Entreprenuaship: The art and ache of building

There’s a spirit that wakes you from deep slumber and entreats you to make an awful decision; sometimes a crazy-almost-exciting-conditionally-fulfilling one. To chart uncharted paths, because your life would otherwise seem stuck.

Call it Entrepreneurship. We call it Entreprenuaship².
Entrepreneur /ˌɒntrəprəˈnɜː(r)/ A person who starts a new business, takes financial risks, and tries to make a profit… that’s for sane people.. Entreprenua /ˌɒntrəprəˈnuːa/ is the act of hopelessly indulging in Dumb Ways to Die. This time faster than you imagine. You’re spared only if you could. Here’s where I identify.

Cook the hell out of you. Stir it, severally. Taste it. Hate it. Cook another kind. Spit it out. Cook it once more. And then, fall hopelessly in love.

See?, how does the French meaning play out here? It misses it completely. So when I say entreprenuaship, you say, y3 nua nua³.

Now, let’s infest our lives with a canker that makes us insomniac, glued to laptops and screens, reading a thousand pages a day, fighting the urge to close our eyes or miss an opportunity; taking on risks my mother, Adwoa Agyapongmaa, would have prayed to the heavens over. Do it sheepishly amazed, in awe of your own heart’s bravado. Smile at yourself the next morning. Do it again on an empty stomach, not because you’re broke, but because something has got to be built, and it’s now or never.

It’s Tuesday, the team hasn’t shared feedback, but you already have a revision ready. You don’t stop building, lest you feel guilty for wasting time, for chitchatting with a man who simply wants to wait on you. You don’t stop even when there’s nothing left to build with. That’s the canker talking. You know this. You build anyway.

Google is generous with its meaning of entrepreneur. Clean, clinical, complete with a good posture. But the everyday Ghanaian speaks in exaggerated expressions on purpose and turns a concept into a picture, or a proverb, because some things only make sense first, then defined later. Dictionaries describe the mechanics. We describe the metabolism. It takes a blend of different recipes to actually arrive. We’re not merely cooking to be cooks. We’re indulging the version of us who thinks beyond today, who wants the ins and outs of a craft, and the nerve to proclaim its goodness to the rest of the world.

So it seems I built something. More clearly – The Eighth Butterfly: a creative agency and social enterprise redefining African brands through rich, bold storytelling, and staying close to the things that move the people we care about. Creative. Culture. Commerce. Through curated programmes including Nyansakuo, RefineryCX, the Vocal Employee Podcast, and Neighbours’ Santa, we’re trying to be the story worth telling.

But how does this woman suddenly become an entrepreneur? Sorry, entreprenua!

It never occurred to me that Adwoa Agyapongmaa, my mother, bestowed this grand, painstaking gift to trade. But oh, she did. For the longest time, it seemed she alone possessed the acumen I supposedly lacked. Let’s say…the egudeɛ will egude⁴, as nature has kindly transcended to me what the woman who birthed me possessed. 

The spirit was never a stranger. Maybe it had a name, a wrapper tied at the waist, a market stall, a voice that haggled and prayed in the same breath. Maybe I only borrowed her recklessness and called it a business plan.

It’s fitting, then, that Sarkodie and Beeztrap made “Amen” – a chant that’s carried me through this journey joyfully, because indeed, hwee anfa a, nframa b3fa⁵.

If this speaks to you; a creative with a vision, a young person hungry to build, an SME ready to grow, take the first step. Jump, fall, fail, and try all over again in full view. Say what you’re building, what isn’t working, what you need. Visibility, not perfection, is what turns a stumble into a signal and tells you which doors are worth keeping open. Continuous learning unlocks the many doors you didn’t think existed.

If playing it small were a person, it would look like humbling yourself to everybody’s opinion but your own. It would look like leading with fear instead of strategy. It would look like doomscrolling and never investing in yourself. Bet on yourself. Start now.

And so, here’s our why: African brands deserve storytelling as rich as the cultures they come from. A market woman’s instinct and a strategist’s discipline are not opposites, they’re the same inheritance, worn differently. And someone has to build the table before the rest of us can sit at it.

We Are The Story; mine, hers, yours, and whoever’s daring enough to build alongside us next.

We do digital marketing, strategy, event marketing and planning, campaign management, content creation, and influencer and talent management.

Reach us at www.the8thbutterfly.com or info@the8thbutterfly.com.

Let’s cook something!

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¹ Entreprenuaship: not a typo. A popular Ghanaian meme, originating from a movie in which a character mispronounces “-neur” as “nua” (Twi for “to cook”), which sparked jokes around the mix-up.

² Y3 nua nua (Twi): “we are cooking.”

³ The call-and-response : you say entreprenuaship, we say y3 nua nua, is the whole argument of this piece in six syllables.

⁴ Egudeɛ (Twi): property. Here, I use it to mean my mother left this gift to me as part of what I inherited after her passing.

⁵ Hwee anfa a, nframa b3fa: roughly, “if nothing works, the wind still blows.” A reassurance of determination, and to an extent grace, portrayed here by the wind (power of God)