Joining Apollo today in the first official interview of The Achievement Index is Chinedu Enekwe, Co-Founder & President of Nandi Labs, the new creative economy for black digital art and culture.
Joining Apollo today in the first official interview of The Achievement Index is Chinedu Enekwe, Co-Founder & President of Nandi Labs, the new creative economy for black digital art and culture. It feels like Chinedu has lived 10 different lives in the span of one, but there’s still only more opportunity and success in his future.
With a score of P, L, and E last, Apollo explore the ways in which Chinedu identifies common threads across experiences to get to the bigger picture, leverages technology and relationships to create positive feedback loops with those around him, and values execution, despite it being his lowest score.
Additionally, Chinedu takes advantage of the opportunities placed in front of him, crediting much of his success to his insane networking abilities. He talks about how he would take one step forward, someone would recognize that step, and then give him something that challenged him even further, allowing him to rise even higher.
Remember to find out your own Achievement Index to see how you compare to our guests!
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Guest PLE Score
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Guest Bio
Chinedu Enekwe is Co-founder & President of Nandi Labs. He’s a creative producer, organizing the NXT.ART Pavilion at AfricaNXT, co-producer of the musical FELA! on Clubhouse and podcasts distributed on Black Enterprise and Business Insider Africa.
He's The CEO of En Garde Media, an award winning global media platform focused on uplifting Black voices reaching over 20 million monthly viewers. He began his creative journey as a performance poet and recording artist before joining the venture capital firm, Exponential Creativity Ventures as a principal investing in creative tools.
He left that role to launch his own fund as the general partner at Passbook Ventures & Studio, an early-stage venture capital firm & startup studio focused on solutions for the global African community. Passbook invests in US immigrants building tools for the future of commerce for the next generation of internet users and builds culture driven startups that tap into the creator community of African descent.
He’s a Moonshot Fellow of the Kravis Lab for Social Impact, founding member of the Forbes Impact Community and serves on the advisory board of Impact Entrepreneur Magazine. In Chinedu’s previous professional experience, in development finance at the at the World Bank and OPIC, investment banking at Merrill Lynch and fund formation and corporate securities law at Weil Gotshal and Manges.
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Guest Quote
“If you are the resource, you're not an entrepreneur, right? If you are the one investing your own time, your own talent, your own treasure, you are not the entrepreneur. You are the resource.” - Chinedu Enekwe
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Time Stamps
*(2:20) Chinedu’s Achievement Index
*(6:51) Don’t lose your balance
*(11:11) Learning from an early age
*(14:44) Leveraging technology
*(19:31) Why networking is critical
*(24:19) Recognizing patterns that work
*(31:37) The elephant in the room around execution
*(36:22) Stick around to see the sausage get made
*(40:05) Apollo’s takeaways
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Links
[00:00:00] Chinedu: One thing I learned in entrepreneurship is it's about resources, right? And leveraging and figuring out ways to gather resources. And if you are the resource, you're not an entrepreneur. Right. If you are the one investing your own time, your own talent, your own treasure, you are not the entrepreneur, you are the resource.
[00:00:33] Chinedu: And you have to use resources, and that's the entrepreneurship talent. How can you use resources?
[00:00:42] Apollo: Welcome to the Achievement Index, a podcast designed to help you understand and accelerate the ways you perform. I'm Dr. Apollo Emeka I created the Achievement Index based on my experience in the FBI, US Army Special Forces.
[00:00:58] Apollo: And business according to The Achievement Index. Vibrant success is the result of doing well in three areas, or as we like to call them, orientations, prioritize, leverage, and execute. On this podcast, I'll be getting inside the minds of noteworthy leaders to ex. Explore how their unique orientations inform the successes and challenges they've navigated throughout their lives and careers on the show Today, I'll be speaking with Chinedu Enekwe Co-founder of Nandi Labs, the new creative economy for black digital art and culture.
[00:01:34] Apollo: Nandi is enabling black artists. To monetize their art and create communities on a global scale through Web three. Chinedu is also a partner at Passbook Ventures, a VC firm, investing in diverse new American and global founders, building the champions of borderless commerce.
[00:01:52] Apollo: Chinedu how you feeling today,
[00:02:00] Chinedu: man? I'm feeling great. How are you?
[00:02:03] Apollo: Amazing. I'm pumped to have you here with us. I just listened to your interview on another podcast and I was like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I get to talk to this dude and like an hour and a half. This is great. So thank you for being here.
[00:02:18] Chinedu: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:02:19] Chinedu: That's my
[00:02:19] Apollo: question. So your score was, you were a 13 in prioritize and 11 on leverage and a one on execute. And it's so funny because you and I are super aligned in that, you know, and so prioritize is. Your first orientation. That's your primary orientation. So when you're at your best, you're able to make big decisions that have long-term impact.
[00:02:41] Apollo: You're able to help people think through complex problems. You're able to break big goals down into smaller goals, and you can inspire other people by painting this compelling vision of the future and what is possible at your best. You have the rare ability to say no to things that are distractions from what your ultimate goal is.
[00:03:01] Apollo: Now where Prioritizers. Often struggle is. We can, and I, I'm guilty of this as well. We can tend to overthink things and suffer from analysis paralysis. We can take a little bit longer to get started on something because we want to think through things and consider every angle. You might play devil's advocate so much that.
[00:03:20] Apollo: Rather than painting that compelling vision of the future, you can kind of confuse people and undermine people's confidence that they're signed up for something that's gonna be worthwhile. People may get frustrated with us prioritizers if we change our minds too much on big decisions, cuz it's easy for us to do that.
[00:03:36] Apollo: And if we don't, if prioritizers don't understand the why of the work, it can be harder to stay motivated and repetitive. Tedious work is a big challenge for Prioritizers. So just kind of giving that brief overview of what somebody who exhibits the prioritize orientation primarily, how do you feel like that tracks, how does that show up in your life?
[00:03:58] Chinedu: I think it shows up accurately in terms of where my zone of genius is, where if I can spend more time helping in those areas, I'm thriving. That's when I know everything is going well, because that's where I'm spending my time. So it tracks very well because I've learned and I've tried to. Skill myself to the spaces away from being like a domain expert or a subject matter expert, mainly because I didn't feel like it's the highest leverage of my time.
[00:04:29] Chinedu: So I'm glad that I'm indexing where I want to be on one level, and then I'm hopeful that I show up for others in that way, and that's, that's why I'm in venture as well and why I have a leadership role in a startup because, I want to, and you know, and the startup is kind of difficult. You gotta do every role at once.
[00:04:50] Chinedu: But, um, but the place where I know I'm thriving is when I can spend time with others that I'm assigning or delegating tasks to and trying to communicate the challenges. And I, I think one of the things that you mentioned, especially about analysis paralysis and really being able to talk. Other people out of the idea that you talked to me Yeah.
[00:05:16] Chinedu: Is something that I've, I've learned as well and that a lot of those bigger decisions that you have to make, you have to make it on your own. You have to go spend time on your own, which is why having a group of other founders that you can talk to, that you can share that sort of nebulous area of, you know, debating these.
[00:05:39] Chinedu: Lofty ideas with, and then come back to your team and then talk to them about where you've landed, because that ideation process really can throw people off when they are focusing on leverage or they focusing on the task at hand. They can get lost.
[00:05:56] Apollo: Man, that's such an amazing call out and I feel like we're transitioning with the rise of technology.
[00:06:03] Apollo: Decisions are just naturally becoming more transparent and collaborative and I think, you know, also, gen Z wants to be involved, wants to feel like they have a sense of purpose when they're showing up at work. And so I think there's almost an over. Correction to being transparent in the decision making process.
[00:06:20] Apollo: I love how you're talking about doing these things on your own. How do you balance that though? I mean, you're also high leverage, so your second was leverage, which is, you know, how do we get this done easily? And that's by leveraging technology. Information people systems. And I hear you talking a lot about people and in your other interviews I've heard you saying, Hey, if I'm investing in 50 companies and I have to worry about which 2% stake in this company is gonna be the most valuable, that's tough math versus, you know, if I'm investing in fewer now I, I've got higher stake and I've got fewer things to worry about.
[00:06:51] Apollo: But I mean, it's crazy if you just Google, you like 20 different things come up. Right. So like, how is it that you balance that need to kind of make decisions alone so that people aren't getting whiplash in your brainstorming process? But there, there are a lot of things, a lot of different companies and ventures that you have to make decisions across, and then other people have to carry these things out, right?
[00:07:13] Apollo: So how do you balance that?
[00:07:15] Chinedu: Man, it is difficult. So it's, it's not the easiest thing, but I think it comes down to having a trusted group of people around me that understand how I think and understand where I'm best used. Right. The people that I work with, I've known for years. Right. So that's been helpful in terms of.
[00:07:36] Chinedu: When a new project comes in, it's not like I have to deal with a whole new set of people usually for a lot of core tasks. So I, I repeat the type of people that I work with, so when I communicate something, it lands, I can talk about the difference of what I need versus something else that I've done.
[00:07:54] Chinedu: Right. So that's the benefit of age where you have the benefit of experience plus relationships and the length of the relationship that you can tap into. Then, I think the most important thing has been figuring out what systems that I can use with people to identify early on things that are tracking or trending well, and then quickly identifying when things are not trending well, cutting those things off, and moving on to other opportunities or moving on to other ways to solve the same problem.
[00:08:29] Chinedu: So I think that has been, The most helpful way to establish it is tools have gotten better. Speaking and having conversations asynchronously has become far easier. So, you know, that increases the amount of work that can be done. But what's really been helpful is being able to monitor and track growth and get better with the systems that I use that I've been building over time to monitor and track growth in progress.
[00:09:01] Apollo: I love that. I feel like that's always a challenge, and I'm really curious about the actual nuts and bolts of how you do that. And just to give some folks some context. I mean, Chinedu has an amazing background. It feels like he has lived 10 different lives in the span of one lifetime. And I know Black don't crack, but you also don't look like you have lived a whole lifetime.
[00:09:22] Apollo: But he's a Howard Law graduate, and one of the first transactions that you worked on was a $30 billion. Transaction. Is that right?
[00:09:32] Chinedu: Yeah. Yeah. It was targeted a 30 billion fund that would be funded by GE and Credit Suisse for an infrastructure fund. So that was actually the first thing on my desk as a lawyer.
[00:09:44] Chinedu: I think I've had these experiences that have added, and that's what's been helpful. The relationships across many industries. Yeah, like in law, and then I went to investment banking. Yeah. Then development, finance, and the government, and then startups and in multiple continents, three continents, Europe, America, and Africa.
[00:10:08] Chinedu: And I could just say that I've been blessed with the good fortune of people giving me responsibilities that I was not prepared to handle.
[00:10:16] Apollo: Right.
[00:10:18] Chinedu: So that that's really where. It would go, I would take one step forward and then someone would recognize that step, and then they would give me something that I was totally unprepared for, but they believed that I had the capacity to handle, and I thank all the people that have given me those opportunities, and I didn't truly recognize that those opportunities were limited and rare when I was being handed them.
[00:10:42] Chinedu: I. Sort of thought they were what everyone got. Right. To be honest, I didn't recognize that it was, you know, grace and favor and all of these things where I had to look back when I faced challenges and when things weren't happening so easily, I was like, Why is this a problem? Then I look back and say, no one should have given me those opportunities when you got
[00:11:03] Apollo: them.
[00:11:05] Chinedu: Yeah, man.
[00:11:11] Apollo: So he says he wasn't ready, but then he knocked these opportunities out of the park and this is just a teaspoon of the things that he's done. He has produced a musical on Clubhouse. He's in the web three space and is creating opportunities for black artists on his new N F T platform. I mean, this man has done so many things and as a prioritizer myself, I have lots of amazing ideas, but only a fraction of them make it into the world.
[00:11:42] Apollo: So I had to ask him about that leverage and execute side. How is he able to make all of these amazing ideas actually come to life?
[00:11:55] Chinedu: So, um, I go back to a time when I was in high school and I. Participated in this group called National Society of Black Engineers. Mm-hmm. There was a club in school and they said, well, we can join this club, which was the pre-college initiative. It was between my high school and Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, and when I went to that school, there were, her name is Jasmine Bridges.
[00:12:22] Chinedu: She was my mentor at the time. She was the. A kind of liaison between the NSBE chapter on that campus and my high school. And NSBE has this thing where they have these conferences, right? And so National Society of Black Engineers, they have these regional and national conferences, and at those conferences they teach you.
[00:12:42] Chinedu: And this is me at like 15, telling me that I should network and I should value the relationships I build, and that I should stay in touch. And this is the first time I had never been to a business event in my life, right? So I took those things to heart. And still to this day, Jasmine and I, we still are in touch.
[00:13:01] Chinedu: Wow. So I learned that lesson. I took it in and I ran with it from the technology level of it, of the aspect of, you know, continue to be curious to the relationship level of nurturing. Long and deep relationships and checking back in. I took that nugget and I just kept it. I, I mean, if, if I didn't go, maybe I would've learned something else, but Right.
[00:13:27] Chinedu: What I learned from that was that people matter, uh, and curiosity really is something you have to nurture and you. Consistently do so and things work out, and I believed in it and it works and it's consistently worked, so I consistently do it. That's amazing.
[00:13:45] Apollo: That's amazing. For
[00:13:46] Chinedu: whatever choices I've made, I've kind of keep on skipping and hopping into these spaces where only 2% of the profession are black.
[00:13:55] Chinedu: Like, so 2% of engineers are black, 2% of lawyers are black, 2% of venture capitalists are black. And then 2% of venture capital funding goes to black people. Yeah. Um, even less at times. So it's not like I've chosen the easiest route to get ahead for people of color, but what I think the organizations that support people of color try to.
[00:14:18] Chinedu: And still are. You know, it doesn't help everyone but the people. It does help. It does really provide a strong foundation. I love that.
[00:14:28] Apollo: Yeah. I want to go back to what you said. Uh, I want to know how you one measure and track progress. Cuz I think that's something that all leaders everywhere, it's elusive, right?
[00:14:38] Apollo: And I mean, there are quantitative KPIs that can still be elusive. And then there are qualitative KPIs that are. Almost always elusive, you know? And so when you're looking at the N F T space, or you're talking about a technology that maybe here in the states we're super familiar with, but you're going to these markets where the technology just has not spread yet.
[00:14:58] Apollo: You're dealing with so many different things and you can't have your. Finger on the actual pulse of all of these things at once, cuz you only have two hands. Right? And so what are the ways that you look at any one of the projects that you're involved in and understand the health of that project. What do you do from a process standpoint or a technology standpoint and even a prioritization standpoint of what you view as important when you're thinking about monitoring and tracking progress.
[00:15:26] Chinedu: So this is really important to me in terms of measuring what works, right? So for me, I use, there's different types of tools like Lean canvas, different types of ways to measure things. But I always get back down to the fundamentals. And for me, the fundamentals always come down to, are you making money?
[00:15:48] Chinedu: Right? How varied is your money? So how many different parties are you making money from? How much. Talent do you have at your disposal? How much inbound interest do you have in your project? So any one project, how much inbound interest are we getting for that project, for talent to participate? Because ultimately it comes down to do people wanna work on the things that you are pulling together?
[00:16:13] Chinedu: Do people want to be involved? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So that involvement, that engagement, are the people who are actually involved, actually engaged, right? Yeah. And. All my companies use Google Suite, and what I do on the back end is I measure how many emails we're getting. So the email traffic to me is a measurement.
[00:16:34] Chinedu: Now sometimes it's just busy, right? Like you just can get a whole bunch of. You know, spam, but generally when it's a business initiative, no one knows you to spam you at first, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, mm-hmm. As things are picking up, I measure that. I measure the engagement across conversations in Slack or any kind of community or discussion platform that the internal team has.
[00:16:56] Chinedu: And then I also measure the engagement on social media and the engagement with regard to visits of the pages. So all of that engagement to me tells me that this thing. That we're working on is a valuable commodity on one level. And then the other is measuring the performance of the engagement. The partnerships Now, when we talk about like technologies that are at the frontier, understanding the adoption level.
[00:17:23] Chinedu: Of those things is really about the partners that you attract, the footprint of those partners and their relative adoption of it. So oftentimes the way I try to add leverage to our support startups that we work with or invest in or in any capacity is what scale of partnerships can we create? That are business development partnerships and that give the broadest level of distribution and have the widest adoption because for me, It's all about scale and distribution that allows for most things to, to thrive.
[00:18:01] Chinedu: So I look for building big, kind of juicy partnerships with organizations and I look for areas, and this is how, I guess maybe, perhaps I use the prioritization. I'll have conversations with large scale organizations and introduce 'em to new technologies or new companies, and I try to explain the value proposition.
[00:18:22] Chinedu: Around their existing priorities. So when I look for an initiative that I'm going to invest my time in, I then apply that same kind of framework. Is there a large enough partner that can give us distribution? How many of those large partners can we choose from? How much revenue can we generate? And then measuring how much is that actually happening?
[00:18:44] Chinedu: Because there's a lot of coulda, woulda, shouldas that don't actually turn into anything but. It's kind of building that out, and that's kind of what I always rinse and repeat into anything that I'm doing. I say, who do I know in this space? How can I talk to them about learning about their priorities?
[00:19:00] Chinedu: Talk to them and understand I. Knowing that I'm surveying broadly what the frontiers of technologies are. I say, there's a company that does this, or there's something I'm working on that can be applied here. We just need to build maybe three or four new modules or interfaces that allows you to do what you're trying to do.
[00:19:18] Chinedu: And then I measure. Does that actually work? Right? And I look back at does that actually work? Do we have the right team that's working on it? Mm-hmm. Does it attract the right amount of capital for it to happen?
[00:19:31] Apollo: Okay, let's pause for a second. Show of hands. Who here is terrified or at least extremely annoyed? By the idea of networking. Well, oo is not, you can see that he has managed to make amazing things happen by leveraging relationships and the way that he does it is so incredibly simple, but it's also incredibly thoughtful and clearly it's been effective for him.
[00:20:03] Apollo: And I really wanted to crack the code on this because there are a lot of folks out there. Who have hangups on networking, how do you do it authentically and efficiently in a way that also adds to the experience of the people in your network? I had to ask him about this.
[00:20:24] Apollo: So what's the mindset that you have when you're thinking about building and maintaining relationships or networking, and then how do you actually go about executing
[00:20:33] Chinedu: on that? I think the most important thing is that you have to actually care. Right. It's always gonna be inauthentic if you don't care about the people you're talking to.
[00:20:43] Chinedu: You don't care about the people you work with. If it's just a zero sum game that you're just trying to get ahead. But if you care what their results are and your results are, you're just being human, right? Like, hello, nice to meet you. What are you up to? Maybe we can work together. This is what I work on.
[00:21:01] Chinedu: So I think. That's like the fundamental premise of caring about another human. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And what they're working on. And that's the first level, I think. The second level after. Like really going about building a relationship is a cadence of interactions, right? Um, I have like 25,000 people in my phone, right?
[00:21:22] Chinedu: That's, that's like literally who literally, so people ask me, why did that, many people are in your phone. How are you keeping up with this many people? And ultimately what it comes down to is, you know, I, I share. About what I'm working on, what I'm building, and you know, it helps that, you know, sometimes I'm just kind of, I share, I'm a
[00:21:46] Apollo: overshare
[00:21:46] Chinedu: sometimes with my network, I'll just.
[00:21:49] Chinedu: Tell them, Hey, this is something I'm thinking about. I'll send an email to as many people that I have and say, this is what I'm working on. This is the status, the ability for business communication, just generally. Yeah. And then allowing people to decide their level of involvement, to decide their level of interest, that level of business communication, whether you're raising capital, where you're working inside of a company, working for someone, you have to learn how to communicate with business.
[00:22:15] Chinedu: Right. In business and. Being comfortable sharing and then growing, and especially in when things are at the earliest stage. Has allowed me to attract people to me and my endeavors and my professional journey such that I've been able to recognize the people who care about my success. Yeah. And then I've been able to return, in return, sort of see people at a earlier juncture in their career as me, and recognized that people who cared about me, yeah.
[00:22:50] Chinedu: Played a role in my life. And then, Also continue to contribute to others who played a role in my life, in my early career, and helped me, who gave me opportunities for no reason. And I think, you know, recognizing that there's like just a continuum of just humanity and whether you're in business, whether you're in your personal life, whether you're with your family, you know, that part to me, the human aspect.
[00:23:15] Chinedu: The intangible aspect because I could get down into like really bare bones, like how am I measuring things right? And how am I doing X, Y, Z? But the, that wouldn't represent who I actually am. What represents who I actually am is the, the fact that I'm always going to have this sort of element where I. I'm gonna defend anyone that works for me, that works with me.
[00:23:36] Chinedu: That human element comes out within networking, and it doesn't work for everyone. A lot of people don't care about people, which is okay, right? Yeah. But it's in that, in that vein, I think it's better if that's what your natural personality is, then figure out like maybe just be a gun for hire. Right?
[00:23:54] Chinedu: That's okay. You can be a gun for hire. You need subject matter experts. Some weekends I just need someone to come in and to just bang out something for me and. I don't need them to network with me all the time. I just need them to be in their silo, write about what project they just worked on. Mm-hmm.
[00:24:10] Chinedu: Mm-hmm. And I continue to track what's happening. I might care. They don't have to care about what's going on with me. Yeah.
[00:24:17] Apollo: You know? Yeah, absolutely. Part of the reason why I'm pulling on this thread a little bit is because, There are gonna be those hired guns who listen to this podcast, right? And they're like, man, but I don't wanna just be the guy or the girl who gets called in to do the thing while he's out there doing the networking and doing the, like, I want to, but like, I don't want to at the same time, you know?
[00:24:36] Apollo: And there might be somebody who's listening right now who's like, but I do care. I do, but I just, I still can't hit send. Or I still, you know, so like, do you systematize or, or kind of automate any of this in any way? Are there times where you're like, oh man, you know what? I've been kind of ghost lately. I need to X, Y, Z.
[00:24:53] Apollo: You know? Are there intentional things that you do to nurture your network and what does that look like?
[00:24:58] Chinedu: Yeah, I mean, roundabout, I guess 2020, I started to learn a little bit more about social media platforms and content generation and sharing and working the algorithms and the practice of being a content creator for the purpose of social media.
[00:25:15] Chinedu: Right? Which was different than just sending out business communications. And I started to systematize things where I started to recognize, okay, this content, which is newly published across other platforms is trending and people wanna understand my take on it. Or at least my audience wants to understand my take.
[00:25:35] Chinedu: So let me write something about it and pull from my own personal experiences to provide additional context that the author has. Right? So I started doing that and I recognized that that was a valuable contribution to the social media that needs, you know, user generated content. And I recognize that I too can be a creator for social media because.
[00:25:59] Chinedu: Social media needs users that will create a system to create content, right? So that's, I started learning that and I recognize that, especially around doing that for LinkedIn. I recognize that is what others are doing for other platforms, that they're just recognizing what patterns work going after and just creating a system of creating that content and.
[00:26:22] Chinedu: You know, not being too stressed about how others may think about it, knowing that there's an audience within your audience for whatever you're doing and whatever you're thinking. And you know, initially I didn't, you know, there's a lot of formulaic things that people do to kind of get people to click and read content, and I did feel like those things were inauthentic for me.
[00:26:43] Chinedu: Like I just. So that's why I started to, I just, you know, said, let me just pull from my own experiences and just have my take and try to generate conversations with people in my network that I wanna have conversations with, that I more than likely can't go to conferences to all the time. I guess what I learned, I.
[00:27:01] Chinedu: Is the things that I do normally where I go to a business conference and whatever is new and trending that is happening, that's current. I'll sit in the lobby and not really be in the meetings and I'll just have conversations with other people who are the like lobby conference goers and we'll talk about what's happening and that's how it built.
[00:27:20] Chinedu: A lot of great relationships and I just took those conversations about trending topics and put 'em online and tried to have conversations in the social media space, and I recognized being myself. Just putting it online and just turning it into a digital content is what works for me. And I think what works for others may be, you know, they may like to do deep research and then, you know, sharing that deep research, which they may just do with their friends unless they just do it for themselves and they act on it.
[00:27:53] Chinedu: But they may create that deep research and create something from it to me. To be honest, what I learned is the phenomenon of memes, right? When I see a meme online, I'll laugh or I'll feel something about it. And I started to recognize, because I was a venture capitalist that was invested in the creative tools, I recognized that people are out there creating memes.
[00:28:15] Chinedu: I didn't even really acknowledge it before. Right? Like some people are out there creating memes, right? Yeah. And the thing about the creation of a meme is that, It is a part of internet culture that everyone acknowledges, but people rarely think about how it came to be. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. And someone did that.
[00:28:38] Chinedu: And you can be that someone, right? And it's similar to everything else that you see on the internet or you see in the world that you can be, that someone that creates a valuable contribution to someone's day. And it's probably gonna be the most authentic thing to you that just comes to mind naturally.
[00:28:54] Chinedu: So I just try to take what comes to mind naturally and then put it out there. And a lot of times I'll go silent for months, right? I'll just go silent for months because I'm either busy or have something in my life, and then I recognize where someone over time will just reach out and say, . What happened?
[00:29:12] Chinedu: I really missed what your take was. I'm thinking that you would have such an interest in insight and they'll reach out and they say this to me and it helps me. It gives me the energy to say, yeah, you know, I do have something to add to this world or this topic area. So it's like a cycle. I get into it, then I get out and then I come back in because maybe I keep pulling me back into the internet.
[00:29:34] Chinedu: I
[00:29:34] Apollo: love it sounds, you know, it's, it's amazing that, I mean, you're schooling me right now because I love relationships. I'm a curious person. I care about people, but the idea of networking is something that I'm like, I gotta be authentic. I have to be authentic. And I also like, I feel like have to have a reason to be talking to somebody.
[00:29:51] Apollo: I. You know what I mean? Like there's this thing of like, we need a reason to have a conversation. And so, you know, the old school days of like, okay, we're gonna go to the meeting and then we're gonna exchange our business cards and then we're gonna go to lunch for no reason. And then we're gonna, you know, like what you're doing is, you're kind of like rewiring my brain right now.
[00:30:08] Apollo: And the ingredients that I hear you talking about to leverage building relationships is caring plus content generation. It's like if you care, if you connect with people and you know what questions are in people's minds and what challenges people are facing, and then you can create content and share that content with those people that is engaging your network.
[00:30:29] Apollo: That is building relationships, even though it's not going to the networking event necessarily, even though it's not sending somebody a copy of a book like that is a super high leverage way and then, You know, talking about is it automated or not? Yeah, it's automated because now you have created people who wanna know what you're thinking.
[00:30:49] Apollo: So the automation is people are hitting you up like, yo, man.
[00:30:54] Chinedu: Exactly. That's the feedback loop. Now, I use certain tools because I'm an avid consumer of content. I use certain tools like Pocket so that I can save articles. Yeah, okay, gotcha. I'm an avid reader. I'm an avid listener podcast, so I'll save these things and then I kind of create.
[00:31:11] Chinedu: Bookmarks and areas that I can compile these thoughts, these thought bubbles into maybe a future article, but ultimately what really tends to happen is I do all of that and then I see an article, and because I've done all of that and I know the context, I'm able to respond better naturally to the article I see.
[00:31:37] Apollo: So we can see oos preference for the prioritize and leverage coming up throughout his conversations. He's clearly got these big ideas, big goals that's on the prioritize side of the house. He's amazing at leveraging technology, people, information, and systems to think about these priorities and how they might get done.
[00:31:59] Apollo: But he's got a one on his execution score. So how is he still able to make all of these big things happen? He's able to dream things up and he's able to think about ways to make the work easy, but he doesn't like to be the one that is executing all of the work. So how does he get anything done?
[00:32:21] Apollo: You would rather be prioritizing and leveraging than executing according to your results. So you've achieved across these different spaces. So how do you cover that lack of passion around the execution side and around the tedium and the heavy lifting and the pulling of the trigger? How do you account
[00:32:38] Chinedu: for that?
[00:32:39] Chinedu: Well, it's because. I started in those spaces of doing the work where I recognized that that space of doing that work, I went and got a law degree, became a lawyer. I was an engineer. I went to business school. I did all of those things. So I have subject matter areas where I understand what needs to be done, and I've put in the work to understand what work is happening and when it comes down to something getting done.
[00:33:09] Chinedu: And finding someone to do it. If people are wasting time, I will get it done, right? Mm-hmm. And that's cause I've gone through those areas. I got my training so that I understand what I can do to maybe, perhaps. I get it to a certain level, then I bring in an expert so that it gets done quicker, but with the right level of expertise.
[00:33:29] Chinedu: So, you know, I take it to a certain level, then I get someone else to review it so I can move quickly and rapidly. Yeah. And then get things done. But I recognize that those things I'm suboptimal at, and some of it has to do with the fact that I, I've done so many varied things that I don't have like a very.
[00:33:46] Chinedu: Deep T-shaped knowledge area on one thing. So if I'm spending my time on legal matters, I'm not the best lawyer you're gonna find, right? I'm not the best lawyer I'm going to find, right? So, uh, like same thing with investment banking. I did, you know, project finance and I did complex financial models and I know how to do it and I know how to write.
[00:34:07] Chinedu: Like these V B A macros, but I'm not the best. Right. What's been helpful is understanding and going through all of these areas is recognizing that I'm not the best at those very deep kind of knowledge areas, but because I have this very broad knowledge, I am far better at picking. And saying what subject matter support I need, I can find the, I'm an expert and evaluate them.
[00:34:35] Chinedu: Right? So the reason why I would always tend to say that I won't do the work is because I can. But I know there's people that are better. And one thing I learned in entrepreneurship is it's about resources, right? And leveraging and figuring out ways to gather resources and. If you are the resource, you're not an entrepreneur, right?
[00:34:59] Chinedu: Mm-hmm. If you are the one investing your own time, your own talent, your own treasure, no hope so, you are not the entrepreneur, you are the resource and. You have to use resources, and that's the entrepreneurship talent. How can you use resources? And not everyone needs to be the entrepreneur. Some people do need to be the resources, and sometimes those resources are far more valuable than the entrepreneur.
[00:35:26] Chinedu: Mm. But when I was an engineer, when I was doing nsbe, what I recognized was I was seeing so many talented, brilliant people that were engineers, and I said to myself, Why do the business people make more money? Yeah, that was my fundamental question. I was like, I think these
[00:35:44] Apollo: engineers
[00:35:45] Chinedu: are smarter than the business people.
[00:35:46] Chinedu: Why are they accepting, getting paid less than the business people? This doesn't add up to me. And that dynamic that started in that moment is something that carried over to do I wanna be the engineer? Which is completely valuable and valid. I, I love engineering. I love law. I love investment banking, and I think there's so many brilliant people in those spaces that yeah, could run circles around me and this.
[00:36:11] Chinedu: And because I have respect for those people that I've met along the way that I say, you know what, let me try to make my lane. The guy that is the business person.
[00:36:22] Apollo: I love it. I love it. One of the things I heard you say on another interview was that you stayed long enough to see the sausage made once or twice, and I think that that is something that's so valuable if you're an entrepreneur or business leader within a larger organization.
[00:36:37] Apollo: I think you know that whole, like you said earlier, I was given stuff before I was ready. Well, really seeing it once or twice. You're ready. You are ready, you stay too long and you're gonna know all the nuts and bolts, right? And so it's such an amazing thing of like, yeah, I need to see it at least once, maybe twice, and then I'm gonna move on to the next thing, right?
[00:36:58] Apollo: But I think people oftentimes get hung up and they're like, I gotta see every single way that this can go down. And so they end up plateauing themselves and in a worse case scenario, Those around them, right? If they're in a leadership position. Cuz they're like, no, no, no, we are not ready. You are not ready.
[00:37:13] Apollo: We haven't seen every single permutation, right? Mm-hmm. But I just love that you're like, okay, I've seen this once or twice and I understand that there's some variability here, but like I can now move over or I can move up and I can just make sure that I'm surrounding myself with people who are gonna be able to deal with those permutations of how those things might play out.
[00:37:32] Chinedu: Exactly. Exactly. I think. The luck of my life has been to luck into very brilliant circles of people who know what they're doing, and I'm around them. So when I think of who I should do something with, I know the talent level. I've seen something done. Yeah, at the most professional and highest levels. So it's helped me kind of discern when I'm trying to partner or do anything, I can look at the level of work and say, I know you don't have it.
[00:38:03] Chinedu: Or I know you would have it if you had this. Yeah.
[00:38:07] Apollo: That's been helpful. I love it, man. I love it. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for joining me today, and this has been an awesome conversation. And now I'm one of your friends. I'm one of, I'm part of your network that I'm gonna hit that notification bell so I can see what you're thinking about.
[00:38:23] Apollo: The things that I care about.
[00:38:25] Chinedu: Exactly. I love it. And um, To be honest, what you're gonna see is how the sausage is made, right? There we go. It's like I'm, I'll be in your inbox with things from time to time and you know, you'll probably not be interested in 85% of what it is, and you only respond to maybe five or so, but that five, please dig in.
[00:38:47] Chinedu: You know what I mean? Let me know. I love it and I, I, I wanna be a part of yours too.
[00:38:52] Apollo: There goes that T shape again, right? Yeah,
[00:38:54] Chinedu: exactly. There goes that
[00:38:55] Apollo: t shape again. Well, what's the best way to, to, to see the sausage? What's the best way to, to, to see the content that you are putting out? So the best way to be that, like 25,000 in first person in your phone, right?
[00:39:11] Apollo: Yes.
[00:39:11] Chinedu: It's pretty much that. But LinkedIn is the best way. So it's Chendu, C H I N E D U dot. And then Aqua, E N E K w E. That's the easiest way to find me. I'm probably number one or two if you put OO in. I love it. I'm probably up there, but if you wanna catch me on the Twitter streets where you see me retweet, folks, that's what I'm, I mostly just do retweets of content that I'm reading and and consuming.
[00:39:37] Chinedu: So it's a COPE 84 c o p e 84. That's my handle. And. Those are the best ways to reach me. I'm always accessible. I do get a lot of inboxes, so what will happen is I'm very much a, if you send me a message and you drop me a line on a post I have and say, check your dm. That is my loop. Perfect, man.
[00:39:59] Apollo: Well, thank you so much and I hope you have an
[00:40:02] Chinedu: awesome year.
[00:40:02] Chinedu: All right. Thank you. Same to you, bro.
[00:40:05] Apollo: What an amazing conversation with an amazing person. We wanna leave you with some tangible takeaways that you can use to improve how you achieve, whether you are a. Prioritizer, a leverager or an executor. So when it comes to prioritizing, Chinedu says that sometimes it is best to do it alone.
[00:40:28] Apollo: That way you don't confuse, scare or give whiplash to the people that are within your circle. Second, from a prioritized perspective is identify the common. Threads and themes from across all of your experiences, what are the big things that matter, the big things that you learned, the challenges and opportunities that are shared across all of your experiences, and how do you tie all of those together to create even bigger and more clear priorities from a leverage standpoint?
[00:40:59] Apollo: One of the things that was. Clearly key to his career and entrepreneurial trajectory was his network, and there's a lot of anxiety around networking and relationship building. But he says that it is as simple as doing two things, caring and creating. So if you can actually care about people and the things that they care about, and then create content and share that across multiple platforms, that is how you build.
[00:41:28] Apollo: A network in 2023, and from the execution standpoint, he says, you know, yeah, I'm a prioritizer and leverager now, but skills matter. He talked about the times that he went through law school investment banking. He has the technical and tactical skills, but he's not the best in the world. So really it's about getting just enough skills so that you can.
[00:41:51] Apollo: Understand how the sausage is made, like he likes to say. And then it's really about understanding what are the individual tasks that need to be done and how do I get the best person in the world to do those tasks. And then as for the executors that are on his team, it's about knowing how they tick, what they're good at, and how to make them better.
[00:42:13] Apollo: Remember, you can find out what your achievement index is by going to www.achievementindex.com. Take the assessment, takes about 15, 20 minutes. Make sure you're in a nice, calm state of mind, in a quiet place, and you can find out your own achievement index and figure out how you match up against our guests.
[00:42:37] Apollo: I'm Dr. Apollo Emeka. If you like the podcast, please rate us on whatever platform you're listening and remember. To share it with your friends. Thanks. See you next time.