Sometimes young people need a boost to overcome certain challenges that might be stopping them from achieving their dreams. We interview Danielle Asah, the CEO and founder of Day Dreams, a digital marketing agency that helps visionary entrepreneurs and professionals amplify their messages and build their brands.
Danielle coaches aspiring writers to publish non-fiction books and has a book entitled Becoming your Dream Self, Seven Keys to Own and Control your Life as a Millennial.
She is part of an NGO in the United Kingdom whose goal is to motivate people to follow their hearts and make a positive difference in the world via their own unique actions.
Transcript
Brent: Welcome to this episode of Talk Commerce coming from Cameroon west Africa. Today, I have Danielle Asah. Danielle, go ahead. Introduce yourself. Tell us what you do on a day to day basis and maybe one of your passions in life.
Danielle: Thank you so much, Brent, for having me on it’s actually an honor to be here today. yeah I’m an author, I’m a marketer and I’m the CEO one founder of Day Dreams, a digital marketing agency that helps, visionary entrepreneurs and professionals amplify their messages, build their brands and drive mores to social media.
Danielle: And for over six years now, I’ve lazed a unique path, which is that of digital marketing. And my pursuit of new and challenging opportunities led me to become a developmental editor where I have aspiring artists to write and publish their books like nonfiction book in less than six months. And in addition, I’m a member and associate director of World Game Changers.
Danielle: This is an NGO in the United Kingdom whose goal is to motivate people, to follow their heart and make a positive difference in the world via their own unique actions. I am passionate about two things. First of all, I’m passionate about helping being visionary entrepreneurs and professionals.
Danielle: And secondly, I’m passionate about helping being young millennial to overcome certain challenges that might be stopping them from becoming their dream self or achieving their dreams, which is also the reason why I wrote a book entitled becoming your dream self seven keys to own and control your life as a millennial.
Danielle: Thank you so much.
Brent: One of the things that you do is branding, but it sounds like you do a whole lot more of that. Can we talk about the world game changer? That you’re part of a little bit it sounds like a fantastic program and you’re helping young people and a young entrepreneurs break in into entrepreneurship.
Brent: Tell us a little bit about that.
Danielle: Yeah, the world game changer is is an organization in the United Kingdom, as I said, and we are just a group of people all over the world in all the continents in the world where we generally come together and talk about certain issues about how to improve maybe the product of living, how to make people follow their own path and their dreams and the little change we could.
Danielle: To actually impact our own people in the community where we live. So talking about the young millennials it’s actually a passion because I grew up, I remember 10 years ago, that was in 2012. I almost dropped out of school, like of college because my parents did not have money to send me to the univers.
Danielle: But I had this passion. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. So at that very level, I was forced to become an entrepreneur, and I also went after graduating from college, I went to the university, while some of my friends were taking some vacation. I was actually working to save money to consequently to achieve to go to the university to be able to pay for my school fees.
Danielle: and definitely, this also led me to working in different companies like doing some certain activities like those door sales working as the marketing agent in the building and construction company. And later on I actually learned about entrepreneurship when I a very young age and growing up and starting my own business.
Danielle: And also this also taught me something great. And I just had this passion of hurting other young people around me because I know, especially in Africa where I we have a lot of young people who are still confused even after their graduation from college are still very confused about what to do. They don’t actually know about what their passion is.
Danielle: So I’m actually that person, I’m that person that would like to help them to find their purpose, to embark on that particular journey and help them to achieve their. Through some of the training program I used to give online, like I train these millennials on spec, specifically digital marketing skills, which I’m more specialized in.
Danielle: It’s been amazing so far. Like I’ve heard so many people and even the people that I work with in the team, they are all millennials. Cause I just find passion helping working with them so that we can mutually help us serve and grow together.
Brent: Do you think there’s a disconnect between the way older people think like myself and millennials would think in terms of how are they gonna get into the job market?
Brent: And even as an entrepreneur how you want to portray yourself to let people know what you’re doing and how you’re gonna break into the job market?
Danielle: I think, yeah, I think there’s actually that difference when it comes to young people, because, and I would say that it depends on the, like the community where we grew up, like the situation in my country and in the Western world is quite different. I remember one year ago I met someone on LinkedIn, a guy, I think he’s 18 years old. He was in the US. And he has found out his company since ever since he was 18 years. So I was like, wow, this is great. But it’s actually a big challenge in Africa and in my country Cameroon because we have most of us are just focused on going to school.
Danielle: They just wanna acquire a certificate, but actually they don’t think about a career after education, which is some of the things when I have an opportunity to empower young people and to teach them that you have to not only focus on going to school, but definitely you have to think about in life after education.
Danielle: So I think there is that difference. Cause young people, they feel like, okay they still have time. I remember high spoke with a father, like he’s about 70 years in mine and he told me that There’s one thing that young people have, which old people don’t have, which is time. And I really agree with him when you are young, you feel like you have all of the time on earth to do whatsoever, but when you are much older, you don’t have time.
Danielle: I’m sure like you, you have a very busy schedule. You need to schedule time for everything so it’s the same. We have time, the young people, they have time. So it’s important. As they have the time to develop their skills. But when you come much older, you have many responsibilities and we needed time.
Brent: Yeah. I think there’s one more thing that older people don’t have that young people have and that’s hair. That’s a small joke about my haircut, but let’s keep moving. So I think that you’re helping young people build their personal brand. Tell us some of what you’re doing to help them on branding and personal branding, I should say.
Brent: And why that’s so important right now.
Danielle: Yeah, that bread. That’s a very interesting question because I can try to share my journey about how I got into building my brand. Even getting in contact with you, getting noticed by you, like with getting noticed by a top leader, like you.
Danielle: It all started in 2018 upon my graduation from university, I had my master’s degree and I was still confused. I didn’t even know what to do, but I knew that I had a passion in digital marketing. So I started taking some online courses, taking some certification program and also getting an internship.
Danielle: Or a job in a digital marketing company. So after this I was looking for a job in a company by then. I was less experienced. I didn’t I didn’t have any visibility. No one knew about me. And at that time I remember I was in 2019. I applied for a job after I have optimized my Linkedin profile.
Danielle: I applied for a. In a company like a digital marketing company in Germany. So it was an online job. And I remember the guy told me that he rejected my application from, because he said I was less experienced. And I couldn’t learn the job. So I tried to convince the guy like I’m ex I, even though I don’t have the experience I’m willing and I’m really zealous about learning this thing.
Danielle: And he was like, no you’re not the right fit for this job. And I said, okay. So can you just imagine that after one year of consistently building my brand later on, I got contacted by this same person and this same company. And he never wanted me because the first time he wanted me to be an intern is in, in his company.
Danielle: So the second time he wanted me to be the co-founder of his same organization. For me, that was a that was a big win. I like, I began to feel like, okay, this I have, I’ve been able to build my brand. So that is just to show the importance of building a brand. First of all, I want to say what personal branding I want to give a brief definition of what a personal branding is because people get confused about it. And I would say it’s about like developing a clear and an authentic image of in the mind of your targeted audience or targeted clients in order to achieve a specific goal. And the first thing is you have certainly heard about this code does says marketing is about yeah, marketing is about asking someone out on a date and branding is a reason for them to say yes
Danielle: Yeah. So definitely it, personal branding is a process of is a process of positioning yourself as an authority in your. As an influenza as it means it’s actually standing out from the crowd because there are 100,000 people just like you out there. So what makes a difference between you and that person is actually the brand.
Danielle: What makes you to be visible, to learn, be recognized as a top leader is the personal branding. And when it comes to personal branding, it’s about highlighting your strengths, your beliefs, your competency, and establishing that reputation and trust and communicating your unique value.
Brent: One question I have about the personal branding for anybody, but I think it’s more for younger people that they want to have this persona that is for their friends, that they’re going out and partying and they’re having a great time.
Brent: And then they want to have a business persona that they would like to give people as well. How do you advise people or younger people, especially to make sure. maybe on LinkedIn, they’re gonna have all business persona and then some other social media platform. They’re gonna have a, more of a fun personal persona, but sometimes in the past, people have gotten into trouble because they’ve posted too many things, maybe on Facebook or YouTube, that there are some mixing with your different personas on different social platforms.
Brent: And do you advise younger people? When they’re doing that branding that they don’t put too much out there on social, or they have one persona that’s one thing. And the other persona is another thing, but be careful how you portray them.
Danielle: One thing I would say is that I think that’s a great question because definitely when it comes to young people only knows we have, they actually don’t overthink about what they post online.
Danielle: So they just go on and share. But definitely what you share is visible to everyone. I remember there was last year, I was invited to a show where I had about 50 people and I asked them who have ever Googled his name. And I remember out of the way, young people and out of. 50. I had just one person that said he has ever Googled his name.
Danielle: And there is one thing we ought also know, like when you Google your name, what pop up is exactly what the other people see. And I can imagine that for young people, their goals can maybe starting their business, as you said, and, or maybe learning a job in a serious or big corporation or company.
Danielle: Whatever you post online, whatever you share, you have to know that it’s all visible to everyone. And those exact same thing is what your target audience or recruiters. They will see what they Google your name. So personal branding here is about controlling or managing the narrative or the messages that are about you.
Danielle: And it has to do with what you post. And the first thing that you need to act yourself is what do I want to be known for? What do I people to know me for and start creating message that is in mind with that message that you want to communicate or what you want to communicate out there. It’s very important because whatever you put out there, other people are seeing it and it can either, it, that would determine whether someone should trust you, whether that someone should collaborate with you or whether someone should do business with you or not. And there is this great said Gordon. He once said, when people love you, they will listen to you. But when they trust you, they will do business with you.
Danielle: So it’s all about building that credibility and trust. because you want to collaborate and do business with people and you have to be serious about the messages that you are putting out there because it has a lot to play in there.
Brent: And when somebody does post something, it is out there forever.
Brent: Some even sometimes if you delete it, somebody may have captured it. And so that posting is there indefinitely. So it is a good advice to say make sure what you’re posting and think about it. And and don’t post things that are going to well, it’s hard for a younger person to know what’s gonna be a problem for them in the future, but think about what you’re doing.
Brent: I myself post and think about how do I wanna be perceived? And I try to stay away from some of the controversial things. Also in the controversial things, it does raise questions and it helps to push boundaries and it helps to talk about some of those important topics.
Brent: There is important things around that. Exactly. Is personal branding for everybody. Do you think that everybody should have some thought about
Danielle: this? We have all been sold on the idea that personal branding is just. influencers, it’s just for big corporations or top topnotch leaders, or I don’t know celebrities, but it’s, actually’s very wrong because I’m personal branding is for everyone.
Danielle: Everyone that wanted to stand out is for everyone. Now we need to, there is alight daily. She said we often think that branding is just for, it’s just done for large corporation, but it’s actually, has everyone has a personal brand, and brand, we need to keep in mind that you can actually begin developing your personal brand.
Danielle: The point in your career, regardless of whether you are successful, whether you are wealthy or whether you are well established as a business or not. So whatever you stage in life, you can definitely start building your brand. And I would tell you’ve been successful or having the skills does not automatically make you to stand out.
Danielle: because, like I said, there are 1000 people just like you, there are thousand people like like person thousand, like thousand personal brands, specialists, or professional out there. Now what makes a difference between you and the other one is personal branding, is building your brand consistently.
Danielle: And I would say no one else is the same match like you or combination or no one has the same exact combination of your skills and expertise like you. Personal brand is about demonstrating, trying to put out your personality or your professional and personal abilities, your skills, your experiences.
Danielle: And you have to know that we have the social media platform. I will not say it’s the only way to actually build your brand, but it’s one of the major things you can use in order to view your brand online. And so just to conclude, I’ll say neither fame no worlds will actually make you to pan out as an authority or to be noticed in your niche, but just try to stand out, just try to stand out by building your brand.
Brent: What advice do you give people to help them stand out?
Danielle: Yeah. When it comes to standing out our, first of all, say there is only one view and building, building a personnel brand is like creating a unique you. And in addition to that, building a person that brand requires just more than just creating.
Danielle: Some quality content, building relationship with colleagues and friends. It requires more than that. So when it comes to personal branding, I would say the first thing to do is first of all, craft a brand vision which is similar to a statement generally the like classic way or the classic example here is I have eight Z Y.
Danielle: like me, I would say I help entrepreneurs and professional build their brands with growth marketing strategies. So leadership begins because of all communicating your why, when it comes to you have to start cause all by communicating your why we, you know, of this popular author Simon Sinek, he said start always start with your why
Danielle: and he say, people don’t buy because people don’t buy what you sell, but people buy people buy why you do it. that’s quite amazing. So once you craft your brand vision, you can decide what you want to be known for, which I already explain. And the next thing developing a consistent message, which you’ll be sharing and communicating on your different social media.
Danielle: Your logos, your brand colors, everything has to be in sync, right? They have to know you for your brand colors. For the message you share and maintaining that consistency and also be genuine and authentic, it’s really easy to identify who is fake. You need to be true to yourself, true to other people.
Danielle: And be honest, don’t try to be like anyone else. When it comes to brand building, be yourself. Try to be unique. Try to be genuine. Then we can also do like building or social media presence, build your social media presence. It can be establishing a LinkedIn setting up your different social media profile.
Danielle: and account like on LinkedIn setting up and optimizing your LinkedIn profile. Cause this starts from there. One thing I do with my client most of the time is making your LinkedIn profile look like a landing page. Like when I went to your LinkedIn profile, I was able to find out about you because LinkedIn is the biggest platform for professional.
Danielle: And it’s both the personal and professional representation of who you are. So definitely you want someone to get into your LinkedIn profile and be able to find exactly what you do and how you can help them. And and also I want to insist on being consistent, like when you are sharing content online, you need to stay consistent because that’s what will make people to actually remember about you.
Danielle: Because there are 100,000 people just like you, you wanna break through that noise. So stay consistent and people will admire you for that. When you want to build a brand, those are some of the steps by step process you can actually take in order to build a powerful brand online
Brent: Being consistent and then being engaging as well. I think for your social media, especially if you’re just posting and never responding. Then people just think that you’re a bot or you’re just not listening to them. Yeah. Because part of that is the message you’re putting out. But part of that too, is knowing and listening to what people are saying to you.
Brent: And if they have a specific question, knowing that you should respond to them. And I think on LinkedIn, if you’re frequently posting, but never responding, then people stop listening to you because they know you’re just posting and not listening
Danielle: back. Exactly. So people generally want to make sure that you care about them.
Danielle: And if they ask the question, you have to be capable of responding and also engaging like you, you care about them engaging on other people’s profiles, who are the people you want to reach out to. And when I think when I talk about posting on them, it’s about adding value. It’s not about selling. Most of the times you hardly see me selling, like on my profile, I don’t sell because people are there.
Danielle: When someone can actually see that he can help him solve a particular problem, he’ll reach out to you for help. So what I do generally is normally they say we need to apply the 80 20 rules when it comes to content posting content online. 80% of your post should be about adding value.
Danielle: And the other 20% should be about promotional content. But generally I would say 5%, only 5% of your content should be promotional content, right? People hate when you are always selling to them. So why not creating values, like sharing content, sharing stuff that can help people and you. Stand out as an authority because you cannot call yourself an expert.
Danielle: If you are not adding value in people’s life, if you are not constantly trying to help people, if you’re not sharing valuable content. So you have to not only engage with your audience, but also see how you can constantly be sharing contents to add value in their life and try to be like getting interested in what they are doing.
Danielle: By you can also do networking. So apart from content, there’s also networking, trying to reach out to people, ensuring that you care about them finding about who they are, what they do and what are their challenges on the daily basis? Yeah. And how you can help in very interest.
Brent: I think that’s one of the hardest things to realize when you’re building your personal brand.
Brent: And it’s part of it is about yourself, but when you start to add value to others, that’s when the branding really takes off, because there’s something that others see that they get in value from you. Other than just a really fancy looking page. Having that value added is one of the biggest thing that you could impart on a younger person to help them understand why any, even an older person like me, anybody like that, they can understand.
Brent: Then if it’s only about yourself and you’re never adding value to somebody else, then there’s really no point in somebody wanting to look at your brand or think about why would this person add anything if they don’t add any value. Exactly. You had mentioned asking why, so I do wanna ask about your book.
Brent: Why did you write your book and tell us a little bit about your book. Yeah.
Danielle: I wrote my book, which is sightful becoming your dream soul seven kids to own and control your life as a millennial, Because of my experience in life, having almost dropped out of school when I graduated from college because my parents did not have money to send me to school and later on becoming an entrepreneur, doing all types of job, because I wanted to save to go to the university.
Danielle: And also starting my business as a millennial, I wanted to help other people like empower other young millennials and tell them it’s possible to become whoever you want to be. If only you can take the necessary steps, which I explain in the book. So in the book, I just highlight the seven steps I took in order to become my dream self, because this has always been what I wanted to do to have my own business working with young people.
Danielle: In this book, I just try to align as with the mission of helping young people out there. And that is my why. Everything I do. My objective is to help young people. And also these visionary entrepreneurs. I know the struggle that entrepreneurs are going through, like setting up a business and it’s not working most of the time.
Danielle: It’s because they don’t have the know how to actually run a business. So if I can be like that person to get up with my team, helping them to support their. Businesses build helping them build their brands and grow, but that is not part of the book. So the book is more focused on the millennials by helping them, empowering them, giving them some great tips that they can use changing their mindsets, setting goals, long term and short term goals.
Danielle: What do they want to accomplish networking with people? And lemme tell you something. LinkedIn has been a game changer for me. What I’m doing today because of the relationship, the network I’ve dealt online, the people I connect with on a daily basis and I exchange with, and, it’s the book is actually there, anybody that is struggling, that it be a young that is struggling and doesn’t even know what his
Danielle: purpose is because I found myself at this stage. I didn’t even know why I was created in the first place. What is my mission? What is my purpose on it? Why am I created? So I just came to the realization that I was created to use my, give my skills. Am I talent to serve other people?
Danielle: And ever since then, I’ve been helping people all over the world, like in the US and UK and in Canada. To build your brand together with a team, with team of young people. And it’s been super amazing. And whenever I have the opportunity to help young people I really want to do it because young people they struggle a lot cause I’ve been there and at times they just need someone that can tell them what to. They just need someone that can encourage them, mentor them and tell them, okay, this is what you can do, because this is exactly what I went through. And this is how I overcame this. And so my book is on Amazon and I read during the pandemic.
Brent: Yeah. And I’ll make sure I put the links and the show notes for your social media and your book. Danielle, we have a few minutes left. I do want to just you had mentioned that you help people to write nonfiction as well, is that correct?
Brent: Yes. Let’s just briefly talk about how would you help somebody like me write a non-fiction book and how would you come up with a topic? And do you have a exercise
Danielle: that you’d go through? Yeah, definitely. I work with an an expat and also being someone that have written a book and have also ghost written or helped other, like for now I’ve heard five people write their.
Danielle: I know that for older people, they don’t have time when it come to it. They don’t have that time to write a book, but they have the know how, which can definitely help other people out there. So what we do is that we try to listen to your story and see which one is the message that you want to communicate out there, which is definitely from the experience you’ve been through your personal experience.
Danielle: And then we craft a message around there, like a title around there. And then we work on the title of the different topics, the different chapters, and they start writing the process. So literally what I do is that I do sessions meeting sessions, where we meet, and then I ask you some questions and you answer them.
Danielle: And then I sit down with the recording and I try to develop a story chapter by chapter, but I make sure that everything that is written in the book is from you. Because one thing I say is that the best person that can teach you something it’s someone that have been through a particular situation. Yeah. So that is a process of writing the book but why I say non-fiction book and focus more on transformational book, like books serve her books, where you can just read and then gain one or two things that can definitely transform your life.
Brent: We have a few minutes left now. I give our guests a chance to do a shameless plug, which is promoting whatever you’d like, what would you like to plug today?
Danielle: I would like to share about my experience working with the entrepreneurs and young people and how they can build their brands online. Talking about personal branding, I would say it is very important and for everyone that wants to make a difference out there, whether you are a professional, whether you are seeking for a job, whether you want to start your own business, I would tell you it’s very important to start building your brand because when you build your brand, you start attracting the right people with the same goals and vision.
Danielle: And this is a game changer in your career. It can help you to get opportunities that you would’ve never, ever imagined in your life. if you don’t know how to grow about it, I can help you. Together with my team to start building your brand online. And also I’ve been able to help about 50 professionals who wanted to land a job, like setting up their LinkedIn profile and start building a brand for them.
Danielle: So if you are a professional, that is, that needs a job. So we can help you to build your brand, set your social, your LinkedIn profile. And if you are business owners and you have been struggling with your business and you don’t even know how to go about it. I urge you to just reach out to me at Danielle Asah
Danielle: and I will definitely see how we can help you to, but if you can also follow my content, because I share content on the daily basis on how to build your brand. If you want to do it yourself, or if you wanna reach out to me just for a strategy session, I can give you one or two tips. You must necessarily not work with me.
Danielle: I can give you some. And also share with you how I was able to build my brand. And in less than two years, I was able to stand out as an authority in my field. Thank you so much.
Brent: That’s probably exactly how I found you. I think I found you through LinkedIn and I think I found you through the world game changer.
Brent: Danielle, thank you so much for being here today Danielle Asah, I will put your LinkedIn profile in the show notes so people can contact you that way. It’s been a pleasure talking to you today, and I wish you all the best. Thank you.
