Most service businesses don’t lose money in one big leak. They lose it in the gaps between tools. Client conversations sit in WhatsApp. Invoices sit in Gmail. Files are in Drive, the tracker is in a spreadsheet called v3_final_FINAL.xlsx, and the meeting notes are… somewhere. Every switch between tools costs time. Every missed message or late invoice costs money. In this live webinar, The Back Office Is Bleeding, we’ll help you: → Find exactly where your business is losing time and money → Decide what to fix first → Leave with a 7-day reset plan you can start straight away It’s built for founders, agencies and service teams. Bring one active client or project, and we’ll work through it together, live. 🗓 Saturday, 31 October 2026 🕚 11:00 AM GMT · Online 🔗 Register at strideos.cloud/events We built Stride to close those gaps by putting projects, clients, documents, invoices and team chat in one workspace. This session is about the thinking behind it, and you can use it whatever tools you’re on today.

Your job title might be the least interesting thing about you. We’ve become very good at introducing ourselves with labels. Founder. Designer. Writer. Marketer. Consultant. Engineer. Useful shorthand. Terrible descriptions of human beings. Because your real value rarely fits neatly into the box on your LinkedIn profile. Maybe you’re the person who connects people who should know each other. Maybe you can turn a half-baked thought into something people can actually build. Maybe you know how to make strangers feel welcome. Maybe you’re ridiculously good at spotting what everyone else missed. Maybe you can teach. Cook. Listen. Organise. Tell stories. Make people laugh. Solve problems. Create energy in a room. None of those may appear on your CV. They still have value. That’s the idea behind Creative Chaos: The Exchange. On October 10, we’re experimenting with a different kind of room. No obsessing over titles. No measuring people by follower counts. No pretending that money is the only thing worth exchanging. Instead, you arrive with what you have: Skills. Ideas. Creativity. Time. Energy. Perspective. Connections. Solutions. And you discover what those things become when they collide with what someone else has. You might walk in thinking you have nothing to offer. I suspect that’s exactly the kind of person who should come. Because perhaps the question isn’t: “What do you do?” Perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong question. What can you offer? 📍 Jambo Spaces, Tse-Addo, Accra 📅 October 10 ⏰ Doors open 11AM Come curious. Come useful. Come without the elevator pitch. Who are you without your job title? Tell me in the comments. And if you want to experience Creative Chaos: The Exchange for yourself: Get your ticket here → crowdpen.co/chaos

Your grandmother ran a susu with zero apps, zero interest rates, and a 100% repayment rate. Most fintechs can't say that. This Saturday in Kumasi, we're unpacking what money looks like when community is the infrastructure. Creative Chaos Kumasi: The Money Edition. Who's pulling up? 👇

A founder opens WhatsApp at 7:12 a.m. There are already 14 messages waiting. “Should we approve this?” “Can we change the campaign?” “What do you think of this proposal?” “Should we move the meeting?” Nothing looks serious on its own. That’s the problem. The founder answers everything. A quick voice note here. A small correction there. A five-minute call that becomes forty minutes. By the end of the day, they’ve been busy solving problems. But the important work is still waiting. The team has learned something without anyone saying it out loud: Don’t make the final call. Ask the founder. It feels safer. The founder has become the company’s safety net. And because the net is always there, nobody learns how to walk without it. This usually starts with good intentions. The founder built the company from scratch. They know the customers. They understand the standards. They remember the mistakes that cost the business money. So they stay close. Too close. The team gets larger, but the decision-making stays in one person’s hands. The company looks bigger from the outside, but it still moves like a small business waiting for approval. That’s when presence becomes a problem. Your team doesn’t need to copy every preference you have. They need to understand the principles behind your decisions. “I don’t like this” doesn’t help much. “We don’t promise outcomes we can’t measure” gives people something they can use. That principle can travel without you. A growing company needs clear boundaries. What can people decide alone? What needs a second opinion? Which mistakes are affordable? Which risks need your attention? If those answers live only in your head, every decision will keep coming back to your head. You’re not supposed to vanish from the business. You still set the direction. You protect the standard. You handle the decisions that could change the company’s future. You just stop spending your best thinking on work your team should already understand. A company is ready to grow when it can carry your standards without requiring your constant supervision. I wrote about how founders can step back, build better judgment in their teams, and stop becoming the reason growth feels slow. Read the full article: buzzedison.com/insights What decision is your team still waiting for you to make?

I am so excited. It is about to go down. What started in Accra is about to travel across Africa. After more than three editions of Creative Chaos, we have proven something important: People are tired of sitting in rooms and being spoken at. They want to participate. They want to meet interesting people, test strange ideas, make things, exchange value and leave with stories they could not have experienced anywhere else. That is why Creative Chaos has no speakers. No panels. No long PowerPoint presentations. I get so tired of long panel discussions. I know you can relate. Creative chaos is chaotic but in a beautiful way. We design experiences that turn strangers into collaborators and ideas into action. Or at least make people just have fun, and let go of the rules. In 2026, we are taking that beautiful chaos to six cities: 📍 Kumasi — 29 August 📍 Accra — 5 September 📍 Lagos — 31 October 📍 Abuja — 7 November 📍 Nairobi — 28 November 📍 Kigali — 5 December This edition is about money. We are talking moneyyyyyyy. We are building a new kind of creative gathering for Africa, one shaped by participation, curiosity, play and the belief that creativity belongs to everyone. Kumasi begins with The Money Edition. We will explore money, value and opportunity through experiences you can enter, touch, question and help create. I’m excited. I’m also slightly terrified. That is usually how you know the idea is big enough. Six cities. One beautiful mess. If Creative Chaos is coming to your city, tell me what we absolutely must experience there. Tickets and partnership information: crowdpen.co/chaos If you will like to be part of the beautiful mess we are creating, my DM is always open.

When they ask me what team I am supporting today for the World Cup final

Most African founders don't fail because the idea was bad. They fail because they built too much, too early and based on assumptions nobody ever tested. I have watched it happen too many times. 18 months of building. 200,000 ghana cedis spent. A launch. Then silence. The customer they built for never actually wanted it. Tonight I'm running a 60-minute working session at Back to Basics in Accra on the one skill that prevents that story: Idea Validation & Market Proof. What I am going to attempt to cover : → How to find the riskiest assumption in your business, the one bet that, if wrong, breaks everything → How Paystack, mPharma tested their riskiest bet before writing real software → The 7 lean experiments that work in African markets. Mom Test, landing pages, pre-orders, concierge MVP, Wizard of Oz, letters of intent, single-channel tests → The Lean Experiment Canvas — six boxes that turn a vague hope into a falsifiable test → Your 7-day commitment — every founder leaves with one specific experiment to run this week This is not going to be another motivational speech. If you know me, you know I get tired of that. We're shipping experiments. 📍 Silver Star Tower — SB Incubator, Accra 🕠 Today, 30 April 2026 — 5:30 PM Bring a notepad. Bring your messiest idea. Leave with proof or a plan to find it. Hosted by @ja_ghana JA Ghana, @BoxplayV Boxplay Ventures and Stanbic Bank. If you can't make it, send one founder who needs it. What's the one assumption your business is currently betting on that you've never actually tested?