 Okay, should you just bring the mic a touch closer to you? Okay. I'm all with higher. Your suspension, that's it. Cool. I am expert at this now. Yeah, you are. Hey, cool. This is a bit of a different setup. Slightly different. Because you are where you usually are. I am. But I am in front of the camera, which is very weird, but yeah, you said you wanted us to have some time together to discuss. Yeah. Firstly, I've wanted the world to know who the woman is that's making this all happen. Oh, whatever. Without a doubt, I could not be, I wouldn't even become close to launching this podcast without your support. So as much as I'm the one in front of the camera and the one having to provide all the money. As you could remind me. But yeah, I'd be saying is a hundred percent the person that is actually the, I guess the heart of the podcast, I'd say. And thank you for all your amazing work. Thank you. That's so lovely. And yeah, I've always said to you that it's a privilege because you just allow me to be creatively free. And you don't usually get that to be honest. And you're open. And so it's just, yeah, it's a really lovely working environment. You are a great boss. Yes. I like to think so. Honestly, I've actually worked hard to try and be a good leader. So I'm glad that's paying off. That's good. Well, I want to learn more about that. I think what we said is that within these type of conversations, we're going to kind of unpick some of the themes that we've already heard in some of the conversations we've had already, but get to know you more on a deeper level and learn from you. Because literally, I feel like everybody that has come on here has said afterwards, can you mentor me in some way? So it's like, OK, if they're not, if that maybe if you're not able to mentor or anyone else that listens because your capacity is gone. Let's do these episodes so people can hear from you. Yeah, here. So this episode, we're going to talk about leadership. Oh, OK. Yes. Oh, yes, I did not tell you. Yeah, we're going to talk about leadership. So, yeah, let's, I think let's just get right into it. So whatever you want to do. OK, so when was the first time you actually called yourself a leader? Oh, OK, you know what? What I'm going to do, I'm going to tell you just before I became a leader and then what happened after. So one of the most important stories of my life or one of the most defining things was actually basketball. So way back in the day when I got to secondary school, I used to actually love basketball, but I was really, really crap at it, if I'm honest with you. I didn't make the team in year seven, made it in year eight, but just got named minutes and sat on the bench. And in year nine, I did the same thing again, made the team, but sat on the bench, got named minutes. There were two outstanding players in my school. There's the other one of my good friends. He actually went on to play professional, so he was that good, dedicated and another friend of mine, Emmanuel Sonny. They were definitely the leaders of the team without any doubt. But in year nine, we were able to get to the county finals. OK, that's pretty good. Yeah, I had no contribution, I sat on the bench. You were on the bench. Yeah, but we got there. And we got destroyed, like literally, like it was terrible. What was the score? I don't remember the score. You remember the score? I just remember being angry and sitting on the bench thinking, this sucks because even if the coach was to pick me in the game, I would probably not be able to contribute that much. And that was like a really disempowering feeling. And I remember sitting on the bus back home with everybody. It was mad silent. Nobody wanted to talk to each other. I think a couple of people might have been low-key crying. People were angry. The vibes were just off. And I remember saying to myself, I'm never going to let this happen again. And from literally the next day, I remember I got my parents to buy me a basketball hoop for my back garden. And I started working on my shot every day, worked on my ball control, all these different things every day. So by the time the summer had come and gone, when we came back, I was now one of the better players in the school as well as in the county as a result. And then, yeah, we went on to actually be undefeated for that year, including getting to the county finals again, including playing that same team. And we actually destroyed them, which was an amazing experience. And the reason I tell you that story is because it really showed me that leadership definitely does start from, I guess, taking control within yourself, seeing that there are environments or things around you that might be difficult. But if you decide that you want to get a certain outcome and you first focus on that internal work, you can control the things that you can control. That's where leadership begins. Even actually the end of that story is we went on another year. We were undefeated again. But because of our previous record, we got put into the National League and we went on to the National Championship as well. So how were you able to... Because it seems like within your own self, you created a spirit of excellence. I'm going to be excellent. But how did you transfer that to the rest of the team? How did you actually... I'm going to say I was in a sense a leader of that team, but I wasn't the leader of that team. Without any doubt, Leslie was 100% the leader of that basketball team. And I'll say I definitely learned a lot watching how he conducted himself. So even that little thing, so keep in mind, we're all in secondary school, we're all wonderful guys. You know what, I can't completely forget. So we're kids when this is all happening. But I remember every night or morning before, actually it was every night, he would remind everybody, this is the games we're playing. Don't forget to bring x, y, z, this and that. Sometimes we'll give a few words of encouragement, et cetera. And so sitting back and watching somebody be such an excellent leader was a huge part of me learning to be like, OK, this is what it takes. And another thing I learned about leadership and that capacity was that as much as there was someone who had to be at the forefront, you did also need other levels of leadership within the team. So I'll say between myself and Emmanuel, we then kind of took on other responsibilities. So yeah, sometimes Leslie wasn't in the right headspace to be able to lead the team emotionally. But because of my nature of always being relatively chilled, I was always able to bring that calm and confidence to the team. Or sometimes being able to just take a player to the side and have a one-on-one conversation, things like that. And it also taught me that when you're leading, then actually probably the next most important person that's around you is your first followers. So the ones that come right after that. So learning to invest into those people as well was another lesson that I low-key learned from that experience. Wow. All in secondary school. All in secondary school. Did you acknowledge that at that time? Or is it when you're thinking about it in hindsight, that you learned a lot? No, I knew at the time. 100%. I remember being really impressed by the way Leslie led. Even at that stage, because I saw the impact it had on me. Because even his own desire and passion, like he wanted to go pro for as long as I remember. I think from year seven, he said he wanted to be a professional player. And he really put in the work to make that happen. Like really put in the work and it was contagious. So seeing somebody that is literally transforming their life in front of you, following their own dream, it leaves you with very little excuses. Or you can either say, this is what I want to do for myself. Maybe not necessarily pursuing the same vision, but knowing that if you put in that type of work and dedication, then that is what you can accomplish. So that definitely understood what I was seeing at that stage too. But then also I realised that there were going to be times when the person who was leading needed other people to step up as well. So definitely there were moments where the different members of the team would come to me or a manual for support, whatever was happening. Like Leslie's passion was a little bit too intense at times. So at times you did need that like calming additional voice or whatever, especially as we began to bring up younger players into the team as well. So we also had like a system of like informal mentorship going on. So the next generation of players will also come in through and develop into. Hey guys, I just wanted to let you know that on November the 24th, 2023, we will be hosting our first workshop of the year. It's going to be focused on helping you to become a board member. For more information, visit the Dream Nation website at dreamnation.co. That's dreamnation.co. What became really real for me was about two, three years later, was when I became ACS president. I was ACS president. Oh yeah, you know, I've noticed there's a lot of great people that, that's a big part of their story. Yeah, it's quite crazy, but carry on ACS president. I want to hear your story. So for those that don't know, the ACS is the Afro-Caribbean Society. Most universities in the UK have one. And I went to Loughborough and we were not on the map for that way when it came to the ACS, like kind of like network. And I think a couple of years previously, the ACS has been shut down. I think it was, there was something to do with the police, something to do with a gun, something to do with people who were not in Loughborough. Loughborough that didn't have, I remember one of my friends went there and she said there was no Nando's there. What is, what is going on? Yeah, no, this was a couple of years before we arrived. Yeah, the, yeah, it's been like incident of with a gun, at least somebody from Loughborough and then something like that. And then coupled out with, I think, I think this is an unconfirmed rumor, but apparently some of the previous committees have tried to do forward through the ACS accounts. So between those two things, the union had basically shut down the ACS. The year before me, somebody had come and resurrected it, but it was struggling, it was on its knees. And then when it came to do elections, nobody wanted to be involved. Like nobody stepped up, including myself. I wasn't even a member at the time if I'm honest with you. Nobody wanted to step up. And the, they tried to do elections two times and then nobody wanted to be president or whatever. So then by the time the third time came, something in me was just like, I can't let this die because as not fantastic as it was at the time, it was still important. And we, I also saw how much the black community at Loughborough needed something because we were quite separated, quite dispersed. There wasn't a much for us and all of that sort of stuff. And I was like, I remember like trying to go to sleep the couple of days before, like you had to put your final like submission in and just couldn't sleep. Like it was just like bothering me so much until I was just like, you know what, fine, I'll run for president and see how it goes. The very minute I said that I was like, so much peace for the sleep instantly. So I put myself forward for the role of ACS president. And yeah, like that was a game-changing situation for me. Firstly, I won the election almost unanimously. The only people that voted against me were the ones that literally came into the event with my competition at the time. And I heard a couple of them even switched sides because the votes were secret so you can actually see. I loved that for you. I still remember what I said would during my election speech because I'd already started my first business at the time. I was running a media company, so Starlight imagery, but we can talk about that a whole nother time. And I remember saying I want to run the ACS as well as I run my business and at the time because we had the reputation for excellence, people were like, yeah, we want that. And I also was just explaining how for the combination of the skill, the talent, the ability, et cetera that we have at Loughborough is very uniquely placed because universities above us, like the Cambridge is in Oxford, like no shade, but actually, shall I say it's all about? Actually shade. You know, I will say it. Yeah, the ACS is above us. They've got the intellectual side of things, but they didn't have so much like the heart. And the ACSs that were lower in the rankings, they had like the heart and the culture, but they didn't necessarily always have like the same level of talent that Loughborough did. So I was like, we are perfectly placed to do something amazing. So, and I think we can do that. So, yeah, like I really took on that leadership role like with everything I had in me I threw all of myself at it. And the first thing was learning how to win over hearts and minds because a lot of people were, let's say disillusioned with the whole concept of an ACS or the black community as a whole. So being able to learn how to bring people in by firstly, I guess my approach was always to show people that I care about them. So show that I care about you as an individual first and foremost and understand what your needs are and what you want and that this vision isn't this mind but it can be yours as well. And doing that enough on a one-to-one small basis so I was able to begin to build some momentum, etc. And we went from having about 20 members to going up to 120 members over the course of the year that made us the second biggest society at the university. We went from doing about four events in a year to doing I think it was 24 that we ended up doing over the course of the year. 24? Yeah, yeah, we were on it. Is it socials as well because that's a lot? Some of them are socials. Although the one thing that I did also say is I banned my ACS from being able to do waves. Not because I've got any issues with people raving, etc. but I thought it was almost too easy and like I wanted us to learn how to do things that would get people involved in other ways in that regard and also didn't let like you know it's always promotes, etc. It's like, you know, you guys do that, we're not going to compete, we will do all the other stuff. So grew our membership, we grew our income as a consequence, we did all these events like we were able to build like the sense of family and community. We won a couple of awards the first time this site had ever done that. And I would say from that point onwards like the ACS has been on the map. So now people think a lot of ACS has been one of the best ACS in the country. That's amazing. And I would say it was that experience which really, that's when I really embraced know I am a leader. People see me as a leader, they're willing to follow me, they're willing to embrace me in that. They're willing to do the work to be a good one. So from that point onwards, that was how it got started. Hi, I'm Courtney Daniela Boating. Hi, I'm Renee Kapuku and we are the co-founders of Two My Sisters. And we are your next guests on the Dream Nation podcast. Well, if I was a listener of this podcast right now, what I would be willing to ask you is how on earth do you get a brand partnership? How do you do that? So I think the first thing is people are often deceived into thinking it's about the size of your platform. One thing that I learned like from doing YouTube, and I think this was one of the key things I was able to bring to like, our dynamic was like, okay, we don't need to be big, we just need to be strong, right? We need to have a strong message and we need to build a strong community not necessarily in size but in devotion. I feel like when, from my own experience as well, I feel like when you have a leadership position, you might not, well I didn't really see myself as a leader. I saw myself as like, I'm doing, there's work that needs to be done, so I'm just doing it. But you are actually saying you are acknowledged that you are a leader in that moment. Yeah. I think it's important. I would very much say because of like, I guess my opinion, my view on leadership is that it's a servant. It's like you're a desk servant in a specific way to help people move forward with something. So it's not about you? It's not about me. But what that experience taught me is that sometimes, actually not even sometimes, actually the people following you do also need you to actually be a leader with your chest. They need someone they can point at and be like, that is the person I'm following. So if you try to always do the humble, deflect yourself away from yourself, then you don't give people something solid to latch on to. Yeah. Because when things get tough, they need you to step up and be like, no, I am speaking on behalf of these people and I'm going to fight for what they need. And if you keep putting yourself to the side and doing this humble thing and be like, oh yeah, anyone can do that, then it's like, yeah, it's nice. But when stuff is difficult, there's no one there. People need to be like, this is who we are following. And then when that's the case, you have to be able to step up and lead by example. Yeah. I hear you. I have a question that I think some other people might as well around confidence and leadership. Because I think a lot of people have ideas but they don't necessarily see themselves as a leader. So do you have to be, do you have to gear yourself up to become a leader if you have an idea that you want to showcase to the world? Like is that, that's it? That definitely isn't your way around it. There's no way around it. I don't see... Because a lot of people don't want their attention or they don't feel like they have the skills to be a leader, but they have an amazing idea. Yeah. So three lessons or three ideas that always stick with me in terms of what a leader has to do. I think I've said this to you before as well. Probably. Yeah. Which is you need to have a vision. You don't need to have the team, build a team that can fulfill that vision and then you then need to give that team the resource that needs to succeed. So let's say you've just got to the vision stage, you've got a really good idea that you can articulate to yourself, to other people around you, to the outside world, etc. The chances are if it's going to be a game-changing idea that you can't do by yourself. It's that simple. So therefore the next step is you now need to build a team. And if you're going to build a team but you're not going to be a leader, you've failed at the first hurdle. Being a leader doesn't mean you have to be like some big social media thing or have thousands of followers or anything like that. You can still be relatively low-key. Many of the people that have done amazing things in this world have been good leaders but they will never be like in a book, for example. And that's okay. But the roles of leadership are kind of unbreakable and so are the roles of change. If you want to have a meaningful impact on the world then you will have to learn to be a good leader. Yeah. Yeah, I hear that. Hey there. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. One thing that we want to do is want to make this as interactive as possible and with that I would love to hear if you have any questions or dilemmas you would like us to address in the episode. To do that visit dreamnation.co forward slash podcast and submit a form that you'll see there. You've said before, you haven't said it on camera but you've said before that at one point dreamnation had 20 employees and right now we have three? Two. Three? Yeah. So when you were talking about the step about choosing the team and having the right people around you which is probably the most difficult part to initially like building everything like what has your experience been like had even just thinking about having 20 I'm just like this is what I mean in the future and I'll definitely probably go up again to that. But how did you navigate that with all your ideas? Even the first idea you said you had at uni like building a team what has that been like for you? Building a team is the hardest thing in life and business like even within all the companies I sit on boards for now are involved and it's still the biggest challenge it's the right people, the right talent in the right place. What was it like? The very first team I built was for my very first business in not secondary school and college I started a company called Cosmic Sports. Cosmic Sports? Cosmic Sports, yeah. Okay, tell me what was it? Cosmic. Cosmic was the nickname I had from basketball. Was that your tag? That was my tag, yes. Explain. Basically, so it was a pretty good basketball player as we know as you may have also noticed although I am above average height I'm not 6'6", you know what I mean? I'm not the tallest guy. The reason I was able to compete is because I can jump extremely high. Okay, Cosmic. That's where the nickname Cosmic came from. So then I started this company called Cosmic Sports to organise sports training camps and tournaments. I didn't get very big at all but it was my first introduction to business and it's also why I went to Loughborough because Loughborough is a sports university so that's how that all connects up. So that company, I built my first team and I literally just went for whoever was kind of available that showed not even any interest in my business just you've got this kind of skill, you're someone that I know, don't want to be involved in this. And yeah, people are very quick to say yes but when first came to Shelf, like they didn't Shelf or do no work consistently and that really showed me this is like, yeah, you can't just people have to first buy you, like really buy into the vision and then you have to buy in, they have to also show their commitment to what it is that you're doing otherwise, like it's not going to work out. The one person I did recruit, he wasn't a mistake was my best friend, Bola. He came on because Bola's always been good with numbers for a long time, I've known him so he came on to do like accounting stuff. I don't know what account stuff he was doing because there was no money but I was like, yeah, I need an accountant really easy to come through. So that was the first version of the team that I built. At some point during university, I think, just after my first year, I realized the Cosmic Sports thing was not going anywhere. Largely, not because it was a bad idea but mostly because I had a better idea which is I started doing photography. So I bought this professional camera to take pictures at my sports events that I was organizing but by the time I got to university, people kept asking me to come and take pictures of other things. Like their clothing lines or their events, et cetera. And I realized that there's actually a much bigger opportunity for me as a photographer than there was in sports tournaments. So I closed that down. It's out of the company I mentioned, Starlight imagery. You might notice there's a space theme going on. Back then, my parent company used to be called Cosmic Incorporated or Cosmic Inc. How many companies have you had? Like fully registered businesses, three in terms of different brands, and maybe about 10. So yeah. Sorry, carry on. Where was I? So with Starlight imagery, I'd learned my lesson with Cosmic Sports about how to build a team. And I also saw he was really down for the cause and that was Bola. So I bought him on board. And he did want to gain handle the finances which was needed this time. So invoicing people, stuff like that. Just starting to negotiate deals on the side. Really important from that angle. And then I realized that I wanted to do, I think it was a lot of entrepreneurs get, which is like I don't want to handle any admin. I just want to go and be the creative visionary person. So I actually then made Bola the CEO of Starlight imagery. And I just was like the creative director in that regard. Which was a good decision. He was a fantastic CEO in all honesty and a lot of amazing things happen as a consequence of that decision. Wait, let's not go past that really quickly. You let go of that title to be the creative director. Which is somebody that you can hire a creative director. How are you able to make that decision? It's quite a big one. To me, it didn't feel like a big one to me. I understood what it looked like on the outside in terms of if I don't have to see your title then people will be like, oh, blah, blah, blah, think, whatever. To me, I was just like, where do our skills align? And this is also somebody I trust. You have to remember, I legitimately trust Bola of my life. I remember when I went on, I had to go to Jamaica on an emergency tip some family stuff to sort out. I remember I just just left him with all my credit cards for anything that needs to be done. It's like, if there's anything that pops up and this gets sorted, do you know what I mean? Yeah, so I trust him with my life. And I think if you're going to have someone who's going to be your co-founder, which is how I treated him, I'd give him a bit of this point, 50% of the company, all of that. If you can't trust him with your life, then what's the point? Co-founder relationships are basically marriages. And actually in many cases, it's lots longer than most people's marriages as well. So you need to really think about who it is that you have as those foundational pieces to your company or your vision. And then, yeah, make sure you can trust that person. So that decision to me was easy in that moment with him, but it's not necessarily an easy decision in other situations because nobody can do trust at that level. So kind of going back to Starlight, we were beginning to grow. We had now also built a studio up in the Midlands. In Media Studio Sim, it's like what you're looking at here. We had this, but not as good, but we moved. And we've now kind of evolved from being photography to start doing video production to then actually go beyond that and start doing more of like a marketing agency. And yeah, like I was realizing that I had so much work I had to get done. So at this point we brought on who was he first came on as an intern and that's just because he kind of just saw what I was doing around the Midlands at the time. He was just like, I just want to be involved and learn from you how to do this. And that's the guy called Ali Farigi. I think I've mentioned him because I think he'll be amazing to be on the podcast. And yeah, he then was like came like my first real employee, I guess. The first time somebody kind of like trusted in like me so much they're like, I'm going to put my career in your hands essentially. And the first time I was had to be like, oh, I need to make enough money to pay this guy as well sort of thing. And once again he showed that he could be trusted so I just I also just gave him keys to the studio all that sort of stuff like went from there. And I think there were a couple other misfires of people who said they wanted to come and learn or wanted to do this and that but you could tell that hearts weren't really in it. Their actions didn't show and I guess what I'd learned from Cosmic Sports before is pay attention to people's actions, not their words. So I just let those kind of relationships slowly die off but yeah, between myself, Ali and Bola like that was a vital buy for that company for the whole of his existence and to hold it down. And when did Dream Nation like in 2013 the creation like what spurred that on and how did you manage the 20 people? You haven't even got to that yet. There was a picture from that gala that went ridiculously viral like ridiculously viral What happened? What was in the picture? So it was I think maybe about seven or eight of the girls that attended they took that really cool picture like of them being kind of silly but looking outstanding could have all like it there. I think I remember this picture. A lot of people don't actually know that's where it came from but yeah like so they were all looking great because they're all in their like gala clothes but they were like pulling like gang signs and faces etc and the caption was something like two doctors, one dentist just naming all the things they're doing and I think it was just like a moment that showed people that you can be excellent and you can also still have personality and enjoy yourself. Thank you for tuning in to today's episode We release a new episode every Sunday so make sure that you subscribe and follow us so that you never miss out. If you would like some more inspiration while you wait for the next new episode then check out the recommendation above Don't forget to follow us on social media and you can send us a question or a dilemma that you'd like us to answer on the podcast This is Club Williams, you've been watching Behind the Dreams and we look forward to seeing you at the next Dream Nation event