Konnected Minds Podcast

From understanding that danger and opportunity are the same word in Japanese to learning why the brutal truth about entrepreneurship in Ghana is that you can have all the knowledge about risk management from working in top corporate jobs in Japan and South Africa managing billions in assets but nobody will listen to you when you say this is how you should consider risk because you need to let your life shine and people will see what is actually happening to you proving that actions speak louder than credentials, the former head of research and senior portfolio manager at Mazi asset management in South Africa who moved to Ghana in 2021 after working many years in corporate making very very good money because his aim was capital accumulation knowing he wanted to set up something back home but needed the financial foundation first, the investment expert who breaks down the rule of 72 explaining that if the interest rate is 24% you divide 72 by 24 to get 3 which means your money will double in three years if you invest in an asset giving you 24% per annum and reinvest the interest proving that when Ghana treasury bill rates were about 30% people could have doubled their money if they knew this but for lack of knowledge my people perish, the financial literacy advocate who reveals the mistake people make in Ghana is putting all their money in the bank thinking they have 2 million in savings when actually that deposit is a liability for the bank which uses your money to invest in Ghana government funds getting 25% to 30% return while the spread is so high they pay their workers and get their fault checks and you get peanuts from interest while they are living on your savings, the reality that banks bring pretty ladies when they want you to borrow money to buy your house because they understand the rule of 72 and know your debt will double after a season but when it's time for collection they bring much more men to collect their money and if you're not able to pay they take away your house and you are in trouble, the wisdom that if you go to his village in Bocancere people don't understand finance proving that financial education should be paramount in our country and everything is confined to Accra but we need to be more practical with the teaching of economics and finance, the careful expert who has rules and has to be careful whatever he says because it's not like he's recommending for anybody to go and buy this or that so privately he can talk to his friends saying this looks interesting you can do this but in a forum like this if you say this company is good somebody will go and buy then lose money and he's going to be in trouble like a false prophecy, the portfolio manager who admits you don't get it right all the time and just wants to be right maybe 51% or 52% of the time and his client will make money because if he buys Sony and Panasonic in consumer electronics but forgets about Samsung and Samsung goes high while Sony stays there he loses relatively and the client is going to be upset asking why didn't you buy Samsung why did you stay with Sony, the entrepreneur whose balance sheet now is about 12 million Ghana cedis but if he actually looks at the money invested it's about two million plus dollars because he worked for very good companies was paid very well and saved a lot of money so when he was coming back to Ghana his plan was ready with his business plan ready knowing what he was going to do with projected returns everything on his computer.

Host: Derrick Abaitey

She turned down $3 MILLION. She's raised $1.5M+ for African entrepreneurs. And she has some brutal truths about why YOU haven't been funded yet.

In this episode of Konnected Minds, Derrick Abaitey sits down with business consultant and Fundvesta founder Diane Akufo - the woman behind one of the highest investor success rates in Ghana (80%).

She breaks down EXACTLY how to:

✅ Build a pitch deck investors actually take seriously

✅ Make your business "investor-ready" (most Ghanaian businesses are NOT)

✅ Choose between equity, SAFE notes, and convertible loans

✅ Avoid the 60/40 trap that cost one founder his entire business

✅ Find investors — and what to send them BEFORE you reach out

✅ Use the AI tool that's reviewing pitch decks in seconds (Mangro AI)

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

Guest: Diane Akuffo

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

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 understanding why operating profit margin multiplied by asset turnover determines your return on assets to learning the brutal truth that in aquaculture you can start small with 20,000 cedis drying fish the traditional way but as you make money from the local market you upgrade your equipment step by step until you're exporting to Europe where they test for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that stick on fish skin when you smoke with firewood and might cause cancer which is why investing in modern drying machines matters even though it costs more upfront, the catfish farmer who explains that retailers have slim margins of 2% to 3% but high turnover of 2 to 4 times per year while companies like Fanuc making robots have very high margins but low turnover of 0.5 because they only produce maybe 50 robots per annum proving that scale is everything in the fish business and if you're doing a thousand fish you're going to be in trouble but if you're doing 10,000 tons or 50,000 tons you have leverage over feed companies like Raanan and Coppens because they know you're going to buy from them, the entrepreneur with a 100 kilowatt solar farm who admits he doesn't have the managerial resources to be thinking about making his own feed when companies can provide it and the real strategy to lower costs is just scale not trying to buy maize soybeans methionine and all those ingredients yourself when you should be focused on your fish and marketing marketing marketing, the aquaculture business owner who breaks down the regulatory maze you must navigate before starting a catfish farm in Ghana where the Fisheries Commission charges about 1,000 cedis for permits for both grow out and hatchery operations but the EPA charges around 20,000 cedis after doing environmental research and writing reports based on your capacity, the farmer who uses boreholes and has to deal with the Water Resources Commission which is in charge of all water bodies in Ghana and charges you for water you're drawing from the ground because you're using it to make money though they can't monitor all the farms using boreholes but his farm is right by the road so they can see the tanks and he has to comply, the wisdom that catfish farming is absolutely profitable and tilapia is very popular because any corner you turn in Ghana you see a Banco joint with tilapia and imagine the volume of tilapia we consume every day every week every month while catfish is just a niche but Nigerians have taught us you can actually grill catfish and people in the diaspora want dried catfish to make Banco joint and soup and Indians are waking up to the fact that it has a lot of meat and is not as bony as tilapia so the demand is actually growing, the strategic thinker who says you don't have to narrow yourself to Ghana as your market but think West Africa is my market and then the whole world is my market going through this step by step by step always doing your Japanese due diligence researching the background of where you want to have your catfish farm, the resirculating aquaculture system expert who uses RAS technology where water comes into the tank he feeds the fish they poop into the water and conventionally this water would be flushed out into gutters but in resirculating aquaculture he moves this water into a mechanical filter where the solids are filtered then it goes through a biological filter where any bacteria is eliminated, the minister for fisheries and aquaculture Mrs. Emilia Arthur who came and tried to streamline regulations because farmers had to deal with several regulators and it was really cumbersome and very expensive so they want the Fisheries Commission to be a one stop shop which is very welcome for the industry, the reality that if you're using Ghana Water Company your water bills are going to go up but you have to make a decision.

Host: Derrick Abaitey

From building a 100 kilowatt solar powered fish farm with greenhouses to understanding why most Ghanaian companies die with their founders, and why the brutal truth about entrepreneurship is that creating generational wealth means moving away from the one man show mentality where if you're not here the business cannot survive because knowledge and wisdom doesn't reside in only one person and you need to put structures in place that allow the company to thrive even when you're gone which is exactly what happened to great companies in Ghana set up by people from Makropom and other places where when the founder passed away the company died because maybe the structure wasn't great and somebody took over and said I'm not going to do this leaving workers jobless proving that without proper management and vision the business collapses with the founder, the entrepreneur who studied Japanese companies like Toyota Honda Suzuki Panasonic and Sony where one guy started it the structure was there his son became boss his grandson became boss and the family has interests but because the structure is solid the company survives for generations teaching that generational wealth creation is not just about making money but about building something that will take care of your wife your daughters your grandchildren and provide jobs for workers long after you're gone, the fish farmer who decided to breed fish in tanks under tunnels in greenhouses so workers can go in anytime even when it's raining and built his own hatchery for constant supply of fingerlings because selling raw fish makes some money but processing the fish drying it and packaging it with machines is where the margins are high, the businessman who brought in machines to dry and package fish but admits he made a mistake not securing offtakers before starting the project because he was not living in Ghana and didn't trust people to do the research for him and the industry is so fragmented with everybody claiming they're doing 1,000 catfish or 5,000 fish and there are so many lies on YouTube with people getting caught thinking if they buy 1,000 catfish they'll make this amount of money when it's not like that and unfortunately people are falling for such advice, the solar power advocate who saw that energy cost is very high in Ghana and in Asia where he worked in Japan electricity for industrial use is actually cheaper than electricity for households and Singapore is even cheaper but in Ghana it's not like that making it nearly impossible to grow industries with such high cost of power which is why he installed 100 kilowatt solar on his farm to power everything with ECG as backup and two generators as additional backups, the aquaponics dreamer who initially wanted fish water to flow through floating beds where you plant lettuce on styrofoam and the plants pick up the nitrates filtering the water so you don't waste a lot of water and only top up every three months while harvesting vegetables but decided Ghanaians don't eat vegetables so he converted everything into tanks and got stuck with waste water wondering what to do instead of flushing it into gutters like some people do, the innovator who built greenhouses and directed waste water into tanks to irrigate them now producing red and yellow bell peppers after doing tomatoes and cucumbers and buying three more greenhouses from a supplier that will be installed soon bringing the total to six greenhouses optimizing revenue by going back to competency and figuring out which vegetables to grow, the realization that an old friend told him something funny that a man going into retirement is more concerned about losing their money than their life and at this age how long is he going to live so what is he leaving behind for his wife his daughters his future grandchildren.

Host: Derrick Abaitey

From understanding that you cannot just wake up and become the MP for Kasoa or expect that buying Tom Tom for somebody will make you successful to learning the brutal truth that building wealth requires going through a process and buying shares then forgetting about them for one year to be amazed by the returns, and why the harsh reality about money is that if you're not disciplined you cannot grow money and you cannot keep money which is exactly why young people need to cut down expenses like the NSS personnel who sees their boss buying 100 cedis jollof and wants to do the same when the boss has worked hard to be where he is while the NSS person is barely making enough to survive let alone spend 100 cedis on lunch, the financial literacy educator who teaches people through 30 Seats Challenge that saving money is hard and the level of discipline required for a teenager to save money is something we don't speak about enough because when you're 17 years old working in London teaching piano for 18 pounds an hour on Wednesdays doing three or four hours but never saving any money it proves that even when money comes easy it's hard to save, the young man who got 30 pounds a week from the government just for going to school but never saved anything probably sending it back home for siblings proving that without discipline and a clear purpose money disappears into Mx90s trainers and immediate gratification, the reality that in Ghana temptation is everywhere because when you're sitting in a trotro with 500 cedis in your pocket the woman selling chewing gum comes around the one selling polo comes around almost pushing it down your nose to buy it and once you get off you see roadside sellers selling plantain and by the time you get home food is not ready so you buy from the seller right outside making it incredibly difficult to save, the wisdom that because it's hard not a lot of people do it and that's the reason why people remain poor because the way people become wealthy is by being disciplined and only 5% just 5% of your habit just being a little bit more disciplined than the average person and you are winning, the phone case seller who walks into the studio without a shop but carries what she sells wherever she goes proving you don't need a shop or big capital to start a business because when someone teaches her that struggling savers just need to be 5% above the average person it's imprinted in her mind and she goes home and works within that 5% showing the power of mindset shifts, the young entrepreneur who explains that people don't start businesses because they want to start big when actually you can provide a service wherever you find yourself and clock it making 4,000 cedis profit selling phone cases without needing a storefront or massive investment, the challenge of changing mindsets when you see someone like Japan Can Be who sold six of his properties and went through the process but a normal person watching the podcast will see it as he's trying to bluff instead of asking what can I give up to make it like him proving we need to let go of our old ways of doing things, the memory of mothers saving money in handkerchiefs inside headdresses before learning about microfinances and growing their savings methods showing that your mindset needs to be able to change things because we do not sit on only ourselves we learn from people around us, the nostalgia of lifting up grandma's blue sheet on her table to find coins never more than three cedis underneath because she didn't have a bank account and mobile money was not available in her time but that's how she saved her money teaching the foundation of discipline, the stepfather who saved his money in the ceiling working as a farmer and chemical seller being smart about hiding his cash until one day somebody went to steal it.

Host: Derrick Abaitey