I am sick and tired of teaching

Over the past 5 years, my students have done over ₦20 billion in sales.

They used the strategies. “Here’s how to find the bulk buyers.” “Here’s how to write ads that make people feel something.” “Here’s how to sell to the most stubborn, skeptical Nigerian customers.”

SWOF. EVAA. The Masterclasses. The Webinars. Social Media. Thousands of business owners took the frameworks, hit the market, and made serious money.

People see that ₦20 billion and say, “Commando, you’ve tried! That’s impressive.”

"SMH! There is nothing to celebrate.

Actually, that number keeps me up at night. ₦20 billion across tens of thousands of people over five years? That’s not a win. It’s proof of a gap I didn’t want to admit for a long time.

The teaching isn’t enough.

People would learn the framework, get fired up, then go back to their shops and... struggle. Not because they aren’t smart. But because the tools they’re using are actively working against them.

And honestly? That’s on me.

But let me back up.

No Sleep for the wicked

For the past year, I’ve been building something. Quietly. Obsessively. The kind of project that makes you forget to eat and have full-blown conversations with yourself at 3:00 AM.

I can’t show it to you yet. But I can tell you why it exists.

Every week, I talk to Nigerian business owners. Fashion vendors in Lagos. Skincare brands in Abuja. Food businesses moving products across the country.

The complaints are always the same:

• “I’m getting traffic, but they’re just ‘window shopping’.”
• “My ads are not working.”
• “They ask ‘How much?’ on WhatsApp and then disappear.”
• “I’m doing everything manually—I can’t scale because I am the business.”

These aren’t lazy people. These are entrepreneurs doing the work. But they’re at a gun fight with matchstick

The tools available to us were built for people in San Francisco or London. They weren’t built for how Nigerians actually buy and sell.

The “Nigerian Factor”

Our customers are different. They want to negotiate. They want to talk on WhatsApp, not send an email. They need to see that other people are buying before they even think about trusting you. They price-shop, they ghost, they come back three weeks later and ask, “Oga, is it still available?”

Most platforms just hand you a “store template” and wish you good luck.

I tried to fix it by recommending foreign tools. “Use this for your store.” “Use that for your automations.”

But it was a mess. My students would sign up, wrestle with a platform that doesn’t understand “Pay on delivery” or “WhatsApp closing,” and either force it to work or just give up.

The strategies work. But you can’t run a Ferrari engine inside a Keke Napep.

Blind man dey lead blind man?

You know the part that pains me the most?

Look at every commerce platform built for Nigerian sellers right now.

What do they focus on? Operations. Inventory management. Order tracking. Payment processing.

That’s fine. You need those things.

But here’s what nobody is asking:

Why does a Nigerian customer visit your store, look at your product, and still not buy?

Why does someone add something to their bag and then disappear?

Why does a buyer ask “how much?” on WhatsApp and go silent the moment you reply?

It’s not an operations problem. It’s a conversion and trust problem.

Nigerian buyers are skeptical. They’ve been burned before. They don’t trust your store just because it looks nice. They need to see that other people are buying. They need to feel like they’ll miss out if they wait. They need the freedom to negotiate — because that’s how we buy things in this country.

A Nigerian will see your product, like it, and still not buy until they ask someone who already bought. “Abeg, you don buy from this store before? Them legit?” That’s how we shop. That’s how trust works here.

What has any existing platform done to solve that? Nothing.

Africa has the highest cart abandonment rate in the world at 93%.

No platform is solving for that. Everyone is building warehouse software and calling it e-commerce.

You know why? They’re builders who understands technology but not the market.

Nobody is asking: “How do we make the stubborn customer actually press pay?”

That’s the question I’ve been obsessed with.

It’s like I’ve been teaching people how to climb — and then sending them to the mountain with no ladder.

So I’m slowing down on teaching. Not stopping. But shifting.

This next phase is about building the ladders.

Instead of saying, “do voice note marketing — Nigerians don’t ignore voice notes.” I want to hand you a tool that does that at scale.

Instead of just telling you “design emotion-driven marketing,” I want to hand you the tool that does it at scale.

Instead of just teaching follow-up strategies, I want to give you a system that follows up automatically.

That’s what the last two months have been. And honestly, the last year.

But these past two months — I was locked in a room with this thing like my life depended on it.

Because it does.

I’m not ready to show you yet. But I’m close.

When I do, I think a lot of things are going to change for the people who use it. Not because I’m special — but because nobody else is building for this market the way I am.

Nobody else has spent years in the trenches with these sellers AND has the technical ability to build the solution.

I’ll be writing more often now. The Commando Dispatch and my WhatsApp Channel are going to be where I share what I’m thinking, what I’m learning, and eventually — what I’ve built.

My name is Joel Amawhe, but you can call me… the Commando

P.S. Hit reply and tell me what you sell. I want to know who’s reading this. One line is fine. “I sell wigs in Abuja.” “I run a spa.” Whatever it is. Just reply.

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