Global Courant
My Pivot Journal is a weekly series from Ventures Africa that documents people’s career transitions from one sector to another, especially to technology.
Everyone talks about living the dream life. In most cases, they measure how close they are by what they can afford. But for Alma Asinobi – one of Nigeria’s leading travel content creators – it doesn’t work that way. For her, the dream life is not a destination, but a state of mind in which passions and goals are aligned. And after she got three degrees in architecture, she had to build that life line by line. Here is Alma Asinobi’s pivot journal.
How it started
When I was 15, I decided I was going to study architecture. Initially I wanted to do Mechanical Engineering because in my “what a man can do, a woman can do betterera (I still am though). But I came back to that when I saw that chemistry was one of the required subjects to pass. I didn’t like chemistry and wanted to be as far away from it as possible after my SSCE. To this day I do not know the first ten elements. So I chose architecture because I loved technical drawing and was the best in my class. In fact, my uncle is an architect.
I resumed my studies at Covenant University when I was 16. But I thought in my second year that I would not practice architecture. I think 15 is too early for most people to decide what they want to do for the rest of their lives. And I know it sounds ironic because I still went for a second and third degree in the same field. The truth is that I needed time to discover what I wanted to do without losing the structure in my life. I had always been adventurous and spontaneous. But whatever other things I had, one thing was certain: I was a student. And that gave me some kind of stability and freedom to explore other aspects of my life.
During my school days I got my hands on many things including photography, modeling, video editing and writing. I started a blog in 2015, my second year at school. For some reason I stopped the blog the day it started and didn’t write anything. In 2018 I picked it up again and started writing again. i also started creating content and became more invested in it. In 2019 I started with social media full time. I tried photo editing in Lightroom and also learned how to use some apps. That was the year my Instagram account grew to about 2000 followers.
Revelation
In 2020, when the pandemic hit and the lockdown started, I had just returned from my first trip abroad. It was one of my resolutions to visit a country every quarter. But two days after I came back from the Republic of Benin, we went into full lockdown. By then I had about 2400 followers.
I couldn’t go out, take photos and shoot videos the way I wanted to during the lockdowns. So I had to improvise. I was reading a lot of books during the lockdowns so I decided to make content from what I was reading and learning. For some reason it worked so well. Many people found it recognizable. In the beginning, a lot of people stopped following me. But I think that was a blessing in disguise. It just helped me search my content and better understand my audience. After the lockdowns (still in 2020) my account grew to about 6000 followers. It was in the same year that I decided to be consistent with content creation.
Alma Asinobi
Transition
After the pandemic, I went back to school for my Msc graduation. But I wanted to stay in Lagos because I thought it was much closer to the opportunities as a content creator at the time. So I needed a job. By getting a job in Lagos, my parents wouldn’t fight me to leave my home city, Port Harcourt.
I had two degrees in architecture, but I was suddenly interested in digital marketing. That was a problem: there was a disconnection. And while I had the transferable skills for this role, recruiters couldn’t see it. Many people prefer to play it safe and hire someone with experience or an academic background in marketing.
I applied for a job at a fintech startup and although I was one of the finalists, I received a rejection letter. And so I returned to Port Harcourt at the end of December, hoping to try again. But I later got an email from their HR saying they had seen a message I posted (an article). As it turned out, they wanted to build their content strategy and focus on content marketing. I agreed to their offer and we did not need any further interviews. Within a few days I received my letter and in January I moved to Lagos.
That was my first role and I was with the company for a year. Then I took a short break and spent most of my time working on content. But what surprised me was how transferable my skills were. I’ve been writing since I was little. My dad made us (my siblings and I) big fans of dictionaries. I hated reading, except it was a dictionary. But I wrote a lot: whether it was poems, rhymes or something else. All of that translated to starting a blog and writing on social media. Even the photography and editing skills I acquired helped me transition into my first job in technology.
At the end of 2021 I made a solo trip to Senegal and Gambia before returning to Nigeria. A few days later I went to Ghana. Creating content on those trips created a lot of traction and my followers became more interested in travel content. Then more people interested in travel content started following me. At the end of 2020 I had about 7-8k followers. At the end of 2021 I had 11,000 followers and at the end of 2022 I had about 40,000 followers. My content made me work with more brands, travel-focused communities and companies. In 2022 I moved to Canada.
How are you
Working in tech has really opened up my life. Between 2021 and this year I have worked with several tech startups in content and marketing. I have worked with one in Berlin and one in Canada. I also started a travel company, Kaijego, to help people with weak passports travel more and more easily. Traveling and content creation have been my passions for a long time, so it feels good to make a living out of it.
My plan is to go back to full content creation and running Kaijego. But that’s no easy feat. I am still settling in a new country and I have to combine that with career changes. Doing this while intentionally building Kaijego from scratch is challenging. But I strongly believe in my ability to figure things out – I always do.
Career Hack
Being able to tell stories and communicate has been one of the most important game changers for me. There are probably a lot of people who can do what I do, but only a few people can tell the stories like I do. And I believe that anyone who wants to move from working 9 to 5 to building themselves needs to be able to tell compelling stories. In fact, everyone should learn to communicate and tell their story.
