Konnected Minds Podcast

He started as a BlackBerry campus ambassador. No salary. No guarantee. Just a free phone and a chance to serve.

Fifteen years later, they made him CEO of Red Africa.

Ayodeji Razaq is one of Africa's most quietly powerful business minds - co-founder of The People Company, CEO of Red Africa, and a man who has spent his entire career doing something most people refuse to do: letting himself be used.

In this episode, Ayodeji breaks down the uncomfortable truths about entrepreneurship, employment, money, leadership, and what it actually takes to build something that lasts in Africa - without holding anything back.

What we cover:

This is not the regular success story. This is the real one.

🎟️ Konnected MInds Live Kumasi, Sept 9th. https://www.konnectedmindslive.com/

Guest: Ayodeji Razaq

IG: https://www.instagram.com/dejizaq/

Host: Derrick Abaitey

IG: https://www.instagram.com/derrick.abaitey

YT: https://www.youtube.com/@DerrickAbaitey

Join Konnected Academy: https://www.triibe.io/konnected-academy

🎟️ Konnected MInds Live Kumasi, Sept 9th. https://www.konnectedmindslive.com/

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From selling phone cases without owning a phone to building multiple income streams while still in school, and why the brutal truth about making money is that you need to be trusted because coming by money is a very difficult thing to do and if somebody has set up a business and you want to start yours by feeding from theirs you need to build that kind of trust for somebody to willingly give you something to go and sell and bring the capital back which is exactly how the journey started taking stock from someone's shop selling it and returning the profit before moving into iPhones where a campus friend gave one iPhone 7 on trust and even though the profit was just 300 cedis because of not knowing how to navigate the phone it was enough to keep moving forward, the young entrepreneur who manages a mother's fashion school handling sales marketing and social media analytics while still carrying phone cases in the bag and in the car ready to sell at any moment because at every point in your life the money you started with might not be enough to carry you to the top so you need to grow and even in this studio there are phone cases ready to go because leaving an imprint in someone's mind matters even if they don't buy today, the determination and mindset shift that is the number one skill people need to learn if they want to grow their money or make money because if you want to make money and you don't have a particular mindset towards making money you're still going to be there stuck in the same place watching businesses doing well on the streets but preferring to be under air condition taking home 500 cedis a month rather than being in the scorching sun taking home 500 cedis profit a day, the social status trap that keeps people from entrepreneurship where having a university degree or master's or PhD makes people think selling coconuts means you failed life when actually you're making more money than them but they fail to look at the aftermath and only see the outside which is why coconut sellers around 37 and parliament house wear suits to work purely because of social status and packaging, the coconut seller in a suit with beautiful makeup dressed neatly selling coconuts creating a higher probability that customers choose them over others because packaging puts you out there and some coconuts are served in nice bottles with straws making customers upset when their regular seller doesn't have a straw increasing the probability they move to the next person who does, the 30 Seats platform that focuses on savings because too many people misuse their money spending on watchy egg willy salad plantain and sausage all protein all at once knowing they don't have money for the next day teaching people to cut down spending and expenses and talking highly against betting because the society is so full of itself tied to social abilities and people bet with money they don't have sliding into DMs telling stories about what they're going through from betting which is so addictive they cannot stop, the 30 Seats Challenge that started first January where you save one cedi the first day two cedis the second day three cedis the third day adding one cedi each following day so by the end of January you have saved 496 cedis which is enough to start a business and people have the misconception that you save one cedi every day but that's not how you get to 66,000 cedis by the end of the year.

Host: Derrick Abaitey

From importing surgical masks during COVID to building multiple businesses across continents, and why the brutal truth about getting unstuck is that you can't just sit there like a pigeon waiting for someone to put you on because there's something you can put yourself on when you first stand up trust your guts and go out and surround yourself with sharks who are successful people with problems that need solving and every person on earth has a problem even God has issues trying to make children on earth not sin which is why preachers arise providing solutions to God's problems and that's why He blesses them, the young entrepreneur who discovered that to import a whole box of surgical masks during COVID cost less than a dollar but one single mask was selling for 20 cedis in Ghana proving the system does not support local produce in any sector whether health or agriculture because local products are always more expensive than imported ones, the businessman who brought masks into Ghana and watched the price drop from 20 cedis to 5 cedis then 2 cedis then 1 cedi while still making profit showing how predatory pricing works when someone enters the market with better connections and fair pricing, the founder of Mahema and Viet Star brands who considers himself a custodian of people's money because people give him money to do business with them for them and he receives calls from people in Ghana and beyond across Africa in Congo who come with their fathers wanting to do business but don't know what to do with their money, the shock who treats clients and partners fairly making all the people who have investments in his company multi millionaires who have got a lot of money and are very successful but still have problems because it is never enough for humans we need more which translates to the local dialect as even raising the sea, the wisdom that when you find that shock and you find his problem trust me it works because you're already selling and it is working when you don't have anybody younger than you who has given you money because you need to know what you're going to do with that, the advice to people who feel stuck and don't know what to do which means you don't have any source of income you don't have a job you don't even have anything like you're just there like a pigeon saying Charlie put me on put me on put me on when there's something you can put yourself on, the strategy that somebody must know somebody definitely somebody knows somebody so go step up try and build connections and when you meet a shock find out their problem personal problem or business problem because there's no successful person on this planet that doesn't have a problem, the approach to not quickly just jump on the shock saying hello my name is but instead take your time it may take you being like a month two three months because people like him when he meets new people he takes time before he gets them in and it mostly they never even come because they haven't given him a solution to something that he's facing, the value you need to bring to the shock you meet so when you get out there in search of something for yourself and you get the opportunity one time pick and ask of their problems or just try and find out in conversation what the challenge is even if you don't have the solution because once you hear the challenge your action and attempt in trying to help them will already win their trust, the relationship building where you nature it saying hello hi were you able to get this done because trust me we need each other you need someone's shoulders to stand on someone needs to hold your hands someone needs to pull you and those people they need to know the value of why they're pulling you.

From losing everything in three months to understanding why Ghana's rice business is controlled by cartels, and why the brutal truth about entrepreneurship is that when you lose over a million dollars because you trusted the wrong people and tried to help Ghanaians by giving them rice on credit thinking anyone could be a rice seller and make money, you realize you were just being robbed by sharks who knew exactly how to solve your problem of needing people to sell your rice but ended up biting you instead leaving you with no revenue no recovery rice gone company in debt and yourself in debt, the young entrepreneur who brought goods and met new people who said they were businessmen but they were actually the bad sharks who took advantage of his desire to work with Ghanaians and supply rice to anyone who wanted to sell, the business owner who thought a credit based system was a good idea where people could just sell make money bring it come take another one until he encountered dishonesty everywhere and all the rice and all the things went down in just three months losing everything, the reality that taking legal proceedings sounds good until you face Ghana's legal system which deserves much respect but is very slow and frustrating and you need to spend a lot of money to go for what you want, the recovery of only about 5% of what was lost with some people still being pursued by authorities to this day since 2022 for something that happened long ago while he has already moved on, the affliction that brought him back to his senses making him humble and going back to his roots where he began saying no I would rise but now I have the experiences, the year it took to plan the comeback because he didn't just want to jump back in after knowing how to import something and knowing the real buyers and the real people who want to do real business, the phone call to his suppliers over there where he had maintained good relationships proving that your network matters when you fall, the dishonesty in the country that every entrepreneur in Ghana knows making it so difficult to trust people that you're working with, the mentality that employees think they could build a house inside your business when they don't even know how you made it and the first thing that comes to an average Ghanaian person's mind when given an opportunity in that business field is steal, the man in Kumasi at Lancaster having breakfast when someone approached talking about how his employees put him in debt of about half a million cedis because they said they were paying the taxes but were not paying it and there were letters from GRA, the three minute conversation where another man joined in somewhere in Tema with the same story about employees killing his business proving this is endemic in the country, the shirt shop with a sign saying employees needed because the owner had sacked all of them for the same thing, the past five years where out of all the new businesses created maybe only 10% are left and 90% have gone out with one of the main factors being the people we work with, the philosophy brought up in homes that says a successful person is probably an occultist making people think whenever they get the chance to work with a successful person the first thing is hurry up and get out grab what you can and exit, the first year of doing business in Ghana where he sacked about 13 people and had people in his construction business stealing cement and being sold, the cement being kept in the bush behind the studio when they were building because there are buyers who will buy stolen goods, the comment that says oh it's because you don't pay them well when actually the price is set and they come and mention their price and you pay them so why are they still stealing.

Host: Derrick Abaitey

From losing over a million dollars in a rice business gone wrong to understanding the brutal reality of predatory pricing and foreign dominance in Ghana's food import sector, and why the harsh truth about entering the rice business is that you can't just walk in with a hundred thousand dollars thinking it's easy money because the moment you show up with your shipment the established players who own 12 brands each will scrub their prices down to cost price and even below just to frustrate you out of the market selling rice at 200 cedis when it's impossible unless they didn't pay duty or got the rice for free, the entrepreneur who faces predatory pricing where competitors intentionally lose money just to keep new players out of the market cutting prices so low that first time importers are forced to sell below cost and lose their capital before eventually quitting the business allowing the big players to raise prices again and recover everything they lost kicking you out, the business owner who warns that 80% of rice importers in Ghana are foreigners from the Middle East India and Lebanon creating a serious concern about food security when the country's food supply of rice sugar and other imports are mainly in the hands of foreigners not because they're not helping the economy or providing jobs but because no Ghanaian businessmen can survive in an environment where the people in the companies are robbing Ghanaians themselves, the realization that these foreign business owners have been here for generations and actually have Ghanaian passports and speak Twi so fluently that if you don't see them and only hear them on the microphone you might think it's a Ghanaian speaking proving how deeply rooted they are in the system, the imported rice versus locally produced rice debate where imported rice is cheaper than locally produced rice because the cost of production in Ghana is so high and all borne by the farmer while in other countries the government provides machinery fertilizers tractors and combined harvesters for free as grants supporting their agribusiness, the farmer in Ghana who has to pay for the tractor buy gasoline rent the combined harvester plow the floor and bear all those costs alone ending up with a product that's not even as fine but still highly priced compared to imported rice making it impossible for any rational Ghanaian consumer to choose local when there's Ghanaian rice at an exhibition selling for 450 cedis while imported rice is way less, the thought of growing rice in Ghana that died after research showed it would result in losses because government promises to help the agri sector never come and friends who own farms in Volta region get no help and have to call for assistance just to sell their rice, the shocking data that the entire rice harvested in Ghana is not enough to feed the people of Greater Accra for two weeks yet people still complain about not having buyers because it's not about demand it's about pricing since farmers spent a lot of money to produce and are suffering, the solution that would affect a lot of importers but could work if the government pushes an agenda for 70% consumption of local produce and 30% importation but only if the government also supports the farmers because otherwise importers would just quit and switch to farming to gain from government support, the threat to the economy when the people who control how much food comes into Ghana are foreigners who are helping the economy yes but building theirs even better sending all the money back to their homes creating a situation where if they decide they're done and leave Ghana will go hungry.

Host: Derrick Abaitey