Liberty Case

One of the top challenges of an average Nigerian student is money. How did I spend it? Where did it all go? More importantly, how can I make money as a student?

It’s never enough.

The first feasible solution is often the pressure to get a job because in some farfetched mathematical equation, the solution to money is paid employment. I laugh in adulthood.

Really the pursuit to make money never gets old.

Next comes the frustration from paid employment and their difficult work hours. That’s if you find one. Most formal job roles require graduate certification and even when you have that, there’s always the NYSC requirement.

Yes, Undergraduates aren’t the only ones finding it hard to make money.

Need I mention the peer pressure to make money through illegal means.

One often falls back to starting their own business. Then they discover the next challenge — capital to start a business. In the end it all boils down to money. The third challenge of a Nigerian student is lack of time.

SEE: Top Small Businesses in Nigeria

Let’s face it, between lectures and assignments and, God forbid, carry-overs, the money problem can be crazy, but the worse problem is a lack of idea on how to make money.

That’s what I’ll be discussing.

Here are some ideas that can fetch you money in school. Some require a bit of skill but don’t be scared, often times we already possess this skill but we are too afraid to even embrace them.

I’ll talk in detail on the different skills required to start each business. I hope you can make something out of any of these ideas.

Also, feel free to leave a comment if you can relate to the money struggle.

Ideas That Can Help You Make Money as a Nigerian Student

1. Tutor

Your colleagues are hardly going to pay you to teach them, neither will your juniors. Matter of fact, as a senior, you are obligated by the department to tutor students in lower levels. So that’s not what this is about. When I say tutor, I’m referring to lesson teachers.

All businesses are tied to specific environment. So no matter how rural, chances are there is a child in your radius that could use a teacher. All you need to do is convince their parent on the importance of your role. Sell yourself. Don’t Know how? Read my article on Closing Impossible Deals.

Remember you are a student trying to get by, so your charge is relatively lower than regular tutors or who cares if it’s higher. You know where the shoe hurts. Schedule lessons to suit your programme and voila, you have a reliable source of income and of course the company of children.

My elder sister was forced to open a Primary School when her small private lesson grew from two kids with zero knowledge in English or Maths to over twenty kids in three months. What she said to the parents was: “Your children are smart, they just need someone with patience to attend to them plus, the quality of primary education you can afford can’t give your children the attention they need to boost their confidence”. Not in those exact words.

Not long after my house became a congregation of all age grades. Toddlers whose mothers needed a break, spent their day on my bed or following my mum around the house. Everyone was duly employed – even my dad, and he hardly smiled! Yet children loved his company.

Keep your eyes on your grades while you are at it. You aren’t trying to start another primary school. Remember you have a degree to earn. Keep it small; except you can afford to pay your friends to assist.

2. Caregiver

Children can be needy. Avoid those age range. Have you considered being a caregiver to an senior citizen? Even if your school is located in the most remote rainforest in Nigeria. Chances are there’s an old fellow who could use your help with small chores and a meal. Every elderly person’s need differs. Except in severe cases were the client is bedridden, your role consist of cleaning and cooking and keeping tabs on their drugs and other safety issues.

Sort out breakfast and other house chores, go over for lectures, stop briefly for lunch and return in the evening for dinner and any other thing. You might be lucky to find a client that only needs your service a few times a week and some might include accommodation.

The role of a care giver can get complex depending on the needs of the client. WATCH THIS

3. Hairstylist/Barber

If all you can do is a simple cut, trust me you’d always find clients who need a cheap cut because just like you, it’s that time of the semester and they are too broke to get a standard fade on their punk. Same with a hair stylist. Go on YouTube, learn trending hairstyles. Chances are the girls in the hostel want to look expensive for half the price.

4. Makeup/Nail Technician

The demand for beauty standards keeps growing. As a makeup artist you might be limited to your school environment if it’s far from town because jobs can come at a time that clashes with your school work, but let’s focus on positives.

OOPS! Another downer. Makeup can be pretty expensive and demand may not be daily. Check out your environment as usual. If you can make a few thousands over the weekend, you can focus on your school work. Same goes for the nails. Girls will hunt you down a rabbit hole if word gets out that you make a mean nail art. You can learn from watching YouTube. Stop chasing IG stories. Burn data on contents that can help you learn how to make money.

5. Event Planner

I met a girl in NYSC and she told me how she started as an event planner in school. You need passion for this job. You also need to learn to convince your client that you know what you are doing. Mind you the top skill here is management. As an Event planner, your major role is to see to the success of the event. You source the right professionals that can deliver on projects. That’s your super power.

6. Writer

Writing is one of the most lucrative skills in this age. The sweet benefit of writing is that you can easily find jobs that enable you work remotely. You can be anything: a content writer, a copy writer, a script writer or even an editor. It helps to have a laptop but don’t let that stop you when you have a smart phone. Borrow a laptop if you need to, do anything possible to get the job done, save up, then buy a laptop. Like I said, every business has its fair share of challenges.

Your hands will burn but when people casually tweet “where ona dey see this money,” you’ll force a smile because you know how to make money as a student.

I’m just going to say this once. Novels are fun to read and can help you grow your audience, but you won’t make a million selling your self-published poetry collection on Amazon. I Know! However, you can improve on your skills by writing nonfictions like articles and stuff for websites.

7. Graphics Designer/ Illustrator

As with writing jobs, graphic designers are always in demand. Take advantage of your network. Chill on posting memes for a while, inform your contacts that you design graphics for a fair price and watch the power of recommendations. Never forget to add that you charge for your services. E get why.

8. Music Producer

Do me a favour. Tell your younger ones to turn their hobbies into skills. Advise that kid that likes camera’s to follow professional cinematographers on YouTube. Tell that child that likes to drum on everything to learn how to make music now! One of your favourite music producers studied architecture but taught himself to make beats while in school. That up-coming artist in your school sampled his beat and he improved on his work until top artists were willing to pay much more for his work. Need I say more?

9. Transportation

I got talking with an old friend that schooled in some University in Ghana and he was willing to share his story with me on how he made money as a student. His school was quite the distance from the bus park and he offered a solution that brought the drivers into campus to pick up students and he got the deal at a fair price. in his words, he was making so much money he stopped calling home nor did he go on holidays.

10. Tailoring

For some reasons, all the tailors I know never used their skill while in school. I don’t know why! Probably they never needed money. I know dressmaking can get really demanding, so if you are good at it, you could offer to work in a standard workshop that’s within your vicinity. One thing is certain, tailors will always be relevant.

Bonus Tip: Catering

While in school, my younger sister started cooking for her friends over the weekend. Then she grew it into a brand. She made pots of soup or any special meal in large quantities for people who wanted to stock up on food for the week. She also sold per plate to people based on request. At the time she was studying something in agriculture and was somehow able to manage both, howbeit she had a partner. My sister with the idea lived in a school standard hostel but her partner had a house off campus. Somehow they were able to work together to make sales. This is key in business. Every business would have its challenges and its risk. You have to be willing to persevere.

HANG ON! Before you hop on any of these, Read this article on Business Strategy

Final Note

For a Nigerian student, there are countless possibilities to make money if only you’d be willing to embrace opportunities. I once saw a cheap Ad offering to make one-minute videos for small businesses. It was way too cheap and as expected the quality wasn’t great but this guy had found a way to make cheap Ads with his smart phone using mobile video making apps. I can’t blame him for embracing an opportunity.

I have deliberately excluded sales from this conversation for a reason. It’s way too rampant. Every student on my contact is posting cheap clothes from Ali Express and frankly, it’s exhausting. Plus I wonder if they really make money. I won’t advise you to go in that line. If you want to sell clothes you better have something better than a cheap gown from China. Too many “what I ordered versus what I got”.

I may sound tough but trust me, it’s all from a place of love. I want you to make money rather than noise.

You can learn about drop shipping HERE.

Suggested Readings:

• Solved: Top 6 Challenges of Small Business Owners Today
• Nigerian Children Could Make Money If Only Parents Teach Them These Things
• A lesson from Harvard business school
• 7 Ways You Can Create an Effective Business Strategy for your Business
• How to Gain Visibility for Your Startup

A customer’s impression of your brand is critical; that’s why the customers are always right. Competence can attracts, but it takes empathy to consistently close impossible deal.

When faced with a sales decision: my first question is hardly about product quality but about trust. Can I trust you?

We were entertaining a friend for a few days, and one evening we took a stroll down my street, and my friend wanted to buy something from a particular shop. My response was, “oh, we don’t buy from them.” Did they have the products we wanted? Yes. But for some reasons, I’d rather walk an extra mile than shop from that store. Let’s be honest; every family has opinions on what store to buy from and why. I don’t hate the lady as a person, but I don’t deal with her because she lacks empathy.

Empathy and competence are top traits needed in sales, but when it comes to closing impossible deals, empathy trumps competence.

The Five Components of Trust

There are five major components of Trust, and you may fool some of the people some of the time and get away with lucky sales, but if you lack customers’ trust, you’ll struggle with closing deals.

• Integrity
• Competence
• Consistency
• Loyalty
• Openness

You can rehearse for competence, but you can’t fake the qualities of empathy. Humans sense when salespeople fake these things. They may not act on it, but most of the time, it hits like a primal instinct.

Leading with Empathy

How does my small “beef” with a small store affect her sales on the street filled with hundreds of families? Well, in my three years on this street, that small shop became smaller and had far less patronage because . . . as customers, we decide what we think of her first before deciding on patronising her business.

Now let’s move on from small streets to a larger market with big brands like Nike. In 2016, Colin Kaepernick sat during the US national anthem to protest against police brutality and racial injustice. The following week, he kneeled during the anthem, and things escalated from there. Trump got involved; he demanded the NFL fire players involved in such a protest. It was intense. In September 2018, when Nike celebrated its 30th anniversary of the Just Do It slogan, they decided to pick their ambassador from the social arena. So they turned down a list of star athletes and opted for an outed NFL Quarterback who took a kneel during the national anthem.

Why?

Was there a backlash from the public?

Yes, there was. People burned their Nike products.

A Lesson on Empathy in Consumer Brand Marketing

Of course, the Kaepernick case was pretty intense and highly polarised, but as muggy as the situation seemed, Nike stood firmly on the side of the Demographic that benefited their sales. They took side with an athlete that embodied what they represented as a brand, and it was summarized in that one slogan: Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything. Just Do It.

As a salesperson, always remember that the fate of your product is decided within the social arena. The pole was a divided opinion between the baby boomers and the more progressive and spirited young ones. Nike was willing to sacrifice the baby boomers, and that decision paid off.

I could go on and on out of share love for Phil Knight and everything Nike embodies. Nike is top on the list of businesses that understand the power of Consumer brand marketing.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping point, he made an important note on Mavericks. Mavericks are nonconformist. They are highly influential, and no, they are not social media influencers. These are regular folks who take their time to inquire about products and easily convince a family member and friend to try a product, and usually, they are good for their words. They are kids and mums, and they matter within the complex network of sales marketing.

First Impressions Might be all You Have

Mavericks are competent when it comes to consuming product data, and they can easily turn opinions of people toward or away from their products. The bottom line is you need Mavericks to close impossible deals on the broader market.

I watched a documentary on a failed Fyer Music festival that took many influencers to trend but was brought down by a teenage boy’s tweet.

The teenage boy passed one honest comment on the incompetence of the brand and it spiralled and brought a whole organisation to the ground.

Here’s why Empathy Trumps Competence, Especially in One-on-one sales

You can hire an expert to write catchy sales copy. You could design the most flashy logos but when a customer walks into your store none of that would matter if customer service is zero to none.

I took a customer success management course (don’t ask why. I was in a dark place with employment).  It started with a desire to boost my CV so this writer with zero experience in Customer Service could get a job in that field. It never worked out. Thankfully. I learnt the importance of retaining customers through marketing. I also got to learn that the sales funnel is an intricate network of built on referral from loyal customers. That means a deal doesn’t close after purchase.

Also, I’ve come to observe that some deals close before they even begin.

The first time I went shopping for a wedding dress, I had a list of stores recommended to me and my experience in the first store was just impressive. They didn’t have the dress I liked in the size that suits me, but while I was walking out, I told my sister that that was the store I was shopping from. Why? Empathy.

The next store I entered was far bigger but their service was so poor I couldn’t wait to run out.

I’ve recommended every Tom dick and Harry to that first store. Months after my visit, I still champion for them because I was in love with their culture. The odd thing is my wedding theme didn’t require a gown anymore yet the sales was succesful because I’ve directed several brides to them, and every one of them loved the store.

Let’s talk about competence

I once knew a competent dressmaker. I was impressed by her work. It was neat, and from my first dress, the fitting was just perfect but then something happened and it opened my eyes to her greed. That was the last time I’d do business with her and I can never recommend anyone to her.

Was she competent? Highly! But she lost out on a business deal with me because she put competence before empathy.

Final Words

Competence and empathy are great qualities in sales; but it’s the order that matters. The best leaders and salespersons put empathy before competence. This is a fact and has been widely researched by the Harvard Business Review. If you want to close impossible deals, try leading with empathy.

MORE: How to Implement Empathy in Your Marketing Strategy for Better Result

The place of empathy in marketing is not talked about enough. This is probably because the entire human race is becoming less empathetic. We only see the reflection of that in marketing.

In its most basic form, empathy is the ability to “put yourself in other’s shoes”. In other words, it’s the ability to understand and share the feelings of others.

From a marketing point of view, empathy is the ability to understand and share your customers’ feelings.

Maybe your marketing has not been working because you refuse to make room for empathy in your campaigns. Let’s attempt to fix that as we explore the place of empathy in marketing and how you can use it to get better results.

Examples of brands that have successfully done this

Spar Nigeria: Post-EndSars Protest

The EndSars protest had been infiltrated by hoodlums leading to looting and violence in some parts of Lagos. The hoodlums targetted businesses for looting, one of them being the supermarket chain, Spar.

One of their stores was attacked and goods carted away, leaving properties damaged. However, Spar’s reaction to the incident on Twitter is the epitome of empathy. And you can tell from the replies under the tweet.

Hotels.com: Captain Obvious, Social Distancing

We all know how the travel and hospitality industry was among the worst hit by the coronavirus outbreak. Most countries banned travels, so the industry was almost non-existent at the climax of the pandemic.

For most businesses, it was time to think of ways to manage the limited resources they have and see if there are other ways to make money still. But Hotels.com approached this differently.

Instead, they did a campaign to encourage people to stay at home. They literally did a campaign to discourage people from patronising them. That’s not something you see all the time, but then that’s how empathetic brands think.

At the time of doing this, the company’s revenue will feel the adverse effect. However, in the long run, people will remember them as the brand that places their customers’ health and safety above money.

Nike: Inspirational and motivational video

Empathy is about connecting with your customers on an emotional level. Nike is one of those brands that consistently demonstrate this. 

In 2017, Nike released a 1hour documentary on a man who attempted breaking the two-hour marathon barrier.

This is not a profit-driven campaign but one that seeks to motivate and inspire its customers.

Twitter: Work from home for staff

The coronavirus pandemic made some companies adjust their business processes in varieties of ways. For Tech giant Twitter, it was an opportunity to show empathy to their employees by announcing a permanent work from home. Oh, yeah, employees deserve empathy, too and empathy towards employees also influence how customers see the brand.

How to Implement Empathy in your Marketing

Help, don’t sell

Most marketers always think of one thing – sales. 

Well, we get it. It’s totally fine that you want the best ROAS (return on ad spend) on all your campaign, and that can make you focus on sales only.

However, if you want a good result from marketing, you have to focus more on helping rather than selling. You now have to approach marketing with the understanding that your customers need help and that you have just the solution they desire.

Consistently deliver contents that seek to help your customers, not the regular “come and buy”. This is why content marketing is always going to be crucial.

Connect with their feelings

As humans, emotions influence most of our decisions, including buying.

Findings have shown that humans feel first before thinking. So, the fastest way to get us to do anything is through emotions.

In a 2016 study, Tempkin Group discovered that when people have a positive emotional connection with a brand, they are 8.4 times more likely to trust the company, 7.1 times more likely to buy more and 6.6 times more likely to forgive such a company’s mistake.

When you create empathetic stories, you’re building a kind of emotional bond between you and whoever reads it. Similarly, when you develop narratives around situations and challenges, the customers tend to see themselves in your story.

And to successfully do this, you must know your customers through and through. Who they are, what they do, their interests etc. The buyer persona is going to play an important role.

Think like your customers do when they need to solve a problem

This is like the whole essence of empathy. That is, your ability to put yourself in your customer’s shoes.

Take a moment to imagine yourself as your customer facing a problem that your business seeks to solve. What steps did you take in finding a solution? Where did you go? What platforms did you use?

This will help you understand your customers, but it will also help you understand their buyer’s journey. And with this new knowledge, you can strategically position your brand at different stages of the journey.

Focus on making someone’s life better

Every product serves a need, solves a problem or helps somebody. Hence, benefits over features.

For instance, nobody cares about how your smartphone has 4GB ram, 48mp camera and 128GB space. Instead, tell them about how all of these features will benefit them. Tell them their phones will work faster (with 4GB ram), they can take more quality pictures of their products to share on social media (with 48mp camera). They have more space for all the files and documents that matter to them (with 128GB ram).

Make your customers see themself as unstoppable when they use your product. Seek to position your product as a lifesaver.

Deliver clarity, not confusion

Almost everyone has seen a confusing ad. But let’s not mention names; we are not here to ruin any brand’s reputation (further).

Sometimes you as a product owner, you know exactly what your product does. Still, the product may be so complex that it becomes difficult for your customers to get it.

Take a moment to imagine what Apple had to go through to market iPods when it was first released in 2001. Yes, it’s a groundbreaking innovative product, but how do you explain to people at the time that some tiny piece of technology can hold thousands of songs? People were only familiar with walkman then.

This was what Apple did. Here, take a look at what the first iPod commercial looked like.

The ad is so straightforward and easy to understand. Noticed how Apple used the known to introduce the unknown?

Apparently, there were laptops then, and people knew they could play music from their laptops. So, the ad guy started playing the music on his laptop but moved to his iPod when he needed to go out.

Another thing the ad portrayed is the portability of the iPod. The guy could dance and move with the iPod sitting pretty in his chest pocket. That was not something you could do with Walkman (as the name suggests, you could only walk with it)

Also, not a single word was said till the end of the ad. No words, yet we all got the message. Sometimes, less is more.

The “iPod, a thousand songs in your pocket” at the end of the ad summarised the point above – benefit over features.

And finally, the emotion-laced Apple slogan, Think Different, coming at the end of the ad is the icing on the cake.

This Apple ad may just be a classic example of a simple, clear and effective advertisement. 

Listen to customers and evolve

See, this is probably the most important aspect of empathy. To empathise with people, you have to know them and to know them; you have to listen to them. That’s the way it should be.

There is so much you can learn from your customers. After all, your business exists for them.

So, take the time to hear what they have to say from time to time.

The happy, satisfied customers and the dissatisfied, unhappy ones – listen to everyone.

In Conclusion

Empathy boils down to the golden rule – treat others how you want to be treated. Treat your customers like they are humans with needs feelings, and they would respond with trust and loyalty.