Close to where I go to withdraw money from a PO agent, I saw. her 

Clad in all black – cotton tees and denim jeans – and tall, she was shapely the way agencies would want their models to be.

She was absolutely beautiful. My eyes focused like a laser to take in all the details. If I were a tailor, I’d need no tape and I’d get the exactness of her body dimensions. 

Thankfully, it wasn’t my turn yet to withdraw, so I let my eyes trail her movement. Done discussing with the little girl attending to me, my eyes followed her till she disappeared behind a gate made with corroding corrugated roofing sheets. 

I knew where she walked into – a collection of shanties where low earners lived. 

I got lost in thoughts. “Dressed as she was, if she tells you she lives in the GRA, you’d believe her. Despite living in a shanty, her outward expressions belied her source.”

I began to think how my marketing expressions changed after encountering a client who had 7 companies. She’d asked me to take a cab to meet her up, but I felt I was smart. I took a tricycle and unfortunately, she was standing right in front of her office when the tricycle pulled up. I felt like being swallowed by the earth.

When I sat down, her first sentence was, “Let your expressions be like those whom you want to attract to you.”

For an hour, she schooled me on expressions and attractions. Then she said, “Even if you current reality is so bad, the way you market and present yourself should always show the pitiable state you’re in, except you’re not out to attract the kinds of people who you love their current reality.”

She paid for my Uber (that was the first time I ever rode in it) and asked me to change my expressions.

Back I those days, I’d write about my tricycle (called keke in Nigeria) experiences and riding in molues (rickety long public buses) in Lagos. I stopped all those. Even if I’d ridden in one, I kept my written pieces in my diary for my own consumption alone. 

I know you may be reading this and so it doesn’t matter because God is alive or that living your truth is the way to go, but I had to put this out. It could be what could help someone break through when thought about deeply. 

Your marketing expressions and messages matter.  

When your ad campaign heading goes “I’ll show you how can make $1000 even when you’ve not made $50 dollars in your life and with zero naira” what do you think happens? 

You attract…

And this isn’t to say being broke is a crime (we are all broke at certain levels as we journey in life) but it may be that you want to attract a certain kind of people, but your expressions cast a net to catch tilapia instead of barracuda. 

By now, I feel that you’ve gotten the crux of this post.