The Person Under the Umbrella (And Everything Else)

If you're just joining, here's the short version of me: I build food brands, and I help other brands figure out who they are. Turns out those are the same skill, just pointed in two directions.Let me explain.

The food side

For 99 days, I stood under a yellow umbrella in Adekola,Ibadan selling jollof rice, letting the food speak before anything else did. I started documenting the journey early on, and on the second day of documenting, my audience gave it its name: Jollof Diaries. That story is documented in my ebook, Under the Yellow Umbrella, and it's the foundation everything else here is built on.

Alongside the street food, I also run Misola Cakes & Kitchen, the baking side of what I'm building. Different product but same instinct. Both live under Misola, the bigger house I'm building all of this toward.

The strategist

Here's the part people are sometimes surprised by, I didn't build this food brand by accident. Every decision, the 99 days under the umbrella, the way the story got documented and shared, the way the name itself came from the community rather than a boardroom was strategy. That's the same thinking I bring when I work with brands on positioning, story and how they earn trust with the people they're trying to reach. I'm actively working toward doing this as my full-time work, and this newsletter is part of that build, out loud, the same way I built the umbrella.

Why one newsletter for all of it

Building food brands and building brand strategy are one person, one way of thinking, applied in two directions. If you're here for the food, you'll see the strategy underneath it. If you're here for the strategy, the food brands are your case study, live and in progress.

What to expect going forward

The Jollof Diaries story, continued feeding days, what's next for the brand. Misola, when I'm ready to show you the rest of it. And the strategist side what I'm learning, what I'm building toward, including the very public goal of landing a brand strategy role before this year ends.

Same trust-before-the-ask way of doing things, now written down.

Glad to have you here.