 Faisu wa kwadfa faw chano on twitter, kwadfa faw underscore chano on the gram, hashtag up the day is Thursday vibes, mina y 12 val. And it's the latest back for show in this here town, in this here serie, if you don't know, ask somebody, if you run all the way from 7 in the morning till 10 in the morning and it's a daily show so many all the way through Friday. Kwanza kejwo, but kabla tufii ke kwanini kejwo, situ kaya kaya tuapa. It's my complete honor to introduce to you a very, very phenomenal lady. She looks great. Oh my gosh. And she's about to pass wisdom. Siji kama nwela medei, that color bibi perhaps for this time and purpose. I don't know, but give it up everyone for A'Cheng Butler. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? I'm really well. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I'm glad you came. It's a complete honor, complete. Please introduce us, although I've just said your name, please reintroduce yourself. Wonderful. Thank you. So my names are A'Cheng Butler. I'm the CEO of Digital Beehive, which is a digital marketing and consultancy firm. So that's what I do as my day job and in my free time as a passion project, I do a lot of career coaching and mentoring. Yes. Let's start there from career coaching because I feel like first of all, nowadays, although it's not our fault, it's not really the systems what COVID-19 has come with a lot of things. Schools had been closed for a long time and now that they're back, it's insane. My auntie was sending me the timetable for my cousin and the longest break is a week between terms. They're like, eh, tamwan, okay, mi tam 3 days. Okay, now you close one week and it's a lot. And then they have to also adjust because she's a form one. She's adjusting to brand new subjects and a whole lot. Like, kamami, you got this. But aside from that, I want you to help me understand how someone maybe who's in high school right now or maybe who's gone through the process, but is still kind of shaky on the matter how to choose what we're going to do for the rest of our lives. How do you go about it? Like, is it, do you watch it on TV? Do we wait for a voice to whisper in our ears? Like, how does it work? I wish it was that easy. And you know, it's hard. You know, I always say it's so unfair to expect a young person who's 16 years old to know what they're going to do for the rest of their lives. It's so difficult to know. And so a lot of the time we sort of choose a career direction. A lot of the time it's because maybe our parents have put us under pressure or you must be a doctor, you must be an engineer, you must be a lawyer. All those careers that are sort of very formalized and yet the world has changed. And you know, when I was 19, the kind of careers that you could pursue versus today, I mean, I wish I could be 19 today because it's so much more opportunity. So to your question, how do you choose? I usually suggest that you think about a number of things. There's the things that you're good at. So you might find that you're really brilliant at, I don't know, math. But you could also find that you're really brilliant at creative writing, for example. And so sometimes you're good at certain things. But there's the second category, which is you can be, you can be, you can actually love certain things. So you're not obliged to only do what you studied. You could also explore building a career in what you're good at that comes naturally or you could explore building a career with around things that you love. Yeah. It's okay. I want you to imagine we were just trying to define what a hasla is. And apparently a hasla is not someone who is protected by 275 armed people. It's a bit more humble beginning. So I want to imagine that there is a student out there or a pupil of high school. What's the difference between a pupil and a student? But anyway, one of those. So this person is not just going to school but this person is also kind of giving in to the family. Do you understand? So maybe if my mom is doing this, my dad is doing this, I also have to do this because maybe I have a lot of siblings or I'm the oldest or I'm in this particular place in the society. So I must chip in as I read. So how do I now start thinking about what I want to do when the things that I have to do kind of taking charge? You know, it's about being conscious of it. It's about knowing what you're good at. So I'm going to give you a very real example. There's a lady I met a few, maybe now three weeks ago. She's at the university. I think she's in her first or second year. Young, very sort of committed, very hardworking and so on. How did I meet this lady? I bought something online and they did the delivery and they called me and said, we don't deliver on Saturdays because our delivery lady, that's the day she worships so she'll deliver on Sunday if that's okay with you. So Sunday morning, my delivery comes in and it was this young lady and she was very charming and nice. We started chatting. She told me I'm at the university. I said, oh really? So how come you're doing the delivery? You do this as a side hustle. Are you a hustler doing legit trying to earn an extra income stream? And she said, actually I do this to help my sister who runs this business. I also help my mum who does curtains and stuff and so when she needs support or help or deliveries or whatever, I help her do that. And I do this on the side to make some extra money because I'm at the University of Nairobi and I thought that is absolutely fantastic. Now this is a classical case where she's obviously having to chip in to help the family so she needs to either help them with the business and at the same time she earns an extra shilling or two because like her sister for example pays her. It doesn't take away from the fact that number one she's pursuing her studies at the university and number two that she's got a passion. So her dream is to start a business. She wants to become an entrepreneur and she wants to start selling thrift clothing or newly used clothing. And that's her dream. She says because young people are really into fashion and I want to be able to go pick some nice stuff and start my business and sell. So I think even though you have responsibilities to help your family at home don't look at it the glass is always either half full or half empty. Don't look at it as the glass is half empty as in oh no I have to help the family that means I can't pursue my dreams. Keep your dreams in mind. Maybe you don't have time because between your studies and helping your family you're not able to fully invest your time and maybe your savings in starting your business but then the opportunity will come. And I think there's always a benefit to being young because what you have is time. If there's one thing you have is time. And energy. And energy. You don't get exhausted. You party for three days in a row and then you're still in class and then you're hanging out with your friends and then you've got your little business you're doing young people have energy. I don't understand how you're able to to sleep for three hours a day but you can. So there's always ways that you can find time and a balance and if you're not able to do it immediately you will certainly have the opportunity so don't put aside your dreams and write them off as not possible because you're helping the family. There'll always be an opportunity at some point where you can juggle the two and eventually fully focus on your side hustle or starting your little business. I like that. You can do both. Relax. Before we get to your day job you said you are a mentor and I like to believe that some of the things that you coach people through is basically life skills. The difference between motivation and discipline motivation. Oh you get excited a few days I don't feel like today it's raining it's cold it's hot. There's always a reason to not do something. Yeah. Especially if it's benefitting by the way there's always a reason not to do it but where motivation fails discipline now carries what you want. You do it whether it's cold whether you're tired whether you're not feeling so good whether you come rain or shine you will do it is that something that you and who do you coach like is there a particular age bracket walk me through that. Okay. So first of all mentorship is really important and you know a lot of people might wonder is there value in actually being mentored and I'd say yes I have a mentor who's mentored me for 30 years. Wow. Actually 26, 27 years he was my boss way back when and he's mentored me through the years we're very very good friends now and every time I'm making a really big career usually I'm very clear about the decisions I'm making but I'll bounce it off him just to get a perspective an objective perspective as a different take on what I'm you know the big step that I'm trying to take. So I generally I believe in mentorship because I've seen and had the benefit of being mentored by really amazing people he's the main one who's kind of stayed through the years and I prefer to mentor young people usually I mentor 18 to I'd say 18 to 30 35 and it's on a host of things it can be on life skills it can be on how to handle a situation at work it can be on how to build your career you know the career planning aspect of it it can just be on some advice because you're juggling stuff in your personal life maybe family and the pressures of family are there and you're kind of just struggling to figure out how to deal or navigate that yeah so 18 to 35 but I also do coaching with the coaching it tends to be with more senior people people in kind of middle, upper middle or senior management you know so people even at director level and I'll do the coaching which is really around helping them work through certain aspects of usually it'll be based on the things that they may feel they're struggling with or maybe they're feeling a little stuck in their careers and they want to work through it or they've just gotten a promotion there's one lady I was dealing with who had just gotten a promotion her boss quit and she was immediately promoted into C-suite and she was like oh my goodness I never saw this coming out of the blue I need some coaching to help me figure out how to work through this and how to manage and how to navigate what do I need to be doing differently now that I'm in the C-suite now that I'm in the executive committee so I'll mentor mostly young people and I'll do the coaching with more sort of seasoned professionals your knowledge must be vast to be in a position where you not only walk people through life skills at 18 to 35 ish to you know hey I've worked for 30 years if I haven't picked up a thing or two by now by the way I'm taking your number after this so you only can interview to for value you know the benefits of coming to work are many there are many Thursday vibes okay let's get into your day job you deal a lot with digital tell me exactly what you do maybe on a Monday to Monday all right so my background is in strategic marketing I worked in strategic marketing for almost 30 years about 20, 22, 25 years across all of Africa so I built quite I built quite a bit of expertise in strategic marketing but also in understanding and working in different African markets I speak both French and English so I worked in the French speaking markets as well as in the English speaking markets so a day in my life or a week in my life usually I do a lot of the business development myself which is looking for new business and relationships the people you meet every day your network is your network and I say that now because as an entrepreneur now I've been an entrepreneur for about three years the reason and the way that I've been able to grow my business is through the networks the people that I met along the way but I built rapport with a rapport with relationships with those are the people that will usually give me business so sometimes people will call and say you know hey I'm looking for this kind of expertise can you help so what we do on one hand we do strategic marketing which is everything around you know building the brand you know how do you want to position this brand who are you targeting what do you want this brand to stand for how are you going to communicate to this target what is your unique selling proposition what is it about your product that makes it different and special and that will make it relevant to that target audience what need is it addressing with that target audience so I'll do a lot of strategic work you know focused focused on that kind of thing and then we've got this other docket of work that we do which is the digital marketing so this is all things online from you know a web design and development social media marketing and community management digital analytics a search engine optimization to help your your website rank better influencer management so the whole strategy around the identifying the influencers managing them developing the content with them so that it's aligned to your brand while it's remaining true to the influencer and and the essence of who they are and what they stand for so all things digital is really what we do we do a lot of work around just the digital strategy because sometimes we have clients who have their own internal team but they're struggling to figure out how to maybe you know put more emphasis or be more differentiated in the digital space so then we'll help them with digital strategy as well yeah okay two things I'm getting from this first of all it sounds like you benefited from the COVID-19 pandemic when now everything kind of shifted to the digital side and two dealing with people is not easy how do you do it it's not easy especially because clients and then client is always right and then you're telling the client to this because you have seen it work and you know what you're saying but they don't want and they don't want you know so to answer both questions first of all we were already working virtually ever since we set up the digital because we had team members in different parts of the world most of them here but in different parts of the world somebody was in Spain somebody was in India you know somebody was in the US so we've always worked online certainly with COVID-19 which I think has been devastating to a lot of people but from a business perspective the clients who always would insist they must have face time and you must drive halfway across the city two hours in traffic because they want to see your face saying the same thing just saying the same thing just face to face they've had to adjust and that's helped because it means we're more efficient with our time so COVID has helped in that sense because it's made people realize actually it is possible to work and actually move things forward from your living room or your kitchen table or your little office at home yeah so that has helped now to clients and just managing clients it takes a lot of patience and I think sometimes we respond or react emotionally and so my advice when it comes to dealing with clients what has helped me is I've learned to be conscious if I'm being triggered because a client maybe is I catch you you know what I'm talking about yes you're with me and stand and so sometimes you almost have to take a deep breath and not respond because you know already you can feel that your response is coming from an emotional place and what I've also found in digital is that because a lot of clients do not have the expertise it makes it a little easier because they'll defer to you because they feel I need to trust this person or this person and her team they seem to know what they're talking about I don't know enough to challenge and and throw the baby out with the bath water so to speak yeah so that has helped but it really takes a lot of patience and I always say that when you're really triggered don't respond then because it could totally totally ruin the relationship and relationship is key and relationship is key and there's also personalities actually because there's some clients who are absolutely darling we did some work with the South African Foundation I mean but we loved them completely we wanted to adopt them forever and ever amen you know what I mean they were just such nice people and so some clients are just just gems they're wonderful and you don't lose sleep feeling tortured because you're going to meet him with them the next day if anything you go the extra mile and you know the team and I we were always like oh what else are we going to do for these guys we're thinking we should do this guys we need to shift direction and sometimes we'd go that extra mile on something that ideally we should charge for we wouldn't charge for it because we were so passionate about the work that they were doing which was you know social impact related and very very noble and they were also just really wonderful people yeah so not all clients are quite difficult am I allowed to say what I'm coming to you are allowed it is it is okay I'll tell you a secret I have a very difficult time with with this the whole idea of being a brand they tell me oh value on tv oh yeah brand oh you should carry yourself like that and not just physically you know also my social media should reflect and the things that I pursue and I can accept that you know I like I like my job I really do and sometimes that's all I want to do I just want to do my job I don't want to be old time old time social media looking for captions so annoying it kind of takes the wind out of me so I had to outsource I went and told strategist I'm like okay I have a problem here very very big problem mostly because I don't care but I know I should so I need you to kind of be the bridge between what I'm supposed to do and what I actually want to do so in respect is it something that you do do you approach clients or do you would they approach you mostly is it sacrosan that you know approaching them and telling them okay I see what you're doing and I love what you're doing it actually kind of resonates with what I am doing can I help you is that what goes on or is it mostly help me I need this I need this and I'm going to pay you this yeah so it's it's two ways sometimes I'll be in a conversation and somebody you know will say oh I'll I'll tell ask me what I do and I'll tell them and they'll say actually we're really struggling with that and then of course that's the opportunity to pitch what we do and then leave it to them to kind of make a call sometimes they'll say I'd love to hear more this this I need one two three four could you tell me more and then we'll work on a proposal and share it with them and have follow-up calls sometimes it comes through sometimes it doesn't so sometimes the opportunity is presents itself where somebody's talking about their struggle but other times you know we we literally go out and look for the business so I'll go to certain events more so before you know pre-covid but even now or I'll give talks and as a follow-up to those talks usually I'll pick up a lead or two somebody who will say I'd really love to hear more I think I need you for my business the minute somebody says that I know that's a lead I need to pursue it see how I can how I can help them and so we've been able to to convert some some you know some leads into actual clients sometimes you know it takes a while to convert them you know I'm using convert which basically just means get them to to commit to you know buying our services sometimes it'll take even six months other times you know you speak to somebody and in a month they call you back and say you know I really want to move with this you know there's a lady I met a couple of weeks ago at a book launch we sat next to each other we chatted it was really nice and then we said you know exchange numbers you know ladies when we're together how we really connect and we bond and we exchange numbers sometimes we use those numbers sometimes we don't she literally got in touch and we chatted and last night at 8pm we were on a call because she'd asked me to give her a proposal for some services and some support that she wanted I shared the information with her we had a follow-up call yesterday and so next week she's going to make a decision so that's a classical example of where you meet somebody and very quickly you move from a lead to literally a conversion where you close the deal and you know you start doing work for them so you must always be at your best like you're always on your AK which can be difficult and exhausting if you're two people but I can see you and what you do are one we are I am it is it is but coming back to you and this around the sort of brand you I mean you first of all you're great at your job you look fabulous thank you but also part of your job and everything that you're doing is going towards building and strengthening this brand that is you doing the social I love what you've done which is to outsource it not doing anything about it is a lost opportunity so outsourcing it as opposed to ignoring it and saying it's actually not the fun part for me it would have been very unfortunate so you outsourcing it is the right thing to do as long as the person who's doing the work of creating the content is creating content that is true to the essence of you and of course they will do create the content with your direction with your guidance you probably say yes that works no I don't like the sound of that and so that's great that's the way to do it because you have a unique opportunity you have a really wonderful platform and the world is so digital so if you're not on digital as an individual brand as well you're really losing the opportunity to build your brand I was very deliberate when I was working in corporate my platform is LinkedIn I actually love LinkedIn okay now I'm on IG as well because I'm talking to young people and that needed to be the place I was in but LinkedIn was my channel and I was very deliberate about managing my LinkedIn my profile was always top notch you will never find typos my picture was always bright and it draws you in anytime I got a new qualification I would update it I've gotten three international jobs just randomly somebody inboxing me DMing me and telling me hi you've got a great profile we think we have something you'd be a great fit for this opportunity would you mind would you be open to talking to us three international jobs two out of the country one was a regional job based out of here so to the point around digital and maybe the social space you don't have to manage it on your own like you're doing that's a really good way to build your brand you can get a friend to do it if you don't have a budget to do it do this for me and I'll help you out with that there's always ways that you can find ways to get it done but it's so important because opportunities land in your lap through digital I'm such a fundamental believer in that it's funny how times have changed like a long time ago once I told myself I'm not young I'm not small so a long time ago we had to go to the cyber cafe to log into our emails to go on Facebook and Facebook then was a whole phenomenon which was an IG site it was making a lot of noise and at the time we used to have or we'd create kind of our taglines with a mood or a feeling so baby girl 2005 or a sexy thing in 1992 and I hear right now that is not very acceptable because you can actually miss on opportunities simply because of how you present yourself not even picture anything simply just by your email address or your name so these things are very important it's all the devil is in the details isn't it absolutely I have a saying everything communicates everything you say everything you don't say everything you do everything you don't do communicate something about your brand or about you so you're right now having said that different channels can play different roles so you can still be baby girl 254 maybe on IG because IG is your fun one with your friends and this and it's not sort of your corporate one so you don't want people to see the professional you know fabulous valentine behind the mic and everything that's really your fun place where you're on holiday and you show all the wonderful things and then your bikini you know that could be your strategy where you say IG is my personal space and then LinkedIn is your professional space so that's the one where you're not going to put the over sexy pose and everything because that's you the professional you want people to see you out there as the really seasoned well spoken professional media personality that you are you know and then you could say Facebook might be one that you use professionally but the lighter side of who you are so that's where you do kind of fun stuff but never the more kind of risque or pushing the envelope stuff you know on your Facebook maybe you have stuff that you you know a little business that you do or maybe there are brands that you want to promote so that's kind of your professional face but where it's bringing together your personality with maybe businesses that you're partnering with and that could be your strategy for Facebook so I always say you don't have to use all the different social media channels in the same way you can decide what you use for what so for me the longest time for the longest time my IG was really my fun place I'm out with my friends we're having a nice class of wine you know I put it in there oh we're out and it's somebody's birthday and we're dancing I'll put it there you know just hanging out with you know my my closest friends and I post them there and then I eventually transitioned it into the career series so I'm doing I'm still posting personal pictures of me hanging out doing stuff but the you know the key thing I post is career tips and tricks yeah that's now my IG my LinkedIn is my professional thing so you'll never see me posting sort of random nonsense or silly stuff on my LinkedIn I'm really serious on my LinkedIn Facebook I'm not using as much but it's more of kind of friends but I've kind of been off Facebook because I've been focusing on IG so my recommendation and to anyone would be think strategically think and decide on how you're going to use social which channel will play which role yeah and don't lose out on LinkedIn I think a lot of young people to make for a concept yeah somebody's I posted something about LinkedIn on my Instagram and somebody said what's that LinkedIn? I was like we have to finish this conversation time is running out all my days however as the last thing I can't mean the last thing there is a tendency for the younger generation to express themselves online more so than how I did or how we did when we're growing up maybe possibly because it wasn't that a big it wasn't a very big deal at the time technology was not as it is right now 2-year-old can unlock a tab and do what they're supposed to do at 2-years-old kwa na kula mawe mimi we together I was there walking without shoes enjoying my life the best way I can so how would you advise someone who may go through personal things or not so personal but there's no line for this is something I will go through in real life and I will choose not to put it out there because this is how you speak from a point of ignorance you know kwa na kula mawe mimi but they belong to a certain group it could be a tribe it could be orientation at the terms of sexually and now you want to talk about the whole umbrella and then this thing comes and gets you at 9 years later you're trying to get sick employment and like you remember that thing you said last time long time ago on Twitter now we're not going to give you a job because of that would you last time would you please advise upon that anything that goes online stays online so think about what you're putting out there you know any stuff like to do with hate hate stuff it can come back to bite you I don't know if you read about Chrissy Tygan yes online bullying that happened I don't know how many years ago I rest my case and she apologized and she had to but you know think of the negative publicity that comes with that you know so you do have to think about what you're putting out there if you're comfortable to share then go out I mean go on and share knowing that it's out there and you can't pull it back and that's okay if you're comfortable you have to think about that and sometimes sharing some of those things might even open opportunities for you you know you might share that you know I don't know maybe you love to sing but you're too timid to sing in public and you're singing about your broken heart and then I don't know it opens up an opportunity for you but also things can really really backfire so think about what you're putting out there my other advice is you know it doesn't take much to be kind it's free why do haters have to hate actually being kind is free and it's so easy to do you know so just treat others the way you want to be treated it's just so much easier what has helped me in life is having a positive mental attitude and dealing with people treating them with respect whether it's the tea girl whether it's the guy who's cleaning or sweeping outside whether it's the boss the CEO or the chairman of this or that it's just so much easier to treat people civilly with respect and you'll find it comes back to you and like that yeah there's a way I don't want this conversation to end but I said that was the last question so it has to be how can we find you on social media how can we reach out in conclusion wonderful thank you so I'm on LinkedIn at cheng butler so if you just search under cheng butler my main channel especially for young people is Instagram at attitude so not attitude but at chitude because my name is at cheng so replace the double T with a C-H and you'll find me on Instagram I'm also on Facebook though not as active on Facebook okay thank you once again for coming to we will be having words after this because you know if you want to also have words go follow her and reach out at 254 Facebook 254 channel to the hashtag is Thursday Vibes don't go away have a couple of more interviews waiting for you