Two years ago, Chevening rejected me.
Last month, I stood on stage at the Chevening Global Conference 2026 at Loughborough University London and delivered a speech to the very institution that once said no.
The title: "Leading True Stories: How Organizations, Leaders and Nations Can Leverage Storytelling as Economic Infrastructure to Drive Growth."
Let me tell you why this matters.
When I got that rejection in early 2024, I had about 900 followers on TikTok and a few thousands on Instagram. No real community, no leverage.
So I did what I knew how to do best. I told my story. Publicly. Every single day. For 90 days.
It became the project of my life.
I called it βWatching A Man Change.β Itβs still up on my YT.
I decided I was done playing around with my potential and I got to work
900 followers became 100,000.
Then 700,000 . 70 million views. 2,000 students across multiple programmes. Clients queuing up including NLNG.
And of course, the very scholarship that rejected me came back and said yes.
But here's the part most people miss.
That growth wasn't because I was motivational. It wasn't because I "went viral." It was because I proved a thesis. The exact thesis I delivered at Chevening last month:
Storytelling is not a marketing tactic. It is vital growth infrastructure.
When a nation wants to attract foreign direct investment, what does it lead with? A story.
When a founder walks into a room full of investors, what determines whether they walk out funded? Not just the numbers. The narrative around the numbers.
When an organization wants to retain its best people, what keeps them? A shared story about where they're going and why it matters.
Every economic outcome we care about. Investment. Growth. Talent. Loyalty. All of it runs on narrative.
And yet most leaders, most organizations, most entire nations treat storytelling as an afterthought. Something for the comms team. Something soft.
That is a strategic failure.
That's exactly the problem I built Jali Group to solve. Most creators, founders, and leaders are sitting on stories worth millions and treating them like social media content.
Jali exists to change that.
We're building the infrastructure that turns storytelling into the most valuable growth asset in your business.
I stood on that stage as a Chevening Scholar, a Techstars mentor, someone who earned a perfect score at one of the worldβs best Rhetoric programs.
But none of those credentials are what gave the speech weight.
What gave it weight was the proof. MY proof.
Hard work isn't enough anymore. The leaders, the organizations, and the nations that will define the next decade are the ones that learn to lead with true stories. Not polished stories. True ones.
And now I'm going to prove it again.
Tomorrow I'm launching a new series documenting what weβre building to define a new era in the creator economy.
Every single day for the next month, I'm documenting exactly how I'm building Jali Group in real time. The decisions. The strategy. The numbers. The story behind all you see.
No theory here. Just a founder using his own story as distribution, in public, while building the company as he documents it.
If you're a creator trying to build a real business.
If you're a founder who knows you should be visible but doesn't know how. If you're somewhere in between, this series is for you.
Day 1 starts tomorrow. See you at work.