 Welcome to The Advocate on Plus TV Africa, where your panelists discussed provoking topics in an atmosphere of seriousness, decisiveness and laughter. Here we call a spade a spade, and like we say here, no holds barred. Today I'm picking up from where Delac will stop last week on the issue of startups and I'm talking about how more socio-capital is needed. Salman, who makes his debut today is talking about the need to close the data literacy gap. Ruth speaks on the growing sarcher economy and finally, Elijah continues with his leadership series and he terms this the sabotage leadership. Stay with us, we'll be right back. Startup founders need more social capital. There's a lot of flaws and buzz around the world capital when starting a business. Early stage founders are always on the hunt looking for financial capital to throw in their ideas and solutions. Why I agree that money is critical to early stage founders starting a business is also a deeply underrated form of capital, which is the social capital. I personally believe that it's important for early stage founders to invest massively and aggressively into building relationships. This is one way to make deposits into their social capital bank account, which can be withdrawn later on when they need it. The next morning we're looking for to scale your business or your life, the hands of someone. The money you seek in exchange for your product lies in the hands of people. One introduction can take your business to the next level. The quality of your finances has a deep connection to the quality of your relationships. So the big businesses and companies we see today were built by people investing early into social capital. What we've seen with this type of capital is that it works in an impute-output dynamics. It is what you put in that you get out eventually. Early stage founders can quickly ramp up on what they are building if they can make that paradigm shift and pivot into growing their social capital bank accounts by connecting with people and building more meaningful relationships. Alright, so what are your thoughts? I actually like this topic. I like the fact that you made mention of social capital. When you think about it, you realize that most people are focused on raising financial capital, but you realize that the cheapest form of credit or cheapest form of capital you can get is actually social capital. It all relates to things like integrity, things like keeping to your word, having good relationships, having good friends, having good people around you, not just being an islander, wherever you are, because as the saying goes, if you want to go far, you go alone. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go people. So you realize that that also applies even in whatever sector you are, especially as an entrepreneur. So you need to really work and develop the social capital as a person. Well, Victor, I love this. Let me just come from this way. It's great treasure lies in human personality. We all know that it's sacred. Now, if you want to drill that human personality, the resource, the drilling process has to do with relationship building. You now get the resources in there. The resources could be in the form of physical cash. One you call normal currency, fiat or whatever currency, or the inputs. In terms of tech, service, resources, knowledge also. You just need to build a relationship with people because the world is beyond just normal money. If you are looking for money, people are looking for money to start on their phone, but then you neglect having good relationships with people. You need to be in circles where you learn from people and appreciate them for what they are. You learn not to be selfish, manage yourself and try to be good to other people. And then that has to build your network. After all they say your network is your network. Your network is your network. So even I can add to that, most of the things that you have in cash is like the permanent thing. But there are some services you can get literally for free. Like when I'm building some of my products, I reach out to my friends who have those skills. So they just help me like with marketing, help me out with marketing, help me out with designs. Those are things I can get for free because I have that relationship. I think people are the highest form of money. I've literally embodied this where I've literally built things from ground up, utilizing the people in my life. That's why I'm very intentional about connecting, making very valuable relationships. Again, how to build relationships is really intentional. It's organic. So you don't wake up thinking that someone is going to give you money. Someone was telling me that if you want to get to the VP, you just want to contact with the VP. For some people, they are like 100 contacts away, depending on how you... So I think it's about when you meet someone, you are not investing in people because of what you can get from them. But you're investing in people, like it's a natural process where you're thinking about what can I give to this person because the truth is, the more you're doing that, the more you're depositing. So it's like an unseen process, it's abstract. You are depositing to your bank account. And maybe tomorrow you need to do something. Oh, I know someone. Oh, I know a graphic designer. Oh, I know a web developer. Oh, I know this UI you're expressing. And that person comes on board on your project. I think someone says something that when money or cash finishes in your life, it's not money that's finished. It is people, right? It is that when you don't have access to people. So I think that all founders have to pay attention to... Again, Ruth is in finance and maybe raising money and all of that. But even to raise money, you need people. You need access to the investors and all of that. So we're paying attention so much to who have this massive idea. I'm going to give Mark a run for his money. I'm looking for money. I need money. But we're not thinking about what about the people? We've not exhausted the relationships that are... I think it's really important when you're building something at that early stage because you don't even have access to cash, but you have access to people that can get things done. Again, it's just like if someone says, I want to get a car. So I ask someone that once I'm looking for money to buy a car. So I ask them, do you need a car? Do you need money or do you need a car? Well, I need both. No, you need a car. So what if I give you the car? What you need is the car, not money. So oftentimes, I'm looking for 10 million. What do you need money for? Exactly. So I need to get an office space for my business. What if I connect with someone that gives you the office space? I like what everyone has said around this topic. I think one question that I always like to ask is and it's the challenge that I had when I started on my career because everyone tells you build social capital, build a network and then you go for networking events and you realize that you are either lost or the connections you make doesn't translate into anything. I mean sometimes you exchange cards, you do everything and you realize that it just ends there. So the question is, how can a young person build a social capital? Practical way actually. If I'm going to respond to that personally, let me use my safe way. For example, I've been opportune to attend local and international events. When I go for international events, I don't joke with it. I'm always intentional in reaching out to people from different countries not just for the glory of it, but for the strategically. What is strategically? You know what you want. If you go to somewhere, a networking event, just like you said and you don't have where you are going to, you don't have a clear direction of where you are going to when you get there, you'll be lost. Any tundical area will meet you and end up wasting your time. First things first is that number one, you are genuinely interested in people. You want to give back to people. You just want to genuinely help. You're not being selfish. Then secondly, again, you have to be strategic. That's in that order. You'll be strategic in the sense that you have a project in mind you are trying to do or you have something in your mind you are thinking either long-term or short-term. In the process of having genuine conversation with people, you'll find out about who they are and the reason. And then you keep in touch. After the process, after that opportunity, there's what we call posts. Conference management. You have to intentionally call them. Keep up with conversation. No, there's some people who are weird and you say you don't call them. You say, I don't call them. I don't like calling them. Stop all those nonsense. Stop it. If you want to build network, learn to call. If it's okay with the person you are communicating with or at least send messages. Keep up with conversation. Emails and all these things. Technology has made this thing easy. If you start with first-level relationship, first-level conversation, emails and correspondence and then eventually if you guys are or you people are building that exclusion, exclusion in relationship, you can decide to transcend beyond that. They have phone calls, then video calls, video chatting. Good things can happen from there. I think it's not going to be a big practical group wanting something, you know. So just add to what Elijah said. Like I said earlier, it's about being organic with it. I see people go to events and they want to talk to a bunch of 1,000 people. They just want to talk to everybody. Hey, hi, hi. You don't do that. So for me, I identify three persons I'm going to speak to, write, exchange contact, learn about them. And like he said, when I get back, I'm going to follow up and keep up. Oh, hi, I'm Victor. We met at this conference. I'm an entrepreneur. I do this, you know, just following up. If there's something to do together, you know, and then we just keep up with that, right? So people just collect a bunch of business cards and numbers and they don't do anything afterwards. So it's about targeting. Targeted, you know, because building is strategic, like he said. I mean, when you're trying to build the house, right? You get the architecture to drop the plans and then you're not plastering and then you're doing foundation. It's not possible. So you start with foundation, then you get to window level, lintier, then you start. Nobody paints a house with that beauty. You don't do that. So it's strategic and it's organic. So you don't want to meet 100 people at the same time. When you get home, you just realize, I don't even know what I'm doing. So you take it one step at a time or I went to this place. I want to meet one person or two persons or three persons. And then I'm going to do like a post. When I'm done, I'm going to go back and follow. But I think that the larger work is the consistency of keeping on with that relationship because the more I get to talk to you, the more I get to know, okay, so Rook is in there. So Rook does this. Elijah does that. But when you make it a one-off and we think that we're going to come back after one year. Oh, let me go back and talk to this lady she's doing this. No. That's going to be parasitic. So it has to be same biotech where you're talking to them and then they're talking to you or cultivating that. I think that's one thing that really works for me. Let me quickly, yeah. This has no business with the environment because I hear a lot of y'all who say to me, I'm an extrovert or I'm an introvert. I do not talk network. My friends, if you really want to gain things in life, good things of life, you want to learn to make genuine friends with people. That's it. Forget about chasing money alone. Money alone, we're not just going to say money, wealth is in people and wealth is beyond money. Awesome. And some mistakes some people do during their talking, they start by selling services. Yeah, you start genuinely by knowing the person. Get to know the person. I think I was going to even add try to find something like a common ground if it's probably we went to school together. You try to find something that interests both people and then you can kick off from there. Yeah. All right. Up next is Solomon. Do say to me.