Happy Birthday to me, 2025

Its been a while since I gave a life update

I write this on the 14th of February in the Koforidua mountains. It’s my birthday tomorrow and I feel like I’m drowning in everything that comes my way. A deep sense of overwhelming washes over me casually. I have noticed that this has been the norm for a whole now and I have gotten used to it. I fear that I am losing my light

Lucia

Since I made the firm decision to go ahead with my bakery in December 2024, there have been a mountain of roadblocks and hurdles that I have had to fight through and maneuver. There were definitely good days, but there were as many days that felt utterly bad. Days I feel totally defeated. If you asked me how I am able to carry on I honestly would not be able to answer you because I really pull from a force that is beyond me in every sense of the idea.

When I started this I had planned to get all done and officially open on the 31st of January, which at the time was perfectly plausible to me but the universe had it’s own plans for me.

Baking

I have been working with a chef and before I opened, I sent samples out to people on three separate occasions for free.

The first time proved to be way more stressful than I had anticipated and for all the reasons I felt was wrong at the time. The texture was very far from what I was expecting from my chef. People didn’t complain about the texture and I had to explain to everyone that it was rushed work so this isn’t the best work but everyone would be nice and welcoming, which bothered me immensely. With the second sample distribution, the rolls had a tough exterior. My friend Ama mentioned it was chewy, which I loved because that was the most practical advice I could’ve gotten. I also noticed that when she was trying it out, her first instinct was to use a fork to eat it and that had piqued my interest and that was a great pointer to focus on the texture.

The third time was a mix of the first and second time. That was when I decided to step in myself and see what exactly was going wrong. My immediate question was how do you know what the temperature is in the oven? The answer I received was about eyeballing it. This filled me with discontent. Something I say in my mind all the time when I have to work with something that requires a process is if you can’d have it down to a science then do you really understand it?

The first step was to get an oven thermometer and play around with the climate control in the oven. Next was to learn what well kneaded dough is. Immersed myself fully into the process from start to finish, making notes as I go: Window pane tests, yeast amount comparisons, how the baking tray affects the outcome of the rolls, etc. The outcome was a thing of pride and beauty. That led to this tweet:

so last week I took a stab at making cinnamon rolls for my bakery @Made_By_Lucia and I must say I impress myself sometimes. ran out of cream cheese after I was to add topping but it was pretty good. steady preparation to starting on the 31st pic.twitter.com/w2lDWDww7O

— Desmond Sofua (@desmondsofua) January 19, 2025

Dealing with high standards

There’s a quote I remember hearing a lot on YFM when I was younger and would listen to the radio:

If it happens once it’s happenstance. Twice, it’s coincidence. Three times means it’s meant to be

I like to move with this notion a lot and it’s could also be built on top of Ian’ Fleming’s quote that says:

Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action

I avoided doing this for the longest because I have proven to be a bit of a difficult person to work with sometimes. I tend to set a high bar for myself when it comes to anything I do. Whenever I have to work hand-in-hand with someone who does not see that putting out your best at all times is needed, I would feel like I have been backed in to a corner, the kind that prevents me from fully expressing myself and when that gets pent up I would alienate myself from the people in question. It took me quite a while to accept this trait of mine and by accepting it, led to the beginning of change for me. While studying writing, Harry Dry utters the words:

Your standards are your work

David Perell also mentions how he was with a mentor of his and this was an excerpt of the conversation between him and the mentor in question:

David, there’s two things that if you do, you will be insanely successful. he said the first thing is to learn how to have a high quality bar. The second thing to never let the high quality bar fall. And he said that sounds so simple and we’re sitting at lunch right now and you’re like yeah yeah yeah and he says No, it’s going to be hard. there’s gonna be people who are angry, there’s gonna be people who are anxious, there’s going to be people who are pissed off, there will be people who stop working with you because of this. but if you have a high quality bar and you maintain it, great things will happen for you

Hearing this filled me with so much reassurance as I do not have anyone around me that would say these things to me. Figuring it all out for yourself can be rather exhausting because at the end of the day, no one can handle your execution better than you.

Joel’s Birthday Celebration

On the 26th was the birthday celebration for Joel Anaman . A private event. It was a rather enjoyable experience. I got to meet Nii who helped a lot in steeling my resolve in my long-term career decisions. I always moved with the assumption that I had some sort of problem when it comes to communication and Joel let me know I didn’t have one. Which was rather refreshing to hear, coming from someone I look up to.

During the event, the mic would go around and everyone had to talk about how they came to know Joel and I noticed a lot of people would talk about career help. This struck me as odd. Is it that no one desires to know the man himself? Before Joel and I ever spoke I was told about how he would call you at odd hours and shoot ideas at you and how exhausting that could get. This was rather curious to me because that’s really what I do. The only difference is I have to shoot my ideas at myself because I had no one around me to do that with. That’s when I knew I really needed to meet this person and as true as they come, we would have calls at dawn about ideas.

Joel made me understand that I’m not bad at something I’m just new to it. If you feel like a part of you is preventing you from getting what you need to get done done, that part of you needs to die for what you need to take it’s place. How bad do you want it?

Movement

When I started this I was crashing at a friend’s, mostly on the couch. The routine was to wake up at 7AM, do some home workouts and move to Vida e Caffe to work. This was very intentional because I plan on opening up a physical shop so observing how Vida e Caffe runs their operations a different branches provided a ton of insight

Color

One huge question I had an incredibly tough time answering was what color to use. I liked red for the color for a lot of reasons of which some are:

• It speaks of love and compassion
• Works great for contrast with food
• It just felt right to me

I asked feedback from people and only one person liked the red. This bothered me so much because I felt like since the people are going to be consuming it, they should know what they want and like and therefore, I should just go along with what they’re saying. This took me more than a week to decide on. I had to fall on outside inspiration for this. Picked up the book The Lean Startup and clarity came as clear as day. I decided to go with red. Though I did tweak the shade of red a bit to be calmer. I sent out flyers of this and they were all positive ones. Validation acquiredAs Ogilvy said:

Rules are for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men.

Packaging

The hurdles were crazy I’ll say that much. I started out by doing extensive research on paper box packaging and my focus was on something that introduces itself to the consumer. The color being red was one touch. The shape of the box was another. An statement space behind the box was something I felt would be a playful touch to it. [This particular piece I am beginning to question though]. The bottom of the box has a QR code that leads to something new every month. This was an implementation that was added to award curiosity. Nobody looks under a box so if you happen to, hooray, a surprise awaits

After getting the boxes I realized a number of things that were wrong with this box design

• Stacking them on top of each other was not the best idea because of the shape
• Closing the box was difficult. (This was the fault of the die board execution)
• The sides of the box kept being pushed outwards
• The printing was not clean
• The die cutting process was done inaccurately and the whole design was shifted to the right even though I had accounted for this and added bleed

One important thing I learned during my time at NewComma is never trust the user to know what to do. Constraints are always helpful in the long run. Me thinking adding bleed to account for the shift would be okay was very wrong. What they decided to do with the bleed was position the cutting all the way to the right which is really hilarious when I think about it.

I am currently in the process of redesigning the box.

Making Content

As YC representative Dalton & Michael would say, Content is King. In order for people to patronize that you’re selling you need to be able to show what it is you’re selling. Naturally you would need to be able to feed them with more and more content in order to increase validity. That should go along with social proof as well. Having to work on all the process all on my own: sales, marketing, financing, delivery, packaging, baking and all other responsibilities of a sole founder, it gets rather overwhelming having to add content creation to the mix, regarding how big of a task that is on it’s own. Knowing myself I would not be satisfied with subpar work and switching roles in the thick of the mission has proved rather coupling.

At the time of writing this, there have been 3 tries at shooting content. The first time was at my place at Santeo, which didn’t go so well. Terrible lighting and such but I learned quite a lot there. The second time was with my chef. The lighting was bad there as well and the environment was rather less than ideal. The process at the time was rather overwhelming. The third time was done all the way in Koforidua. That failed because I was working with a vegan recipe since I was in a vegan household. The idea was to supplement the absence of an egg with yeast and ended with bad advice and adding way too much yeast. I did get some shots in there though which was a lot of learning. At that point I felt totally and utterly defeated. Who comforts the comforter?

I am back at it though. Each time I made an attempt, there were tons of stuff to learn from and I plan to do this again and again until I get it right.

Social Media

Posting on social media has proved to be the most difficult task of all so far. I have every desire to post about it but here lies the case where I do not have the kind of content I need to do that. This causes quite the headache as it feels like I have nothing to push and words barely do justice when it comes to food. A picture is worth a thousand words after all. When it comes to social media management, I have every intention of hiring someone to do the job. Something I learn in the Silicon Valley show is you may be a genius but that doesn’t mean you have to know how to perform every single task. Leave what the other team is good at for them to handle. Your job is to guide the direction. Leave the execution to the experts. So for anyone who sees this and knows someone good enough for the job, please reach out to me personally or via email mrsofua@gmail.com.

Godsent Motivation

Shavliel and I went to see Brent this week. There were friends of his hanging around and I struck a conversation with one of them. Turns out he was a chef – Chef Kwafo. He’s been doing it for 8 years now. Wow. One of the things that fills me with complete awe is people who find something they really want to do and completely stick to it no matter what the weather. That is someone I am trusting with execution no questions asked. That was super impressive. Turns out he’s friends with Barnabas Nomo, a role model of mine. Small world

Two days later, as I’m ready to head out to the Volta Region, a snapchat notification appears. Chef Kwafo wants to be your friend. Curious action. I proceed to add him back. He replies to my story where I posted my bakery flyer. Apparently he had seen the tweet I had referenced above and didn’t think he would be meeting the person behind that. That was a moment of insane motivation. For someone I find impressive to give me props was quite flattering. That came at the perfect moment. I was feeling totally and utterly defeated the day before because of the third failed attempt at making content. Thank you Chef Kwafo for that. He was also the first person to figure out that Lucia was my mom’s name. Serious respect. I do hope I get to work with him as time goes on.

Father

This year I bury my father. This fact is on a need-to-know basis because of how my emotions are interpreted by people. I try to be as direct as I possibly can. He was an absent father and because of that I barely had a relationship with the man. The fact that I do not feel the kind of sadness I should be feeling fills me with guilt sometimes and that makes me wonder if I am losing my emotional features.

Why am I talking about this here? A couple of reasons. Firstly, I decided to treat everything I do as a diary entry. The audience comes second. That’s how I get to truly put out my best work because it is true to me. Second, I like to write about real life. People are dealing with real life situations and that affects their output on the world. I am an advocate of mental health and men’s mental health especially. Men are not regarded as emotional beings and are expected to take anything that comes to them as is and absorb it like that is their function. That is a silly connotation that I do not condone. When I talk about real life issues I speak for all men. People don’t have it all figured out and just because it’s not being talked about doesn’t give you the avenue to treat them like they solely exist for your entertainment.

I have been told severally about how I can act cold and having to explain that I am not made of stone seems to do more harm than good in most cases. Having the kind of life where making hard decisions is all that you have been known to do, placing me in situations where I have to make such decisions comes without hesitation. I do not enjoy it but it just happens that that’s what’s been handed to me.

RIP David Sofua. You did your best with what you were given in life and I respect it.

Engineering

My engineering life has been on hold since I started on the bakery. Running around managing the business has taken up a huge chunk of my attention and energy. In all honesty, I miss being able to just sit in front of my desk and a controlled environment and create whatever is my head. Engineering and design will always be my first love. I do try to put that in my current bakery implementation when and where I can. Of course, brevity is the key to the sauce.

Romantic Relationships

Nonexistent. Maybe another day

Personal Relationships

I was hanging out with a close friend where I was explaining to him my dilemma with having to buy out someone I was working with. Essentially trading bad human labor with a machine for efficiency sake. I was told sarcastically Do something that’s not for yourself for a change?. This was a rather hurtful thing to hear from someone I held rather close to my heart. From what I know about the actions I take, the people who matter to me take priority and that got me really thinking about how my actions are perceived. It was later explained to me that that statement came was an action of projection but I can’t seem to shake off that feeling. I love my friends and they have my heart in all matters. But having my heart strings pulled like that felt like a thing of manipulation and figuring out how to process it has been lingering in my mind for forever now. As I mentioned earlier, I am not made of stone. Life made me make difficult decisions off the bat and being put in the kind of situation where I have to make a difficult decision hurts a lot. But I have to do it anyway. No one is going to make the decision for me. Doing it for me from now onwards.