# Clifford Nyarkoh on Building iSupremeHQ: From Student Magazines to Big Brands

An episode of [The Peswa Podcast](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1781537541), 7 Sep 2025, 1 h 10 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/110e1ce70/podcast/play/117753093/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-2-31%2F421135839-44100-1-b9ce14f57dfdf89b.mp3

Send a text Clifford Nyarkoh, CEO & Founder of iSupremHQ and iSupremeLabs, joins The Peswa Podcast to share his incredible journey. Starting out in high school as a barber, Clifford hustled his way into creating magazines, organizing campus events, and building what would later become a full-scale growth and marketing agency working with major brands like Yango and Flutterwave. In this episode, Clifford opens up about: •How early hustles shaped his entrepreneurial mindset •Building a business straight out of university •Challenges of scaling a creative agency in Africa •Working with international brands and breaking boundaries If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, student, or creative looking for inspiration, this episode is packed with insights you won’t want to miss. Click the link below to support the show—every bit of support goes straight into helping us create even better content, reach more people, and share more incredible conversations. Support the show (click here) -- https://www.buzzsprout.com/2423582/support 📩 Connect with us: • Follow Bill on Instagram: @billcobbinah • Follow us on all socials: @thepeswa 📢 Subscribe The Peswa on all Platforms: https://linktr.ee/thepeswa Get access to amazing royalty-free music for your projects — sign up for an Uppbeat account using the referral link: https://share.uppbeat.io/cy9fcqqxj4tg Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more raw and unfiltered founder stories on The Peswa Podcast. The Fresh Patch Podcast - Where Good Pets Get It. Welcome to the Fresh Patch Podcast where we talk about everything, from dog... Listen on: Apple Podcasts Support the show

## Transcript

[0:00] I was a very confused kid growing up.
[0:02] I was Rob. At some point I was about buying
[0:03] school. It's a very unconventional place
[0:05] with someone who went to University of Ghana I studied
[0:07] with. Geography We are a growth
[0:09] agency. We are building products that
[0:11] solve marketing problems. What are the problems business
[0:13] are facing? What are the solutions we can
[0:15] offer for them and then what products should we build.
[0:18] This is the best magazine, the school I produce at that time
[0:20] and I felt proud of it. I want to create an
[0:22] organization. The plan was create magazines
[0:24] for high schools and junior high schools.
[0:25] So I went into uni and I'm like, you know, and to start this
[0:27] thing, that's where ice cream started.
[0:29] I just put a couple of friends together.
[0:30] People began to see I Supreme as one of those cliques and I
[0:33] didn't like that. I got fed up so wanted to do
[0:34] something different, something big.
[0:36] It didn't come out the way I expected.
[0:37] I've never been broken. Funny story, my nickname in high
[0:40] school was Supreme. Wanted something more
[0:42] professional, more future facing.
[0:44] You may need to convince your parents against the marketing
[0:46] agency. My mom found out somehow that I
[0:48] wasn't staying in school. Focus on the school classroom
[0:50] might not be necessary to you, but the school community is
[0:53] extremely important. That's how we wanted an agency
[0:55] in Ghana. It's underrated how difficult it
[0:58] is to get in the room and that's matter how good you are.
[1:01] That would be $10,000 by the way.
[1:03] In your bid to like keep all these like the vehicle moving
[1:06] even though it's like the batteries on fire, your
[1:08] franchise, you know it's flat. How do you keep yourself seen?
[1:18] Hello, community of builders. I said this because I mean, you
[1:22] know, I'm actually mean. It's just build something.
[1:24] So the conversation you're about to listen to is one with
[1:27] Clinton. Yaco Clinton is the CEO for I
[1:29] Supreme their marketing. They said they are a growth
[1:33] agency and we started off as a marketing agency, now a growth
[1:36] agency and they were like really, really renowned brands
[1:39] in our ecosystem. The flat wave young go, great
[1:43] work, very young man. And I think a very, very behind
[1:51] the care team kind of conversation we had on this one.
[1:54] And I can't wait for you to hear it.
[1:56] And so as a manager remains just build something.
[2:01] Anyway, thanks for coming. Yeah, you're doing something
[2:05] really interesting with Ice Supreme.
[2:07] And for some reason before we came here, I just had to get
[2:09] along. People just talking about you in
[2:13] different circles. You know, just last week, I was
[2:15] telling you, my friend PY, Yeah, I was on a call with him.
[2:18] I was like, oh, he's doing this work.
[2:20] And like, you know, you're involved.
[2:20] Like, I've heard this guy's name before.
[2:23] It's really flattering that you decide to come in here, have a
[2:25] conversation with us. Well, it's, it's an honour to be
[2:28] here. I also come across your podcast
[2:30] a couple of times on like, it would be nice to be on here.
[2:33] So, yeah, feels like, you know what they say, a dream come
[2:36] true. That's very flattering.
[2:39] Yeah. But yeah, ice cream.
[2:41] What do you guys do? It's as we go and it becomes
[2:46] difficult to say it all in like 1 sentence.
[2:50] What else is we are basically in a traditional sense a marketing
[2:53] agency, you know, but we've sort of grown out of that because of
[2:58] other things we are we are getting into.
[2:59] So right now what I will call us, which is not a conventional
[3:03] word is that we are a growth agency or we are a growth
[3:05] company. So we basically have two
[3:08] divisions right now. The First Division is the pure
[3:11] marketing agency and that's how we started, you know, we started
[3:15] doing branding markets and all that.
[3:18] At that time we decided to position, to focus, to do, to
[3:22] become a technology focused growth agency.
[3:25] So we are trying to look at how businesses can use technology to
[3:31] create different and new kind of experiences and connections with
[3:35] their customers. You know, so it's the usual
[3:38] stuff that everyone does. We just set up, we want to use
[3:42] technology as the medium. You know, how do you use
[3:45] technology as a means to reach more people, to create better
[3:49] connections, to create a different kind of experience
[3:52] with them? So there is that.
[3:54] Then there is a technology division called Isopream Labs
[3:58] where we are building products that solve marketing problems.
[4:01] So, you know, working the space for a while now and what I'm
[4:05] begin to realize problems that businesses face, especially
[4:08] smaller businesses faced with regards to their marketing.
[4:11] And for someone as curious as I am, you wanna do something about
[4:15] it, you know, and like, how do I use technology to solve this?
[4:18] So you, you, a lot of agencies, I think it's an idea need to, to
[4:23] do these things over a period of time.
[4:25] You, you tend to figure out how to use social media to solve
[4:29] that problem, how to use TV or to use radio, but there's a
[4:34] shift ongoing at the moment. So you're like, how can I use
[4:37] technology to solve that? So that is where we are at right
[4:40] now. We are building a couple of
[4:41] products we have, I think there's a first place I
[4:44] mentioned it's Intellix. Hopefully we'll be launching it
[4:47] this month. It's an AI part, customer
[4:49] engagement platform, customer intelligence platform actually.
[4:53] So you it helps you, you know, interact with your customers on
[4:57] social media by replying, responding to them based on
[5:00] knowledge that you have uploaded for your business and it learns
[5:04] over time to be able to respond on its own.
[5:06] Then it detects their sentiments, gives you
[5:09] recommendations on how to improve them.
[5:12] It gives you basic insights and analytics on what's your chat
[5:16] performances and what your customers think about your
[5:18] business and what they need from you.
[5:20] It also helps you detect sales leads, so people who are
[5:23] potential bias or customers of your business, and then it helps
[5:28] you also resolve their issues for them, you know, so detect
[5:32] supports, tickets and all that. So that's what it's about.
[5:36] And there's another one that has been in the pipeline for a while
[5:38] now called Connect that helps small businesses find pay and
[5:42] collaborative creatives like graphic designers, copywriters
[5:46] and all that. So that's the second product.
[5:48] We also set up an innovation lab.
[5:49] It's like a marketplace where like.
[5:51] It's like a marketplace, yeah. So business can find creatives
[5:54] and then in the future creatives can also find gigs that
[5:58] businesses have posted, you know, So that's another thing
[6:00] that we're working on. So we have to build a
[6:03] technology. We have to enable ourselves with
[6:04] like a technology fundamental sort of to be able to do that.
[6:09] So one of the things that we're doing this year is to create an
[6:10] innovation lab. We brought a couple of students
[6:14] and young graduates together to actually do research.
[6:17] You know, what are the problems business are facing?
[6:20] What are the solutions we can offer for them?
[6:23] And then what products should we build, you know, to.
[6:27] So it's a lot of work we are doing.
[6:29] Yeah, yeah. On that end, because we believe
[6:31] that, you know, if you want to solve problems with technology,
[6:35] then we need to be technologists.
[6:37] We can just be seeing it as seeing sick, you know, we can
[6:40] just be seeing that this is who we are where we don't have the
[6:44] capabilities, you know, so we actually have to be able to
[6:47] serve businesses better. So that's basically why Supreme
[6:49] is so in in short, I don't say that we are a growth company.
[6:54] A growth company? Yeah, a technology focused
[6:57] growth company. Yeah.
[6:57] That's very interesting. Yeah.
[6:59] Like starting off with pure marketing and the marketing
[7:03] agency, you've evolved to build like a whole ecosystem that
[7:07] tends to the marketing needs of businesses and even customer
[7:10] that's really customer focused needs of businesses.
[7:13] That's exciting and it's very it's like a very unconventional
[7:16] place for someone who went to University of Ghana.
[7:19] I studied with geography. Geography, OK, so run me through
[7:22] that before University of Ghana you went towards Saint Martins?
[7:25] Saint Martins Yeah, I did general arts and actually I
[7:29] wanted to do well. I I would say that I was a very
[7:32] confused kid, You know, growing up, there were so many things I
[7:38] knew I could do. I had so many passions I had.
[7:42] There's so many things I wanted to do right.
[7:44] So it was very conflicting for me.
[7:46] Was there a rapper in there? Actually, yes, I was a rapper at
[7:48] some point in my school. I was, I was a rapper.
[7:54] I was a dancer as well in high school, so people don't believe
[7:58] it whenever I say they all know me now.
[7:59] But then those of you from high school know that I was.
[8:02] Yeah. So there were so many things I
[8:03] wanted to do. As a point out, I was thinking
[8:05] about becoming an actor. I don't know how that went, you
[8:08] know. So I was, I went through a whole
[8:11] period of self discovery to try and see.
[8:15] And truth is I believe I can still do all of those things if
[8:17] I really put my mind to them. You know, it's nothing that I
[8:20] don't think I can do. So I believe that if I really
[8:23] want it and I invest my time and then I can do it.
[8:26] So, you know, there's a lot of pressure.
[8:30] You know, I said in good, smart, smart kid in school, your
[8:34] teachers or family, everyone wants you to do the usual
[8:36] medicine stuff like that. And I mean, it was exciting, but
[8:41] whenever I thought about even doing medicine, it was about how
[8:45] do I start? It's as a business, like, how do
[8:48] I start a hospital and not necessarily how do I serve
[8:52] patients, you know? So there was always a business
[8:56] perspective behind whatever I wanted to do when I thought of
[8:58] becoming a lawyer. So how to start a lawyer?
[9:00] For money, it's because of money.
[9:02] I don't think I've ever been bothered or concerned about the
[9:06] money. When I want to start something,
[9:07] it's about creating things. I love to start things.
[9:10] I love to create things. Once I'm in love with it, I want
[9:15] to create it. I don't mind how long it's going
[9:17] to take. I don't mind what the return is
[9:20] for me. I mean, eventually when you're
[9:22] not I, I, I see the results more as fulfillment that you say, OK,
[9:26] I want to be here. Like even As for my business, I
[9:29] want the business to get to a certain point, work with some
[9:32] kind of clients, have a certain type of team on a particular
[9:35] skill, you know, and that's his performance for me, you know, So
[9:38] obviously when you get to that school, it comes with the money.
[9:40] So it's like it's a given that comes with it, but that is not
[9:43] really what you're looking at, you know.
[9:45] So I was that's conflicted a lot.
[9:47] So I went to high school at general arts, and then I had a
[9:51] couple of business ideas back in school.
[9:53] Senior High School. Senior High School, yeah, I
[9:56] tried to to I used to do so during my preps.
[10:01] I will spend a lot of time working on writing parts you
[10:04] know people write. Letters on letters.
[10:06] I've been designing letters and writes on the intro for people.
[10:08] That's what I spent a. Story.
[10:12] That's what I spent my preps doing, you know, So I pay people
[10:16] pay me to do that, you know. I was also at Baba in school,
[10:19] though. I used to cut people's hair for
[10:21] money and it wasn't really about it, man.
[10:23] I just enjoy doing things, you know?
[10:25] So I tried that and then eventually I wanted to start a
[10:30] magazine for the school on my own.
[10:32] OK. So I put a thing together,
[10:34] started talking to people. We started to went to the school
[10:36] to get permission. The school was like, they can't
[10:38] let us do that on our own. So the school, we have to do it
[10:42] on behalf of the school. So we became like an automatic
[10:44] editorial board, but I wasn't the school that started it and
[10:47] apparently the was an editorial board.
[10:49] So they were more like sidelined for us, you know, because I
[10:53] started my own thing. So we went ahead, we did it and
[10:56] I didn't get anything from it. I wasn't paid for it.
[10:59] All I got was one copy of the magazine and I felt so proud
[11:02] because all the teachers, the headmaster, everyone said this
[11:05] is the best magazine the Squad produced at the time and I felt
[11:08] proud of it. So that's sort of inspired me to
[11:13] want to do it on a larger school as a business.
[11:16] So the plan from there, but also involved in the planning of some
[11:19] events back in high school. So I want to create an
[11:23] organization that does marks. Of these boys were controlling
[11:26] the school. I was actually very fits the
[11:29] profile. I was actually very low key.
[11:31] Got it. I was very low key.
[11:34] But you know, I just, I somehow always ended up in conversation.
[11:38] Creative entertainment. Very part of the intercom.
[11:41] Yeah, I was part of the intercom.
[11:45] About You can rap, You Can Dance.
[11:47] A part of the internal community.
[11:48] Yeah, there are people running in the school.
[11:49] So I just ended up there. So I just wanted to create
[11:51] something like that. So the plan was create magazines
[11:54] for high schools and junior high schools, right, Do events for
[11:58] them because I sort of found that passion and I wanted to get
[12:02] into it. So I spoke to a couple of my
[12:04] mates at that time back in high school, spoke to them, that's
[12:07] what I wanted to do. They seemed interested.
[12:08] We completed school and they kept asking actually how far
[12:11] with this and how far with that, you know?
[12:12] And it was all, it's all seemed so much for me.
[12:15] I didn't know where to start from.
[12:17] So I went into uni and I'm like, you know, and to start this
[12:19] thing and that's where ice cream started.
[12:21] I just put a couple of friends together.
[12:23] So we started like that. We were roaming our own schools
[12:25] in JHS schools in Accra. We want to do magazine for you.
[12:29] We want to do events for you and all that.
[12:31] And we're like, you know, let's, let's do our own events to get a
[12:36] high power people to know about us.
[12:37] We did. The first event was successful.
[12:39] That was called Supremacy. It was actually a club event.
[12:42] We did. It was successful, people love
[12:44] it. So we ended up doing so many
[12:46] events, you know, and now people began to see us as an event.
[12:50] Organization. Organization.
[12:52] I didn't like that because I was on the plan, so we had to do
[12:55] some repositioning over time to. Me.
[12:57] Was he making you money? It was actually, it was I, I
[13:01] think the first, the first amount of money I made from
[13:03] running this business was from the events I was doing.
[13:07] You know, I just saw it differently at a time, right?
[13:13] It was, people have seen it, as you see around those times you
[13:16] were in high school around the time I was there were these high
[13:18] school cliques, you know, they were also doing those events and
[13:22] all that. So people began to see Ice
[13:24] Supreme as one of those cliques and I didn't like that.
[13:28] And that was definitely because of the kind of activities were
[13:30] involved in, you know, and also doing events was very, very, it
[13:34] required a lot of resources if you don't have sponsorships and
[13:36] all that. So all the events were doing
[13:37] before were our own event. I got fed up with the club
[13:41] events, so I wanted to do something different, something
[13:44] big. So the next event I wanted to do
[13:45] was like the concerts. I wanted to get brands on board,
[13:48] you know, and it took a lot to to make it happen, right?
[13:53] But then I didn't it didn't come out the way I expected.
[13:56] So that sort of like shifted my focus not from doing event
[14:01] necessarily well like. What you do because of broker
[14:03] resolve? I've not been broken.
[14:06] Actually, no, I've not been broken.
[14:08] It just was more like, OK, there are we wanted to do the event as
[14:13] a means to experiential marketing, OK, So doing
[14:17] activations and stuff like that for brands, I was like, that's
[14:20] just one way of doing marketing. There is a digital way, there is
[14:25] a advertising way, there is, there are different ways of
[14:28] doing it. So if the event side isn't going
[14:31] to work, then we can explore other approaches to make it
[14:35] work. So we decided to focus more on
[14:37] digital. You know that that's when we
[14:40] shifted focus from the events into digital.
[14:44] And yeah, high school uni geography was I, I wanted to do
[14:49] business administration. I didn't give business
[14:50] administration. I ended up with geography and
[14:52] you know, I could do anything that was offered.
[14:54] So I just did it. Quite an interesting name.
[14:59] I supreme, I supreme, where, where, where?
[15:01] Where does it come from? Funny story, my nickname in high
[15:06] school was Supreme. Oh.
[15:08] Oh so supremo. Supremo yeah, You know, so I
[15:13] just started something with that name.
[15:15] So it was initially called Supreme Inc.
[15:18] But then again, when we began to reposition from the event house
[15:22] thing into an actual agency where like we wanted something
[15:26] more professional, more future facing cause Supreme Inc didn't
[15:30] seem like something that you could grow with, you know,
[15:33] wanted something we could grow with.
[15:34] So we went to ice cream and then we made it work.
[15:37] Actually, someone told me that we are, we're less than a year
[15:42] into starting the business. So someone told me that it's too
[15:45] early to do that. We're going to forget you and my
[15:48] team had also grown attached to their Supreme Ink name.
[15:53] You know how to make a point to them.
[15:55] And there's one thing if I believe in something that much,
[15:57] I'll, I try really hard to convince you.
[15:59] It makes me come off as I am trying to install my
[16:04] preferences, you know? But that's not the case is that
[16:07] I believe in you so much. I'm willing to make a point to
[16:09] you. So what I want is for people to
[16:11] also defend their point to me. If your points seems to, you
[16:17] know, make more sense, I don't mind going.
[16:19] But if I believe in this so much, I'm usually very stable
[16:22] when it comes to stuff I believe in so.
[16:25] When I do something, when I first think of what you're
[16:26] doing, if one of the early thoughts I had was you might
[16:29] need to convince your parents against the marketing agency,
[16:32] right. Because in Ghana, just being in
[16:34] convincing parents that you want to do your own business, you
[16:39] know, just something that buy and sell or something, just
[16:42] trying to do something different.
[16:43] Yeah. And entrepreneur is you have to
[16:46] do a lot of convincing. That's the general stands for
[16:48] most parents. But here you are wanting to do a
[16:50] marketing agency doing events and how do you want to convince
[16:54] your parents? I didn't.
[16:58] I didn't because so, you know, I've, oh, like I said, I've
[17:03] always had that. I think the point where I
[17:05] started coming out more was in uni sometime in second year.
[17:10] So our first year, I don't know when I was in a car, sorry.
[17:13] We're using a car. Yeah, I was using a car.
[17:15] Yeah, I've lived on most of my life in a car.
[17:18] So because I wanted to do my first event, I was going out a
[17:22] lot looking for sponsorship, right.
[17:24] So my mom found out somehow that I wasn't staying in school, you
[17:28] know, I was roaming around looking for sponsorship.
[17:30] And she told me that you're in center school to do a business.
[17:33] You're sent to school to study. So focus on the school.
[17:36] When you're done, you can go into business.
[17:39] And I think my way around parents is I don't rebel, you
[17:42] know, other children will rebel. I don't know.
[17:44] I want, I know what I wanted. I didn't know what I just said.
[17:46] OK, I just want to identify anything, you know, is so when I
[17:50] did my second event in school, I think I was in second year.
[17:54] Then I just give some of the money to my mom, you know, you
[17:57] know, and actually you think that eventually they come
[18:02] around, they never come around. And that's because it's, and
[18:05] it's not from a bad place. And that's the thing a lot of
[18:07] people get wrong. It's not from a bad place, from
[18:08] a good place. Parents always want to look out
[18:11] for you. They want to protect you.
[18:12] You know, they feel like they wouldn't want you to make a
[18:17] mistake that they've probably made or they want to make sure
[18:21] that you are set and entrepreneurship is very risky.
[18:24] It's there's a lot of uncertainty.
[18:26] There is very little security, you know, for you.
[18:30] They want you to find a job that is more stable, you know, So
[18:34] once every wall it comes up, you know, when they see you're doing
[18:36] well, they feel proud of you, especially when they hear from
[18:39] other people, oh, your son is doing really good.
[18:41] They feel proud of you. But then once in a while there's
[18:45] especially when if you are very personal and very open about
[18:48] some of the struggles with running a business with my mom.
[18:51] So whenever you open up things like that to her, yeah, my dad
[18:55] is around here. We, we don't talk about business
[18:57] that often, you know, but I do like talk a lot about that with
[19:00] my mum is. Your mum, a business woman.
[19:02] She's a business woman with my parents, a business woman.
[19:04] Interesting, you know, so whenever you open up about the
[19:06] struggles of running the business to his like, she gets
[19:09] scared for you. And it's just like, why don't
[19:12] you find, you know, a job to do because you feel like that's a
[19:16] small stable that has more security.
[19:19] But it is. It is what it is.
[19:20] You know if the. Parents are business people.
[19:22] Why? Why don't you?
[19:23] Why? Why don't you really talk to
[19:24] your dad? I, I, I talked to him, you know,
[19:30] it's, I don't know if that's something I'd want to get into
[19:32] so much, but then it's like every, every child has the
[19:35] parent that they bond more with, you know, so it's very natural
[19:38] that you're going to open up more to one person than to the
[19:41] other. Yeah.
[19:41] OK, so that's that's basically what.
[19:43] Siblings you have. 3 or 4 I think.
[19:48] Three or 4444. Yeah, on, you know, step step
[19:54] siblings. OK so between my mom and that we
[19:55] are just two but they try to. Explore.
[19:58] Yeah, I'm bringing. And I'm growing up.
[19:59] Right? Right.
[20:00] Yeah. And so did you grow up with
[20:03] parents? Yeah.
[20:05] Until a point my parent got divorced eventually.
[20:09] So I grew up mostly with my mom, but I've always been in touch.
[20:13] I won't call it a stepdad because we would never live
[20:16] together. OK, OK, OK.
[20:17] He he was there. But we never live together
[20:22] between between my mom and dad. I am the oldest.
[20:26] Yeah, But on my dad's side, I'm the second.
[20:28] So I have an older brother. Yeah.
[20:30] And I have younger siblings. How do that?
[20:33] Affect you, your parents getting divorced and having to live with
[20:36] your mum and all that still as a oldest child.
[20:40] I think you know people, everyone and how stuff like that
[20:46] effects, right. Yeah, people like to Personally,
[20:48] I like to deny that it didn't affect me because I feel like I
[20:52] came off fine. I did well.
[20:53] But then when you look at it like I'm also a very self aware
[20:57] person. So you end up looking back at
[21:00] things and you're like, OK, this is definitely because of that.
[21:03] So I am a very isolated person. For the ones with better time.
[21:10] I like being alone a lot. And I think that came from that.
[21:14] You know, I felt like it was more peaceful being alone than
[21:17] to have to be there where, you know, you have to deal with the
[21:23] conflict from both, you know, so I ended up being, and I, I tend
[21:29] to also, I, I, I began, I began to feel like the more I'm in the
[21:33] same space with someone over a long period of time, the chances
[21:39] of there being conflicts is higher.
[21:42] So I tend to spend very little time in the same space with
[21:45] people. People.
[21:46] Yeah, because I feel like, you know, after a while and it's,
[21:49] it's very normal for those things to happen.
[21:50] I just for long term relationships, I feel like so
[21:54] many conflicts have they put a strain on the relationship, you
[21:59] know, So the, the, the as much as you can avoid conflicts, you
[22:04] know, But yeah, I just became that person that I just like
[22:07] being a living when I when I wasn't living, when I was living
[22:09] with my mom, I was always happy when there was no one in the
[22:12] house, especially on vacations. When I returned from high school
[22:14] uni, my mom goes to work, my sister goes to school and I have
[22:17] the house myself. I feel very at peace.
[22:20] Not that's I've not been more treated by my parents.
[22:23] You know, my family was very friendly, home.
[22:27] I was happy, peaceful. I just like having my personal
[22:31] time, my personal space. How are you, how are you
[22:35] blending that you know, with your leading the team, right?
[22:39] And I'm sure with the ideals of having like a long term
[22:44] association with the team and working together with them on a
[22:47] day-to-day, right. And of course working with
[22:49] different people will come with conflict will arise.
[22:51] But here you are very conflict adverse piercing.
[22:54] How have you managed that? OK, it's great.
[22:59] So that's one thing I would say that I wish I treated or I wish
[23:06] I had the same commitment to other parts of my life like I
[23:09] did with work, you know, with when it is about work, I always
[23:13] make it happen. Dealing with the hard
[23:17] conversations, having the hard conversations, dealing with the
[23:20] conflicts, living with people, if it means making it work, you
[23:24] know, So when it comes to work, I, you have to make it happen.
[23:28] I have to make it happen regardless of all my emotions,
[23:31] all my mental spaces, whatever. Just have to make it work 'cause
[23:35] you might not not get a chance to make it happen again, right.
[23:39] So I, I think I've grown to the point that it's easier to have
[23:43] such conversations. I don't think I'm conflict
[23:47] averse when it comes to work. And in fact I've become very
[23:52] outspoken, OK as a person generally cause initially, you
[23:56] know, if I am not happy about something, I would rather avoid
[24:01] confrontation. Just that a person doesn't feel
[24:04] bad or feel some type of way, you know, but then you realize
[24:07] that there's not something you can avoid for long.
[24:10] So you began to speak up more. I tried as much as possible to
[24:15] speak up in a way that doesn't make the person feel bad about
[24:18] themselves. You know, sometimes you air,
[24:19] you're human, you know, I don't think I'm a preferred person.
[24:22] Sometimes you air. But then you again, because I
[24:26] said I'm a very self aware person, you interest person
[24:30] realize, OK, I didn't approach this right way.
[24:33] So you go back and then to resolve it and yeah.
[24:36] OK, so back to our right, some of that started from CIA school
[24:43] so to speak university to be in this great brand that is
[24:47] building tech a very flat. Scenario Classic A great brand
[24:50] a. Great brand because I mean, now
[24:51] you are working with, with your flat away by your Yango Mamas,
[24:55] you know, big brands, you know, So you're going to hopefully
[24:59] explore what has brought you here from that young man in
[25:03] University of Ghana studying geography, running away from
[25:05] school to seek a sponsorship to this point, right.
[25:08] So at some point you worked with you, you did a couple of
[25:11] projects, started up other other things, pairs wares, things like
[25:15] that, you know, so University of Ghana, you decided that now
[25:18] you're going to focus on marketing, you're going to be a
[25:21] marketing agency first of all, at what point did you decide
[25:24] that? What influences it?
[25:25] Well, we're not just going to be making magazines for schools or
[25:30] doing events for people to be happy and make happy people have
[25:33] a good time, but we want to be a marketing agency.
[25:35] What influenced our decision? OK, so we were very deliberate
[25:40] about our own brand. OK, right.
[25:44] Our logo goods, our let me see, our entire visual identity was
[25:51] really top notch. How we handled our own socials,
[25:54] our own publicity was really good.
[25:56] So we started getting a lot of attention for ourselves.
[25:58] So what started happening is that businesses started reaching
[26:02] out to Asda. Can you do this for me?
[26:04] Can you do that for me? Can you design my logo for me?
[26:06] Can you create a brand identity for me?
[26:08] Are you doing that yourself? Most of it I was doing a lot of
[26:12] myself, so I had to learn. Funny thing, I've always tried
[26:18] to design on my own and I told about the writing entire writing
[26:21] part thing. So I I tried designing our first
[26:26] logo, but then I was spending every allowance my mom sent me
[26:29] when I was in university to pay for designs for initial events.
[26:32] So the first 3-4 events that we did was what I I spent my weekly
[26:40] allowance paying. So every design, the price of
[26:43] every design is equivalent to a week my weekly allowance.
[26:47] Wow. Which means that that weekly are
[26:48] like, you know, it's always funny when you know, I'm rich
[26:53] people talk about your story and they say, Oh no, I started with
[26:57] just five cities and pussy. That's a lie.
[27:00] Truth is, I can say I started my company with 50 Ghana CDs
[27:03] because the first spend I made on my business was that 50 CDs.
[27:08] I paid for a flyer design, you know, so I can say that, you
[27:12] know, so that's how I started and I like it wasn't
[27:16] sustainable, you know, so I had to learn how to design on my own
[27:21] so that I can be doing stuff for our own brand.
[27:24] And eventually I I got really good at it because I like to
[27:27] think I have very good tastes though, so I got very good at
[27:30] the entire branding thing. So a lot of the clients that
[27:34] were coming to us or do this for me, I was doing all of that for
[27:36] them, most of them for free. Some of them were my friends,
[27:38] businesses somewhere free stuff we do for some of these organic
[27:43] com students organizations on campus, the Political Science
[27:49] Students Association and all that.
[27:51] So we're doing all of those for free.
[27:53] But it, it brought more visibility.
[27:55] Now people begin to see your work.
[27:56] People begin to see your logo all around just to ask some
[27:58] questions. What do you do?
[27:59] What are what are these guys and all that, you know?
[28:01] So we saw that and we're like, OK, this is an opportunity for
[28:03] us. Why not turn it into something?
[28:06] And that's the thing, when you begin to explore that, you begin
[28:09] to learn more and you begin to get excited about it and OK,
[28:13] there's something I can do. So we branched into that.
[28:16] So I, luckily for me, I started meeting people along the way
[28:19] that could make it happen. You know, like I made my first
[28:24] in about, I think that was level 300, you know, 'cause we had a
[28:29] magazine projects that I was design entirely.
[28:32] And I had this designer who was, he was someone who wanted to
[28:35] learn from me, you know, so he was bugging me to give him the
[28:38] project to do. And I, I don't want, because I,
[28:41] I like, I wanted to do it myself, you know, eventually I
[28:44] just handed it over to him to do.
[28:46] And we made, we had an agreement on how much I was going to pay
[28:49] him every month, you know. So that was, I think that was my
[28:51] first, I made my first time when I was in level 300, you know, I
[28:55] was paying 200. And so that's a month, 26 a
[28:59] month, yeah, that's money. So that's how I started and I
[29:04] started meeting people who helped make it happen basically.
[29:08] And that's how we turned it into into a business, OK.
[29:11] And then so after university and now you've built this little
[29:16] marketing agency at University of Ghana, you're getting clients
[29:19] serving the student body after school.
[29:22] What was the plan? You do your national service
[29:24] where? And I supreme.
[29:26] You work for yourself, I. Work for myself, National
[29:27] Service, that was a tough decision.
[29:30] I was very confused from the period before I graduated.
[29:35] It was a very confusing period for me.
[29:37] So you want to work for yourself.
[29:41] You know you want to work for yourself when you know that if
[29:43] you are doing that, you can invest a lot of time into
[29:45] growing the business, right? But there's a lot of uncertainty
[29:50] that comes with that. You don't have a solid client
[29:52] base that is sustainable enough to keep you and order that we
[29:56] are bringing along with you, you know, so that was tough.
[29:59] So the plan was to do my service elsewhere while I was doing this
[30:04] business on the side. You know, it wasn't something I
[30:07] wanted to do because I, I knew it was going to distract me and
[30:10] I don't want that. You know, luckily we're able to
[30:15] find an office space, a small office space smaller than this
[30:18] room, you know, and then a couple of the people that I had
[30:22] agreed to come on board with me, you know, with no plan.
[30:25] We, we, we didn't have any retaining client that we can
[30:28] say, OK, we are short of this amount of money every month.
[30:30] We didn't have that. Yeah.
[30:31] We also took the risk with me. Yeah, Yeah.
[30:34] Because they also had opportunities to do their
[30:36] service elsewhere and to jump on other opportunities.
[30:39] And they're like, you know what, we'll do this thing with you.
[30:41] And then they jumped on board with me.
[30:42] So we started and we're all hustling together, you know?
[30:45] So it was a lot of consistency and a lot of showing up even
[30:51] when we didn't have clients, just doing things that put us
[30:55] out there for people to know that these guys are there and
[30:58] they are this good at what they do, you know, And that
[31:00] eventually started bringing in some good leads to people who
[31:04] really believed in us that, OK, maybe I've not seen you do big
[31:08] stuff, but I believe you can do based on what you've done so
[31:10] far. So let me give you an
[31:11] opportunity. Let me put you on this thing,
[31:13] you know, And that is how it started.
[31:15] Which when you would you say like your first big break deal
[31:18] happened? Which client was that?
[31:21] Breakthroughs. Sometimes we say that's people
[31:24] underrate how many breakthroughs you need to have to have that
[31:26] actual big, big break. I'm still looking for
[31:28] breakthroughs, by the way. Oh, yes.
[31:31] But the first one I would say was when we got to work with
[31:36] pizza in in chicken in. OK, yeah, that was a known
[31:40] brand. It was a known brand.
[31:43] And we did so many stuff for them that was good for our
[31:48] portfolio and that got us attention, you know, so I'll say
[31:53] that was the first big break. So, so again, so I, I university
[32:01] been in university and that's one thing I always tell people,
[32:03] entrepreneurs who say that and our school is not necessary and
[32:06] all that, you know, the, the classroom might not be necessary
[32:11] to you, but the school community is extremely important, you
[32:15] know, very important to the network because I, I just
[32:19] assisted in the university community as I doing ice
[32:23] supreme. I was also the head of
[32:25] organizing committee for my whole Lehman.
[32:28] So while planning our whole week, I got to meet someone from
[32:34] one of their organization besides partner with, you know,
[32:37] and then in fact, he offered me the opportunity to do my service
[32:41] in their company, right. It was around that same time
[32:44] that we decided to, you know, go move to our own office, right?
[32:50] And this person, you know, he also helped us with the last
[32:54] events that I said we did that internal wall and then we
[32:57] decided to, you know, stop doing events.
[32:59] So after I decided to, you know, go on my own to do the business
[33:04] full time, this person, he kept looking out for me.
[33:06] So now he still looks out for whenever the opportunities reach
[33:08] out. You I think can do this, you
[33:10] know, go for it. So he was, he told us that this
[33:14] company is looking for an agency and I think you should go and
[33:16] pitch, you know, so he just made an introduction.
[33:20] The pitch was all us, right? Come up with ideas on what to do
[33:23] and all that. But he let us know of the
[33:26] opportunity that existed. And then we went to the winter
[33:28] pitch and then that happened. And luckily for us, we got we
[33:31] got in. When we go in, we have to prove
[33:33] a point. We have to prove a point to
[33:35] them. We have to prove a point to
[33:36] ourselves. That's prove a point to people
[33:38] that wanted to work with us, you know, So after that we because
[33:44] of the work we're doing for them, we got a chance to work
[33:46] with Roku Mamas OK, which was I think work on Mars was like one
[33:49] of those brands that really puts a spotlight on us because it was
[33:53] one of the brands we started from scratch.
[33:54] It work on was an existing Ghana at all OK, So every publicity,
[34:00] every awareness that they had was because of the work that we
[34:04] did, you know, including their brand design or marketing
[34:09] design, marketing. We run the entire marketing.
[34:13] You get it in color, so it makes a franchise, so you get input
[34:17] from the international teams and all that.
[34:19] And it was also one one of the opportunities we had to work
[34:23] internationally because it was a global brand, you know, so you
[34:27] get to work with their teams from outside and all that.
[34:30] So it really puts us on the spotlight.
[34:31] We did so many things for them and we had the freedom to create
[34:35] because we're interested by brand guidelines and all that.
[34:38] So we get a chance to to express ourselves to to show how good we
[34:42] are. So that's made a lot of people
[34:44] start noticing us and how good we were.
[34:46] And then from there more opportunities started coming on.
[34:49] Like I said, Pedan was the first brick, Rahuman was the 2nd, and
[34:53] then you know, other things followed from there.
[34:55] Hey, we're the young go as well. Yeah, we're the young go on a
[34:58] couple of projects a few projects.
[34:59] What's the story there? I don't know if I'm allowed to
[35:03] say this. So someone that I, I won't say I
[35:08] mentored him who was someone who was a mutual on, on social
[35:13] media, you know, and he's, he texted me one time that he sees
[35:18] my, my tweets and he really likes what I post about, about
[35:21] marketing and all that, you know, So we, we kept in touch
[35:26] once in a while, he reached out to me if he wants an
[35:28] understanding of something. He also worked in another
[35:30] agency. So he reaches out to me with
[35:32] discards and all that. And eventually he got a job at
[35:36] Yango. So he told me that Yango was
[35:38] looking for an agency. So I should pitch, you know, so,
[35:42] so again, 1:00 we, we never actually, we never get things
[35:49] handed out to us. Yeah, we don't, we don't get
[35:51] freebies, we don't get handouts. It's people that basically
[35:54] looking off for us. Listen us to that.
[35:56] There's an opportunity that exists and then we go in and
[35:58] show that we deserve, we are capable of doing it, you know,
[36:02] So it's always based on merits, you know, but then someone
[36:05] points you to the way. So that's how it happened.
[36:08] We went and we pitched. We we got the first project, we
[36:12] did a second and a third project.
[36:15] We did three projects with with Young Go.
[36:17] The one I'm really interested in knowing about, I mean with your
[36:20] marketing works was Flatter Weave, Africa's biggest fintech,
[36:26] fintech startup, $3 billion in valuation.
[36:31] You know, and I know you, you did some work for them here in
[36:34] Ghana. Tell me, tell me about that.
[36:38] Similar thing. So I I really can't talk about
[36:43] the I supreme story without talking about the people who
[36:46] have been impactful in our journey, right?
[36:50] If I sit here and say it was all me, yeah, that would be a big
[36:53] lie. There are people who look out
[36:57] for us a lot. And that is also because we are
[37:00] really good at what we do. You know, we always show up.
[37:04] We always. And that's good.
[37:06] Yeah, That's good. Because I mean, even with this,
[37:08] the conversation we're having, right, it's busy with the fact
[37:11] that it's two people, two different people kept telling
[37:14] me. I think he's talked to this guy.
[37:15] I think you should look at this guy here.
[37:17] And I think it's a testament of what you're saying.
[37:19] Yeah. Yeah.
[37:20] Right. So we do that and then whenever
[37:23] there's an opportunity, people let us know there's this
[37:26] opportunity, you know, so flattery wanted.
[37:31] They're in Ghana. They run their campaigns in
[37:34] multiple countries, so they wanted an agency in Ghana.
[37:39] We presented our plan to them. They loved it and we got the
[37:42] chance to to work with them. We've also worked on a couple of
[37:45] projects with Young Go Flatter. We, I mean, we're in a couple of
[37:49] projects here. So that's how it happened.
[37:51] It was someone looking out for us and then we go in and one
[37:55] thing I I would say is it's underrated how difficult
[38:01] difficult it is to get in the room.
[38:04] And that's a matter how good you are.
[38:06] Yeah, getting in the room is so difficult.
[38:10] So one thing that we've been fortunate with is people who
[38:15] look out for us, who mention us in room.
[38:18] So that's we go in and show what we're capable of.
[38:20] In fact, at this point you're also looking at people who can
[38:23] get us into bigger rooms. Yes, because the work is not
[38:26] enough. We do the work.
[38:29] We we keep proving that we are capable of doing this, but in
[38:32] that every at every stage of your business, the strategy that
[38:36] made you, obviously the strategy that made your first 100K is not
[38:39] the same strategy that make your first one million.
[38:41] That's true. Definitely the same strategy
[38:43] that make your first 10 million. You know, so at any point in
[38:45] time you need a new approach to getting into the rooms that can
[38:49] elevate you. Yeah.
[38:50] So we always working at, you know, preparing for those
[38:55] opportunities when they are. So if you get a, a big brand
[39:00] coming in very few and you're looking for an agency that can
[39:04] work for them, are you in the position to be able to work with
[39:09] them? Do you have the capabilities,
[39:11] you have the team? Do you have the the stranded
[39:13] experience be able to work with them?
[39:14] You know, so even if someone mentions you in a room and you
[39:18] don't have all of those, you go in and you're gonna mess it up,
[39:21] right? So we always work in a position
[39:23] in ourselves. So that's when the opportunity
[39:25] comes, it becomes easier for us to take advantage of it.
[39:28] That's what we are doing. And then, yeah, there are who,
[39:30] who, what, what? I don't have control over a lot
[39:34] of things. What I have control over is how
[39:36] good we can be at what we do. So that's if I've met you today,
[39:40] you've seen my work. Yeah.
[39:42] Tomorrow when you go somewhere, you can say that.
[39:43] OK, I think you should try this guy.
[39:45] Then I can come in and show that person that I'm actually as good
[39:48] as I said I am, you know? OK.
[39:51] Interesting. So I want to ask this.
[39:53] So let me let's use the Peso podcast as a business, right?
[39:57] Just trying to put myself in the seat of a customer, a potential
[40:01] customer. What services can you provide
[40:03] for me as I Supreme and what can you do for me to let's take the
[40:06] personal broadcast. So I've come to you.
[40:08] Hey guys, I'm starting this broadcast and I need an agency
[40:13] to help me build my brand and market what I'm doing.
[40:17] What are the things you can do for me?
[40:19] OK, so we never answered that question without asking what you
[40:23] intend to achieve with your podcasts.
[40:25] OK, you know, who are you trying to impact?
[40:29] Who do you say? And the usual who do you say is
[40:32] your ideal target audience, you know, and what will success mean
[40:36] to you? What would you say?
[40:37] OK, if I've gotten to this point, then I feel like you guys
[40:40] have done a good work. Now, once you understand that
[40:43] we, we never try to come from a perspective of this is what we
[40:48] do and automatically have to do that for you.
[40:51] Once you understand what you are trying to achieve, then we
[40:54] cannot decide what strategies would work, which approaches
[40:57] would work, even which channels should work, right.
[41:02] Some agencies are straightforward when you come to
[41:06] them, it's you're going to do a couple of designs for you and
[41:09] all that you're doing a podcast, maybe what you you need is not
[41:15] some designs or artworks or whatever.
[41:17] How do you distribute the podcast to the right people?
[41:20] So that's distribution. Now distribution is not a
[41:23] conversation that's a lot of agents are going to mention to
[41:25] you when going to a meeting with them.
[41:27] They're going to our distribution because we've been
[41:31] and it's a creative thing. We create some wire to look,
[41:34] always look in a particular direction, you know.
[41:36] So we would now look at OK, if we want say the podcast to reach
[41:40] 1,000,000 listeners of viewers, they will need to distribute it
[41:44] beyond the approaches is currently being used to
[41:47] distribute it. So whatever want to listen to
[41:50] maybe it is not even regular social media users you're
[41:54] looking at listing business executives and all that.
[41:57] What is will spend their time. You know, are the only usual
[42:00] platforms we know about fail because of ground Tiktok?
[42:03] If yes, sure, why not? If not, where are they and how
[42:07] do we get up? Yeah, declare you.
[42:12] That would be $10,000 by the way.
[42:15] So if, if, if, if not, if not, then we know that OK, they're
[42:19] likely, you know, we'll wake up in the morning and go to a Ghana
[42:25] web to go and read news. How about we put snippets or
[42:30] sound bites of the podcast as ads in Ghana web and then
[42:34] redirect them to our podcast on the real social platform?
[42:37] Because the platform that the content exist on might not
[42:42] always be the platform of discovery.
[42:46] You get it if your primary channel of promotion is Tiktok,
[42:51] not and you know, for podcasts, for instance, not a lot of
[42:54] people wake up in the morning and go on Apple podcasts to go
[42:57] and refresh and look for podcasts to listen to.
[42:59] A lot of them discover it from social media before they go on
[43:03] there. So if you post only on Apple
[43:07] Podcasts, Spotify and you don't, you don't distribute it, no one
[43:11] is going to listen to it. I've I've myself, it's been an
[43:14] issue like that with me where we created a podcast last year.
[43:17] We posted on YouTube, we post snippets on social media, but we
[43:20] didn't put a lot of effort into distributing it.
[43:23] You know, by distribution, you post multiple snippets in the
[43:27] places where the people you want to listen are.
[43:30] Multiple snippets. Yeah, I mean, so, and if you can
[43:35] you, you talk from the some of the podcasts that people listen
[43:39] to Definitely also once we need to, we need to understand, it's
[43:42] just that people think that a lot of people are more inclined
[43:45] to listen to certain type of content than others.
[43:47] It's natural, you get it. That is why a lot of people end
[43:52] up using clickbait to get able to to get traffic onto their
[43:56] website, their their podcast. But then once you notice that my
[44:00] podcast is not like conventional pop culture entertainment and
[44:03] stuff like that and it's quite niched and people are going to
[44:07] listen to it. The numbers not so many people
[44:09] might need to reach as much of them as possible.
[44:12] Then you are proving to be very targeted, so very advanced.
[44:15] I believe that distribution onto the platforms that the actual
[44:20] audience are on. Then you now direct them onto
[44:24] the actual platform that we are hosting the content on the.
[44:27] Industry I see now I want to I understand why these brands are
[44:34] working with you. I see.
[44:36] So I think you know we said from the start to your national, so
[44:39] you guys got an office piece and you had a couple of, I did the
[44:41] same people you are working with.
[44:44] Some of them. Some of them.
[44:45] How many people are in the team now?
[44:48] About 12 people. Oh, that's great.
[44:50] About 12 people still seems. Are you still at the same
[44:52] office? No, we, we currently are remote
[44:57] firsts. We are moving to a new office
[45:00] very soon rather than year. We are remote firsts.
[45:03] So we mostly work from home. But then we have some of the
[45:06] people that I started with, I still have four of them on the
[45:09] team. It's been about 6 or one years
[45:12] now. Some of them are still on the
[45:14] team. And then there are people who
[45:15] have left, who have joined, and yeah.
[45:18] OK. So what's the future looking
[45:20] like? I mean, I've touched on what
[45:22] you're trying to do from the beginning, building these apps
[45:25] that help clients. I'm sure you've got, like you
[45:28] said, you've got the the need for building these solutions
[45:31] from your work with small businesses about generally what
[45:35] does the future look like for I suppose what the next fee for
[45:38] the next year, next five years? We by 20-30 we want to be the
[45:46] goal to growth company for ambitious businesses.
[45:50] OK, right. You want anyone to think about
[45:55] what is the next phase of your growth and think of I Supreme in
[45:59] terms of technology. The reason we keep seeing next
[46:01] phase is that social media has been here for close to 10 years.
[46:09] When it comes to media, every couple of years there's a new
[46:14] medium that becomes mainstream. Some years ago it was what radio
[46:20] and and TV robots, then social media, you know, what is next?
[46:26] What's that next phase of for brands to rigid your audience?
[46:32] And we want to be positioned to be the go to for brands when
[46:37] they want to explore what our next phase is for them.
[46:40] So if you're already doing social media and all that, what
[46:43] if in the next 5 to 10 years your customers are not, you
[46:46] know, spending some on social media or what if social media is
[46:49] not their initial? And we can see from all these
[46:53] platforms, platforms like Facebook inquire debt for a
[46:56] certain age bracket versus in demographic, you know, so if you
[47:00] were a brand and then your primary marketing channel is
[47:04] Facebook, how is that playing for you now?
[47:08] So for future ready businesses, we want to help them figure out
[47:12] the next phase of markets and the next phase of their growth
[47:15] with all the new technology that is coming on.
[47:17] So with the new advancements in AI, with VR, virtual reality, AR
[47:24] and all that, how do they take advantage of that to create
[47:28] different, better, deeper, stronger connections with their
[47:32] customers? And that is who we want to be
[47:34] and want to do this for some of the most ambitious brands in the
[47:36] world. Aside that, also building more
[47:39] technology tools that can help brands do more efficient and
[47:43] cost effective marketing. I see through your story, I
[47:48] gather that you, you, you did this thing called pesos.
[47:51] What's what's the story there? OK, so you know, because of my
[47:56] field and my background in in marketing and strategy, a lot of
[48:01] times my friends who are also into entrepreneurship and
[48:05] starting stuff like that, we get off conversation what we can do
[48:08] together. So Pestos was started by a
[48:10] friend of mine. It's a money platforms if it's
[48:15] authentic, OK, suspend, save and invest, you know, so we talked
[48:21] about me coming on board to lead growth and marketing for that
[48:27] and that's how it came about. So he had he was working on the
[48:31] products, let the development of the products and I was helping
[48:35] with marketing and all that. But then eventually was
[48:37] discontinued, you know, and then he moved on to focus on other
[48:41] things. So that's happened.
[48:43] So what's, yeah, what's premium platform even A lot of the times
[48:46] I try to look at other things that it's possible for me to to,
[48:52] to jump on. What I also notice is that I
[48:55] think that's one of my weaknesses is that it's very
[49:00] difficult to focus and be committed to something that is
[49:05] not that's that's not part of isoprene.
[49:09] OK, you get it. So it's very good for me to be
[49:11] involved. If it's not the reason is
[49:13] because I've built my entire, my entire strength around IT.
[49:17] Supreme, my team, the process, the structure, all of that.
[49:20] You know, if I can put it as part of isoprene, I know how to
[49:25] make it happen. Yeah.
[49:27] Because I have, I've built a system that works.
[49:30] Yeah, you know. So no matter how big it is, how
[49:32] small it is, I can make it work when it's part of ice cream when
[49:35] it is not. That means I have to be involved
[49:39] fully. You know, I have to do things
[49:41] that I would ordinarily make someone that is part of isoprene
[49:46] be in charge of you get. And that makes it very difficult
[49:49] for me to commit. So since then, since I noticed
[49:51] that I'm very intentional about the the stuff that I hope a lot
[49:57] of opportunities come on board. People want to do things with
[50:01] you. Not I'm just usually very
[50:02] because I also don't want to for my reputation seek.
[50:05] I don't want to commit to something that I'm not able to
[50:08] deliver on. And then it becomes like, OK,
[50:10] he's not a trustworthy person or a reliable person.
[50:13] So I tried to actually had an experience like that before when
[50:16] I was part of an organization and I couldn't because of all my
[50:21] commitment to startups. Yeah, that, you know, like I
[50:25] what? Happened there.
[50:27] It was an idea. We came up with a couple of
[50:30] guys. We had worked a lot together
[50:32] from uni and we wanted to create before.
[50:35] Like at that, at the time, the startup space in Ghana wasn't
[50:39] vibrant. I just wanted to create a
[50:41] community that's brought everyone together, shared
[50:45] resources, shared experiences, naturally creates A framework,
[50:51] you know, that could be followed.
[50:52] So we're not just looking at community and we're actually
[50:54] looking at policy as well. How can we inform policy on a
[50:58] high level and all that, you know?
[51:00] But then again, we're still, I was still trying to figure out
[51:03] the entire supreme thing. There was 2-3 years after school
[51:07] trying to figure all of it out. So there was so much commitment
[51:10] on that end. And I didn't have a lot of
[51:12] structure on my own to be able to commit to that.
[51:15] So I had to. I felt like I was drawing back
[51:18] the organization, so I had to pull out so that things can.
[51:22] Yeah. So I tried to.
[51:24] I tend to be very skeptical when it comes to such stuff.
[51:27] Commitments here reminds me of the story of Red Bull.
[51:31] No, Red Bull, Yeah. The owner of Red Bull didn't
[51:34] make the energy drink because it's a marketing marketing
[51:36] company. OK.
[51:37] And then teaser this grey energy drink and then, well, we can do
[51:42] this to get on and part it with this marketing system in our Red
[51:46] Bull Little Red. Yeah.
[51:46] So I think it's good that you're open to things that fit into the
[51:50] system. It's actually something a model
[51:53] that we've explored. I think 2-3 years ago we started
[51:57] something called service for equity where we do marketing and
[52:03] growth for certain startups that seem to have a lot of potential
[52:09] in exchange for equity. You know, so we explored that
[52:14] model that sometimes still open to.
[52:16] It's just that, you know, you always look at the team's
[52:19] capacity to be able to do that. So we explored that.
[52:23] There are a couple of start-ups we had conversations with, you
[52:26] know, but some of them you know are giving away equity is a
[52:30] difficult conversation for a lot of people, you know, but if we
[52:35] are going to do it, we need to know that there's something in
[52:38] it for us. So that's something that we like
[52:40] to do. We are we are still open to
[52:41] doing stuff like that. If we say that because we are
[52:46] investing time, you know, we need to make sure that it's
[52:52] going to be profitable soon enough so that we can, it's not
[52:56] really about making money back that we can actually start
[52:59] spending on the things we are doing.
[53:01] So if you are doing market, there's only a lot you can do
[53:03] with organic activities, you know, how can we start making
[53:07] money from it to start spending on it, You know, so that's what
[53:10] we try to look about. And yeah, it's something that I,
[53:13] I believe that there's a lot of. It's a, it's a, it's a huge bet.
[53:18] You know, if you can, that's what VCs do.
[53:20] They put their money open. That's in the five years they
[53:22] become profitable. If I can put my resource behind
[53:26] a business and I know that in 2-3 years it's going to be
[53:29] profitable and I'm going to come on, I'm going to do that, you
[53:32] know, so it's something I still look forward to.
[53:35] And there are a lot of businesses that I, I see.
[53:38] I'm like this business. If I had a way, if I had a
[53:41] means, I would own a part of this business.
[53:44] I'll bring well do like a measure or an acquisition even
[53:49] you know, with Ice Supreme there a lot of them.
[53:51] You see, there's so much potential.
[53:54] What I noticed is that for a lot of us, and it's when something
[53:59] applies to me, we are really good at building.
[54:03] Yeah, but growing is something that we lack.
[54:07] Yeah, you get we it's and it's it's not something I don't think
[54:12] it's something it's for a want of not trying.
[54:16] I think something just don't have the means to or just don't
[54:19] have the resources to to to get to that level they want to get
[54:23] to. It's people trying a lot of
[54:24] things and they are very good at the actual crafts.
[54:28] If it is creating the not to create, if it is pretty not to
[54:31] produce, you know, but then growing it and then the
[54:35] operations behind the entire thing does it's business issue
[54:40] is it's a machinery on it's own. There's operations, there's
[54:43] finance, there's administrative stuff, there's marketing,
[54:45] there's growth and not everyone has the strength and a bandwidth
[54:49] to be able to do that. So there are a lot of times I
[54:51] think if if I just start on a company today, what it will be
[54:56] is to create. That's like a machinery that
[55:00] supports businesses so they can focus on what they know how to
[55:04] do and then we run the entire business operation for them.
[55:08] It's something I've thought of, have entertained, but I just
[55:10] look at my time and my commitments.
[55:12] I'm like maybe later on by then. Yeah, that's something that I
[55:15] would really want to because there's so much potential that
[55:18] is not being explored because you just don't have the
[55:24] bandwidth. Yeah, you know?
[55:25] Yeah. Quite a brilliant young man you
[55:29] are. Thank you.
[55:30] And has your mother come around? Come around nowhere.
[55:35] Oh, I mean. Yeah, that's now you are, you
[55:38] are rooks and who's in marketing how?
[55:39] Many has it been now she comes around, then she backslides, she
[55:46] comes around and she backslides. You know, we just hope it's I
[55:50] mean, all we want, all I want is to make her feel like she wasn't
[55:58] right all along. You know, that's, I knew what I
[56:00] was up to, you know, so every time that I'm, I'm a very
[56:03] patient person with my goals, right?
[56:06] I know that this is going to happen.
[56:09] You know, I give myself time and that times I'll be setbacks and
[56:13] all. Yeah.
[56:14] But then I, I'm very patient. I know I'm going to get to that
[56:17] point. But unfortunately for you, and
[56:21] it's the same with every entrepreneur, not everything and
[56:26] everyone will be patient with you.
[56:27] Yeah. So you are patient.
[56:30] Your parent might not be patient with you if you're in a
[56:33] relationship, your partner's manually patient with you.
[56:37] And that is the conversation we don't have, right?
[56:42] Because you're, you know that all this thing a bit far and
[56:46] you're committing to it and all that.
[56:48] We have a partner who is Charlie when you get it, not that
[56:53] they're adulting you, but then they also are looking out for
[56:57] themselves. They want to be with someone
[56:59] that they know there's stability, you know, so the
[57:03] minority person. So I what I do is I never fault
[57:06] people like that. I always take it as someone
[57:09] looking out for themselves or someone even wanting the best
[57:13] for you because again, we are very it's very easy for us to go
[57:18] there out of or they don't believe in.
[57:21] You know that. No, that's why I didn't believe
[57:23] you. They wouldn't they wouldn't look
[57:25] out for you. Something they're trying to
[57:27] protect you. That OK, this thing, what if
[57:30] actually you go five years, 10 years time and actually doesn't
[57:34] far, you get it? Yeah, you get, but you'll never
[57:38] know. So sometimes all you need is
[57:41] people who are patient with you, family, friends, your team, my
[57:44] team, the upper mind is more extremely patient with me
[57:48] because it gets tough, right? What what people don't know is
[57:54] we have restarted this company 3 times.
[57:57] People don't know that on the outside.
[58:01] It's a company that is growing, Yes, it's actually, in fact,
[58:04] some of the times that I called the worst moments in the growth
[58:08] of our company were some of the best moments who compared to the
[58:11] previous years. There's also a period of a lot
[58:15] of uncertainty, a lot of failures and all that.
[58:18] You know, at that point, what you need is people who are
[58:20] patient with you, but you can't fault someone who isn't patient
[58:23] with you during that period because they're also looking out
[58:26] for themselves. So there's someone who is
[58:27] working with you and they have a plan for their life.
[58:31] They can't leave the end. They can't put their plan for
[58:34] their life on hold for you. Don't decide to go and start a
[58:37] business. You get it.
[58:39] So someone wants to say that in five years they want to be at
[58:43] this level in life. They want to be in this kind of
[58:45] role and in this amount of amount of money and all that,
[58:48] then the company is not growing as fast as they want to be.
[58:53] You know, it's very natural that they would leave the jump ship
[58:56] to go and explore things that will make them go faster.
[58:58] It's very natural. So what you don't have to do is
[59:01] to, you know, be a Saab bitter person about about it, right,
[59:07] Just have to understand how to open minded, OK, This is why it
[59:10] is what it is, and then just let it be, you know, never.
[59:13] So I don't take certain when people jump ship.
[59:16] I don't take it personal. It hurts and because of my
[59:19] nature, people don't people, people think I don't care about
[59:23] stuff like that. When people leave, people think
[59:26] I don't care. I actually do.
[59:27] And I take it very badly. I go through all of it like a
[59:31] heartbreak. You know, you do with it.
[59:33] You have the, the nightmares, the withdrawal, the, the
[59:38] heartaches and all that, right? But then eventually.
[59:41] You have two to shout. You understand, you know, by
[59:45] eventually you, you, you get right and you understand why
[59:48] they had to, you know, so that's the thing.
[59:50] And I, I think it's all of those reasons that make people that
[59:56] makes it difficult to want to start a business.
[59:58] People think about all the difficulty or the failures or
[1:00:02] the challenges. And it's normal that you would
[1:00:05] be hesitant to get into business.
[1:00:07] But then that's also the thing when people think about failure,
[1:00:10] they think about. It's an absolute.
[1:00:14] People think filler is absolute. If they say you are filled, it
[1:00:18] means the entire thing has collapsed.
[1:00:20] But that is not always the case, right?
[1:00:23] I see filler as I see it in but not as as a whole, because
[1:00:28] you're always going to feel and the most successful people still
[1:00:31] feel who are our our goods in football.
[1:00:36] Merci Ronaldo, They have bad, they have bad games.
[1:00:39] That's that is failure. You know, if you're running a
[1:00:44] business, people think failure means the business has
[1:00:47] collapsed. But no, if an employee is
[1:00:50] unhappy and they resigned, you are failed.
[1:00:52] If you launch a product that didn't sell, you have failed.
[1:00:56] Yeah. If you've delayed on salary
[1:00:57] payments, you have failed. If you have an unhappy client,
[1:01:01] unhappy customer, you have failed.
[1:01:04] You're always going to fail somehow.
[1:01:05] Yeah, once you start seeing it that way, what you want to do is
[1:01:08] to keep the entire vehicle moving.
[1:01:10] Even if one tire bust on the way, even if there is an engine
[1:01:16] failure on the way, whatever I say, just keep the entire
[1:01:18] vehicle moving and that's how I see it.
[1:01:20] So things are going to feel. I, I, I've lost clients.
[1:01:24] In fact, sometime last year I lost 4 clients in a go.
[1:01:29] You get it on the outside, everyone sees growth, they see
[1:01:33] you still moving. And that is what you have to do,
[1:01:36] keep the vehicle moving, keep the company moving.
[1:01:38] People don't have to or you don't have to give up because
[1:01:41] some part of it is failing. You know, so that that's when
[1:01:45] when you have done my own has seen fellow as that it becomes
[1:01:49] easier to deal with it. Now one thing is not moving.
[1:01:52] Cool you are dealing with that, but keep the entire thing
[1:01:55] moving. Really.
[1:01:56] Yeah. Wow.
[1:02:04] It brings me to this question about the journey as as
[1:02:09] founders, right? And there are expectations of
[1:02:13] the people we work with, expectations of the people who
[1:02:16] have committed their lives to us, so to speak, whether it's
[1:02:19] like relational fronts, whether it's like a relationship or
[1:02:24] family. And you also have expectations
[1:02:28] and you also have expectations for yourself and the, the, the
[1:02:33] period of waiting for the realization or like the
[1:02:36] manifestation of those XP like expectations.
[1:02:39] You know, it can be very lonely and gruesome, like you've
[1:02:43] highlighted some of them, right? And how do you in your, in your
[1:02:48] bid to like, keep all these like the vehicle moving, even though
[1:02:51] it's like, you know, the back seat is on fire, your franchise,
[1:02:56] you know, it's flat, Your, your, your just things are not going
[1:03:03] as bad. Things are on fire.
[1:03:04] How do you keep yourself sane? How do you take care of like
[1:03:09] your mental health? What do you do to stay afloat
[1:03:14] and not drown 'cause it's a very, very, very unfriendly
[1:03:18] terrain? Brutal.
[1:03:20] Yeah, gruesome. And like you said, people know
[1:03:24] of these, not many people know there's on the outside
[1:03:26] everything may be looking nice and good and you guys are you
[1:03:29] any raises amount of money or how he closes clients and but
[1:03:33] then your ship is in distress. How do you be there for
[1:03:41] everybody, shop for everybody and then also shop for yourself.
[1:03:47] Most importantly, how do you do that?
[1:03:50] You always have the end in mind. Where am I trying to get to?
[1:03:52] You're not there yet. You can't give up on the way.
[1:03:56] If you never doubt the journey, then I don't know who you are
[1:04:02] because you, you will. I do Once every three months I
[1:04:06] do. There was sometime last year
[1:04:08] that I kept telling my team because I'm done with this
[1:04:11] thing. I'll lie to you.
[1:04:13] I'm sure I still have records of that chat somewhere.
[1:04:16] I wake up in like, I don't know. And not because something is
[1:04:20] going, there are times that it just comes in like what have I
[1:04:23] been doing here, you know? But something else will happen
[1:04:28] that makes you feel like, OK, This is why I've been doing this
[1:04:31] all along. So you need to find a reason.
[1:04:34] I made a tweet 2 days ago, sometime this week, that it is
[1:04:40] very important to do things you love because sometimes that's
[1:04:45] the only reason you have to keep going.
[1:04:47] You need to be passionate about it.
[1:04:49] You need to fall in love with it because when it gets tough and
[1:04:53] there isn't that thing that keeps you going, you are going
[1:04:56] to to leave. And it's very natural for
[1:04:59] everybody in a relationship. If you encounter conflict or
[1:05:05] issues with your partner and there isn't that thing that's
[1:05:08] makes you wake up and say I love this thing so much about them,
[1:05:12] and because of that, I want to make it work, you're going to
[1:05:14] leave. You need a reason to that I
[1:05:17] can't see for everybody. I have found my reason is that
[1:05:21] this is what I'm trying to build, OK?
[1:05:24] And I am going to make it happen regardless of the challenges
[1:05:27] that I face to. You need to find a way to cope,
[1:05:32] a coping mechanism. Yeah.
[1:05:35] Good, bad, disastrous, whatever. Find something.
[1:05:38] What do you do, everyone? How do you cope?
[1:05:42] I sleep a lot. OK.
[1:05:43] I sleep. I think sleep is like my best
[1:05:46] coping mechanism, whatever it is.
[1:05:47] I feel like once I sleep and wake up, I'll find a solution to
[1:05:51] it. I'll find a way.
[1:05:53] In fact, there are times that you sleep and wake up and your
[1:05:55] brain resets from that feeling of, of giving up.
[1:05:59] So to, you know, I can actually make this happen.
[1:06:02] There are times that you figure out the solution in your dreams
[1:06:05] or in your sleep, you know. So I sleep a lot.
[1:06:08] I watch movies to distract myself.
[1:06:10] Something that sounds like you just want to deal with the
[1:06:12] situation, you know, so you need a distraction.
[1:06:16] So it's very people I really like people who have friends or
[1:06:21] community because it can really help you, you know, get out of
[1:06:24] it. I don't have a lot of friends
[1:06:26] unfortunately. My friends are quite work with.
[1:06:28] So we are going through it. We are all going through it
[1:06:30] together, you know. So sometimes, and that's what
[1:06:33] happens sometimes we'll meet, we'll sit down, we'll talk and
[1:06:37] the Commission just moves away from work to other things or
[1:06:41] laugh and all that before, you know, like that thing has just
[1:06:45] dissipated. You know, you don't feel it as
[1:06:47] much as you used to because like there are people who are there
[1:06:50] for you. So you need to find a community,
[1:06:52] you need to find your coping mechanism and you need to look
[1:06:56] at the end goal. Why did you start this in the
[1:06:58] 1st place? There's it's, it's very easy for
[1:07:01] also us to, there's this thing called the sun cost fallacy,
[1:07:07] right? So because you've invested so
[1:07:11] much in it over a period of time, you feel like I need to
[1:07:14] keep going, but at some point need to assess that is it
[1:07:17] actually going to work? You know, actually I lost some
[1:07:21] clients last year, 4 years ago, last year or four clients.
[1:07:25] And I felt like, do I need to keep this thing moving?
[1:07:28] All right, yeah, because you've lost some clients.
[1:07:31] But everyone on the outside knows what you're capable of.
[1:07:34] They're always gonna reach out to you to do things for them,
[1:07:38] right? Once people know that you exists
[1:07:42] and you are good at this and you keep showing that you are good
[1:07:44] at it, they're gonna find their way to you.
[1:07:46] So the difficult thing is that waiting period.
[1:07:49] That's six months of waiting. Now, one year of waiting.
[1:07:52] That is where it is hard and that is where you need to stay
[1:07:56] focused. The and that I think that's the
[1:07:59] most difficult part for people when there's nothing going on,
[1:08:02] when there's silence, you know, when you are waiting, you're
[1:08:07] waiting for that next call, that next gig, that next client down,
[1:08:12] next seal. So about someone I've been
[1:08:14] talking to recently that is just like that.
[1:08:17] So they sell their products and then one would they are making a
[1:08:20] lot of seals and the good of flu.
[1:08:21] We can like dead silent, no seal at all.
[1:08:26] And I asked them, you made so last week, right?
[1:08:31] And you are good at what you will like it.
[1:08:33] What makes you think they're not going to come back again?
[1:08:36] Maybe it's this week. There are a lot of reasons that
[1:08:38] accounted for that. Maybe it's yeah, Brooke, maybe
[1:08:42] they've not heard of you. Just keep doing what you do to
[1:08:45] get yourself in the front of people.
[1:08:48] And if you are selling something of value, they always find their
[1:08:52] way back to you is you just need to be able to go through that
[1:08:55] period of silence. And that's a difficult part for
[1:08:57] a lot of people. So myself, yeah, that's what I
[1:08:59] do. I think I'm, I'm very strong
[1:09:01] mentally, you know, so I'm able to go through that and come back
[1:09:04] and skated, you know? Yeah.
[1:09:06] And yeah, I'll sleep over it. I'll, I'll, I, I, I won't talk
[1:09:12] to people often, but when I do, it's relieves me a bit.
[1:09:17] You know, distract myself from movies and all that thing.
[1:09:20] Eventually you're fine, but you come back to it again.
[1:09:22] Eventually when things are going right, you come back to it.
[1:09:25] So it doesn't to get used to coming back to the office.
[1:09:27] Yeah, you clearly, like I said, a very brilliant young man and
[1:09:32] your journey has been interesting.
[1:09:35] I really hope you keep your eye on the goal.
[1:09:38] You find a community and then you just keep going, right?
[1:09:42] I don't see some synergy with what you're doing and declare
[1:09:46] you. Yeah, just probably see how we
[1:09:49] can work together definitely with the podcast.
[1:09:52] Definitely. And yeah, thanks for making the
[1:09:55] time. Thanks for having the
[1:09:57] discussion. Yeah, all right, community.
[1:10:00] Last, make conversation with Clinton and quick conversation.
[1:10:04] The monetary means just build something, you do it.

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