Nancy Isime Reveals How She Didn’t Make One Dime from ‘Nancy Isime Show

Nigerian actress and producer Nancy Isime is giving us THE REAL about what it’s really like running her popular show, The Nancy Isime Show.

During an interview, Nancy Isime spoke about the emotional and financial stress that comes from that show, and the only reason she keeps doing it till today. Here is what Nancy Isime had to say.

During the interview when talking about The Nancy Isime Show, Nancy Isime said:

NANCY ISIME: Producing my own show, I tell people all the time: entrepreneurship and doing your own stuff especially under the climate of being in Nigeria. If you never start, no worry yourself! [laughs].

Wait, let me tell them the truth! You know, everybody makes entrepreneurship look so glossy. If you never start, if you wan do your show, if you wan do your movie, if you never start, that’s a good time for you to not start. Because you don’t want to know the anxiety that comes with it, especially when it becomes popular. Like my show, my show has become popular. I cannot wake up one day and say I’m stopping it. It’s going to be a big deal. People are going to talk about it and it’s going to make me even sadder. You can’t even sleep well because you feel like something is missing. You have all these blessings happening for you, and then you’re like ‘shit, I haven’t recorded my show’. Or, ‘shit I’m waiting for my money from this’, or ‘oh my god when are they going to pay me?’, ‘When am I gonna speak to the TV station?’, ‘Who is going to pull out, who is not going to pull out?’ And then it’s all sorts of different parts.

Sometimes I’m just like I should have just stayed working for people, so the anxiety is theirs. I’m just the host or I’m just the actor. If it works or doesn’t work, that’s on you bro, I’m out! [laughs]. The risk, the profits, the losses, everything is yours. Whether it succeeds or not, it’s yours, and it’s quite heavy.

I remember after my very first season of The Nancy Isime show, I had some guests ask me, how do you make money from this? That’s the thing. Everything in Nigeria is so money driven, end result driven, like you don’t wait till it happens which is years. I don’t mind it, now it’s in the investment stage. There’s a time it will start to take care of big ass bills for me, and I’ll be chilling and buying assets off the show. It will get there, if I’m patient enough. I always say something: money follows value. So make it as valuable as possible. By the time your show gets watched by a lot of people, the money has no choice but to bounce on.

My first season made not a single dime! I put it on TV, I partnered with the TV stations, I was hoping okay maybe one or two sponsors will come on board, but the entire season went by. I was grateful because it grew audience members who loved it and the station was asking for a new season, like when is it happening? And then I shot, and of course one or two brands came on board – but you know how it goes, brands will owe as long as they want to owe. But at the same time, it was just encouraging to say okay this is coming on. For me, it’s more about the passion. It’s more of this is what I want to do, this is my dream.

Source: Jide Okonjo

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