Navigating Challenges: From Relocation to Empowering Gambian Entrepreneurs

Below is a link to my latest YouTube video where I share the journey to success with Affiliate marketing.  If you would prefer to read please go to the transcript which appears below the video

TRANSCRIPT

Steve here again with my regular weekly update into my exploits in the affiliate marketing world. Yeah, Easter Monday today so it should be a public holiday but you know online marketers you crack on and do a little bit every day. I think I do allow myself Christmas day off but um, yeah, we’ll be doing a few hours today and it’ll be a bit of a rest as well.

So yeah, this week we it’s going to be a little bit shorter than normal I think because we did move early part of last week so maybe three days were incredibly busy with the move um and I did try to do some work to try and work through it but it just became overwhelming with you know different workers wanting this and that and trying to keep up with emails. um also we’re still working through the liquidation of the offline business.  Obviously the former staff there the former the former employees there they are waiting some of them are owed quite a quite a sum in redundancy and redundancy payments so I feel an obligation to look after them you know they’ve been with me a long theme you know so much someone would do sort of payments of twenty thousand pounds which they’re waiting for and it’s a bit stressful I guess for people.  I know it’s going to come through eventually but you know some of them don’t seem to think it well anyway

First of all this week  just something that keeps cropping up  during the last week  during my various trainings is to allow yourself to make errors it sounds strange you know but we all like to be perfect but I think if you’re going into business you’ve got to allow yourself to make the odd error now and  again.  Yeah without errors you can’t do anything.  I’ve worked with people in the past who were absolutely terrified of making an error really terrified and it does or it can hold you back so never be frightened of making an error acknowledge it  acknowledge it learn from it and move on from it basically um so yeah the other and the other main thing that I’ve always taught people I’ve always tried to instill into people who I have  trained and mentored in the past  in opening a window blind retail business is never give up

Actually  there’s a young man ire in Gambia I’ve known him a number of years.  A reminder flashed up on my phone yesterday up, on my phone, first time I was here which is 11 years ago so I’ve been coming here in the winters,  most winters for 11 years.

So this this young Gambian guy used to work at the restaurant that I opened a long theme ago i was sort of a watchman, sort of working for tips basically, you know, we didn’t actually we didn’t actually employ him i was around working for tips and i also used to sleep in the security place at that restaurant anyway he was always talking about as they say around ire going “back way” to Europe,

It’s a treacherous journey a lot of people, a  lot of young Africans don’t make it.  There’s little going on ire for youth to be honest you can understand it but you know the ulthemate goal is to get to the UK I think because like Dick Whittington they think the streets are paved with gold and we just shovel up gold all the theme.  That’s the perception they’ve got but anyway that’s beside the point anyway I told him to find himself a business get himself a little business doing something and never give up, you know have a dream never give up.   So I saw him quite recently actually and he’s got a juice bar on the beach. Nothing special and it’s not making a fortune but he has a business on the beach and it’s making him money and he’s quite happy. I said how did you get manage to do this.  He said “Steve can you remember all them years ago you told me never give up and that’s what I’ve done I’ve never given up hope and yeah I’ve got this now it’s not much but it’s mine and I’m proud of it and I will try and built form that”

The guys in his I guess in his 30s yeah, he can do that I’m sure he can do that.  I’m proud of him and I’m proud of what I’ve helped him achieve although it’s only small I’ve helped him achieve something he is a businessman here in Gambia

OK so back  to here,  so as we as I said we moved last week we’re now in a second floor apartment which upstairs we’ve got a whole rooftop wire I will be filming from soon we’ve got no furniture up there at the moment I just need some sort of patio chairs up there a we’ll be able to use up there as well but yeah it’s a very very nice place very spacious and for the same money as we were paying before so I’m quite happy with the way it’s turned out to be honest.

So last week what did we do? Not a lot really (businesswise) so this is why it’s going to be sort of shorter video than normal I would think.

I did mention a book last week  the book or A BOOK is going to happen my target is to have it ready for pre-launch if you like by the 1st of May.  At the moment I’m working on it, I know it’s going to be about it’s going to be about the transforming from employment (or self employment)  to an online affiliate marketing business, so at the moment I’m putting sort of half an hour aside each day to work on that.   I’ll be looking at the title for working copies for a title and do a little bit of research on them so you see what goes best and also the cover so my hope is I say 31st of this month, (so I’ve just said it 30^th of this month) there’s only 30 days in April,  yeah 30th of this month it’ll be ready for um pre-launch Which will mean people will be able to pre-order the book for maybe free at least low cost free plus postage so that that is the aim.  I’ll keep you updated from time to time how that’s going on.

Obviously  the intention of it is to position me as  an expert if you like taking me from a learner to an expert.   A published book gives credibility and I guess it will also give self-confidence I think someone told me recently that business success  is 80 percent mindset, 80 percent mind and just 20 percent mechanical so the mechanics of it is important getting set up but then the 80 percent is  mindset so if anything that gives you the confidence to say that oh look I’m a published author this is my book it’s going to be I guess a good feeling to do that

Anyway one thing that we did this week is some training.    A bit of training on LinkedIn.  Now LinkedIn is not like the other sort of main social media channels, it is more  business orientated so obviously you can’t go you go on to LinkedIn and start  saying what you had for breakfast today etc,  this is a cup of coffee,  or this is you know this is me having my morning walk.   No, it’s more business,  going to be more business orientated but it is an excellent place obviously for marketing anything to do with LinkedIn,  ie. how to make money on LinkedIn and it’s also an excellent  to promote any affiliate marketing or affiliate material or anything which helps a business,   So as I’m going to be promoting very shortly a software package that most businesses really need if they want to  keep up in the digital age so yeah going on there (posting) it’s going to sort of get me positioned there.   Regular daily postings it’s going to you know get me positioned on there as someone who knows a little bit about digital marketing, that’s the theory.

I say it’s business based they do say only post to LinkedIn once a day because if you post more than once a day it’s a waste because your new post just knocks the old post off the system if you like.  The actual posting is very similar to Facebook and all the rest of them, your picture of a video,  some text like most of the other the other platforms.   LinkedIn do not like you putting links away from LinkedIn into a post, but you can put a link in the first comment so after you’ve posted on LinkedIn go straight back in go into the comments and you can you can put a put a link in there to where you want to send people to,

As I say once a day posting and  it is recommended actually that there is there is a the facility on LinkedIn to do a,  what do you call them, to do a poll.   Polls apparently do perform much much much better than posts so it’s a good idea to sort of put a poll on there once a week maximum just get an extra exposure  obviously you have to sit down and decide what you what you’re going to poll about.  Sort of you I don’t know give me an idea.   You could say, if you if you’ve got something to promote that’s  got the ability to make two hundred dollars,  an extra two hundred dollars a week, you’d say “what would you do with an extra two hundred dollars a week”  and answers like buy a house probably you want you know what I mean by increasing mortgage to buy a house but you know things like that  come up with some with some interesting sort of polls that you can use on there.   Just remember it’s business, it’s more of a business to business sort of site,  however saying that obviously you know business people do have um private social lives and it’s not any of the software that they might be interested in they might be interested in sort of extra training on social media platforms and stuff like that.

So that’s about all I that’s about all I did last week to be honest I think with the bank holiday as well as moving it’s just a bit in case of going to keep the business sort of ticking over.

So target is obviously April now  first quarter is finished later today I will be just going over sort of the last quarter reviewing the last quarter where  I hit targets where I failed at targets,  and I’m planning for the next quarter and then the next three individual months and the next week and the next seven days I plan every week

At the end of every quarter,  so the there are three reviews to do this week,  it’s the last week the last month and the last quarter so plenty of reviewing to do,  and then set out the next three months what we’re going to go where I want to be at the end of the three months which will be June which is halfway through the year again!

So so one thing I have decided I’m going to do this month I hope to get it up to get up there is to increase my social media posts obviously LinkedIn is going to be just once a day but the other four or five I don’t know,  so we’ve got Facebook, Facebook Group, Instagram, X which is Twitter obviously and Google My Business, those five plus we’ll be going on to TikTik. I want to try and do TikTok sort of three themes a day as well so I’m going to be sort of trebling my output of social media.  Which you know I’ve got software now that’ll do that if you want to know about it just drop me a line you can comment below or comment on my blog just get in touch and um you know I’ll tell you how

I’m doing it.  It’s with AI these days and you know various tools we’ve got it’s very easy to post a lot of personalized if you like personal social media.   I’m not talking about using sort of AI generated avatars but it is  going to be me in person without being totally overwhelmed okay there won’t be maybe brilliantly highly produced highly edited masterpieces of content but they will be honest and sincere and transparent so

I’ll let you know how that goes and I say by the end of the month I want to be doing like three posts every day to all my social medias, except for LinkedIn which will be once a day and a poll once a week

So that’s about all for this week and I say thanks for watching as always and I’ll see you next week or you know drop by on my blog for any new content that I might put there in the week I’m trying now to sort of build that out by putting more and more content on there, I’ve got loads of ideas sort of on my hard drive which I’m completing and uploading.

OK so thanks a lot for listening this week and have a great week and and see you next week