THE MAKING OF YORUBA PROJECT
Not every business starts with a plan. Some start with a habit nobody thinks twice about, like someone quietly forwarding proverbs on WhatsApp because they enjoy the language. That is exactly how Jack Lookman built one of the more unusual publishing businesses to come out of Nigeria's content scene, and it holds a lesson worth paying attention to: you do not need to be an expert in something to build a business around it.
It Started with Forwarded Messages
Years ago, a young man with a background in finance and accounting, not linguistics, developed a habit of writing out Yoruba proverbs. For each one, he added the literal translation and the deeper meaning behind it, usually four or five lines, then posted them casually on WhatsApp. He was not doing it for money. He picked up much of what he knew from spending time with elderly acquaintances, listening to their stories and sayings, and he simply enjoyed capturing their thoughts.
The proverbs spread quickly on WhatsApp: person to person, group to group, screenshot to screenshot, until they had drifted so far from the source that most people sharing them had no idea who had written them in the first place. That is how Jack Lookman eventually stumbled onto the content, through a classmate who had reposted it to a class group chat. Curious, he traced the messages backward through several people until he finally found the man behind them.
From Casual Hobby to Business Partnership
After a few conversations, it became clear the original writer had never thought of monetising any of it. He was simply passionate about the language and had a habit of preserving what he learned from older associates. Jack Lookman saw something different: an untapped body of cultural content that people clearly wanted, given how far it had already spread on its own.
He proposed a simple deal. The writer would keep sending over his proverbs, and the two of them would work together to turn the content into something sellable, splitting any profit that came from it. The writer agreed, and the collection process began. Historical posts, roughly a hundred of them, were forwarded over WhatsApp and compiled by hand, since the platform limits how many messages you can forward at once. From there, the material was edited and formatted for publishing.
The first title went up on Amazon under a Yoruba name: Oro Ishiti- Indelible Yoruba Words that roughly translates to "words of wisdom" or "words that make you reflect." The series became, by a wide margin, Jack Lookman's best-selling books to date.
Scaling the Content Without Being the Expert
What happened next says a lot about how content businesses actually grow. Instead of stopping at one book, the collection kept expanding: from around 100 proverbs to 352, then 405, then 450, with each new volume simply adding to what came before, rather than starting over. Some proverbs came directly from the original writer's memory of elders. Others came from unexpected places, a thought that surfaced in the shower, during prayer, or while commuting, which would get typed out or voice-recorded on the spot and sent along to be checked, corrected, and properly translated.
Alongside the books, the content was serialised as short videos across TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook. Each clip followed the same format: the Yoruba proverb, the English reading, then the literal meaning, laid out so viewers could follow along on screen while listening. Because neither the reading nor the pronunciation was something Jack Lookman felt confident doing himself, he hired outside voice talent for that part of the work.
This is worth sitting with for a second. Jack Lookman was not fluent in Yoruba. He has described his own reading as passable at best and his writing as weak. His grasp of the language came mostly from childhood exposure and, oddly enough, from listening to Yoruba musicians, growing up. Yet he built a publishing business around a language he did not fully speak, because his actual skill was somewhere else entirely: spotting a gap, organising scattered content into something coherent, and pushing it out to an audience.
Buying Out the Rights
At some point, the original writer's enthusiasm cooled. He had never set out to run a business, and the day-to-day grind of content creation was not something he was chasing. Rather than let the project stall, Jack Lookman made him an offer: a lump sum, paid in instalments, in exchange for the intellectual property rights. The writer would still be credited as author, with his details included in the books so readers or potential collaborators could reach him directly, but ownership of the growing catalogue would shift.
That arrangement is what let the project keep expanding. As new volumes were added, additional payments were negotiated for the extra writing work, handled the same informal way as before, over WhatsApp, proverb by proverb.
There is an honest admission buried in how this played out. Most people assume that if you are the one physically writing the content, you deserve the lion's share of any profit. But when you actually break down where the time, money, and risk go, that assumption does not hold up as well as it sounds. Jack Lookman took on every financial risk, paid for editing, hired voice talent, ran the marketing, and kept the project moving long after the original spark had faded. Writing the words was one piece of a much larger puzzle.
Turning Culture into a Product People Actually Buy
The books are sold as paperbacks and eBooks on Amazon and a handful of other retailers, with a companion blog hosting much of the content for free, alongside links to buy the full collection and watch the video versions. The idea behind giving so much away for free was deliberate. It builds trust, drives traffic, and gives people a reason to come back, all while funnelling interested readers toward a purchase.
There are a few clear monetisation paths worth noting for anyone thinking about doing something similar with cultural or heritage content:
• Direct sales. Paperbacks and eBooks through major retailers remain the most straightforward source of income.
• Licensed audio. The read-aloud versions used across social media can eventually be packaged and sold as standalone audio products.
• Consulting and teaching. Once you have built visible authority around a niche, whether or not you are the technical expert, people will pay to learn from you directly.
• Affiliate content on the blog. A blog that already attracts an engaged audience is a natural place to add affiliate links and display ads.
- Courses and tutoring. Structured lessons, whether live or recorded, turn scattered cultural knowledge into something people can systematically learn.
What Comes Next
Jack Lookman's future plans for the project include expanding into oriki, the traditional Yoruba praise chants that trace a person's lineage and family history, along with content on Yoruba names, their meanings, and the culture, food, and music tied to them. There is also interest in eventually building automated quizzes from the existing proverb collection, so readers can test what they have learned rather than just consuming it passively.
The Real Lesson Here
The most useful takeaway from Jack Lookman's story is not really about Yoruba proverbs at all. It is about paying attention to what is already circulating around you and being willing to act on it, even in an area where you personally have no formal expertise.
The habit that made this possible was disciplined idea capture. Whenever something worth pursuing crossed his mind, no matter how small or half-formed, Jack Lookman wrote it down immediately rather than trusting himself to remember it later. He would revisit the note, add to it over time, and only move on it once there was enough substance to work with. Most people let good ideas slip by, simply because they never wrote them down in the first place.
You do not need to be fluent, credentialed, or an insider in a field to build something valuable from it. What you need is the ability to recognise when something people already love, is being underused, and enough follow-through to turn it into a product they are willing to pay for.
Jack Lookman’s Websites And Books
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