Copywriting Expert, Waju Ogunleye, Speaks on Finding Marketing Success Despite Being a Chronic Introvert
In a crowded world with billions of voices, the pressure to be loud and heard is real and it demands to be felt. Make no mistake about it, in this era, countless individuals who thrive in the quiet have reported feeling the pressure to conform. Sort of like the Cranberry album title, Everybody’s Doing It, So Why Can’t Shouldn’t We?, right? Hmm, yes, but not quite so.
Standing bravely against the wind and rising as an avatar for those who want to be heard without speaking above a whisper is the celebrated entrepreneur, copywriter, and marketing expert Waju Ogunleye.
From the moment he was born, Waju Ogunleye, born Olanrewaju “Waju” Ogunleye, was already destined to lead a life that would take him several paces away from the beaten path unlike most of his peers. A crippling speech defect and stutter would later drive him down an exhausting 20-year path of abysmal self-esteem, which had debuted at childhood, right at home.
Ostracized by his family and friends to build essential bonds with, Waju struggled to build strong and lasting connections, ultimately finding solace and sanctuary in the written word as he befriended books and developed a command of the language far beyond his years.
“I learned to depend desperately on the written word for effective communication,” he recalls. “Books became my friends and because it was all I had, I became very good at writing in a way that every word mattered — like bullets mattered to a soldier on a battlefield.”
As Waju grew up to be the “quiet but brilliant kid” in his school, he would later notice a void that accentuated that gaping divide between him and his classmates. To that impressionable though precocious kid, being liked and having friends seemed to matter more than being a brilliant kid, so a trade-off happened. Choosing to spend more time “getting liked,” his academic performance plummeted with time.
“By the time I got to high school, I already wanted to have friends more than I wanted to pass,” he said with a wry smile. “And that’s exactly what happened — I failed all through.”
Sometimes time brings healing so with time. Waju would later wake up to the fact that the love and acceptance he craved from other people was right within him — he only had to reach for it. Clarity and a shift of focus back to what mattered as a student saw him finding his groove and getting back on track.
By 2007, he made his debut on the business scene, succeeding to the amazement of family and close friends who’d always known him as little more than that “mousey chap who always shrank from the spotlight.” The trappings of success — fast cars, nice suits, and swanky restaurants — delivered La Vida to him and quite naturally he was besieged by a fair-weather crowd until things went downhill in 2010 as his venture failed and his wife bailed on him, taking their son with her.
“It was a really dark phase. My ex wife would call to taunt me. I was depressed and battling suicidal thoughts. I just didn’t have the heart to end my story on a sad note.”
At the end of his tether, Waju would later abandon his dream of financial independence for a low-paying government job.
“I stuck at it for about three years — silencing my better judgment with liquor and an occasional joint. I roamed the nightclubs to escape insomnia and the nightmares that came knocking when I managed to sleep.”
His eyes conveyed the lessons learned by one who had been to the very depths of denial and yet survived it.
“The voice of the Authentic. You can be quite relentless — it hounds you in your dreams and even your waking moments.”
One morning, while preparing for work, his wake-up call came as a clear whisper within him, “You’re where you want to be.” He struggled to shake the thought. But it persisted.
“How can I want to be here?” He argued with himself.
Six months later, he believed it and took massive action. Embracing his situation, planning his next moves in detail and executing with a devil-may-care daring that amazed all that knew him, things began to look up for Waju.
He found a suitable woman, remarried, had a daughter then quit his job to focus on online marketing. Waju remembers the day he quit as being terrifying. “I had less than $20 to my name. But I knew if I stayed, my salary could not double in 10 years. It was now or never”
Deploying his prowess with words and an experiential understanding of how words could influence actions through emotion, his sensitive nature had ensured this over the years, he rose rapidly to become widely known as the “King of Email Copy.” His forte was copywriting, email copywriting, to be specific.
Waju’s bestseller and critically acclaimed coaching program, SALESCRAFT, provided the platform for the launch to a new start for his family in America, ushering him into the big-league of seven-figure earners in the online marketing niche last year.
Not one to rest on his oars or glory in past wins, the ingenious entrepreneur recently built on his success, launching a marketing agency that works with Indiana local contractors to generate authentic leads and inbound calls. This latest venture is built to run with Salescraft Live, designed as the “Coachella of Marketing,” starting from 2021.
Aside from an outstanding reputation as the King of Copy in the marketing industry, Waju is an author and his two books, “The Money Whisperer: How to make money in a bad economy -even if everyone is broke, skeptical or a tightwad” and “The Email Sorcery Handbook: How to craft emails that open purses ethically.” These work like an unerring compass for individuals struggling to get past the same hurdles that used to block the intrepid entrepreneur’s way.
“The way I see it, if you want to get from Point A to Z, the best you could do is ask someone who’s been through it. I mean, ask someone who has fought the battles you are fighting and what’s more, has won those battles,” he says as we finish up our drink. “My books detail my journey, my story — how I navigated the swamps, the crags to find an even ground to build the marvelous dream I’m living today, and how anybody can replicate my results.”
And what is his story? In a world that struggles to remake you in its mould — a world that constantly teaches you that selling your essence is the price you pay to be loved and to be successful and make the Big League, you can choose and fight to remain authentic and still end up crushin’ it, if you listen to the right sensei.
Determined to convey the message that you don’t have to force yourself to be noisy to be successful, Waju is working on an upcoming book he refuses to name.
His parting words? “You can have good success in life without being loud, owning a yellow Lambo, and without ceasing to be your core, comfortable self — an introvert.”
Learn more about the celebrated entrepreneur and his story by following Waju Ogunleye on Instagram, Twitter, and his official website.
