In 2018, Tayo Aina boarded a airplane headed to Russia for the FIFA World Cup with out a visa. He didn’t watch soccer, however his associates deliberate to observe the event stay, so he took the chance to depart Africa for the primary time.
With about *₦300,000 ($$831.06) gathered from his filmmaking aspect gigs, he purchased a return flight ticket and landed in Moscow in the course of June. The Russian parliament had simply authorized a invoice make the nation visa-free all through the World Cup. To qualify, all guests wanted to do was purchase a flight ticket, which granted them a FAN ID that served as a allow to fly into Russia.
That journey was the start of a brand new form of starvation for Aina.
“It was lots of publicity,” he stated, realising life was totally different from what he had identified. “Life doesn’t must be the best way it was in Lagos—folks can stay in another way.”
Within the month he had toured Moscow, watched soccer matches, and brought midnight walks with out worry, Aina determined, he would see the remainder of Africa.
“[I realised,] if I may return to Africa, then I may journey extra,” he stated. “Let me go throughout Africa, too, [and see] what Africa is like.”
That is the story of Tayo Aina, YouTube creator, filmmaker, and tech founder.
Aina had hung out working throughout the tech house earlier than ever transitioning into the media. Earlier than he ventured into journey and movie manufacturing, he was constructing Spacebook, an app to e-book an area for occasions, conferences, and holidays, which he meant to be the ‘Airbnb of Africa.’
He quickly realised that Spacebook was not viable, and coming off a tech profession pathway, later labored as an Uber driver in Lagos in 2017, which allowed him to see locations he ordinarily wouldn’t.
In between rides, he would watch YouTube movies that uncovered him to worldwide creators documenting different cities.
As an Uber rider, driving clients to eating places and numerous areas, he started documenting locations to go to with the cellphone he had on the time, then importing them to YouTube. Finally, Aina rented gear to movie weddings, occasions, and building websites privately for purchasers.
It was not till April 2018, when a world music star, J Cole, visited Nigeria, and Aina supplied his group free video protection in change for a ticket to his live performance, that he realised the affect he may make with the movies he created.
In beneath 48 hours, Aina edited the video of the efficiency surrounded by a crowd pulsing with power, and uploaded it to his YouTube channel, garnering him 1,000,000 views on the time.
As Aina created movies, he started to recognise the facility of the tales he advised, revealing Lagos and Nigeria in methods his viewers and the curious public didn’t appear to have skilled.
“I began to see feedback of individuals saying, ‘I’ve by no means seen Nigeria like this, or Lagos like this earlier than, or now I’ve one thing to point out my associates within the US or UK,” he recalled.
It turned apparent that he wasn’t simply making movies however telling highly effective tales that had been altering perceptions. From his statement, the folks generally documenting the tales of African had been non-Africans, and whereas it was ‘cool to observe,’ nuances and context had been totally different, and typically lacking.
Aina is evident about why the African perspective issues, whether or not dwelling or overseas: “A white one that lives in New York, their life-style and their notion are totally different from somebody who grew up in Nigeria, moved to New York and is now dwelling there. And I felt like no person was capturing that.”
How a worldwide lockdown birthed the ‘Made in Africa’ sequence
After Aina’s journey to observe the World Cup in Moscow, he returned extra resolute to doc the remainder of Africa past Nigeria’s borders.
“That’s the way it began,” he admitted. “It turned a much bigger imaginative and prescient of ‘let me showcase Africa’.”
Aina didn’t make his subsequent worldwide journey until a 12 months after when he visited Kenya; all of the whereas, he continued to add movies on YouTube and create content material for personal purchasers.
In February 2020, he deliberate a one-month go to to South Africa. Whereas within the nation, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the nation, rolling with vineyards and wine tasting cellars, got here to a standstill.
The lockdown prolonged Tayo’s one-month go to to an eight-month keep. It was right here that his lens began to take a special topic.
“I felt that as I’m selling tradition[s], and tourism,” he stated. “ I additionally need to promote the folks as a result of I understand how laborious it’s to construct a enterprise, and black folks, Africans want as a lot help as they’ll get.”
With the lockdown, Aina had ample time. When his good friend talked about his mechanic, a Yoruba man from Nigeria with a narrative value telling, Aina grabbed his digicam and went off to the workshop.
Within the midst of steel drilling, soapy bonnets and polished automobile trunks, the ‘Made in Africa’ sequence was born.
“These are conversations that I’d usually have with out the digicam,” Aina stated. “It was me sharing that curiosity, bringing it onto a digicam and making it, in a means, lots of people can study from how others construct their companies.”
Aina returned to Nigeria in October, however not earlier than gaining his first 100,000 subscribers whereas in South Africa. Later that 12 months, YouTube monetised his channel.
It took some time to entry his funds due to the logistics round receiving his AdSense PIN, however ultimately, he did and obtained his first payout in 2021.
As he continued to journey, telling tales of cultures and the folks behind them, Aina began to get enquiries about creating movies and rising a profitable YouTube channel.
“I all the time wished there was anyone who may take me via the method of find out how to develop a YouTube channel… however I by no means discovered that,” he stated.
Pushed by a need to distil years of trial, error and progress right into a scalable system, he started constructing the YouTube Creator Academy in 2022.
“Sure, the method was gruelling. I’d go file, delete, file, then I’ll watch it once more,” he recalled.
When the primary model launched in 2022, it noticed fast traction with 100 signups within the first two weeks, however Aina quickly hit a bottleneck frequent to solo creators.
He realised {that a} digital product was a ‘complete enterprise by itself,’ requiring advertising funnels and a group that might function whereas he was off-grid or in transit.
This realisation sparked an enormous structural overhaul in 2024. Aina stated he re-recorded 90% of this system, added stay weekly teaching calls, and constructed a worldwide distant group spanning Nigeria, Ghana, and the US to deal with all the pieces from group administration to technical help.
Constructing the machines that construct the digital future
Now with hundreds of African creators the academy has empowered, Aina hopes to diversify the options and infrastructure he’s constructing for the creator economic system, each on the continent and at massive.
“We’ve been capable of construct one thing that offers worth to creators,” he stated. “Now now we have lots of creators in our pipeline, and we need to begin creating infrastructure [to solve] different issues that creators are dealing with, both bodily infrastructure, advisory infrastructure or digital software program infrastructure.”
One such infrastructure is the Leenkies model, a link-in-bio product he constructed for creators to handle their funds and data multi function place, with zero fee price to assist remedy monetary bottlenecks creators face.
“Now we’re on the stage, like the best way Mr Beast constructed his [media business], that’s actually what we’re attempting to do, and construct totally different arms,” he stated.
For Aina, he’s additionally seen his profession come full circle, the place he’s returning to his tech roots from when he constructed Spacebook earlier than he moved into media.
“Now, I’m going again into tech and constructing options for creators throughout the globe,” he stated.
After I requested how he’s been capable of construct whereas being extremely cellular, Aina credit his techniques and groups. Over time, he has constructed these constructions into the engine of working his YouTube channel.
From modifying movies to thumbnail designs, he outsources to his group and focuses on concepts and their strategy to video creation, and even then, there’s a group that handles that.
“The identical means I used to be capable of construct a construction for YouTube, is the best way I now construct a construction for the academy, the place now we have the online builders to the advertising—that’s the one means you possibly can construct something that may scale,” he stated.
For Tayo, this isn’t only a private philosophy, however one he believes African creators ought to have a powerful command of: to give you the chance construct and distribute.
“Anyone can construct—however how are you going to distribute? That hasn’t been solved but, however creators have already got that pipeline [their audience],” he stated.
For creators who can’t construct the merchandise, infrastructures or options they need to see, Aina asks that they discover anyone who’s constructing and companion with them.
The command of each constructing and successfully distributing is a technique he sees the creator economic system unlocking financial prosperity for Africa as a continent, and Africans at massive.
*Alternate charge: ₦360.9830 to $1 as of June 1, 2018
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