Victor Sosanya, Founder @ Valuable Community

Hey everyone, welcome back to The Graduate Guide. Today we have Victor Sosanya here. Welcome, Victor. Victor. Victor is a public speaker, coach, and personal brand expert. So you're very glad to have him on. How are you doing?

I'm doing good. I'm doing very well.

Nice. Okay, so you studied economics at Warwick University a while back, and obviously now you're quite an established speaker and personal brand expert, but that wasn't always the case. So can you walk us back to your life at university? What did you think you were going to do? As a career?

Yeah, no, it's a great question and I'm so happy to be here. I think I have to take it a bit behind university to give you context of why I actually chose to study economics at university. So in sixth form I studied economics for the first time as a subject, and I remember the reason why I chose it over business studies, because I thought like that's where you make money, make money essentially. People told me if you study economics, those who go to university, they get good jobs, they make a lot of money, finance. And at the time I was more money motivated, funny enough, than I am now. We'll get onto that later. But I thought that was the route I should take, and I absolutely loved economics at sixth form, A-levels. So for me, the next step was just to take out A-levels. And I remember at the time, my sixth form that I was at, I was fortunate enough to have a good careers teacher or careers sort of officer. And then we also had a UCAS, a separate UCAS team, and I remember they actually encouraged us to apply to Oxbridge, so Oxford and Cambridge. So the course that I actually applied for was Economics and Management at Oxford University. It was this top tier course. I think entry acceptance level was like 3% or something ridiculous, right? And from— I grew up in East London, so where I'm from, you know, people didn't go to Oxford, especially not onto this E&M course. So I done the assessment. You have to sit some like exams before you can actually get interviews. I think I've done the TSA, the Thinking Skills Assessment, Then after that, I got a rejection, essentially. It hurt, but it also didn't hurt as much because something in me just said, like, you're meant to go to Warwick, you're meant to go to Warwick. So here I am now, ended up at Warwick University in the Midlands studying economics, the pure course. And yeah, it was a great time, great 3 years.

And did you, like, when you were doing Warwick at university, I think most people that study econ would go down like a traditional finance route. Were you thinking you were going to do that too, or how did you slowly get involved with like wanting to maybe become like a public speaker, coach?

Yeah, so a lot— I always get this question, what is it that you do? Because I mean, I don't even know how to describe it.

I'm like, this, this, this.

The thing is, funny enough, I, I skipped a bit from my story. So when I was in sixth form, a lot of people don't know this, but I actually got a scholarship to go to university.

Oh nice.

And the scholarship that I got was with an investment bank. Work. So whilst I was 17, 18 years old, I had knowledge of what investment banking was, or at least the industry, not a lot. But I went to apply for the scholarship program, and essentially it was like a job application. So I submitted application, I had done my CV, cover letter, telephone interview, assessment center, final interviews, so 30, 45-minute interviews with MDs. I'd done all of that whilst I was in sixth form, and successfully I got onto the scholarship program. But what it did, it actually equipped me me with work experience. So they gave me internships every summer whilst I was at university. So to your question, did I always think I'll go down the finance route when I was studying economics? Like I said, I knew that economics, the type of people that would do it would be interested in finance. So just being around similar like-minded individuals was something that I aspired towards. But however, because I had my scholarship program and I used to do internships in investment banking and in trading the markets In uni, I wasn't really concerned about like application season as many students were. Spring week, so I never done a spring week because I had a summer internship the same year people used to do a spring week. Does that make sense? So I was much more focused on, okay, I study economics, I don't really need to join Warwick Finance Society or the Banking Society or Technology Society because I already have a summer internship and I think my career path is quite set. Can I do something else? And that's when my entrepreneurial passions in me came alive, if that makes sense. So I joined the Entrepreneurship Society at Warwick in my first year, and I was actually made junior executive. And I was responsible for a man named Patrick, very, very amazing guy. So he was like my head, but he ran the whole of events, and I was like junior exec running events. So I got into running entrepreneurial summits for entrepreneurs. We held it at Warwick in 2019, the Impact Summit, one of the largest summits. We brought very successful entrepreneurs, and we brought people like Chris Forbes. So he runs the Cheeky Panda, you know, it's million, million pound, multi-million pound company now. We have people like Mark Wright from The Apprentice, I believe, winner of The Apprentice. So for me, I started to immerse myself in cultures and environments which was very entrepreneurial, where I saw a lot of people speak because I was in charge of running conferences, events, speakers. And I was like this is amazing. Like, I love the way they spoke, I love the way they conducted themselves, and it was not just like speaking waffle, it was speaking about venture and building enterprise. So I think at my early stage of university, that's when I realized that I have like a part in this too. Like, there's a part for me as well in the speaking industry, but also building out business and value for other people.

And I imagine at such a young age you were thinking of wanting to maybe become a public speaker. Do you think you always had a talent for that? Like, you were always a well-spoken person and you saw yourself on stage, or how did you kind of decide you actually wanted to do that, and how did you become good at it, I suppose?

Yeah, yes, a great question. And a lot of people underestimate public speaking, right? Because the truth is, majority of people— not everyone can speak. Of course, if you're mute, you can't speak. But let's say you can speak. Speaking is natural. Everybody speaks. I'm speaking to you, you're speaking to me. However, when it comes to public speaking, it is cited as the number one fear for a lot of people. They don't know how to communicate themselves in front of an audience, a crowd. It can, it can be a crowd of 5, let alone thousands or 100. When I was young, I never really had aspirations to be a public speaker or keynote speaker. I developed my speaking skills because when I was in school, I used to be that kid that will sell to you. So I was selling food, sweets, chocolate, chocolate spot, I actually started to sell chicken wraps. Hot chicken wraps. It sounds crazy, but I used to travel into school with a knacked duffel bag and have like 30 hot chicken wraps in foil. And I used to sell to kids in the playground between lessons, after lunch. Could you imagine? So what that done, it allowed me to communicate to people. So when you have 15 wraps and you've only sold like maybe 5 at the start of the day, you've got to start speaking to push the rest. So I learned how to communicate at a very young age and be persuasive and learn different tones. And I guess it improved my emotional intelligence as well. So that stuff came from a young age. Then as time progressed and I went on to sixth form, I then exposed myself to lots of networking events, particularly around business, because that's what I was interested in. And you start to realise that the best business people are normally great speakers because they're convincing, they're persuasive, they know how to engage a team and bring people into their vision. Because business is a team sport. You can't do it individually. So what I realized is going to those events continuously, I started to pick up different things from different people. And then I think my— it dropped into my head that I'm actually quite good at communicating and I'm quite good at breaking down complex topics into simple information. And I have a desire, should I say, to help empower people. So I actually, the first type of speaking I guess I was doing was motivational. My friends will look onto me, people in my school, people who were around university on LinkedIn, they'll look onto Victor to help him like motivate individuals. So I feel like I fell into motivational speaking from a young age, and now there's all sorts of facets of speaking which we can get onto. As you can tell, I speak too much.

No, it's good. You're a public speaker, so I imagine. Um, I mean, now you work a lot with interns and recent graduate students, right? What would you say you notice people get wrong about speaking in general, public speaking? Do you have some recommendations on like what would you do if you want to just slightly improve the way you speak, be it in like in front of a crowd or in interviews?

Yeah, no, it's a great question because there's public speaking, which is speaking in public in front of an audience of 2 or more. Then there's communication in general. Knowing how to communicate. So I work with employers, organizations who hire lots of young talent, so early careers, apprentices, interns, graduates, young professionals. And when I speak to them, essentially what the service I sell is training. So I help train them on communication, I help train them on personal branding, how to build a brand. And those two things are very similar, they overlap. And the reason why that I can go into these firms and get paid to do these things is because they've realized there's a gap between young professionals in the industry right now and them communicating effectively. Communication could look different on so many different levels, and what I mean by that is when you apply for a job, there's written communication, you know, CVs, cover letters, back in the day you needed to be excellent at that. Nowadays with AI, anyone can do that, right? Easy work. However, you don't get the telephone interview. The telephone interview hopefully requires you to speak and not an AI bot. So you're now communicating over the phone without actually seeing anyone, and that's very, very crucial. So let's just say— let's say— let's start there. Telephone interviews, communication. When individuals are on the phone communicating to someone else who they cannot see, communication is even more important because the only thing that they can gauge is your voice, your tone, your confidence. And when I done my telephone interview to get the scholarship whilst I was in sixth form, there's a tip that I remember I always done. I never sat down taking a telephone interview. The reason is most people who sit down taking a telephone interview, they don't realise that their voice projection is less effective than if you're standing up. When I was standing up, when I'm on the telephone, I'll even be walking answering interview questions. I won't be happy behind the screen or looking at the questions and panicking. So that's one tip. And when you go into further stages of a job application, you meet in person, you're doing interviews like this one-to-one conversation, or you might have a group of individuals assessing you in an assessment center, communication becomes very, very important. What that looks like is, how can I confidently communicate what I think? A lot of us are smart, we have lots of ideas, but when push comes to shove, we don't know how to get that across. How can I influence people? So when I speak, I often influence people. Sometimes, I'm not sure if you've heard of it, I could be saying complete BS, but people be like, 'That's amazing,' right?

Yeah.

It's because there's a way to speak to influence people into your ideas, the way you think, your vision. Same way if you're working in a team and you're You're doing teamwork most times than not. If you're working for a startup, a mature company, whatever, you're going to be working in a team. How do you influence people to buy into what you want to do? That's all— this is all communication. It's always often thought about, I'm on a stage with a microphone speaking to 100,000 people. There's that element. But before that, before you get on stage, let's work with the basics. So there's a lot. I felt like I went on a tangent. I'm just trying to— did I grasp— yeah, answer your question?

No, it's, um, I think what's interesting is I I once— we once had a public speaker come to UCL when I was doing my master's there, and then he was like, oh, the first thing you need to do is stand up straight and like open up your shoulders, like open up your body. And students started doing it, and then everyone had to go to the front and give like a 1-minute speech. And you could really tell that people who actually tried to like make themselves bigger on stage could communicate better, or they just look more convincing and present. So yeah, I think— what do you think about like little things like gestures or body language? Do you notice that?

Of course.

How can you improve that, would you say?

Yeah, body language, gestures, huge part of communication. They're non-verbal, right? The things that you do, like I'm moving my hands, they help me convey a message or a story. They're very, very important, but I don't think they're the end-all because what I recommend is that you be natural. If someone told me, you know, puff your chest out, walk on stage, those are things, yeah, they're not natural. If I was to go out, oh snap, I'm speaking but I forgot to puff out my chest, the midway sentence I puff out my chest. Those things are not natural. You need to be natural. And what I mean by that, you need to find your speaker style. So there's 4 types of main speaker styles. The first one is motivational speaker. As I told you, you speak to motivate people. The next one is transformational speaker. So these are speakers who speak to create impact. When they speak, they inspire people to action more than just, I feel motivated and happy now. They inspire people to action. Um, so motivational speaking, transformational speaking. The third type of speaking is informational speaking. So those are these individuals who, they, they're like lecturers, a lot of information. They might be deemed as boring speakers, but they're very good at conveying information, presenting information. And the fourth type of speaking is motivational, transformational, informational, and slipping out of my head. Let's just go with this.

Yeah, yeah, don't worry about it.

And we can bring in the fourth one. Um, essentially with these types of speaking styles. It means that when you think about your body language and your gestures, you match up with the type of speaker that you are. It has to be natural. I do recommend people remove bad gestures when they're speaking. That could be, I don't know, if it's a girl, let's say you're playing with your hair and you're speaking a lot. A guy, we do this a lot, you know, macho man sort of speaking like that. There might be certain gestures that people make when they're uncomfortable. To the trained eye, I could see it. Naturally, people won't be able to see it, so it's not a big deal. But again, it depends on what you are communicating. Is it a presentation at work? Are you pitching for finance or investment? Now, if I'm a— I'm not an investor, but if I was an investor, a VC, and I had a team that came up to me who are looking for investment and they're pitching their business and they're explaining their financial projections or their cash flow forecast, whatever, and I can see the speakers like very nervous, as in something's not like— he's like, something's not right about this, whatever he's conveying, I'm going to look at the body language and make up a sort of decision. Maybe this is not the right fit. So this is why communication is, is so important. Gestures help, but they're not the, the end of all.

No, true. I think as an investor, if you think that the startup people are nervous, you wouldn't want to invest because if you're nervous about your own business, right? Like, what, what's the point of that? But let's go back. So you're like a student and you're slowly getting into speaking, right? When did you realize that there was a possibility to maybe make money out of it? What was your first paid speech or coaching seminar?

Yes, it's a great question. So the funny thing is, I was— whilst I was at university, COVID-19 happened, right? We hit a global pandemic. I tell people this, my speaking journey really kicked off in the pandemic, which sounds absurd. Yes, that's when it kicked off. So when the pandemic hit, I think it was like March 2020, I think around 2— no, maybe a month after, or in that month, I just got a buzz-like moment idea. And the idea was, we're in a pandemic, everyone's going crazy, fear, anxiety is on the rise, things are rapidly changing, let me host my own online conference, generally. And it was called 2020 Vision, and the aim of this conference was to instill vision back onto students, graduates, young professionals, that there is hope outside of this pandemic. So what I did was I had a Zoom account. Lucky enough, I used Zoom years before the pandemic, so Zoom was new to everyone, but I've used it before. I had a Zoom account and I scheduled 7 days of 7 days at 7 AM. We had a morning call and there were like these vision calls. And guess who was the headline speaker? You? This guy, for the first ones. So I got confident. And these were strangers, like I promoted on Instagram, LinkedIn. I had strangers joining, young professionals, 7 AM. So no glitz and glamour, you're literally waking up out of bed, joining this call. I was encouraging people to put their cameras on and I'm now speaking about certain topics around why we should keep our faith and hope and visions and all the dreams that we wanted to do, why we shouldn't let it slip. Then a few days passed and I started to reach out to speakers on LinkedIn, professionals, and they actually joined as guest speakers. So that's when the speaking journey kicked off, during the pandemic essentially. Now when we were emerging outside of the pandemic, at this time I was still doing my degree, I was still interning with this investment bank, and the 2020 Vision conference was a huge success. My DMs, everything was blown up with messages. Then people started to reach out to me off the back of that, like, oh, you're the guy that done this 2020 Vision, I'm hosting this, I would love you to come. At the beginning, I'm like, oh sure, great. I wasn't thinking about any money, so I used to travel to different events to speak, join a panel, talk about certain topics about entrepreneurship, about how I got into investment banking, about finance, a range of topics. And every single one of them was a practice, to speak, but also an opportunity to give back and bless other people. And that was what I was doing for a very, very long time. Charging money didn't even— wasn't even factored into my, into my head. Then I think it got to a point where I was so pressed with time because I was now doing exams. I was at the time, actually, I actually had, um, a previous business, a previous events company. I want to work, accelerate, or we want cash to run it, but the pandemic sort of messed up those plans. So I had lots going on, and when I used to get these invitations, now it was like I was deeply becoming out of pocket, meaning that I would pay for travel, I'll pay for food, the time that would have to spend on something else, I'm not getting compensated for it. So I think I then asked for, can you cover my food or travel or something like that? I'm trying to remember what organization it was, and they said yes. I was like, oh, easy, easy. If you don't ask, you don't get. Cool. Then there was another online conference, um, I think it was called Rocking Your Teens, I believe, and they were doing this massive conference and it was online. So that was virtual, I didn't have to leave my house. And I time they requested me as a speaker for their conference, and I asked again, like, is this paid? Is it free? Is it pro bono? And they said they have a fee for speakers, but it's not that much. And I won't reveal to you what they gave me because they are, they are CIC, like a charity. Well, not charity, but CIC. So they weren't like a huge profit-making, you know, conglomerate, but they had a fee for speakers. And I was like, oh, okay, whatever the fee was, I knew I was taking it anyway. So I took, I took it, and delivered the talk online. And from then I realized actually I'm providing a service because the value that I'm providing to these organizations far outweighs whatever they were paying me at the time, if that makes sense.

Yeah, that sounds great. And I think a question I would have as a student, I think we hear a lot about the importance of personal branding, right, be it through speaking or LinkedIn. Um, and you have found, I think, a really good selling point, like use your faith and your own story to kind of make a convincing narrative.

Yes.

But do you think like anyone can be a public speaker, or what would you recommend to find like your specific angle in as a process if you want to start with personal branding?

Or yes. Yeah, so let me try to dissect the question. So if students are watching this at the moment and they want to build their personal brand around public speaking, or just in general?

In general.

Yeah, in general. That's a great question. I believe that everybody has a personal brand, whether you like it or not. Personal brand, or brand, what people think about you, your reputation, what you portray online. If you're not online, what, how you walk into rooms and command it. Everybody has a personal brand. If you want to be intentional about building your personal brand, that's another thing. That's me, that's now making the decision to say I represent something. I have value. When I give my personal branding training workshops, even to corporates, I tell them about the 4 foundational pillars of a personal brand, which is, first of all, is your story. Like you mentioned, who are you? Who are you? Before you go online and start posting pictures and colours and I've got a new backdrop or whatever it is, who is this person? Who's the individual? What's your story? Where do you come from? Where you are now? Where are you heading to? So I always tell them, focus on the story. The next is your values. So those are the things that, what do you stand for? What do you represent? What do you— like, what's— it's kind of like you're a business as an individual. What's the culture? So that's what I tell people to focus on: their story, their values. Next, I, I told them to think about also the, the value that they can offer, because with personal branding, if you want to grow a personal brand, you need to have something to offer. It's again, it's like business, like you're doing sales. What is it that you offer to other individuals? And for me, I just happen to offer public speaking services and training to help empower and edify individuals. So I teach a lot of content. I take content that individuals might find, you know, scouring the internet may take them months. They're implementing it, it's not working. I help them consolidate information and practically help them apply it, and they get results. And that's, that's sort of what I do. You've got to think about what do you offer, what do you offer, if you're thinking about putting on a personal brand. Now, for students, I would believe that they're either at a certain crossroads looking at getting a job, going to offer something to an employer, starting their own business or side hustle, should I say, looking to offer something to clients, or they're in the middle of figuring out what it is that they want to do, that creative endeavors. So at any point in time, you're still offering something, so you still need to build a personal brand. And I would just recommend they think about those 3 things and they be authentic and true to themselves, because at the end of the day, a personal brand is personal.

Yeah, I think I'm also slowly getting there with my personal brand, building it, but no, it's definitely a journey. Okay, great. So the last question we ask every guest is your definition of success, and maybe we can look at— I know you're a motivational speaker and you often help people maybe think about what success means to them, but what would you say does it mean to you? And looking into the future, what do you think your success will look like, or how do you define it?

It's a deep question. Yeah, I know. You ask everybody. What I say success is, I say success is personal fulfillment. That's what I say success is. Success to me is personal fulfillment. A lot of people are successful, quote unquote, but they're not personally fulfilled. They are always chasing the next thing. Because if I said success to me was to make a certain amount of money, or not even money, maybe to work with a certain amount of brands, on the surface of it, it's great, I'm progressing and moving forward, but I'm looking at the next thing, meaning that I might not be personally fulfilled. So success to me is this idea of personal fulfillment. Um, Abraham Maslow has this hierarchy of needs, I don't know if you ever heard about it, and you have the basic needs and it goes on to like sort of the middle needs. At the very top is self-actualization, and that's the need to be somebody, to become somebody, to be fulfilled. And for me, that's what success looks like. It looks like doing, doing the work I do and being fulfilled in it and having impact, you know, every step of the way. And as you mentioned, so I'm a Christian, so I have faith that could guide me around that. So my success looks different than how success in the world or with other people look like. So as long as I believe that I'm walking in purpose, doing exactly what I'm called to do, and I'm fulfilled doing it, I'm already a success. It's not just— it's not a destination. I'm already there.

Yeah, that's a really beautiful definition, definitely, and something different to what other people have said. Yafa, thank you so much for coming on.

No problem.

Great having you. Yeah.