Today's post is brought to you by...Fonbnk
Airtime is Your Onramp to Digital Money.
Africa leads the way in the adoption of mobile technology (a key technology in the fourth industrial revolution), particularly thanks to its young population. Technologies such as Fonbnk are changing the life and work of the young and tech-savvy in Africa as the continent leapfrogs into this new paradigm. Fonbnk’s role in all this is to bring internet access to millions of people in sub-Saharan Africa.
With Fonbnk’s wallet, the 1.4 billion people currently unbanked can now access financial services and markets previously beyond their reach. Fonbnk has created a marketplace for the future of work using free mobile internet access to democratize participation; more easily enabling Sub-Saharan Africans to engage in the digital economy.
They are the leading global marketplace enabling you to convert your airtime into digital money. And for a limited time, they will even pay you to try them out here.
“Is success about learning or proving that you’re smart?”
As a starting point, I want to acknowledge the fact that I am an average human being who doesn’t know much relative to what I need to know. I realise that to become successful according to conventional measures, I have to believe that I can learn anything - especially what I don’t know - no matter how difficult or challenging it might seem to be. Needless to say, I’ve developed an iterative approach to life-based on simple, timeless principles that help me understand how reality works and what to do about it.
The fact that all successful people operate by principles that help them be successful is really intriguing. They did certain things that enabled them to come by what they had and in most cases continue to practice the same principles to increase their success at those things which they choose.
Let’s unpack what this actually mean. Jump in!
Trading time for money
I’d like to think that it is natural for any [young] person to find the prospects of trading their time for money extremely appealing and often seductive. I mean we’ve all been taught by those ahead of us that the best, or rather, safest way to kick-start our professional careers, especially after bagging our glorious degrees (or not), is to seek employment in established companies so that we could build our CVs, professional expertise, develop long-term work relationships, etc. But what they don’t tell us is the odds of being overworked, underpaid, and trapped are greatly stacked against us as soon as we jump on the bandwagon.
However, that old, uncreative model of making money is old news because things are changing way faster today than they were a year ago. So, this means that we all have to embrace the new world order that teaches us that making money is not a thing we do anymore, rather, it is a skill we learn.
Fun Fact:
“You’re not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity - a piece of a business - to gain your financial freedom.” - Naval Ravikant
Earn with your mind…
9 months ago I published ‘The Journey to becoming Paid in Full - A Practical Thought Process for Anyone to Crush 2022’. But little did I know how this little ebook would set me on an upward trajectory. Initially, I wrote it as a mere collection of my personal thoughts and experiences from the past couple of months (2021). It was a result of the most important things I have read, internalized, and failed at. So, in my mind, I was writing for others - not myself.
In hindsight, it became clear that it was all about me.
Interestingly, Marc Andreessen’s blog post about not following your passion played a big part in shaping my perspective.
Don’t follow your passion - Marc Andreessen
“Don’t follow your passion. Seriously. Don’t follow your passion. Your passion is likely more dumb and useless than anything else. Your passion should be your hobby, not your work. Do it in your spare time.
Instead, at work, seek to contribute. Find the hottest, most vibrant part of the economy you can and figure out how you can contribute best and most. Make yourself of value to the people around you, to your customers and coworkers, and try to increase that value every day.”
From this perspective, it’s important not to let our biases stand in the way of our objectivity, because if we get hung up on our views of how things “should” be, we will miss out on learning how they really are. The key is to fail, learn and improve quickly.
A great example is my first NFT project, Funti3r Passport NFTs.
The Funti3r Passport NFT is the perfect gift for people who want to get into crypto, but don’t know where to begin.
The narrative around this project is that most of the decisions we make can be boiled down to fun and money. In fact, making learning fun is a thread that runs through digital-native communities. People are naturally curious; the goal is not to kill that curiosity, but to nurture it.
In addition, early adopters might be drawn to particular web3 projects because they’re a more fun way to make money than their job, or because they get to earn money by doing things that they find fun anyway.
We want people to learn, meet each other, explore new horizons, and invite them into a new different world to build the future together. Therefore, educational media connects people through 1) engagement without work, 2) growth without marketing, and 3) shifting them from being strangers to collaborators.
Buy the NFT here.
…not with your time
What you think is attainable is just a function of what you know at the moment. Unfortunately, most people tend to rule out a goal because they think it is unattainable. For example, it’s not really about hard work. You can work in a restaurant eighty hours a week, and you’re not going to get rich. Getting rich is about knowing what to do, who to do it with, and when to do it. It is much more about understanding than purely hard work.
In fact, it is a fundamental law of nature that by following your intellectual curiosity more than whatever is “hot” right now, and your curiosity leads you to a place where society eventually wants to go, you’ll become successful.
Here, the take-home message is that successful people are those who can go above themselves to see things objectively and manage those things to shape change. They optimize for the whole. So, the challenge of how to make money is to therefore figure out what products/services society wants but does not know how to get, and then cultivate the character, capability, and curiosity to deliver whatever that thing is, at scale.
Bonus Section - Social Tokens
Creators often struggle to capture the value they create on social media platforms and beyond.
For example, a musician might share new tracks on Twitter in the hopes of driving listeners to buy tickets for an upcoming tour. Even if 100,000 people like the associated tweet, turning that attention into cash may be challenging. You’d have to get viewers to head to a different site, find a show near them, and pick a date that worked. Despite pleasing a hundred thousand users, the exchange rate between X and Y in that transaction is likely to be brutally low.
Social tokens may change that equation and offer other advantages like monetizing what you love.
By converting followers into buyers, you undertake moving social to financial capital.
Learn more here.
I hope this newsletter makes you a little smarter heading into the new week. It’s very much a work-in-progress — please send feedback and help me out by submitting the things you come across that make you smarter here.
Thanks for reading
Wisani