As you well know, I am a Content Marketing Specialist, helping brands create a story around their Offerings and using it to reach their target audience. It is only normal that when I see a fellow writer, I should jump in celebration.
This episode of #TheInspiredDream is not about someone that cooks for a living, rather it’s about someone that writes for a living. She’s the CEO of Writers.ng, a creative writing agency that helps you churn out excellent write-ups in whatever niche you desire. Her name is Sylvia Azi. Let’s meet her:
“I’m Sylvia Azi. I’m a writer, a social media Strategist and Co-Founder of Writers.ng.”
“I have always been a writer. Back in the university, I was known among my peers as ‘the writer’ of the faculty. Friends and course mates would come to me to help them polish their write-ups, either a speech they were to deliver or an essay for a competition and even proposal documents. I also helped a couple of my lecturers with editing and writing some reports as well.”
“Fast forward to National Youth Service Corp (NYSC), it was the first time I was totally independent, and although I was grossing up to N30, 000 monthly from the Federal Government (FG) and my Place of Primary Assignment (PPA), it was not enough to foot my bills, I was broke!”
Her NYSC days was an eye opener for her. She realized that she had to start a side business or at least start charging for the writing and editing. Hear what she says:
“Writing was my Messiah. I started charging my friends for the ‘favours’ I did for them. I did website copies, blog articles, personal essays, even school projects and research. The number of clients I got within a short period of time made me realize that people need writers. I have two great friends who are very good developers at afrivelle.com, we discussed it and then we started working on setting it up…and today, here we are.”
Most writers are readers and they don’t seem to do the same things that other people do. Was Sylvia any different?
“While my peers watched cartoons, I was busy reading as a child. I don’t have any memories of me watching cartoons, I only remember books. I read my mothers books, from her collection of novels by prominent Nigerian authors down to her collection of spiritual liberation and religious books. I read it all. I read newspapers, magazines, journals, growing up, I was really hungry for knowledge.”
“I started writing at the age of 14. In secondary school, I had a notebook magazine called ‘the wonder book’. It was popular among my peers, I used to update it with latest happenings in the news, I’ll read papers and magazines and then go and write my own report in my own words. Back then journalism was still very artistic- the quality of the words and sentences, especially the creativity infused into the articles. It really appealed to me and I enjoyed reading newspapers. ‘Wonder book’ was my own newspaper, an avenue to release my creative energy. I also had stories and poems in the book as well. Wonder book was later published as ‘The Golden Young’ in my SS2 courtesy of my amazing parents and principal.”
Sylvia has had writing as a part of her for a long time. She wrote stories and poems from time to time most of which were in the exam hall or during a lecture while studying Electronic and computer engineering in UNIZIK where she graduated in 2015. While in the university, she was also a member of the hostel press crew- Ribon, and eventually became the president of the crew.
After completing her mandatory one-year NYSC in April 2017. She worked as a social media content Strategist for Africa Courier Express and later for Thank U Cards. She was then shortlisted for the GIST TECH-I competition that was held in Turkey last month. It was an all expense paid trip, sponsored by the US Department of state, but could not attend alongside the other person shortlisted because their VISA processing took too long.
Sylvia and her two co-founders started Writers.ng officially in January 2017 but it was not until April that they decided to focus on it and put in more work to build the business and the team. They have about 10 writers on their team and they are still growing.
You might ask, is writing that important? Why did she not go into accounting, human resources, engineering, medicine or even mainstream technology. Hear what she had to say:
“It may not be that obvious right now but so many people are looking for content. Very soon, the content industry will boom, just like the software industry. We will be there for the boom and we will be ready to take on the crowd of content seekers. People are looking for reliable, experienced and talented writers, and we are the solution to that. We write basically everything, blog articles, website content, research reports, books & ebooks, stories, applications, business documents, etc. The question is what do you want to write?”
I loved the concluding part, she changed the question from ‘is writing important?’ to ‘what do you want to write?’
Does she have any advice for the African Youth?
“Yes, I want every youth to know that we are the agents of change. It’s really difficult to be great around here but we need to stop making excuses and start finding solutions. Only us will save ourselves and our continent.”
It’s a wrap guys!
Thanks for supporting us.
Help share this post to your friends and let’s hear what you think in the comments section below.
As you already know,
I’m yours truly,
Leke Ademo
The #CelebrityInterviewer
PS. Do you know anyone in Africa who needs to be featured as our #TheInspiredDream, send a message to +2348077454779 or leke@theinspireddream.com.ng
