Igor in Los Angeles and Mandar in Kampala are both Marketers. In the first episode of Life Unboxed, both introduce themselves to the other and any points which attract attention are developed further. What caught their attention and interest? The answers are quite revealing.
The episode was recorded on September 13, 2023.
Transcript
Frank Igor and Mandar, welcome to the first half episode of Life Unboxed, where we’re going to explore mysteries to metrics, how marketing and life can influence each other. And in the first session today, we’re going to focus on the AIDA model, attracting attention.
So, each of you are going to introduce yourselves to the other person, and you’ve got to say something which will catch that person’s attention. None of this has been scripted in advance. I know nothing, as usual. And then afterwards, you have 10 minutes each to develop the topic. So, Mandar, if there’s something that you found that Igor said that you found interesting, you then, through a Q&A session, have to develop that and vice versa. Gentlemen, as I said, I am not here. The show is yours. Igor, let’s rock and roll.
Igor Okay, let’s do it. Although I have a Russian name, which confuses a lot of people in Los Angeles, I am Brazilian. So, I was born in the southeast of Brazil, and I was lucky enough to have a lot of moments in my life that I met nice people. And when I was 21, I went abroad to study and work in the United States. Then I went to Canada, and I travelled throughout Europe. And I’m starting mentioning my trip history because I really think that I am a very different person from what I was before traveling the first time, which is good because I am probably the most random marketer you will find because my history, my professional history, is very unlikely.
And I like to think that the way I see things and the way I manage my career put me in a position in which I have a lot of options and I can navigate very well on whatever I want. One of those characteristics is maybe seeing things as a system that I can tweak what I want and forging my path based on what I want for my life, which is not common. Usually the most people I know, they will kind of look for a path that someone already went through, and they will pick, oh, this path seems interesting. The way I see that, and I was inspired by many people, it’s like, okay, there is no path I want. So, I have this menu of paths that there is nothing I want, so I will create my own path. And there are a lot of things involved in this process. Something that I’m always proud to say, and sometimes I am a little bit repetitive, is that I really want to frame my work as something that will improve my life, not otherwise. So, I don’t try to set my work as a standard. I like to set it as something to improve my life. I also like jiu-jitsu, which is something new for most of people outside United States and Brazil in which this part is very popular.
And I like to explore things in nature, hiking, running, and things like that. So that’s an introduction I can think of right now. Yeah, and I’m encouraged to know about Mandar.
Frank Okay, so it’s all yours.
Mandar: Yeah, so this is Mandar and I come from India. I was born and bought up in a city called Mumbai.
After some time, after 10 years of my career, I got a chance to come to Eastern Africa and my destination was Uganda. And then in Uganda, I have come eight years back and I’ve been working here now for a long time in between, I got an opportunity to roam around Eastern Africa and to see various countries like Tanzania, Kenya, Burundi, South Sudan, Zambia, Rwanda. And I really loved that experience, apparently, because something interesting about me is since childhood, I was very much in love with something called “abroad”, like a place away from my country.
I remember my neighbour relatives used to be in US or Muscat and they used to get the cards or the letters. And this neighbour was kind enough to give me those stamps. So, I think that hobby I started from my childhood. And I was always fascinated by those various things, you know, those stamps, coins of different countries, chocolate come from outside. So, you know, I was, I always wanted to go to abroad.
I realized that in 90s, the safe route from India was to become a software engineer, because India exported so many software engineers to US, Europe and wherever possible. All my colleagues were already done that and already went out. Now, I couldn’t do that. And I was really disheartened that I missed the bus, you know, that I couldn’t become a software engineer. And that’s it, you know, nothing is going to happen with me. But somewhere, you know, okay, in between, some interesting thing about me is post-crossing. I am a post-crosser for the last 11 years. In post-crossing, you basically send a postcard to someone, a random person around the world, and you receive a postcard from a random person around the world. So, there is a one website dedicated to this hobby called postcrossing.com.
So, one fine day, I met the tarot reader, you know, the lady who sits with the tarot reader, something like a gypsy. So, I was asking her, when I’m going to go to abroad, is there in my destiny file, by the way? So, she said, okay, what you do? So, I told about about my life, about this hobby. So she said, yes, you’re already seeding the universe by these cards, you know, I think what you are doing is very good, you are sending some part of you to the world. And actually, you are signalling the universe that, you know, someday you, I also should be somewhere. And then, you know, all of the sudden, I got this opportunity, which was not at all in my, even in wildest imagination, apparently. So, as I said, that time, some boom was there in Nigeria, and also in Eastern Africa, Indian was investing in these countries, and they wanted their own executives. So somehow, I got this opportunity, and then I landed to Uganda.
So I wanted to say that, you know, this is quite interesting part, you know, like, I read a book called The Secret by Rhonda Bayan, you know, and I strongly believe in that book, that if you want something, you know, and if you really strive to be, strive to achieve that whole universe, conspire to get what you want. So that is a little interesting. I feel that it is quite interesting thing about me.
Okay, about, apart from post-crossing, I really love to mingle with people. I want to know new person, I really love to meet new, new people. What happened is, you know, being the expat, what I realized is where all our Indian expat actually try to be within their own group, and within their own comfort zone. So, at one point of time, I realized that that’s it, you know, I’m done with this. So, I started meeting now Ugandan people, you know. So, through different, different ways, I find the opportunities, I meet them, I try to understand their life, and their life is not really easy. You know, life, their life is quite tough. And, you know, but somehow, they always smile, somehow, they always have energy and passion to live their life. And that really motivates me. So, this is a bit about me, actually. Over to you, Igor.
Frank Okay. This is quite a, quite a revealing set of introductions. It reminds me a bit of, I don’t know, if you’ve seen the film Forrest Gump, only you have Forrest Gump sitting on the park bench, “life is like a box of chocolates. You don’t know what’s inside.”
Okay, so thank you for your respective introductions. I am very pleased to report that you have under kept your time limits. Igor, you, you went under time and Mandar, you managed to just manage to keep in the timeframe. Yeah. So, because marketers love to talk.
Okay. So, Igor, it’s back to you. You now have a maximum of 10 minutes to unpick anything that you found in Mandar’s introduction, that you found interesting. So, we’re now at stage two of the Aida process, interest. So, ask Mandar some questions of anything that you found interesting in his introduction so that Mandar can elaborate on that in greater detail. Okay. So yours, Igor.
Igor So I want you to start asking, like you mentioned that you want to travel to other countries in Africa and some perception I have been a Brazilian and I think most of the world have this perception is that Africa is just one place, right? We talk like, oh, he lives in Africa. Like I want to know Africa, but Africa is huge with dozens of countries. So, my question is, do Africans, I know like you are not African, but you live in Africa for a long time. Do they, do they want to travel within Africa? Like when you talk about Tanzania about with someone else, do, are they curious about Tanzania or they are kind of, oh, that’s kind of the same. What’s the perception?
Mandar Okay. So, this is a quite interesting question. Well, Africa is made up of around 52 countries. Okay. And Africa is divided into the region like Northern Africa, Eastern Africa, Western Africa, Southern corridor, and then Horn, Horn of Africa.
So, right. You know, like, so if you want to understand more about Africa, I think you should better focus on this region like Eastern Africa, what is there in Eastern Africa, what is in Horn, what is in Northern and what is in Southern like that.
Okay. If you talk about the perception and curiosities, so I really, there is a very much perception, different perception about the countries, African countries, then there is a curiosity also. For example, one simple example is South Africa. No one wants to go to South Africa because they are xenophobic. You know, African blacks are beating or killing another blacks. So, they feel that they are superior and they don’t want any other blacks there. So, this is sort of, sort of basically not a perception, but actually the things are going on there. Many people want to go to Kenya because if I talk about Uganda, for that matter, Uganda is now a little less developed country and Kenya is our New York in this region.
So, they want to be there. They want to understand their development, the infra, you know, a lot of things which are happening there. So, yes, I mean, and actually Ugandans are traveling a lot. They’re traveling for the businesses. They’re traveling for the jobs. Everyone has relatives around, you know, I think you must be knowing these are not the countries earlier. There were just tribes. They were living in their own region. That’s it. Colonizers came, big scramble for Africa. They cut, you know, laterally, parallelly, longitudinally, and then they separate this. So, what I realize is a Ugandan has maybe relatives in Rwanda. Uganda may have relatives in Congolese. In fact, there is a lot of interconnections happen. Like one of the girl, I met recently, she has roots in DRC, Congo, Rwanda, Kenya and Uganda. So, you know, there is a lot of mixing and interbreeding has happened in between.
Then there is, I’ll tell you one more perception about particularly Horn of Africa or Northern Africa. They feel that they are not Africans. And in fact, Northern African also feels that they are belongs to Arabs. So that is again, you know, one real divide is happening. If you see Horn of Africa, which basically a cluster of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia, these guys totally look different. You know, they, I mean, if you see, and then you can say, you cannot say that these are African even, because there is also a lot of mixing of blood, Arabian blood, Indian blood, you know, so those people also try to keep a little separate out.
So, you know, what we saw from outside, it’s totally different. You know, so that is in actual the answer for your question.
Igor: No, that’s interesting. So like people in the Horn of Africa, they feel like they belong more to the Middle East. Is that right? Yeah, that’s interesting. And okay, one question I had for you last time, but I didn’t have time to ask. So, let’s say Uganda, it’s a very interesting place from Brazilian perspective, because we have a lot of people with who came from Africa, like unfortunately by slavery, but we have a lot of African influence in Brazil, a lot, like, I mean, 90% of the culture in Brazil is African influenced. And Uganda, we have two things that are very popular in Brazil, which is like the, I don’t know the name English, but the thing that you do like that.
Frank The bongo drums.
Igor So in Brazil, like we have this in Capoeira, in Samba, which is a music style. We have a lot of drums in, African style drums in Brazil, influenced by Uganda. And also, we have words like that came from Uganda, but I don’t think they exist in Uganda nowadays. So, in the Portuguese language, there are people, there are researchers that don’t like to tell that our language is Portuguese because our language, according to those researchers, our language, it’s more like Brazilian African, because we talk Portuguese, but a lot of influence from Africa, while the Portuguese in Portugal, they have zero influence from Africa.
So, like in the language, you have a lot of influence. So, my question is, if I as a Brazilian, if I had one day to spend in Uganda, I know it’s a big country, but I know it’s a difficult question, but you will handle it. So, what do you think I would have to see? Like one day in Uganda, what would you recommend me to explore in order to really know Uganda culture?
Frank Mandar, you have about three minutes for this difficult question.
Mandar Okay. Well, actually, it’s totally depend upon your liking.
So, if you like wildlife, I would suggest you to go to Murchison Park.
If you like hiking, as you said, you should go to the Rwanda Uganda border where you actually hiking and going through the gorilla habitat, you know, so so it’s called gorilla hiking, gorilla trekking, sorry.
If you like, if you like culture, you should, you should spend a time in Kampala. So, what you are saying that there is this traditional drum they have, and then there is a traditional dance. Okay. And this traditional dance is actually below the body, you know, the movements are most of the below the body. So that is also quite interesting to see.
If you are really interested in river Nile, I should tell you, river Nile originated from Uganda. So, the source of Nile is in a place called Jinja.
So that will also and it is one of the most, you know, beautiful place naturally. So that is also place can influence you can attract you. So, this is this is my answer in nature.
Igor Okay. Yeah. Well, I like the gorilla hiking.
Frank Okay. Okay. I think we might come to that one again. So okay. So good question. Difficult question equal. Well, well battered back to use a cricket term, Mandar. So let’s now for the last few minutes of today’s podcast, let’s reverse the thing. You listened to Mandar, you listened to Igor’s introduction. What has caught your attention that you would like to ask Igor to explain in more detail?
Mandar Yeah, Igor, I just want to ask you, when you shifted from Brazil to USA, I believe you are shifted from developing countries to so called number one, I mean, first word, how was your experience? Was it good? Was it bad? Was it, I mean, they really hold you, they invited you or as per the perception, you know, there is a lot of racism is going on and all that shit.
Igor: So okay, like, give you a straight answer. Wasn’t a pleasant experience in many ways. Okay, but I will finish that in a more happy way. But like in the beginning, it’s not pleasant because I have talked about that with Frank, the feeling we had when we are applying to come and the feeling we have when we are here, and we need bureaucratic stuff is that we have to beg for everything.
So, for just to give example, when you are in Brazil, when you are applying to a visa, you have to go to the American Consulate, that’s fine so far. So, you have to go there to interview. But like to enter the Council, you have to basically wear like very specific kind of clothes, you can wear shorts and things like that. And the Consul that will interview, like if they refuse your visa, they will just say, no, you are not allowed to go and they won’t explain you why. And you have to be two days in the city because they, for some reason, that it’s hard to explain, they split the process in two days. So, you have to go in one day, go to the interview and then you have to sleep in the city. Usually, it’s Rio or sometimes Sao Paulo. And then the next day you have to go again. So, it’s a process designed to not work well. So, they actually designed the process to be bad, right? It’s not like, it’s not bad because they don’t look into that. They designed it, they want to be bad.
When we got here, like we need like the social security, it’s difficult, seems like we have to beg for everything, to rent our apartment, to sign up for the internet. So that’s not a good experience, generally speaking, if you are a foreign United States.
And that explains why people who come here, they usually build a cluster of people from the same country. So, Mexicans, they just interact with Mexicans, Ethiopians just with Ethiopians, Brazilians with Brazilians, because it’s hard to interact with Americans themselves because, not all Americans, of course, but you’ll feel like you are begging to be here all the time.
However, like the good thing about coming to the United States is that you have a lot of possibilities. So, it’s an unfair place in terms of accessibility. So, you don’t have access for almost everything, everything you have to pay, which is different in Brazil.
We have a very good health system. The school is free. You have free universities. Here is everything paid and everything very expensive. So, it’s not accessible. But in the other hand, it’s very free. So, you can do whatever you want. No one will hold you down. And it opens a lot of opportunity if you are in this mood, if you are in this phase of life to really hustle.
So, my experience so far has been like, oh, it was difficult to get here. It’s hard to get things going because you have to beg for everything in terms of bureaucratic work. But once you are set up and you want to put the work, you can achieve a lot of things that you wouldn’t be able to achieve in other places.
So, like, for example, right now I am applying for a job in a philanthropy. That’s huge. Like, they had over 200 employees. They fund projects with millions of dollars. That’s something that I would never have the opportunity to do in Brazil. So that’s this kind of both sides of the same coin, you know.
So my final take on that, and I was talking with my cousin last week about that, like when I did say it’s good if you are in a phase of life that you want to suffer in order to achieve things. Like if you want to relax, to live a good and happy life, calm life, like here is not a good place to be. So that’s my short answer.
Mandar Then Uganda will be the best place to be.
Igor Yeah, probably. I’m sure of that. Better than here for sure.
Mandar Okay, that’s great. That’s great. Thanks.
Frank Any other questions, Manda, at this point of our podcast? No? Okay. Okay, so maybe it’s better to do this in 30-minute segments because there is so much that you two said that has to be processed and evaluated and discussed and thought of. Brilliant start. Thank you for such a fantastic opening with the attention and then bringing up all these nuances and speaking the brutal truth. I mean, Igor, I think the impression of the United States is it’s difficult to get in once you’re in and you have the financial money, the financial means. It’s a brilliant place to be if you want to achieve something.
And so we have a positive perception of a developed country, the economic might of the world. I just want to say that like our Tuesday get together yesterday, we are actually in a BRICS universe. So, Igor, you’re from Brazil. Manda, you are from India, so the BRICS community. There’s been a lot of discussion about the up-and-coming power of BRICS. And secondly, both of you are expats in different countries. I think that’s also quite a significant thing.
So, we have a positive view of the United States and Igor, you take away the curtain and reveal that what’s inside is maybe not so positive. Whereas we would see, Mandar, that Uganda is probably, putting it politely, a difficult country to live in. Yet you come across very positively and say that it’s better. It’s a really nice place to be.
Okay, now we have to look at where both of you come from. So, Igor, you come from Curitiba in the southern part of Brazil. And Manda, you come originally from Mumbai. So, where you came from and where you’ve headed to, that also has to come into the discussion as well.
So a really interesting first result, totally confusing, totally contradictory. Let’s see where we can take it next week when we look at the desire to develop certain topics. And then the final part of this process, the action part where you two develop the agenda for the topics in these future podcasts. And hopefully we can get some more people to join us as guests to you.
So basically, I step right back. I’m the producer. You two are the hosts, the podcast hosts, and we can see who can join us and that you two can develop the format of this podcast.
If you know somebody in your own network who would be able to participate in this discussion, bring them in. I’m open to anything that happens.
Gentlemen, thank you for a brilliant start and see you next week.