My Results at Disha

In 2020, I got a call from the founder of Disha asking me to be the cofounder and CMO to help them scale

I got a call from the founders of @getdisha saying I was the missing link between where they were and where they wanted to be. I was invited to be a CMO and Cofounder. It was a no-brainer because even without these titles, I was already a big fan of the product.

I loved the product and I talked about it to anyone who cared to listen, even before I came on board as a CMO and cofounder in February. For those who don’t know, Disha started as a link in bio tool and evolved into a tool for creators to build one page sites.

3 Key Metrics I am Proud Of:

• Over 100% month on month growth: Before my time at Disha began, we had just a little under 1800 users, most of which were gotten from a Black Friday campaign and launch day on Product Hunt. There was a rapid decline after November but when I joined in February 2020, we had a goal to get at least 10,000 new users before December 2020, organically. Leveraging creative campaigns and strategic partnerships, from February 2020 we recorded 100% month on month growth. We also experienced massive growth in pro-users (annual and lifetime sign ups). Monthly pro-users also increased and this increased our revenue by 5900%. On the exact date of my departure we had hit 20K total users, almost 500 Pro users and over 1 million page visits to the Disha page with many influencers across the globe choosing us as their preferred one-page site and link in bio tool. We were present in over 80 countries in the world.

• Over 650% Increase in Social Community Growth: At the time we had less than 800 social media followers who were just followers. They didn’t feel commitment to the product. They loved the product but it wasn’t quite a community, it was just followers. So we picked two platforms: Instagram and Newsletter. We decided to build a safe space for creators to learn, stay updated, and feel free to express themselves. We noticed a soaring increase in engagement. As a startup, we barely had any money for ads. So we relied on the quality of our posts to drive engagement and many of our posts got 400 to 1000 likes. We had engagement where the community members talked to each other and not just to us. We promoted our people and provided relevant information to help them thrive. Disha built great creators. That was much more important to us than likes. We built connections, lasting relationships and partnerships. Our newsletter community soared as well as we created enlightening resources featuring members of our community who were thriving. e.g. 20 Minutes with Seth Godin and Peace Itimi. Super proud moment. We supported community leaders in their events and programs, this made them feel supported and inspired them to talk about us every single time. One of those community leaders was Salem King. We supported his training workshop by giving a scholarship to another creator – Dimeji. This genuine love for creators and our willingness to truly support them, inspired Salem and Dimeji to talk about us at all their monthly training events. We never paid them nor asked. Salem alone brought 100 new users monthly by word of mouth. He genuinely loved the product, talked about it, his trainees tried it, they loved it, they told more people and weaved more webs and connections in our tiny little space on the internet.

• Presence in Over 190 Countries Worldwide: When I first joined Disha, we were present mostly in Nigeria. To be a global brand in line with our goals, we needed to expand our presence across Nigeria, and into the world. The goal was to be global brand with presence in over 20 countries, and to be truly global, country expansion was necessary. We found some creators who are community leaders, and some others found us. We loved collaborating with creators all over the world, shinning the light on their work, responding to their queries on Quora and in forums, and just being there for them. One thing remained true, we were meeting a global need and people enjoyed our content and community. Our presence in over 190 countries is a milestone I am proud of.

How Did We Inspire People to Use Disha

• We defined our clear goals and what we wanted to achieve.
• We took time out to understand our target audience and their goals.
• We searched for creators where they were and really engaged with them (truly listening).
• We found creator communities and spoke to the shepherds of those communities.
• We collaborated and partnered with creator communities and connected them to each other.
• We created for creators and ensured they had the resources and tools they needed to thrive.
• We supported creators and communities, their workshops and we were genuinely interested in the people.
• We ensured timely response to the concerns, and created walkthrough how-tos, answered their questions before they asked.
• We showed off the work of creators, celebrated their Disha pages, created leaderboards to help people see how they were performing, we sent monthly stats, monthly mails to encourage them, strategies to help them drive more traffic and celebrated their milestones. With Disha, creators were at the centre of everything.

It was a wholesome product made by creators for creators. It was a product that worked.

I am proud of Disha and humbled by the fact that I was the catalyst needed to fuel the exponential growth of such a wholesome product.

I wrote this to help content creators, growth leads and more, realise that if your strategy is centred around the target audience, you are definitely going to get their attention, retain that attention and inspire them to dig deep into their pockets to pay/subscribe for your product… because truly, it is their product.