By: Franklin ASARE-DONKOH
A Ghanaian businessman and philanthropist, Oseadeeyo Nana Kumi Kodie who has dedicated his life to improving the lives of those shares his inspirational story to inspire others to give back and make a positive impact in their own way.
According to him, he made savings from the menial jobs he undertook to enable him to set up a business as well as to buy himself kinds of stuff without going ask help from his parents or friends.
Born in 1988 in the Ashanti Region of Ghana, the business mogul who is known in private life as Mr. Dennis Kumi Appiah grew up in a humble household with other siblings. Despite the challenges of every home, his parents instilled in him the importance of hard work and perseverance, values that would guide him throughout his life.
Dennis started his entrepreneurial journey back in 2010 when he founded Dadaba Group. At the start of the journey, many people thought that the name for the group which literally translates into English to mean ‘rich man’s son’ got many people to speculate that he was from a rich home and that he was born with a golden spoon in his mouth.
According to the multiple award-winning philanthropist, that was not true. In a recent post he made, Nana Kumi Kodie I disclosed that he had to work hard to become who he is today.
He explained that, even though he was not from a too-poor home, he still did some menial jobs against the will of his father to get money for himself and also create the needed connections with big personalities who had great business acumen back in the day.
Below is the full post he made about his journey to riches, a young philanthropist.
“I was born in Akim Oda over some decades ago to my lovely parents who are strict and willing to get the best education for their children. As a kid, I was talented, skillful, and one of the best footballers in my neighbourhood but my dad’s work didn’t allow me to explore and exploit much in football, he got transferred to Sunyani and was given one of the big government bungalows so the whole family had to move to Sunyani, and that was the end of my football career.
It saddened me a lot. Oh yes, I could have been a professional footballer if I had continued but a change of environment halted my football ambitions.
Now in Sunyani as a small boy, I had to adapt to the bungalow life. There was a tennis court where business tycoons and top CEOs in Sunyani had formed a club to congregate and to play tennis, so one day I went there to watch them play, and in fact, I was very impressed seeing all those top guys.
So from that day, I never skipped any of their match days, I was too young though but I was very eager to get close to those top CEOs, so I started catching the balls when they leave the court for the players, and as a result of that they fell in love with me and later named me together with some boys as “catchers”. It got to a time when they started paying us the “Catchers”, and I got the opportunity to build links with them.
When my dad heard that I was a catcher at the tennis court, he lost his cool and would beat me anytime I sneaked out to watch tennis, but that didn’t stop me. (After all, I was being paid to watch and catch tennis balls, I wasn’t stealing to go and watch tennis balls…lol).
Because of our commitment to the tennis sport, they later trained us the “catchers” to form their junior team, and once again, I became one of the best and most popular junior players in the club. (I have replicated what I did in Akim Oda as a popular footballer now in Sunyani as a famous tennis player).
The hustle life was in me. Don’t be afraid of change. My question to you is, how far can you go to achieve your purpose? Think about it.
Note that my core vision and eagerness to get close to those top CEOs wasn’t about playing tennis, I wanted to be like them as a CEO in the future, I modeled them, and they were nice-looking people with lots of cash in their deep pockets.
Also, note that I wasn’t spending the money I was being paid recklessly, I was saving much of it, and so as a young boy, I was able to buy almost anything a “dadaba “would buy, so friends started calling me” Dadaba (You now have an understanding of my name Dadaba right?).
A few years later, my dad was transferred again to Kyebi, and that is where I started my adult life, when I went to Kyebi, I already knew how to build relationships and how to associate with big men because I had already seen that in Sunyani.
Life in Kyebi and after Kyebi set the stage for the real making of Dadaba, stay turn for the rest of the story tomorrow. I have a meeting.”
