Akil Benjamin on Improving the Industry’s Inclusivity: “The Best Time to Start Was Yesterday, the Second Best Time to Start Is Today.”
Akil Benjamin knows that accessibility changes lives and this knowledge has been the bedrock of all he has done within the business field ever since he was 18 years old, when all he needed and all he had was “energy.” The energy to connect people and communities, represent those who aren’t fairly represented and put all that he has into the causes he believes in. What seems to be a wandering storyline that led him to where he is today and his place within those communities he connects, started off with a common friend offering a meeting over email with his future business partners, and their common love for music.
“When we started in 2012, we wanted more and more people to be able to connect with their favourite artist or fan, and be able to monetise it. So, almost OnlyFans without the nefarious behaviour, because it was just focused on music. But we were broke, so this whole idea of building a product company doesn’t work when you’re broke. But we got good at building things to connect people.” That music company that he, Lex Fefega and Richard Fagbolagun started in 2012, called Comuzi, grew through many different iterations. From buying virtual phone lines and small business tools, to exploring the healthcare space and essentially doing telemedicine as early as ten years ago, Akil has his eyes always glued to his initial goal of unhindered connection.
“We got good at connecting people, so we started to sell that skill. We could design products and services to connect you to your audiences. And because we’re from minority backgrounds, as three black men who started the company, this whole idea of ‘hard to reach’ wasn’t difficult for us. We had a natural affinity to a community group.” So as the world started to become more inclusive, Akil and his partners knew that naturally, they needed to make products and services that are more inclusive, as well as help facilitate that.
But not all was smooth sailing, tells me Akil. In the beginning, there was a good amount of trial and error involved. “Loads of failure, loads of not wanting to continue and loads of having to reinvent yourself,” he shares. However, these challenges are exactly what built his resilience and grew him as a character, giving him the invaluable lessons without which he wouldn’t be on the journey he is on now. “It’s not just you though is it,” he adds, “it’s your parents supporting you, it’s someone mentoring you, someone guiding you through that nervous time of making your first 10k and 50k, and then 100k. And then someone supporting you through the drought, seeing you as a rough diamond and giving you the opportunity and environment to sustain yourself and grow.” All of these ‘someones' were there for Akil in different ways through his ten year journey and his question became clear: “What can we do to afford this to thousands of other people that look like me?”
The answer to this materialised in what Akil called the M&C Saatchi Saturday School, aiming to teach people of colour and other underrepresented groups the basics of business. Seeing Akil build a sustainable creative career out of his work, a lot of his friends started asking him how to do it, and naturally, he enjoyed helping them - “It was the highlight of my day,” he says. “So I’m now not working on clients’ work, I’m helping my friends. That’s not sustainable if you want to keep getting paid. So I had to find a method of helping my friends where I don’t work for free.” His point of view was simply that he needed investors to be able to keep teaching people from the community. As it turned out, a lot of people from M&C Saatchi London started sponsoring Akil’s work in the form of tickets for people to go to Akil’s events. One thing led to another, and when the agency saw a great influx of people being interested in the program, they committed 50 thousand pounds towards teaching 1000 people in 2020, which gave the official start of the Saturday School.
“That year we taught 3000 people,” says Akil. “We completely smashed our targets. But that is also the year George Floyd happened. But for me, Ahmaud Arbery was the stinger. A 24-year-old black man running around his local neighbourhood, hunted and shot down by a couple of white men, who thought...I don’t know what they thought but it was wrong. I ccouldn’t protest at the time because my wife was pregnant. I said ‘What else can I do from home now?’. My main question was ‘how do I support others?’ I was already teaching classes and core skills, but as I said, that understanding of guidance and mentorship, that support network through a community is also what makes you through.” Akil wanted to find the best way to afford people the community mentoring that helps them navigate all they learn, through a transparent relationship that helps individuals grow.
When he got to that conclusion and knew what he was after, Akil got the ball rolling online and the thing snowballed pretty quickly - a development that he is not a stranger to. From a tweet, to five people, to 20 people, to filled out Google forms, Akil got to a moment where he knew he needed funding to help the newly hatched project. “M&C Saatchi were great. They funded 20k and they were great with funding resources, and then the community, the whole outside world also gave me 20k, through our crowdfunding campaign. Then we went off to mentor hundreds of people.” Since then to today, the ‘Mentor Black Business’ (MBB) program has gathered over 500 mentors with experience spanning the industries of music, tech, media, advertising, legal, strategy and many more, and have woven incredible networking webs within those industries with the help of M&C Saatchi and other partners, like Somerset House which is where the masterclasses take place within their newest incubator programmes. “We are encouraging and supporting lots of people to have sustainable creative careers,” says Akil. Something that, to this day, he is grateful for having people to do for him when he was starting off at Comuzi ten years ago. “We have 50 businesses in Somerset House right now. And we are planning our fifth cohort in 2024.”
Right now, MBB’s main goal is to find out the best format to deliver not only business education, but also financial and creative freedom. “And if you can give financial and creative freedom to someone from a balck or minority community, you’ve helped them overcome so much. That’s my goal.” In terms of importance of access, Akil explains that the MBB is completely funded by sponsors and happens for free at the point of sale, “almost like the NHS or local government services, free at the point of sale for these individuals.” But when it comes to recruitment of people within the program, Akil explains he doesn’t believe in the exclusivity that can be born out of picking people from the crowd. “One of the interesting things about recruiting is, especially for minority communities or women, if you just say ‘Hey, I’m doing this thing,’ it might go over their head. But if you can reach them directly across socials, then you for sure have some great outcomes. For me, it’s not about creating these exclusive places. It’s actually about being hyper inclusive and helping as many people as possible because previously a lot of these experiences have not been ‘for them’.”
Looking at the broader movement within the advertising industry and business as a whole, when it comes to inclusivity and accessibility, Akil believes that both of these areas need the push that programs like MBB and The Saturday School provide. To him, the reason why the company does so well is because it empowers organisations to actually do more. “The problem that we recognise is a lack of capability within an organisation. It’s no longer about desire - desire has been created. But there is a lack of capability and focus to actually be able to execute their desires to make progress and be more inclusive today.”
This is where Akil comes in to break the vicious cycle of talking, acknowledging, but never acting or never acting quite enough. “Every ten years we talk about racism and systemic inequalities. Today, how can you help be a catalyst or a bridge that helps people to go from saying things to delivering for these communities? We know that people don’t do it. And understanding that is why I think we are a standout organisation, because we don’t chastise you. We ask you how, starting today, you can make a real change.” To Akil, the most important part is seeking out the right people that can help you, as an organisation, make the change and let them have the platform to learn from them openly.
Since the start of The Saturday School and the subsequent founding of MBB, Akil shares that he has definitely seen some copycat organisations with similar business models, but he believes that that’s not necessarily a bad thing, nor should we put ownership on social good. In fact, it speaks about the state of the industry improving, or seeing ways to improve on different levels that have perhaps not been seen before, or the market was not entirely ready for them. So, he finds himself in an environment where what he started off with - the goal to connect people - has slowly become the common goal and the one that entire industries are striving towards.
“Minority communities have so much influence,” concludes Akil. “It’s almost like investing. The best time to start was yesterday, the second best time to start is today. All brands and organisations who are thinking about this, and who are tentatively working out how to do it - Start. Just start. I will be here to help you.”
