From leaving home at 14 and never going back to building a business that gave her the voice nobody let her have growing up, and why the brutal truth about why some entrepreneurs push harder than others is that when you grow up without attention, without anyone listening to your problems, without parents telling you they're proud of you or that you're beautiful, the hunger to be seen and heard becomes the fuel that drives you to build something that forces the world to pay attention, the young girl who went to secondary school and never returned home because she craved freedom from a family that didn't know her well enough to understand who she really was, the mother who was against her moving to Accra because she thought it meant prostitution and doing men when the real issue was she never knew her daughter at all, the childhood of being scared of a very hard mother and having a soft father who wouldn't interfere creating a home where if you had a problem you kept it to yourself because there was nobody to talk to, the university years of packing her bags alone and traveling to campus by herself while watching other students arrive with parents and grandmothers and entire families when nobody came to visit her throughout her time there, the realization that the lack of attention from parents and the people she stayed with made her want to be alone but also created a deep desire to be seen and heard which became the foundation of her business, the pattern emerging across successful entrepreneurs where neglect and feeling like their opinion didn't matter in families created a drive to make money because money became the ultimate tool through which society respects people, the moving to Accra with no plan and a friend who never picked up the phone forcing her to stay with a total stranger for months while starting national service, the Apple shop job during service that turned toxic with men and women's stuff leading her to file for early completion after just seven months, the two years at home trying different things including working under someone in construction where she was waking up, going to work, spending 20 to 30 cedis daily on transportation and food without getting paid or learning anything, the day she cried at work and called her friend to say she was coming back home and never showed up to that job again, the guy from a previous workplace who came through for her during those two years at home but the relationship that was saving her eventually stopped saving her, the childhood trauma of carrying water on her head from age eight walking from 18 in Kumasi to Amakom market back and forth, selling food by the roadside, and going through so much that now when she's spending and overspending she tells herself leave it you've been through a lot, the pride of getting to where she is because nobody got her here except her and God when she never thought she would get to this point after doing so many things in pain and being neglected, the transformation from the child whose voice didn't matter to the woman the family now calls before making any decision because no decision goes through the family without passing through her first, the networking problem created by always keeping to herself and her two friends because growing up alone made her want to keep people out of her business even though she wants people to know her, the decision that if she becomes a parent she will show her kids how to love themselves, point to them, and make them her friend instead of making them afraid the way she was afraid of her mother.
Guest: Charity
Host: Derrick Abaitey