lead role there were seven

lead characters

in my first performance job and i was

one of the seven

so i got to start treatment now

i was never i never believed that i was

more important than

the wakapa’s actors those are people who

just show up in one scene

and you probably never see them again

because i learned that lesson very early

if you don’t have those small characters

who just show up and leave

there’s something that’s not complete

about the story

fact everybody is important

let me digress a bit to those wakapa’s

people truth is

if the mentality of the average person

is that

i am not successful if i don’t have the

big role or if i’m not one of the seven

there will be nothing to aspire to

if i came fresh out of school and what

was at the back of my mind was that

i wanted to be a lead and nothing else

i would never have room to grow first

secret to overnight success

for the person who is doing that small

rule as it were

it’s a compromise yes i mean he had the

choice to say

i wouldn’t do this because it’s not big

but here’s the thing

i know at least one person on that

project and mr al qasim knows what i’m

talking about

at that time he was a wakapa’s character

right now that same person runs an

ngo he’s literally never in nigeria

because he’s traveling the world

that was him thinking big but he

agreed to start small

i’ll make this quicker move on find the

niche

i know it’s hard these days for people

to stand out

and be different from the rest

yes i studied theaters there were a lot

of people who were equally talented like

me

and it got hard sometimes standing out

but i got to realize that there’s

something different about every one of

us

so i dedicated my energy back in school

to pursuing areas of the arts that i

believed i had strengthened

so yes i probably was a better performer

than a technical person

so i focused my energies on performance

and i found my niche

but this is the part of any niche that

may be a bit weird

it’s hard to be original these days

because

i mean there are a lot of people out

there who do the same thing that you do

and there’s always the temptation to be

like somebody else

truth is it’s not such a bad thing to be

like somebody else

you have mentors people you look at as

examples

people you’d like to be like it’s not a

bad thing to aspire to

but whatever happens always remember

that you’re still a different person

find a niche yes find a part of your

industry that you can focus on

you can even try to copy a person but

always remember that you’re original as

you are

there’s something about you that will

make you different from whoever it is

you’re trying to be like

or you’re modeling yourself by

second point my third point

fail i think it’s important that we

understand that it’s important to feel

i meet a lot of people who say um

failure is not a part of your vocabulary

all i do is win win-win no matter what

we know that song a couple of us should

do that song

so i asked myself this question if

you never fail how do you understand

what the absence of success is it’s a

very simple question

if you do not fall how do you truly

experience

what the pain of falling is i failed

so to speak over the years

part of the reason why i went into

retirement from performance was cause

i attended a couple of auditions and

nobody got to call me back and i felt

like i failed

but once that feeling was passed

it got to hit me i needed to understand

what it felt like being told no

and for me that was the motivation to

keep trying because

at the back of my head i always felt

that there was something about me that

made me different

from even those people who got the yes

now

if i always got a yes i wouldn’t

understand this feeling

i’d never know what it would feel like

to be in

their shoes but now i know better a

third secret of my overnight success

fail occasionally i won’t encourage you

to fail all the time

it’s very demoralizing if you fail all

the time but be

open to failing it’s not a bad thing the

fact that you feel doesn’t make you a

failure

it’s like going to school and you don’t

prepare for a test

and you fail it doesn’t mean you’re

stupid or you’re incapable of passing

the test

at that particular time you just think

past the test

get comfortable with the idea

my fourth point

leverage on community i will speak only

so much about this

because again tedx mina is a perfect

example

of leveraging on community i’m here

speaking today

[Music]

because i maintained a relationship with

one person for the past

26 years mustafa andarjuw here is my

friend

we went to high school together in abuja

i’ve known him since 1994.

we’ve been in touch since 1994. he’s the

reason why i’m here

he is a part of my community the same

way right now everybody in tedx has

become a part of my community

there are people around you people who

can contribute

to that big dream that you have so now

you realize

that these people are part of that

success story or the overnight success

story

the sooner you become a success i hear

these words being thrown around

just about every other day that i’m a

self-made man

or a self-made woman or i’m a self-made

person and in my head i’m like

how does that even start to make sense

so my friend here is the rice farmer

and he’s a successful rice farmer he’s

not a successful rice farmer because

he’s a successful rice farmer

he’s a successful rice farmer because

he’s part of a community

that supports his endeavors if people do

not

work with him he will not have rice to

sell

if he doesn’t have rice to sell people

will not eat

it’s that simple leverage on your

community

there are people around you who can

support whatever endeavor you’re in

leverage on that community it’s the

fastest way to get to where you’re going

to

[Music]

and this is my last point unfortunately

i’ll be breaking a lot of hearts

overnight success is a scam

just about every other day again please

no lawsuits and this is this is

informational

it is not a law

just about every other day i hear

motivational speakers

talk about how if you

take these 10 20 steps

in the blink of an eye you will achieve

your aim or

become successful or become a

millionaire

no offense to motivational speakers but

i think that’s just about the worst idea

you can give anybody

again i think a lot of this stems from

disillusionment

you see there are more people out here

in the world now who

who have needs that have to be met

and they’re not particularly patient

because at the back of their minds

there’s this thing that

that runs that they’re running at the

time

it’s it’s not a very comfortable feeling

to live with

and i totally understand i sympathize

but

the truth of the matter is the overnight

success is it’s actually a scam it’s the

biggest scam anybody sells

unfortunately it’s a very profitable

scam because

there are a lot of people who are making

a whole lot of money from this

particular scam

so yes i still may solicit

you know your support and ask you to buy

my book

by the end of this talk which is titled

demystifying overnight success and i

probably could make

a couple of millions from the sale of my

books

but i won’t do that because i don’t even

believe in it

at this point i’ll go back to the

beginning of my story

this was me two years ago

this is me now

you see the interesting part of my story

is that

it took me 10 years to get here not two

years

so i kind of lied or like

well my talk was kind of scam

i graduated from school i graduated from

the university of nigeria and suka in

my first job was in 2005

with the bbc i served in 2006

and in 2007 we began recording

waiting day it’s taken me 10 years to be

here today

not two years and not as some people

believe

um overnight

life really doesn’t work that way um

i made a personal promise to myself when

i started working

that i would not perpetrate this

particular scam

i could if i if i wanted to i’ve had

people who have encouraged me to

perpetrate the scam it’s a it’s a

particularly promising

opportunity you know i i also like

no money i like the millions i like to

be comfortable i like to go on vacations

i’d like to be corrupt to my benefits so

to speak

but i won’t do that trust the process

you see people have come before you and

you have the luxury of

garnering experience from people who

have lived who have gone through a lot

of the same things that you go through

have conversations with them i still

come back to the same thing leverage on

community

it’s it’s it’s hurtful and in my line of

work it’s something i experience just

about

every day that we have older

professionals who are not keen on

sharing their experiences with younger

people

for the most part they feel these young

people will

retire them before their time it’s

it’s amusing to think of i think the

older we become it becomes clearer to

most people that

there’s only so much time that you’ve

been afforded as a human being

i i wake up some mornings and

i look back at my almost 40 years and i

ask myself the one question

what what really have i done as a human

one of the speakers said something about

us forgetting or losing our humanity

i think that’s probably the biggest

problem that we have as humans

we forget that we’re humans before

everything else

it’s okay to be selfish no offense to

my fellow scammers as it were it’s okay

to be selfish but

i think for me what’s the most important

that you know where to draw the line

we have needs and wants

i believe it’s important that whatever

information you share with people

should be geared towards and reaching

them and bettering their lives

because that’s just about the only way

you can end up bettering your own life

thank you