Segment: Rice Gone, Company in Debt, I'm in Debt - I Rose From Zero After Being Robbed Blind

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Recorded21 Apr 2026

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Show notes

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

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