Segment: From No Business Name to International Brand - You Don't Need Perfection to Start

From defying her mother's wishes to leave university and pursue government work to building a thriving feminine hygiene business that ships to the US, Canada, UK, Germany, and Nigeria, and why the brutal truth about starting a business when you have nothing is that you don't need perfection, you don't need a physical shop, you don't need everything figured out because the young woman who started with no business name and bathed with AC water during her toughest days now runs an international brand that doctors recommend to their patients, the painful reality of being the child nobody listened to or understood growing up in a home where your voice didn't matter and being bullied without anyone sitting you down to hear your problems, the university years of feeling invisible and unheard that shaped a determination to create something meaningful on her own terms, the national service period searching for jobs that never came and the five to six years that could have been miserable if she had kept waiting for someone else to create opportunities for her, the moment after service when she moved in with friends and life got so tough they were bathing with water collected from the AC unit because they couldn't afford to fill their tanks in a house with illegal electrical connection, the realization that she hates discomfort so much it became the driving force that pushed her to build something of her own at her own pace, the mother who didn't want her working in shops or informal businesses because she wanted her daughter to wear suits and work the 9 to 5 government job that represented respectability when that path felt like suffocation, the father who understood and supported her vision even when her mother couldn't see it, the business that started without even a name because she was so focused on solving problems for women and creating freedom through feminine hygiene education that Africans are never taught at home, the first three weeks of selling 500 products and then hitting a wall where orders stopped coming but instead of quitting she sat down and asked how can I do this better, the decision to invest everything she made back into the business by reaching out to influencer Dorsey who charged 2,500 cedis for promotional posts, the 24 hours after Dorsey's first post that generated 25,000 cedis in sales proving the product and message resonated, the bold move of taking that same money and paying Dorsey for an entire month of promotion and then another month because she wasn't motivated by short term gains but by the vision of building an international brand, the thousands of sales that came through recommendations because she focused her first year not on making money but on getting her products in the minds and on the lips of people, the biggest problem being FDA approvals that prevent her from adding certain products even though pharmacies stock her items and doctors actively recommend patients come to her, the 2,000 orders in just three days during a sales period proving that online presence and trust can generate massive results without a physical shop, the reviews flooding in that make her so happy because she's fulfilling a purpose of educating women about feminine hygiene and seeing them get real results, the trip to China that finally allowed her to create the packaging she envisioned because she couldn't get what she wanted in Ghana and she wanted something that would entice eyes and not be thrown away when it arrived in people's homes, the wisdom that you don't need to get everything at once and she likes going through the process without rushing on anyone else's timeline, the refusal to compare herself to competitors opening big shops because her path is different and her business can do well without a shop if she shows up consistently and authentically. Guest: Femlas Founder Host: Derrick Abaitey