What motivated and inspired you to create your brand?
I think what motivated me was being born and raised in America but growing up in a Nigerian household. Both of my parents are from Nigeria and they raised us in the Nigerian way. I always felt connected to my roots but I think when I was younger I may not have been as interested in my culture. We went to this church (that integrated Nigerian culture) and I grew up learning all the Igbo hymns and Yoruba hymns when it came to church but as I got older I started getting into more of the current music and everything going on in the culture. I’d always have to depend on one person to inform me about the latest music until they got tired of it and started redirecting me to different blogs. At the time, I didn’t know the difference between an upcoming artist and a well renowned artist. I went to the different blogs but I didn’t know who to click on or how to filter out the information. Once I got to undergrad in college, I started working behind the scenes in promotion for parties and then I started working more celebrity events and concerts. I handled logistics which included press releases and PR for the events. Finally, I decided I was going to start my own outlet and essentially bridge the gap. I wanted to show the best of both worlds from the American side as well as from the African side. I wanted to let my American friends know that there were really cool African songs before the word afro-beat became an official term. Before I knew it, I had hundreds of thousands of people from all parts of Africa visiting my site and I wanted them to see the best of both worlds and experience America. My site became a one stop shop. Honestly, the best people who took advantage of this were Africans of the diaspora but it eventually became more global.
How do you separate your personal brand as Raro Abugo from your brand Raro Lae or is it cohesive?
Originally, when I first started it was definitely supposed to be completely separate. I worked a full- time job and I didn’t really want them to know what I was doing with my outlet. So with my site name Raro Lae, I wanted to hide under Raro Lae because my real last name was Abugo. However, despite this separation, if you searched up Raro or Raro Lae on search engines then everything would just pop up right away. At first, I wanted to keep everything separate but as my brand has continued to grow I’m realizing I only want it to be one thing. A lot of times with my marketing company and because of the past work I’ve done with celebrity and entertainment events people identify me as Raro Lae. It gets kind of confusing for them if i keep switching between Raro Lae and Raro Abugo. Of course, I will always be Raro Abugo because that is my actual name but I think having that unison in the brand helps to keep things less confusing versus having so many different identities or even pages. Currently, I’m in the process of streamlining everything.
When did you decide to let more people in and build a team?
I think after two and a half years because I’m a huge micro manager. It got to the point where there was so much happening at one time that I wasn’t able to do everything and also do everything properly. For example, if I’m flying out to this place and then going to another location and then I’m doing a red carpet here and at the same time I need stories to go up on the blog it all kind of got to be a little bit complicated. I can’t do everything by myself and I definitely need help. I’m still grasping it and I think that at the end of the day I still have a really bad micro-managing problem. Especially, when it comes to writing stories, I realized I can step back a little. However, when it comes to emailing and researching potential clients I’m still really hands-on and I think that it is something I will also need to step back from as well. Even if you are able to do something it doesn’t mean you should be doing it because you are best at a certain amount of things. Instead of spreading myself thin I am learning that I need to start delegating things out to different people on my team instead of trying to do the bulk of the work by myself.
What do you think was the catalyst to your immense growth as a brand?
I think in the beginning it was really an ongoing process. I had this great idea in my head but I didn’t really think it was going to transpire and become something this big. As time had past, I decided in 2016 that this was something that I needed to be doing. 2017 was a shaky year and I would ask myself (questions) like do I really want to do this and is this what is meant for me but then God started reaffirming. 2018, was the year that I really saw that I am living in my purpose because certain things started happening in my life.
For example, somebody contacted me randomly on Instagram and they were like “Hey! I would love for you to cover one of my client’s event in New York city. Would you be able to get here?” At the time, I didn’t know who this was but I had “FOMO” (fear of missing out) so I was like sure because I just wanted to know who her client would be even though I didn’t know if I would be available for whatever day she was about to pitch. She went on to say “Okay, so my client Janet Jackson is having an event this day and if you could cover it that would be great and I will put you on the press list.” Immediately, I didn’t even respond to her message and I screen-shotted it and sent it to the group chat with my family and I was like I don’t know if this is a prank or not but this lady just reached out to me to work this event for Janet Jackson and I’m screaming. Next thing you know, I am in New York the next week and working Janet Jackson’s event and I am literally right next to her celebrating her new single release. I think in that moment it was just so surreal and I said to myself
It was just a really inspiring moment within the 4-7 years that I’ve been working entertainment that God really spoke to me.
It’s very clear, just from your story, that you should pay attention to your dms and you have to look at everything that everyone sends your way. What other gems have your learned along the way that work?
I think what I learned is to definitely put in the time. When I was working behind the scenes, not everything I did was paid. I just built up my experience working for free but once you gain a certain level of experience you need to start charging. However, there were certain opportunities that I did get even though I wasn’t paid and it is because I had these opportunities and the experience that I was able to get to where I am now in addition to staying consistent. Staying consistent is important because even if I’m starting a new series and it doesn’t have as many page views consistency will eventually bring the people. People may not be there at the very beginning stages but if they keep seeing something every single week or every single day they will eventually decide to check it out. Also, if we are going to get into tech language like algorithms then if you are consistently doing something then it’s going to pop up higher and higher on the algorithm with search engine optimization.
One thing I will also say is to not spread yourself too thin. I used to always take everything but now I know when to say no and not because I don’t want to do it. For example, if you are waking up at 6am every morning and you also have a full-time job and then your contracted with someone for a project so your doing that and then you are also sneaking to work on your site during your full time and then you are also working on the contracted project after work hours and throughout the weekend. Then, on top of that, someone is inviting you to a red carpet to do an interview. In this scenario, you are going to end up spreading yourself so thin and you burn out because you are absolutely exhausted.
In the beginning, I was writing twenty and even thirty stories a day and I was doing everything in real time. So, if something would happen I’d just run to a computer. I was definitely not hanging out with anyone at the time. It was all about the stories and that consistency is honestly what helped me build my blog. Everyone would just be like what is this blog and no one even knew how to pronounce it correctly.I wanted to have the latest on my site even before the main sites would have it out. Now, I’ve changed the game plan and I work smarter and not harder because doing twenty to thirty stories a day can burn you out.
How do you pitch to entertainers and people in the media?
Honestly, everything I’ve learned had just been self taught. I’d pitch it in person if I got the opportunity and I’d explain my outlet and what I do with my company. I would also just research and find any email like their manager’s email, their publicist’s email, or even their personal email and I’d just introduce myself then provide my statistics. I’d also mention who I have worked with and then close with how I’d like to interview with them while they were in town or collaborate on a specific project. A lot of the pitching I do is through email and I’d have to do my research about each person to put a more personal touch to the email so it doesn’t seem like a cold call. If I need to email someone’s publicist, I’d follow them on twitter and then keep track of what they are tweeting so that I can then reference what they tweeted and we can relate on a personal note. If they respond to me, I’m always happy to see a number in their signature because then after that I’d follow up with a phone call and say something like
“Hey, this is Raro Lae and I just wanted to follow up on the email that I sent to you”.
A lot of people forget that whether they are in the industry or a celebrity that everyone is human so when somebody is calling even if they don’t really want to do the interview they are more likely to take a second and just humor your phone call.
How did you get comfortable with cold calling?
If we have already spoken on a thread I would just reiterate what we were talking about in the email. For example, I cold-called Wyclef John because I emailed them and they didn’t respond so I looked up a number to make a call.
I began the call by saying “Hi My name is Raro Lae and I’ve actually reached out to you via email and I’m sure you are really busy but I just wanted to touch basis with you because I noticed your client will be in town and I’d love to do a quick interview with him whether it’s 10 or 15 minutes.”
In response they say “Tell me a little bit about your outlet.” At this point I go into my pitch and I’d say “Well my outlet is currently in 140 countries and we have this amount of people that come to the website every single day and then in addition to that the mission behind this site is bridging the gab between African American entertainment and African entertainment.” I’d pitch and then make sure that I state stats because you should always stick with stats even though you may think they aren’t all that impressive.
Another example is if you are just starting off and your stats aren’t that high it’s good to state your work and who you have worked with in the past. If your mission statement is your strongest thing then it is important to really nail that mission statement. You can say
“I believe that if your client comes onto my outlet then I’d be able to give them exposure to this certain demographic or crowd base.”
So, in addition to asking for something you definitely want to pitch why they should do it. Whenever I am pitching to anyone I just make sure to say that this is what you are going to gain from this partnership so it’s not only me taking but it’s actually advantageous for you as well for us to do this collaboration whether it be for an interview or for a marketing project or whether it’s for an influencer partnership. I also never really ask is this something you will be interested in? More so, I would ask, so what time do you think will be a good time for us to meet? So I always position my questions to be a leading question versus giving them an opportunity to say no.
What pieces of advice would you give to someone like you back in the day?
I would definitely tell myself back then to do your research because I did research but not enough as I should have done. My whole life I’ve always had blogs so from blogger to Blogspot, and even Myspace to whatever you can think of I had a blog on each platform. I just ended up blogging the same way and making sure that my personality shines through my site. However, in blogging there is a huge avenue to make money from it as well and monetize your blog and in the beginning I wasn’t really thinking about monetizing my blog and I just thought of having this cool outlet but I had to learn that time is also money. I wish I did a little more research and been a bit more disciplined with doing certain things and just not jumped on every single opportunity because not every opportunity is good and not all money is good money. Sometimes certain things are not worth your stress and there are certain things you might not want to be associated with either so that also falls into you doing research.
Comment down below if you relate with Raro’s journey or are in the process of launching your own site!
Boss Watch will feature creatives, entrepreneurs, influencers, digital professionals and anyone who is moving their passions from an idea into a reality. Boss Watch is for anyone who aspires to live a fulfilled life and just needs a little bit of inspiration to know that they are not alone on their journey towards self-realization. Boss Watch is for anyone who has made it through the growing pains of realizing their dreams and is now looking to share wisdom or just find new people to increase their network. Is this you? If so, then feel free to leave a comment or email cnkstylebook@gmail.com for a chance to be featured on the next Boss Watch.
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