Foreword

On a bright warm sunny humid day like this one here in the tropical island of Mauritius, after lunch time, sometime ago, where you can feel the heat that is above 30° Celsius, and the narrow side lanes of urban residential blocks around Port-Louis are quiet. I would open the yards gate, cross the street and check what my friend Alain is up to. We would then figure out something that we will play with. Let’s build a kite, would be one of many projects we engage into. Get some old newspaper, pull some sticks out from the coconut broom, get some cooked rice from the rice cooker to be used as glue, some polyester sewing thread and we were set with the basic materials required to build a kite. Alain knew how to build it, and they would always fly. It required some skills. For example the kite would need to have parallels that more or less are of the same sizes, and when attaching the string you would need to know how to balance the kite and know where to attach it. Alain used no ruler. His approximations would be good enough. In hindsight, later on, I can look back that it was an interesting example of how perfect can be the enemy of good enough. When I started to build my own kites, use rulers, measure everything up, none of my kites flew, it took me several months of trying until I figured out that it had something to do with the balancing. I realized this when at night I would visualize and go through all the processes of making the kite, where I could be making a mistake and what I need to try differently. Finally I started to build kites that would fly. I was glad that i hadn’t given up. Just like back then when we kids were running around on the streets and trying to whistle with our fingers, it took me one month to learn it! Lessons of persistence. Keep trying until you make it, and not to give up. Funny how in adult life, for various experiences including entrepreneurship I would have forgotten about this and give up. I had to relearn from motivational speakers on learning from failures. Back then, it was unthinkable of, that we would someday hold a screen in our hands with high computational power, yet alone in colour and with the ability to speak to anyone world wide and share our thoughts. Something that can be carried around anywhere, that just connects to the internet in the air, no cable required, with multimedia functions like cameras etc. Our TV set would only be switched on in the late evening, there was only 1 TV channel which would start at 17:00 o’clock and stop at midnight. Similarly there was only 1 radio channel. Colour TVs and video players were a sensation. People who had these sets, would rent VHS video cassettes and invite people over to watch a movie. TV shows that we kids adored were Air Wolf which was about a super helicopter, Knight Rider which was about a super car and Tonnerre Mécanique which was about a …super bike! We would run outside and imitate the sounds of these shows. In our fantasies and imaginations we wished we could fly or drive these machines. I never thought about running my own TV channel, radio channel and even less about entrepreneurship. These were the unknowns, things you didn’t know about. Like the “You don’t know what you don’t know” kind of things. What we knew were a few professions. We would say things like I would like to be a pilot someday when I grow up, because it means you can fly a cool airplane. Our thoughts would dwindle around concepts that we know of and relate to the environment we were growing up in. Parents, family and friends would be playing a very important role as transmitter of information. Access to books was sparse and there wouldn’t be any documentaries to watch on TV to learn from. That would come gradually later.

Later on, even in high school, the notion of entrepreneurship was not a given, and something rather unknown. The idea to run your own business sounded too risky. We wouldn’t be inculcated this kind of wisdom. Even though I had the subjects of business theory and accounting, where we would for example study business use cases of where it is best to setup a factory, like in which location of a town and why, the idea of starting your own small business was so far fetched unthinkable of! It was so abstract and distant this business subject, like it would very unlikely turn any of us learning about business into entrepreneurs of the future. This was not going to be instilled on us, this kind of creativity. We were being molded to become employees of the future. To speak of money, or sell something to someone and ask for money was for many a scary thing to do. Yes, the relationship and responsibility over the management of money, we didn’t learn about it in high school, neither later on in other institutions, it remained something of a scary taboo. Like the book Rich Dad Poor Dad says, we were learning the stay poor mindset in relationship to the handling of the money commodity. So, what happened to me, that I didn’t end up as an employee? This is another story for another day. I broke off the system and went another route that led me to learn all these skills the hard way through pains and failures.

Fast forward into the future. We are now, believe it or not, in the futuristic, nearly Utopian sounding year of 2022! We have these devices called smart phones. Multimedia handheld devices with a lot of functions à portée de main – which means within a hand reach, and a few finger movements on your phone, you can be engaging in various forms of communications and transactions. Within a few minutes, you can setup your own kind of “TV channel” or “Radio channel”. Let that sink in, your own channel, on various platforms with access to the world. This is a kind of tool that would have been unthinkable of, yet alone the low barrier of entry and with very low setting up costs (you need to buy the smart phone for e.g) you can simply get started on social media. Become aware of the tool, and what you can do with it. Accessibility to information made easy. So, if anyone can do it, it means there is competition to access the world, the markets, the niches, groups of people etc. If anyone can be their own channel of expression, there can be billions of accounts of channels. Why would someone want to watch or listen to my channel? I would answer this question by bringing something that has value, value and meaning to someone, solutions to problems etc. There are of course many other ways to answer this, like for example I could say that the value I bring on the table is that I film my activity of producing health drinks, which others watching it find it as an entertaining form of value to consume. How to stand out? There are different mechanisms that make you stand out in social media. Then there is marketing, your brand and channel, you can pay to increase your reach. It can create a sort of momentum, more followers generate more followers through sharing your content. Let’s stick with the value. Some years ago, I started to listen to some podcasts like Farnam Street. I would use an app, subscribe to the channel and find great value in their discussion and interviews of interesting personalities. Personalities I wouldn’t have access to here in Mauritius yet alone to meet in person. Meaning with the podcasts, similar to books, I could get to hear and learn how they think. It would influence me in a great way! People on social media who bring value and have a large following base are called influencers! There are many podcasts out there. Like really a lot covering nearly ever theme you can think of, from mental health to entrepreneurship and so on. I wouldn’t go on a podcast app and look for podcasts. Podcasts would usually find me in some way. Through recommendations. Here is how this can happen. I follow Alicia on Twitter, she is smart, I like the way she thinks and the way she words her tweets, this then on social media makes her have a form of authority, meaning if I see her recommend something, like a podcast, chances are that I will like the content as I know Alicia liked it. This is how I found out about Farnam Street, as she regularly retweeted podcasts she had listened about them.

I know Yuri, I met him in person, and we have had conversations several times. I like the projects he does, and in addition to being a student at ALU (African Leadership University), he is also a DJ, part of an organization that runs events and also part of a team that runs a podcast. Yuri and his team mates do so many more things that I cannot list here, you’ll discover more as the stories unfold. This is how I found out about his podcast, in person. Not through social media or any form of online marketing. Today I am recommending to you their podcast Boardroom Banter for listening. And the content that follows will be an in depth interview of the team of Boardroom Banter. We know that there are many podcasts out there. Find out what makes them stand out, what makes them different! Like; How about discovering more about the ins and outs of running and managing a podcast. Let’s get to know the different walk of life’s of the Boardroom Banter team. What is the essence, the mind, the spirit, that brings it all together to make it work. They are all in their early twenties, running a very serious podcast with gold nuggets of content. In this introduction above, I mentioned that I couldn’t have imagined in my youth to run my own radio & tv show someday. The tools weren’t there and we were limited by concepts that would limit our creativity into believing that we can build great things – like to turn the abstract into realities! I am glad to see this happening on the African continent! Let’s dive in!