A114. The Man Behind the Ideas: Inside Jack Lookman's Curated Business Ideas
He had the ideas years before anyone else executed them. Then he built a machine that turns a single spark into a blog post, an e-book, a paperback and a paycheck.
The idea that got away
Every entrepreneur keeps a private graveyard and somewhere in it lies the idea you thought of first, mentioned to a friend, and never acted on - the one somebody else launched five or ten years later while you watched, equal parts proud and annoyed.
Jack Lookman had an entire graveyard. "I seem to have ideas on my mind, and after some point I didn't do anything about the ideas," he tells host Juwon Ogungbe in this episode. "Then maybe five or ten years down the road, somebody else has executed that idea. I am sure this story is common with a lot of other people."
What separates Jack from most people is what he did next. Instead of blaming timing, capital or luck, he built a system - by creating a repeatable machine for capturing ideas, articulating them, and shipping them into the world before they can escape again. That machine is called Jack's Curated Business Ideas, and it now spans a blog, a YouTube channel, e-books, paperbacks and a catalogue of around ten separate blogs on business, empowerment and inspiration.
This is how it works; and, more usefully for you, what you can copy.
The calling that arrived late
"I got my calling late," Jack says, without a trace of self-pity. "Different people get their calling at different times. People like Michael Jackson, maybe at age five or six, he knew what he wanted to do. For some others, maybe in their teenage years. For some people in their older years, and also people at 70 or 80; that's when they find their calling."
The lesson he draws is not that late is bad. It is that late still demands a response.
His response was to use the internet as a distribution channel for his own mind. "Thankfully, with the internet, I decided to articulate my thoughts and then present them on YouTube, and as an e-book, etc."
The raw material arrives on its own schedule. "Ideas come at different times and places," he says. "Sometimes it might be when I'm praying, sometimes when I am in the bathroom, sometimes even when I am travelling." None of that is schedulable, and which is exactly why the capture system, matters more than the inspiration itself.
"I have a process which I follow to make sure I capture most of the ideas."
How a spark becomes a product
Jack does not rely on memory, when the idea strikes; the system takes over.
If he has pen and paper, he scribbles the thought down immediately, sometimes by adding bullet points on the spot. If he does not, he reaches for his phone, sometimes the calendar, by using its notes field as a scratchpad or sometimes using a spreadsheet. The point, he says, is to work "in a very organised manner such that I can capture as much of those ideas as possible."
Then the flesh goes on the bones. "Initially, I put down the titles," he explains. "As time goes by, I add more flesh to the title." A title becomes a set of bullets. The bullets become a YouTube episode - exactly the kind of conversation this transcript came from. Only then does he hand the brief to his ghostwriters, who "articulate and research it, and add as much more value to it as possible."
One idea, many formats. That is the engine.
Table 1: The repurposing pipeline behind every Jack's Curated Business Ideas episode
|
Stage |
What happens |
Output |
|
Capture |
Title and bullet points recorded on paper, calendar or spreadsheet |
Raw idea file |
|
Talk |
The bullets become a short talk on camera |
YouTube episode |
|
Articulate |
Ghostwriters expand the brief into full prose |
Manuscript |
|
Repurpose |
The same idea ships across every channel |
Blog, e-book, paperback |
Why his own name is in the title
The brand has had three names. First "business ideas etc," then "curated business ideas," then "Jack's Curated Business Ideas" - and the final version was a deliberate marketing decision, not vanity.
"One, if you are doing a search online, if you just do 'curated business ideas,' it might bring a longer list of hits," Jack says. "But with 'Jack's Curated Business Ideas,' it's more personalised." His name is the filter that tells a searcher exactly whose judgement they are browsing.
As for platforms, he follows the traction rather than the trend cycle. "It seems to have got more traction on the blog," he says, which is why curatedbusinessideas.com sits at the centre of gravity, with YouTube as the conversation layer. TikTok got a brief experiment. Facebook, on the other hand, where he once posted, is out of the picture entirely because his account was disabled, he says, without a proper explanation. The lesson is an old one, which is, never build your whole house on rented land.
Who it is for: the head and the cap
Jack's audience is anyone hunting a side hustle or a full hustle - the student with more time than money, the professional with a spare evening, the entrepreneur looking for a next move.
He frames it with a Yoruba proverb; which translates: sometimes the person who has the head has not got a cap, and some people have the cap but have not got the head. His catalogue is a matchmaking service between the two. "If you have money and you don't know what business idea to execute, you have a bank of ideas which you could pick from," he says.
If instead you are the one with the idea but no conviction, the same library exists to "cement that idea." Educators and entrepreneurs are welcome too, because the ideas are written to be passed on to generations.
And here is the honesty that makes it credible; it is not everything that is original. "I won't say they are all original. I try to make them original. In some cases, I revisit already existing ideas. In some cases, ideas come to me and I think the idea is actually unique, and then I find out that somebody else has done it already." His offering is not a novelty, rather It is a fresh pair of eyes.
"I give it a view from a different pair of eyes."
The money: a 50% commission and a long game
Ask Jack whether this is about the money and he will not pretend.
"I won't deceive you, I would like to make money from it. I want to sustain what I am doing, and of course to add bread and butter to the table for myself and the family." But the sentence does not end there: "More importantly, it's about impact. I want to make an impact which will be generational, such that when my time is up, people are still benefiting from the body of knowledge which I have left behind."
That philosophy shapes the business model because the company's stated mission is to "empower and inspire generations by leveraging the internet," and the revenue mechanics are built to pull other people along:
• Affiliate marketing. Through the Selar platform, affiliates pay roughly 3,000 naira a year to join and can then promote the books and digital products.
• A 50% commission on total revenue - not profit. Jack is emphatic on this. A 35,000 naira e-book earns an affiliate about 17,500 naira, and the platform pays automatically. "It's not up to me to give to you."
• A profit-sharing app on the to-do list. His planned profit-sharing formula app would split proceeds pro rata that is based on what each collaborator brings to the table.
• Physical products through Amazon. E-books also live on Amazon, extending the same catalogue to paperback buyers.
Collaborations, mentoring and the apps that are still to come
Jack is open for business in more ways than one. For instance, he wants to build apps, and funding has been the sticking point so far, and he wants to take his content creation "to the next level." Mentoring and coaching happen whenever the opportunity presents itself, because he is, in his own words, "very passionate about sharing whatever I know such that other people can benefit from it."
He gave a live example in the episode. A student messaged him on WhatsApp to say he was broke. Jack's answer was not cash but a route: an idea he had already written about: interfaith prayers, which the student could run, with almost no capital, needing little more than a blog and a way to monetise. That is the whole model in miniature, and the idea is free, the execution is teachable, and the distance between them is usually smaller than it looks.
Is AI a threat?
No, and Jack resists the framing entirely. "AI, in my opinion, is not a threat. Instead, it's a compliment to what I do. It could help me do what I am doing by making it better and maybe faster. So I don't look at it as a threat."
He intends to use it the same way he uses ghostwriters, collaborators and delegation; as leverage, so that a single person's judgement can reach further. "I intend to leverage AI so that hopefully that can make it faster, smarter, and maybe better."
No clock, no ceiling
Asked how he paces himself, Jack's answer is both inspiring and a warning label.
He has no working hours. "Even during my downtime, if I am on the bus, if I am travelling, if I am in a meeting outside of what I do, and an idea strikes me, I capture it. So that is also work." He estimates nine to ten hours a day, often more; "I'm a workaholic, basically", and now, we’re recording this episode on a Saturday evening, to be edited and published on a Sunday, on Youtube.
What keeps it sustainable is the division of labour. His main job is the creative work: having the idea, sharpening the bullets, briefing the ghostwriters. "Because they say talk is cheap, I try to brief them on the bullet points," he says. The quality of their output means he rarely has to explain twice.
He also does the video editing and publishing on Youtube, as well as editing and publishing the finished texts. And of course, he does the content repurposing and marketing.
The work is more mentally demanding than physically, and he has one rule for it: "If I feel I am getting tired or getting stressed, then I know it's time to slow down and then I slow down."
Why the urgency? "Nobody is guaranteed tomorrow. So I need to do what I need to do when I can do it." He is a self-described matured citizen, and the timeline is real. On paper, he plans to retire at about 75 - "if my mental capacity is still intact and if I'm still physically able", and even that comes with a caveat: "maybe plus or minus, depending on life."
The wider mission
Curated business ideas is only one of around ten blogs. Alongside it sit projects on widow empowerment, life lessons for teenagers, and undergraduate empowerment. "It's like I'm racing to make sure I do as much as I can while I can," he says. "Because if I wait until I am maybe 70 or 80, I might not be able to do as much."
His closing observation is the one that stays with you; “ When done properly, digital entrepreneurship means you can "actually make money while you are sleeping."
What to steal from Jack's playbook
• Capture beats inspiration. Ideas arrive in the bathroom, not in your calendar. Carry a capture tool and use it every time.
• Start with the title. A working title plus three bullets is enough to hand off. Flesh comes later.
• One idea, many formats. The same thought can be a video, a post, an e-book and a paperback. Repurposing is not cheating; it is the reach.
• Brief in bullets. Clear, cheap briefs let collaborators do their best work without you standing over them.
• Be honest about originality. A fresh pair of eyes on a known idea is a product. Pretending it has never been done is a credibility problem.
• Pay generously and pay on revenue. A 50% cut of revenue turns customers into a sales force.
• Treat AI as a colleague. Not a competitor - a way to do the work better, faster, and further than one person could, alone.
The bottom line
Jack Lookman's story is not really about business ideas, rather it is about the cost of a decade spent sitting on good ones; and the compounding return that arrives once you stop sitting. Build the capture system. Put the flesh on the bones. Ship it in every format you can. And do it with urgency, because, as he puts it, nobody is guaranteed tomorrow.
To follow the ideas, the books and the membership site, start at curatedbusinessideas.com, and search for "Jack Lookman's websites and books." If collaboration, mentoring or coaching is what you are after, search for "business collaboration with Jack Lookman" and reach out directly.
This article is based on the "Jack's Curated Business Ideas" episode hosted by Juwon Ogungbe, featuring Jack Lookman.
Jack Lookman’s Websites And Books
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