How Does Heavy Chef Get Such Epic People On Our Platform?
Many people have asked me how we get so many amazing people on Heavy Chef.
We’ve featured some pretty epic ‘chefs’ in our time. President Thabo Mbeki. President Olusegun Obasanjo. Lauren Beukes. Sir Martin Sorrell. Aisha Pandor. Katlego Maphai. Riaad Moosa. DJ Sbu. YoungstaCPT. Zolani Mahola. Mo Flava. Sam Paddock. Rob Paddock. Robbie Brozin. Albie Sachs. Professor Cass Sunstein. Maps Maponyane. Siya Kolisi. Adrian Gore. Gary Kirsten. Faf du Plessis. And many many more, both on our entrepreneur learning platform and our entrepreneur events platform.
Heavy Chef has also featured loads of technologists, leaders and creatives that you’ve likely not heard of. People that are the authorities in their field and share their recipes on everything from Registering A Domain to Marketplace Platforms.
I’d love to say that our brand is so strong that people are banging down our studio doors.
One day, maybe.
However, for the past year the whole process sorta works like this:
A few weeks ago, we hosted the irrepressible Zipho from Xero in our studio. Zipho has an unbridled enthusiasm for the SME sector. When we asked about her love for her small business clients at Xero, Zipho mentioned an entrepreneur doing innovative work in Langa called Colin Mkosi.
Zipho said '“Hey, Colin would be great for your audience.” Zipho then intro’d Colin to me via email. I requested that he come chat with us about his startup ‘Cloudy Deliveries’. Colin responded, “Hi Fred. Awesome. Thank you for reaching out.”
Colin arrived at our studio the following week. I asked him if he’d heard of Heavy Chef. He responded “Sure! It’s got something to do with cooking, right?”
It’s cool, we get that a lot. I’m sure back in the day peeps thought ‘Udemy’ was a toy company.
Our aim is to build a brand strong enough that everyone will recognise it and want to be a part of it.
In the meantime, it’s mostly word-of-mouth. One referral. to another. We get nearly all our people from… people. If one person has a good experience with Heavy Chef then they tell others about it. And so on.
It’s been an organic process from Day One, since we started trading Heavy Chef as a company in 2017.
With this in mind, we need your help. Heavy Chef is growing and our curriculum is becoming more focused on practical topics. We want your suggestions for epic people to interview for our coursework. We also want to know what you would love to learn about.
So, right now, please do either of the following two things (or both).
One: Suggest someone to share their recipe. Click over here and suggest someone that you believe can speak with authority on a topic that is relevant to entrepreneurs. It can be anything specific, like Zipho on using Xero, or broad, like Colin on township economies.
Two: Suggest a topic that you’d like to learn about. Click over here and let us know if there’s something that’s burning you up. It could be ‘how do I get bridging finance?’ or ‘how do I build an e-commerce website’ or ‘Is Goofy a cow or a dog?’
Yup. That’s how this works.
We use the power of community to build our community.
As the community gets stronger, so we all get stronger. We learn more. We get more connected. We open up more channels. We get more great people on the learning channels. We have more of a voice in the ecosystem.
Got it?
Good.
So, how do we get such epic people onto our platform?
Because, you.
You. Rock.
Peace -
