 Okay, today is our first workshop of the Global Entrepreneur in Residence program and I'm really pleased to introduce you to Tungai Cioto, the co-founder and CEO of Afroblox who will be sharing more about how you can use freelancers to scale up your business. So I would like to hand over to Tungai. Tungai, welcome. Great, great. Thank you so much. I appreciate you for having me. Yeah, so I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. You see my screen? Yeah, so, you know, I'm Tungai Cioto and I'm here to tell you, you know, the journey of how to scale up with freelancers. And my name is Tungai Cioto, I'm the co-founder of Afroblox, which is a Pan-African freelancers' talent marketplace. So we'll talk about designers, developers, marketers, you know, and reconnect them with remote jobs, mainly from the USA, the UK, and Canada. And, you know, in 2020, I was recognized as one of the most influential people for African descent inside Africa. And I'm the former Vice Chair for the Science and Technology Sector for African Union, Pan-African Desperate Youth Association. So yeah, that's, you know, a brief about me and Afroblox, what it is is, you know, if you are designing for your market, because what we figured out was, you know, there's so much potential on the African continent, you know, talk about 1.3 billion people and 60% is another age of 25. And yet there is this global tech talent shortage that has been impending, you know, it is estimated by Mackenzie, you know, a research firm in the US that by 2030, there will be as much as 85 million jobs that are going to be left unfurled because there won't be enough people talented and skilled in those roles. So what Afroblox is trying to do is to help more African freelancers and professionals participate and thrive in the global gig economy, talk about from a job being posted to collaboration, to payments, you know, you want to work with someone from Ghana, from Zimbabwe, from Zambia, and be able to know that, you know, after this job is done, this professional will be able to get their payment and, you know, be able to end economically. So that's what Afroblox is doing. The topics, though, that I want to cover today, I've split them into three. You know, I figured, you know, to start at scaling about freelancers, then we go back a bit and talk about, you know, building a business and how to scale with freelancers and then reach the conclusion and, you know, share an exercise for you guys to do, you know, after the workshop. So building a business, you know, is something that is hard to do when you start. But once you get the hang of it, and once you follow, you know, certain things that people have followed for centuries, successful business people have followed, you'll at least increase your chances of being successful as well. So obviously, you know, you need a name. Website is not really necessary. It depends on the industry that your business is in. Then these are things that you need to think about before you start, before you go out the things like, you know, what type of business am I creating? Is it a for-profit? Is it a nonprofit? What industry or category? Is it, you know, manufacturing? Is it a SaaS? You know, software is a service product? Is it a marketplace? Then, you know, you go on to things like, you know, a tech line, because I've met people where, you know, they're like, I work at this, you know, company, at this firm, then next reason, I'm like, ah, what'd you do? And, you know, they struggle. They probably talk for like, you know, three minutes. But the better approach is to, you know, to have what they call a one-liner. It's just one line, or it's a one line is a bit longer than say, you know, a slogan. So you have a one-liner, what does your business do? Afriblogs is a Pan-African freelance and selling marketplace. Full stop. So now that takes someone to the next stage, like they get the one-liner, now they're interested to understand more. Now you can give the short description, the long description. And another thing is what they call an elevator pitch. You know, they call it an elevator pitch because the idea is by the time, you know, if you get into an elevator and someone asks you about a business, by the time they get to wherever they're going, you should be done explaining about your business. Then the next thing is a pitch. So a pitch is now a bit longer, you know, it varies from, you know, maybe a minute to as much as five minutes pitching about your business. And then you get questions and then it gets to like 30 minutes. So that's a pitch. But what helps you while you're pitching is now a pitch deck, because now that's the visual, that's kind of, you know, giving, you know, the talent or the investor or the person listening to you, you know, a visual understanding, like if it's a graph, if it's showing competitors, now they understand better, because that's your goal, your goal is to sell your business to anyone who's listening and you need to make it as easy as possible for them to do that. Then the other thing I wanted to share was now you've passed all that, now you're working on your business. There's a framework that I read about, they call it the W3 framework. But I modified it a bit, I call it the W5 framework. So the first three Ws are who, what and why. So who means who is buying, you know, if you've decided that your company, you know, sells, they say you sell soap. So who's buying the soap? The soap, maybe it's, the soap is being bought by moms for their children. The next king is what are they buying it for? So they're probably buying it because it's good for their children, right? The next thing is why. Why are they buying it? Because, you know, it's great for their kids. So the who, the what and the why, those three things, you should ask them about any business that you do. If it's, I'll give another business example. Who is buying, say, you know, lemonade, you know, anyone can buy lemonade. So that's a broader audience. What are they buying? They're probably buying because, you know, lemonade is chewed and cold. And that's what they want for the buying it for the taste. And the why is probably because, you know, the feeling that they have after you take it, you know, or the health, you know, health reasons like, you know, lemonade is really healthy. So now when you're framing your, your business, you're like, you know, what or the why now you include it even in your marketing to say, hey, get this, this cool lemonade so that you can feel better. So now you're selling, you know, different things. Just like a Coca Cola, they never talk about the talk, you know, their tagline is taste, the feeling because they've really realized why people buy it. So those are the three things. Then the next, the things that I added, I figured you also need the when, when are people buying it. So now if it's winter, and then you're outside with the stand of cool lemonade, probably no one is going to buy it because it's cold. Now it makes more sense to sell maybe coffee or tea, right? The way you can't, you know, being, you can't be maybe during a presentation at a church and you're selling your lemonade, it's probably better to set up your stand outside so that maybe the presentation is done, people are going out, that's when they get it. So this is, you know, brick and mortar examples, but this ponds into even, you know, digital products. That's why, you know, when you're doing ads, you pick where because, for example, for us, you know, when we're doing our ads, we pick, you know, you know, London, we state, you know, things like, you know, interest, someone is interested in freelancing, someone who's a business owner, you know, all of those because now you know your who, your what, your why, your way and end your way. So those are the 5W, what I call the W5 framework for building a business. Moving on now, you now have your business and you want to scale with freelancers. So the reason most people use freelancers and even, you know, our platform will make use of our own freelancers is that quick turnaround. So you need something then, you need a logo app. Freelancer is a contractor. So they have the time to work on your project and get it done because it's in their best interest. Once they complete, they get paid. If they don't complete, they don't get paid. So that's what freelancing is. Freelancing ranges from, you know, digital marketers, designers, developers, mobile app, you know, developers, UI UX designers, all of those who can offer their skills virtually. So how do you identify them? These are some of the things that we are working on as a platform to, you know, when someone registers, we actually vet them. We don't just add them. We, you know, recently we started to do interviews and test especially for developers before they come on the platform because, you know, someone can tell you that this is what they do, but it's, they say trust, but, you know, verify. So one thing that's really helpful when you've identified the freelancer is to be clear on what you need done. So it's, it's easy to just say, you know what, I need a website, full stop. But for a freelancer, be like, okay, what is the company? So if you tell them the company, they're like, next question is, do you have preferential of colors or do you have, you know, similar websites that you like? So to, to even, you know, all of that can be frustrating to both parties. So what makes sense is for you to start by providing that information. We need a website with five pages. Here are three examples of websites that we like, you know, to look like similarly. Here's our logo. These are our colors. Can you prepare this for us? Here's a Google doc with the information on the homepage, on our vision mission, on our contact information. So now when the freelancer sees that they're like, okay, this is going to take me what, five days to do. The fee is $400 or $500 to do this. That's because you've provided the formation. So it takes away friction from you and friction from them as well. You know, you always want to work together, you know, in a conducive environment. And it's also helpful to state your timeline, because, you know, sometimes, you know, someone might say, you know, I can do this in 10 days. And then for you, maybe you need it in five, maybe needed in a month, you know, but basically, you need to communicate. So it's easy to just assume that it's a freelancer's job to, to know, which is fair. But at the same time, they cannot guess what you have on your mind or what your team has came up with. So you need to be, provide as much information as possible to them for them to be able to do their job. So even still in identifying the freelancer, some of the things you need to consider, you know, the skills, their skill set, because they'll probably send you a profile. So if you're looking for someone who can do WordPress, if you're looking for someone who can do Python language or C sharp or PHP, and then you see a resume that is JavaScript and Java and, you know, quarterly and things like that. And then the person tells you, I can also do that. Don't believe that because if they will be able to do Python, they'll replace Python on their resume. And those are some of the things that promise you to say, you know, before someone does any work, you might want to give them a test. This is something that I do a lot. If I want someone to build a whole system or a whole platform, I'll start by giving them a page. And in some cases I'm like, okay, this is the page that I need. How much is it going to cost? So that someone, I'm not wasting their time, they're not wasting my time. And if someone is paid for this work, and then the work doesn't come out well for that one page, instead of me building an entire platform for, for 6,000, you know, pounds, I can build a page for $50. And then, you know, decide from the, if I want to spend the $6,000 working with this particular individual. So communication strategy is important. Communication channels as well. Some people prefer, there are a lot of communication channels out there. Some people prefer telegram, some prefer email, some people prefer slack, some prefer WhatsApp. There's so many platforms. So it's clear, it's, it's hopeful to be clear from the word goal, which platforms you're going to be communicating on. So now the other thing is, after that project is done, you should be able to mind your results. Look at, you know, what you stated, which is why, you know, job description is important. You know, it's more like a proposal. This is what I need done. And they're like, this is what I can do for you. And they're like, we agree, let's work on this. So now when the job is done, you're like, here's the proposal. This is what we needed. Here's your result of your work. Is it what we needed? Is it what we agreed? If it's not, then, you know, you're clear because there's a document that both of you are looking at. And then there's the issue of progress as well. Someone said, you know, I'm going to get this done in five days. And now you're like a month in, you need to cut your losses, you know, that that happens a lot because five days, maybe someone can do it and can can miss, you know, with two days. But if it's a month and they keep telling you this and that, you probably need to stop. That's what I've seen from experience because it's in human nature to say, you know, let me just try to finish this because you know, you've been digging through it all for a while. And then one thing that I also realized is when you're building a business, keep in mind that eventually you're going to probably need, you know, team members that are now, you know, part of your team is also opposed to, you know, subcontractors. And one way that we have done it is actually from the freelancers. We're like, okay, you're a freelancer. We now need you to work, you know, more time. So because we've worked with them, we've worked with them well. We've treated them with dignity and respect. Pay them what they deserve. We're now able to to hire them. So building a team takes time, you know, use that, that, you know, those starting stages to actually start to identify who can be part of your team, who can be your eventual, you know, executive assistant, who can be your eventual lead developer back in front and your eventual CFO when the time comes and all of that. It's not something that you want to do, you know, the time when you need a lead developer is not the time that you start to looking for it for one, you start to look to look for one when you start your business and when you start interacting with people. Yeah. So that's the main thing I wanted to share about, you know, analytics, progress, fees, you need to agree on all of that before is that. The next thing, the conclusion. So what advice someone gave, advice that no one gave me that I'd like to share that the hardest part of all of this is going to be dealing with people. When it's cold, you can tell cold to change from blue to green, you can tell cold to change from a rectangle to a circle, you know, it's cold. So you can tell you what you wanted to do, you know, sometimes it's hard depending on the language or whatever, but you'll get it done. But when it's another human being that has different views, different, you know, agendas from yours, that you are trying to align because, you know, they're working for you, you'll probably have to work harder on that. This is based on experience, talking to people, you might get out of a co-assuming you're all good, but it's always good to ask, are you okay? You know, is this clear, is there something that, you know, we need to talk about, is there something that I can explain in another way or I can explain better? All of that ultimately creates an environment where both the client and the freelancer are on the same page and not assuming that they're on the same page. So these are, you know, human relations that you have to go through as a leader and as a business owner and this is not just in in business, this is like in every situation you go through because, you know, there's no place that you go that you don't have to talk to someone or someone or something. Yeah. Yeah, finally, you need to get things done. That's why I have competence, a technical competency, you need, you can talk and talk and talk, but at the end of the day, you need to get this work done. So that means, you know, late hours working, that means, you know, you have to get advisors, you have to ask, you have to read and get work done. As a bonus, I wanted to share these three things that going out, you need to take care of. So that's the business, the technology and the people. So the business is your idea, you've created this for it to grow into scale, always implement, you know, technology within it, even if it's a shop, it makes things easier if you're managing your inventory with a laptop, then to write in a book, even if it's a library, so it's easier to have, you know, an electronic library where you can type books and be able to know where they are. And once that is that becomes successful, you're going to need to work with people's that. So that's why there are three things, the business, the technology, the people. You know, the business, you know, basic things, your mission, your vision, what problem are you solving? What is the market? What is your solution? The technology, these are, you know, tools that you can leverage on. There's so many tools, you know, talk about outlook, Gmail, Google Slides, you know, for marketing, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, for messaging, Telegram, you know, Messenger, WhatsApp, for, you know, they're like Photomation, Zapier, AppSport for customer relationship management type form. There's so many platforms that you can leverage on to make your organization or your business run more smoothly. And then the people, you know, you're going to need to get to get help, you're going to need to have a team of advisors, sometimes a co-founder, you're going to need to know rules and regulations and sometimes you're not a lawyer, so you're going to need to identify someone to help with that, grow your community and eventually all this will need to lead to a network effect where people keep telling other people referrals are the best in terms of growing your business. Yeah, so this is my presentation to you around how to scale up with freelancers. Thank you. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Tonguy. We have a few questions for you. So what advice would you give someone if they were looking to get a freelancer on board and they want to put together a technical specification, but they want the, let's say, a web app to have a few functionalities. How would you encourage them to engage with their freelancers so they know exactly what they need to build? Yeah, so there are a couple of ways to do it. At Afi Blocks we realize that it happens a lot that a founder needs a web app, needs a mobile app, but they're not, you know, it's not their skill set or it's not their space, they don't know about Android, iOS faces, all of that. So for our platform we have our project managers. So when you post a job you actually talk to a developer, a complimentary of Afi Blocks that says, hey, this is what you posted, here are our recommendations. So part of that is part of the freelancer's job. To say you need this and this and that, but this is what we recommend. Someone can come in saying, we've had a customer say that I need a web designer, but when we were talking we realized they needed a web developer and recommended, hey, these are the couple of people that can help you with what you need. You can use WordPress or you can use Wix or Shopify. These are the advantages and disadvantages. So the tough part though is you won't always have, excuse me, you won't always have a freelancer that's willing to go that extra mile to, you know, to guide you through all this. So that's where, you know, for me what I had to do in some cases was to ask some of my advisors, to ask some of my colleagues, you know, you probably know someone who knows a developer, you know, we ask a favor, hey, this is what I'm doing, what do you think about this job post or job description? And, you know, developers, you know, like to ask things. So they'll give you feedback. So all of that, you know, you can combine all of those things to come up with the specification document and then share that with the freelancer. Thank you very much. Could you talk me through how we could engage your AfriBlocks if we were looking for a freelancer to build a web app or a phone app? Great. So the best way is, you know, to visit AfriBlocks.com. That's a F-R-I-B-L-O-C-K-S.com and you simply click on post a job. That job, you know, comes to our network and if it's a design job, you know, probably our design team will reach out, our software team will reach out. We're actually creating a website for you guys, right? You know, through that process. So, you know, again, those project managers, you know, we decided to, you know, to add that layer so that the quality of work that comes out, you know, at the end is high quality work. The freelance is happy. The client is happy. So it's AfriBlocks.com. You know, feel free to post a job anytime. We're here to, you know, to help your business grow. We're here to help your ideas tend into reality. Thank you so much. I have another question as well. So you got through to Techstars, which is really competitive and again, globally renowned. Can you share more about the application process and also how to impact on the entrepreneur that you are today? Yeah. So Techstars was, yeah, the process is hectic. It's not an easy process. I think we had about six interviews. You know, we applied. We had to fill in a whole form, you know, couple of questions, your business, your competitors, what's your solution? Why are you special? You know, what's different about, you know, what's out there? We answered all those questions and sent them out. We got a response. We got a first call, second call, then a final call, and then after that we got the response that, you know, we have qualified. So one thing again that I did was to, before I answered any question, I took all of those questions, put them on a Google document, place my answers there and send them to my advisors. Hey, guys, I'm applying for Techstars. Here are my answers. So they have experienced like, you know, where you say the, you know, Afriblogs does this, I think it's better to say this. Where you say, you know, Upwork is your competitor. I think it's better to say, you know, it's an indirect competitor. So it's just those words that makes, you know, someone interviewing you realize that you understand your market. You know, it's an indirect competitor because we are focused on African professionals. They are not. Other competitors are focused on developers alone. We are focused on designers, developers and marketers. So all of that, when someone is talking to you, they're trying to figure out, do you really understand your business? Or you're just, you know, taking a chance. So, you know, asking helps a lot. And then, you know, just basically going online, you know, people talk, you know, they say, you know, I went through the interview and this is what happened. So it was still hard, but it made it easier that, you know, I've researched because nowadays with Google, you just go on Google and you're asking and you type and you see, you know, some other people, their comments and all of that. So, so that's what we did. We went through the process. We, we eventually, you know, they announced that we qualified when we were the first Simbabwin startup to get through the, the, the Texas Accelerator. They give you capital. But the most important thing is you go through a 13-week intensive program where I remember, you know, my calendar was full the whole time, the whole 13 weeks. And you're meeting people where it would have taken you months or never to meet some of these entrepreneurs that are being handed over to you. So I'm saying that greatest value of Techstars was that they are community. They have an immense community of founders. They've been building for years who basically come to you and look at your business and tell you, is this great? You need to change that. You need to change this. And that's one of the most important things that any entrepreneur can ever get early on. And just someone to scrutinize. And because as an entrepreneur, it's very easy to say, you know, this is my idea. I know this will work. But these guys have been in the industry for years. They have some have sold three, four companies. Some of their companies have gone public. Some are millionaires and billionaires. And they are here to talk about your business that's worth like $10. So, you know, that, that, that feedback is, is extremely, you know, helpful. So I would say, you know, I recommend anyone and everyone to, to apply to, to, to Techstars. They have, you know, you know, different cities, different managing directors and different accelerators for different industries. But, you know, Techstars.com, look at them, you know, information is there. Thank you. And you mentioned that you had a group of advisors. What would you recommend to our community of entrepreneurs? How can they start getting a group of advisors together? All of that is, is a process, is a journey. And someone who can advise you, you probably know that person. I'll give you an example. You have been an amazing, you know, leader in this space. You invited me here. And you are helping me, you know, share my business with, with a lot of people. You basically are advising us because, you know, I ask you questions sometimes and things like that. And for, for me, you know, I've met some people during, you know, we have worked before. Some of our clients as well, you know, you actually see, you know, this person is knowledge. And, and the thing with advisors is, you know, they need to complement each other. Someone is really good with investment advice. Someone is really good with product advice. Someone's really good with legal advice. So you need to identify that, okay, with everyone that I know who's really good in, in product advice. If you don't have someone in product management, you probably have someone in investment. You ask them, do you know someone who can help me with the product? And they'll probably know someone because that's the thing with advisors. Advisors do know that, you know, this is my strength. This is not, you would never have an advisor. It's very rare someone to say, like, for me, if you ask me for legal advice, I'm like, I'm not that guy. But if you ask me for, you know, development advice, yeah, we can talk all day. So, you know, asking the person that you already know, if they know someone is another way. And being conscious in your head to say, these are the things that I need advice with. So it's not just getting a random advisor. It's like, what do I need help with? I need help with marketing. So let me look for your marketing advisor. Some of the people I've met are literally connections from LinkedIn. You know, someone that I've seen and that I've admired their work. And then I reach out to them, hey, this is what I'm building. Would you help me? And some have said, yes, some will say no, that's part of the process. Thank you. And some of our students have business ideas, whether they want to set up agencies and they're thinking about, for example, outsourcing marketing. And they were talking about how do I go about pricing? What advice would you give them on deciding how to price their service or product? Yeah. So there's this thing called a product or price discovery, literally, especially if you're building like projects like software as a service projects where you're you're trying to figure out like, okay, you're building Netflix, you're trying to figure out should I put you should people pay $6 or $3 a month. So that is something you really need to ask your customers and have a good sample size. So I've seen some platforms actually have a survey that they send out to their community. You know, for us, we've sent out surveys before some to ask, you know, from a simple question like, hey, how do you get paid? Feelings will say, hey, I get paid through Payoneer. Now we know that there's this service that's dominant right now, we'll look at them and then we try to see if there are some things that we can take from them. So for pricing, it's really product discovery. If it's a brick and mortar thing, like, you know, you're selling, I don't know why I keep saying soap. I always go back to that example. You're selling soap and, you know, now it's things about like how much did it cost you to to get that inventory? How much will it cost you to acquire a customer to buy it? How much will it cost you to market that product? And then now, from there, if all of that is going to cost you $10 to sell the soap, and then now you decide how much markup I want to place a markup of, you know, 50%. So now you're selling that at $15. So, you know, I always think like brick and mortar or retail is easier kind of to figure out as opposed to software products because software products, like, that's where you really need to literally put a service out there. Like, don't stop because a lot of people take too long to put a product out there. You need one thing, you need a lending page. You don't need the whole website. You can have a lending page. I'm selling coaching services, $50 an hour, one on one, you put it out there. And you look at the analytics. How many people clicked on this? 300 people clicked on this. One person bought it. So $50 is not working. Of course, sometimes it may mean maybe no one wants the service. That's another, another, another, you know, interpretation from that. Next thing you lower your service to $25. How many people opened it? Maybe now, you know, $5,000 opened from $5,000, maybe $10 booked a service. So now it's product discovery. And all of those experiments need to be done and need to be done fast and need to be recorded. Because if you don't record, come, you know, three months later, you won't remember what happened when because your mind is not meant to remember things. It's meant to process things. That's what I always tell my team, write things down. Look at what you wrote. You don't have to remember how many people clicked on it. You just have to pull it up. And then now your mind is trying to process. So this is how many people clicked, 10 paid. So this might be getting closer to the, to the right price. Thank you. My last question for you would be, what advice would you give to entrepreneurs who have this large vision of, let's say, a NAP that has various functionalities, let's say numerous functionalities, but there are stages where they say, okay, I don't have much funding available. I don't have an expert to build that. I can't actually set up that business right now. What advice would you give them? The first thing is get started. The second thing is you probably don't need to have all those features. Figure out, I guess that's what, that's why you need to go back to what do you want, that those five Ys, those five Ws, what, where, why, like all of those things make you figure out what the business should be about. So you can start out saying the business should be a learning platform where people can chat and do video calls. And then you're like, okay, who am I targeting? And then you forgot the people you're targeting don't even want video calls, the one voice calls. So now you literally, we are about to build a feature that no one wanted. But because as an entrepreneur, it's very easy to want to build this thing that's in your head, even though you need to listen to what the data, the information, the feedback that you're getting. So I'll say, you know, when you haven't happened, it's huge. Change it or maybe you can even place a roadmap to say at this stage, this is what we're starting with. I'll give an example of someone who wanted to start a broadcasting service. So I was like, maybe you probably need to record videos and then stream them later because they wanted a live stream service. Maybe you start by recording because streaming is difficult. Streaming means you need to be online all the time. So if you start there, you get traction, you get customers that pay you, then you use that money to watch to get to the next stage. But if the stage that you are, if you go like, this is perfect, we're making money here, we're killing it, then there's no need for you to add that feature that was just going to stress you and you would have probably not launched in three, you know, four years because you're working on something that's in your head that no one told you they need. Thank you so much, Tungai. Thank you so much for showing more about how entrepreneurs can scale their businesses with freelancers. It's so great to have you back as a guest. Everyone always learns so much. We will share more about Afroblox and how our students can find out where your website is. And thank you. Thank you for coming. Very great. Thank you so much. I appreciate you. Wonderful. I'm just going to stop recording for the moment.