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