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What the Norwegian Viking Row Can Teach Us About Building Things That Last.

Seun Tayo-Balogun
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What the Norwegian Viking Row Can Teach Us About Building Things That Last.

In December 2025, a Norwegian football fan named Ole Frøystad sat with a notepad in a bar and tried to invent a chant from scratch, for a team that hadn’t been to a World Cup in 27 years and had no guarantee it ever would again.

Ole Frøystad
Ole Frøystad

He remembered the sound of three stands trading a chant back and forth at a club match years earlier. He remembered Iceland’s Viking Clap, the slow-build handclap that swept across Europe in 2016. And he thought about what Norwegians had done long before football stadiums existed: they rowed. Oars out. Bodies back. Rhythm first, speed second.

So he built a chant around rowing.

Sit down. Reach forward. Pull back. Shout “Ro” — row — as a drum quickens underneath you.

The first time his supporters’ group tried it, in a March friendly against Switzerland, it landed flat. “It got some critiques that it looked silly,” one organizer admitted.

Nobody was rowing with much conviction. It looked less like a tradition and more like a few thousand people awkwardly pretending to paddle invisible boats.

Instead of scraping it, they fixed the form.

That’s often how durable ideas begin, not with applause, but with refinement.

By the time Norway reached the World Cup this summer—its first since 1998—the Viking Row wasn’t fan noise anymore. It was choreography. Tens of thousands of supporters dropping into rowing position in perfect unison, beginning with a whisper before rising into a roar.

IMAGE SOURCE - NBC

Within months, the chant had spread far beyond the stadium. It appeared in Times Square. Travellers performed it on a Boston escalator. Members of the Norwegian Parliament joined in after the Speaker struck the gavel. Even Brazilian fans were rowing before their own team faced Norway in the Round of 16.

Here’s the part worth sitting with.

None of that was tradition. It was barely six months old. It worked not because it was inherited, but because it was built from something recognisably Norwegian, then repeated until it felt inevitable. It didn’t borrow credibility from history. It earned credibility in public.

While supporters were inventing a tradition in the stands, another family was quietly completing one on the pitch.

Erling Haaland Image Credit: Time Magazine
Erling Haaland

Erling Haaland was two years old the last time Norway qualified for a World Cup. Until this summer, he had never watched his country play in one. Now he was leading them there.

His father, Alf-Inge Haaland, had made the journey first. Alfie represented Norway at the 1994 World Cup, the country’s tournament before a wait that stretched nearly three decades. It would also be the only World Cup of his career.

There’s a version of this story that makes everything about one tackle—the infamous Roy Keane incident. It’s dramatic. It’s memorable. But also incomplete.

Alf Inge Haaland 🇧🇻 World Cup FIFA 1994
Alf-Inge Haaland

Alfie played on for another two years. What ultimately ended his career wasn’t one collision but years of accumulated damage, a knee that had taken too much for too long before finally giving way.

The quieter version of the story is the truer one. And truer stories usually outlast dramatic ones. Before his career ended, Alfie got one World Cup.

His son, three decades later, got something different: the chance to lead Norway back to the tournament his father never returned to, scoring at a rate no one else has matched at this World Cup and captaining a generation that had grown up with no memory of Norway on football’s biggest stage.

Neither of them controlled the timing.

Alfie didn’t choose when his body would stop cooperating.

Erling didn’t choose when—or even if—Norway would qualify again.

What both controlled was what they did with the opportunity they were given. One played through pain long enough to leave everything he had on a World Cup pitch. The other arrived years later and finished a journey his country had been waiting decades to complete.

Put the two stories together and the lesson isn’t really about football. It’s about how the things we admire from a distance usually begin much smaller than they appear.

A chant that looked ridiculous before it became iconic.

A father whose career ended before the story felt complete.

A son who inherited none of the guarantees, only the opportunity to write the next chapter.

We often assume traditions are old because they feel permanent. They’re often simply ideas that survived their awkward beginnings.

The Viking Row wasn’t born with history behind it. It earned history through repetition. Erling Haaland didn’t inherit a World Cup legacy. He inherited unfinished business.

Both remind us of the same thing.

Every tradition people admire today once looked like somebody’s strange new idea. Every legacy we celebrate began as someone else’s uncertain first attempt.

The people who build things that last rarely wait for them to look established. They build them anyway. Badly at first, if they have to. Then they let time do what only time can do.

Tyler Perry Was Homeless and Rejected, But He Turned Every “No” into a Billion-Dollar Empire

VIctor Akinwale
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Tyler Perry Was Homeless and Rejected, But He Turned Every “No” into a Billion-Dollar Empire

Tyler Perry‘s story is one of the most unlikely in entertainment. Born into poverty in New Orleans and raised in a home marked by abuse, he had none of the usual advantages that open doors in Hollywood. No connections, no formal training, no safety net to fall back on if things went wrong. 

What he had instead was a pen, a handful of painful memories, and a stubbornness that refused to take silence for an answer.

Before he became one of the most influential figures in entertainment, Perry was simply a man with a story to tell. His childhood had been shaped by poverty, instability, and years of abuse. The wounds ran deep, and for a long time, he struggled to make sense of them. Everything began to change after watching an episode of Oprah Winfrey‘s talk show, where she encouraged viewers to write about their experiences as a path toward healing. Perry took that advice seriously. 

He began writing letters to himself, pouring years of pain onto paper. Those journal entries gradually evolved into stories, and those stories eventually became plays. Writing became his refuge long before it became his profession.

In 1992, Perry invested nearly everything he had into producing his first stage play, I Know I’ve Been Changed. He believed in its message of hope, forgiveness, and redemption. Unfortunately, almost no one came. The theatre seats remained painfully empty, and the production failed to recover the money he had invested.

Most people would have accepted that as a sign to move on. Perry didn’t.

Over the next six years, he rewrote the play, refined the performances, borrowed money, worked odd jobs, and staged it again and again. Each production was another gamble, another opportunity to lose money he could not afford to lose. The audiences remained disappointingly small. Bills piled up, debts mounted, and life became increasingly difficult. There were nights when he had nowhere to sleep except inside his car, carrying the weight of rejection while refusing to let go of the dream that refused to let go of him.

To an outsider, it looked like failure repeated over and over again. But something else was happening beneath the surface.

With every performance, Perry was becoming a better writer. He was learning his audience, sharpening his storytelling, strengthening his message, and discovering the voices that resonated most deeply with everyday people. Those years that appeared unproductive were quietly preparing him for the moment everything would change.

Then, in 1998, the breakthrough finally arrived.

A revised version of I Know I’ve Been Changed found its audience in Atlanta. Word spread rapidly through churches, families, and local communities. Crowds began filling theatres. People who had never before seen themselves represented on stage embraced Perry’s honest, emotional, and faith-filled storytelling. The very play that had once emptied theatres was now selling out night after night.

That success became the foundation for something much larger. Perry continued producing stage plays before expanding into film and television. Along the way, he introduced audiences to one of his most recognizable creations, Madea, the outspoken grandmother whose humour, wisdom, and tough love became a cultural phenomenon. While critics sometimes questioned his approach, millions of viewers found comfort, laughter, and hope in stories that reflected their own lives in ways Hollywood had often ignored.

His breakthrough in mainstream cinema came in 2005 with the release of Diary of a Mad Black Woman. The film was a commercial success, proving that the audience he had built through years of stage productions would follow his stories to the big screen. It marked the beginning of an extraordinary run of successful films and television projects that established him as one of Hollywood’s most influential storytellers.

Yet Perry’s greatest business decision happened behind the scenes. Rather than waiting for major studios to validate his work, he chose to finance many of his own productions. Instead of selling away ownership, he held tightly to the rights of his films, television shows, and characters. He understood something many creatives discover too late: creating something valuable is important, but owning it is transformational.

That commitment to ownership changed everything.

In 2006, Perry established a production company, now known as Tyler Perry Studios, to produce films and television projects on his own terms. What began as a bold step toward creative independence eventually expanded into a remarkable 330-acre studio complex on the site of the former Fort McPherson Army base. Today, it is one of the largest film and television production studios in the United States, complete with sound stages, standing sets, production facilities, and backlots that have hosted major productions.

The symbolism could hardly be more profound. A man who had once slept in his car because he could not afford a home had transformed a place once associated with military history into a thriving creative hub where stories are told on his own terms and opportunities are created for others.

His remarkable rise did not go unnoticed. In 2011, Forbes named Tyler Perry the highest-paid man in entertainment, recognizing the extraordinary success of a business model built on ownership, creative control, and a deep understanding of his audience. Years later, he would also join the ranks of billionaires, proving that persistence, purpose, and ownership can create lasting wealth.

Today, Perry writes, directs, produces, and often stars in his own projects. More importantly, he does so without waiting for permission. The same industry that repeatedly overlooked him now recognizes him as one of its most successful entrepreneurs because he built a table instead of waiting for an invitation to sit at someone else’s.

What We Can Learn 

Tyler Perry’s journey reminds us that rejection is often preparation in disguise. His years of empty theatres, financial struggles, and unanswered efforts were not wasted, they shaped his craft, strengthened his character, and prepared him for the success he would eventually carry. Sometimes, the delay is developing the very qualities your future requires.

His story also highlights the power of ownership. Perry didn’t just create stories; he built a platform where he could own his work and create opportunities for others. Talent may open doors, but long-term impact often comes from having the courage to build something that lasts.

If you are in a season where every door seems closed, don’t mistake rejection for the end of your story. Every “no” can become a stepping stone if you keep learning, growing, and showing up. The breakthrough you’re waiting for may simply be on the other side of your persistence.

The Brief Network: Inspiring Stories and Empowering Lessons. 

She Turned a Cultural Practice Into a Global Business Opportunity. Investors Responded With $7 Million

VIctor Akinwale
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She Turned a Cultural Practice Into a Global Business Opportunity. Investors Responded With $7 Million

For centuries, hair braiding has been more than a hairstyle. It is culture, identity, artistry, and tradition woven through generations across Africa and its diaspora.

Yet despite its cultural significance, the process has remained remarkably unchanged. It still demands hours of patience from clients, years of physical endurance from stylists, and countless hours of repetitive work that most people simply accept as part of the experience.

Yinka Ogunbiyi didn’t.

While attempting to braid her own hair for the first time during the COVID-19 lockdown, the Nigerian engineer spent four days completing the process. Instead of accepting the experience as inevitable, she asked a question that would reshape her career:

Why had no one engineered a better way to braid hair?

Today, that question has become HaloBraid, a robotics startup that has secured $7 million in seed funding and is working to modernize one of the world’s oldest beauty practices.

From Frustration to Innovation

Ogunbiyi had spent most of her life in braiding chairs, just like millions of women across Africa and its diaspora. Long appointments were simply part of life.

But her engineering background meant she looked at problems differently. With a Master’s degree in engineering, an MBA from Harvard University, and experience building a smart cooking appliance company, Ogunbiyi recognized braiding as an overlooked engineering challenge rather than an unavoidable routine.

That realization became the foundation of Halo.

The Opportunity Everyone Overlooked

Turning the idea into reality proved far more difficult than identifying the problem.

Ogunbiyi partnered with fellow Nigerian and Harvard graduate David Afolabi, and together they spent 18 months developing more than 450 prototypes while completing thousands of test braids, including on Ogunbiyi’s own hair. Along the way, they discovered that hair is one of the most difficult materials to manipulate mechanically, forcing the team to borrow techniques from disciplines ranging from materials science to inkjet printing before finally developing a device capable of handling textured hair safely and consistently.

The result was HaloBraid.

Rather than replacing professional braiders, the device works alongside them. Stylists begin each braid by hand, preserving their technique and artistry, while HaloBraid completes the repetitive length of the braid, reducing physical strain and helping complete the process up to five times faster.

As the team continued researching the industry, they realized they weren’t solving a niche problem, they had uncovered a massive global opportunity. Halo estimates that people collectively spend more than 8 billion hours braiding hair every year, while a survey of over 2,000 people found that 95 percent would braid their hair more often if the process simply took less time.

The burden extends beyond clients. Years of repetitive hand movements leave many professional braiders vulnerable to conditions such as carpal tunnel syndrome and arthritis. For decades, these challenges were accepted as an unavoidable part of the profession.

Ogunbiyi saw something different. Where others saw a centuries-old tradition, she saw an opportunity to improve the experience for both stylists and clients without compromising the artistry of braiding.

That opportunity was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. In 2025, Halo won the Harvard President’s Innovation Challenge, earning $75,000 in non-dilutive funding and validating the company’s vision. The momentum continued when the startup secured $7 million in seed funding, led by Seven Seven Six, with participation from AlleyCorp and Bling Capital. The investment will accelerate product development, expand manufacturing, and prepare HaloBraid for its commercial launch.

Building More Than a Product

For Ogunbiyi, HaloBraid is not the destination. It is the first step toward reimagining how textured hair is cared for, without replacing the skilled professionals whose creativity remains at the heart of the industry.

Her team is already developing technology capable of undoing braids, a process that often takes nearly as long as installing them.

The broader ambition is to build a complete technology platform for textured hair, a market serving hundreds of millions of people globally but one that has received relatively little engineering attention.

The Takeaway

Yinka Ogunbiyi’s story is a reminder that some of the world’s greatest business opportunities are often hidden inside everyday routines that people have stopped questioning.

She looked at a problem millions of people had accepted for generations, applied engineering to it, and built a solution that attracted millions of dollars in investment.

Sometimes, changing the future starts by asking one simple question: “Why does it still have to be done this way?”

The Brief Network: Inspiring Stories and Empowering Lessons.

Forbes Ranks the 10 Richest Creators on the Planet in 2026: What Aspiring Creators and Entrepreneurs Can Learn

VIctor Akinwale
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Forbes Ranks the 10 Richest Creators on the Planet in 2026: What Aspiring Creators and Entrepreneurs Can Learn

Forbes dropped its 2026 Top Creators list this week, and for the first time in the five years the ranking has existed, the 50 creators on it collectively crossed one billion dollars in annual earnings. The group brought in a combined $1.02 billion over the past year, up 20 percent from the year before and nearly double what they earned when the list first launched in 2022. The creator economy is no longer a side hustle. It is one of the most powerful wealth-generating forces of our time.

But beyond the dollar figures, what this list really reveals is a set of patterns. The people at the top did not get there by accident. They made deliberate choices about audience, ownership, and scale. Here are the ten richest creators on the planet in 2026, and what their rise means for anyone building something of their own.

1. MrBeast – $300 Million

Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, tops the list for the fifth year in a row with $300 million in earnings. At 28, he oversees a sprawling operation that includes YouTube channels with over 640 million subscribers, a production studio, food businesses, and Beast Games, his reality competition series on Amazon Prime.

The lesson here is not about viral videos. It is about reinvestment. MrBeast has spoken openly about channeling nearly everything he earns back into his content and his business infrastructure. He did not build a channel. He built a media company, and that distinction explains everything.

2. Dhar Mann – $65 Million

Dhar Mann ranks second with $65 million in earnings. He runs a 200-person production team turning out digital shows that pull in close to 300 million views every week. What sets him apart is his orientation. Rather than creating content and hoping an audience finds it, he has built a system that listens first and produces second. His output is values-driven and consistent, and it scales precisely because it is not anchored to a single personality.

3. Steven Bartlett – $52 Million

Steven Bartlett earned $52 million this year, building wealth at the intersection of podcasting, investing, and brand partnerships. His show, The Diary of a CEO, is among the most listened-to podcasts in the world. Bartlett’s real lesson is about positioning. He entered the creator space as a businessman who makes content, not a content creator who stumbled into business. That framing gave him access to rooms most creators never enter.

4. Markiplier – $38 Million

Markiplier earned $38 million this year. He started as a gaming YouTuber but gradually expanded into independent filmmaking, merchandise, and a coffee brand. His career shows that a creator who understands their audience enough can extend that trust into almost any product category. The platform was a starting point, not a ceiling.

5. Rhett and Link – $37 Million 

Comedy duo Rhett and Link brought in $37 million this year. They are among the earliest examples of creators who built a proper company around their content rather than keeping it informal. Their Mythical Entertainment business manages their YouTube channels, a podcast network, merchandise lines, and entertainment projects. The lesson is longevity through structure. They have sustained this for over a decade because they treated it like a business from the very beginning.

6. Charli D’Amelio – $18 Million

Charli D’Amelio earned $18 million this year. She rose on TikTok faster than almost anyone in the platform’s history, and rather than riding that wave until it faded, she and her family built D’Amelio Brands, expanding into fashion, lifestyle, and entertainment. Her story is a reminder that virality is an entrance, not a destination. What you build after the initial wave is what lasts.

7. Druski – $20 Million

Druski earned $20 million this year. He built his name through sketch comedy and sharp cultural instincts, then converted that attention into brand partnerships, high-profile music video appearances, and his own entertainment label. His lesson is that cultural fluency is currency. He understood where the energy was and made himself central to it before anyone else moved.

8. IShowSpeed – $30 Million

IShowSpeed earned $30 million this year. His rise is one of the most striking stories in the creator economy. Built almost entirely on live streaming energy and an unpredictable, authentic personality, he proves that genuine relatability at scale is its own business model. The lesson here is that being fully, unfiltered yourself, consistently, can be a strategy that no competitor can copy.

9. Mark Robert – $30 Million

Mark Rober earned $30 million this year. A former NASA engineer, he turned a deep command of science and engineering into some of the most watched educational content on YouTube, then launched CrunchLabs, a STEM subscription box for children. Rober demonstrates that expertise, made accessible and entertaining, becomes a competitive moat. Nobody does what he does quite the way he does it, and that is the point.

10. Codie Sanchez – $31 Million

Codie Sanchez earned $31 million through online business education content. She built her audience around one underserved idea: that ordinary people can acquire and run boring, cash-flowing businesses. She did not try to appeal to everyone. She found a specific audience, spoke directly to them, and became the leading voice in that space. That kind of deliberate focus is one of the most underrated moves a creator or entrepreneur can make.

What the Full Picture Tells Us

The 2026 list spans education, lifestyle, food, wellness, technology, and finance. There is no single formula here, no one platform or niche that guarantees success. What the top earners share is not a category. It is a mindset. Each of them identified what they could offer that no one else could, built infrastructure around it, and treated their audience as a long-term relationship rather than a number to grow.

The creator economy just crossed one billion dollars among its top fifty players. The question is no longer whether this space is legitimate. The question is what you are building inside it.

The Brief Network: Inspiring Stories and Empowering Lessons. 

From Thrift Store Sales to a Global Brand: Here Is What Sophia Amoruso’s Journey Reveals About Risk, Reinvention, and Building Value

VIctor Akinwale
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From Thrift Store Sales to a Global Brand: Here Is What Sophia Amoruso’s Journey Reveals About Risk, Reinvention, and Building Value

Before the Forbes cover and the Netflix series, before the $100 million in revenue, there was a bedroom, a thrift store find, and a 22-year-old who simply decided to start. That is where Sophia Amoruso‘s story begins.

At 22, she was working as a security guard at an art school in San Francisco, checking student IDs for a living. No business degree. No investor backing. No roadmap. What she had was an eye for vintage clothing, a camera she had learned to use in a photography class, and an eBay account. She started an eBay store called Nasty Gal Vintage, handling every part of the business herself, including styling, photography, writing product descriptions, and shipping orders. The name came from a 1975 funk album by Betty Davis. The ambition, at first, was simply to not work for someone else.

“I wasn’t trying to build a $350 million company,” she has said. “I was trying not to work for someone else.”

That refusal to shrink quietly into a life that did not fit her turned out to be the seed of something larger than she imagined. She began the business from her bedroom, handling every part of it herself. Nasty Gal quickly developed a loyal online following of young women through social media, drawn to its distinctive voice and carefully curated vintage fashion. In 2008, however, Amoruso was banned from eBay. Rather than seeing it as the end, she used the setback as a turning point, launching Nasty Gal as a standalone online retail website. The growth that followed was extraordinary. Revenue climbed from about $223,000 in 2008 to nearly $23 million by 2011. Within a few more years, Nasty Gal was generating over $100 million in annual sales, employing more than 200 people, and earning recognition as one of the fastest-growing retailers in the United States.

But success at scale is a different creature from success in the beginning. As Nasty Gal grew, it expanded rapidly, taking on hundreds of employees, opening retail stores, and raising millions in venture capital. With that growth came soaring expectations. “I’ve raised too high of a valuation at Nasty Gal,” Sophia later reflected. “We were doing $12 million in revenue profitably when Index valued us at $350 million. The expectation of the next raise at a billion-dollar-plus valuation was unrealistic.” As sales slowed and operational challenges mounted, the company struggled to sustain the pace investors expected. Rising costs, leadership issues, and the pressure to grow faster than the business could support eventually caught up with it. In 2016, Nasty Gal filed for bankruptcy. It was public, it was painful, and it could have been the final chapter.

It was not.

What followed was not a collapse but a reinvention. Sophia took the lessons of her most spectacular failure and turned them into the foundation of everything that came next. She founded Girlboss, a media company and community for ambitious women that grew into a global brand. She went on to build Business Class, an education platform that has helped thousands of entrepreneurs start and grow their businesses. She also launched Trust Fund, a venture capital firm focused on backing early-stage founders and helping them build sustainable businesses. Today, she sits on the other side of the table, investing in early-stage founders and passing on the wisdom she earned the hard way.

“I’ve seen the full gamut of what worked and what didn’t,” she has said. “It’s the not-so-great stuff that I can often help founders anticipate, or just avoid.” 

This is where her story becomes most instructive for the rest of us.

The first lesson is that starting without credentials is not the same as starting without value. Sophia had no MBA, no mentor in high places, no family money. What she had was taste, attention to detail, and a willingness to figure things out by doing them. She styled her own shoots. She wrote her own copy. She built a brand voice so distinct that it gathered a loyal following before anyone had given her permission to lead. Most people wait to be qualified. She chose to become qualified by beginning.

The second lesson is that failure is not the interruption of your story. It is part of the story. Bankruptcy is not a word that tends to come before reinvention in popular imagination, yet for Sophia Amoruso, it did. She did not reappear with a cleaned-up narrative. She reappeared with honesty, and that honesty became its own kind of brand. She has said she does not “consider honesty a risk.” In a world where image management has become an industry, choosing to tell the truth about your failures is a form of strength, not weakness.

The third lesson is about the danger of growing beyond your own understanding. Nasty Gal’s fall was not simply a matter of bad luck. It was a lesson in what happens when a business scales faster than the wisdom needed to sustain it. “I’m not optimizing for the highest valuation,” she now tells founders. “I’m optimizing for survival. Most people don’t need venture capital and shouldn’t take it.” The glamour of big numbers can obscure the more important question: do you actually know what you are building, and can you sustain it?

The fourth lesson, perhaps the quietest one, is that you are allowed to tell a new story. Sophia built an identity around the word “girlboss,” watched that word take on a life of its own and eventually curdle into something she no longer recognised as hers, and then chose to move forward anyway. “Girlboss was a huge part of my story,” she has said. “But also, at what point can I tell a new story?” You are not required to remain who you were at your most visible moment. Identity, like business, can be rebuilt.

Success is not a single arrival point. It is a series of beginnings, some chosen and some forced. What matters is what you do with the space between what you had and what you are building next.

Sophia Amoruso started with second-hand clothes and a camera. She built a global brand, lost it, and rebuilt again. Her inventory today, as she puts it, is her experience. And that, she has found, is high-margin and far more fulfilling.

The question her story puts to each of us is this: what are you doing with what you already have?

The Brief Network: Inspiring Stories and Empowering Lessons. 

History, Heritage, and Art: Njideka Akunyili Crosby Creates the First Official Joint Portrait of Barack and Michelle Obama

VIctor Akinwale
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History, Heritage, and Art: Njideka Akunyili Crosby Creates the First Official Joint Portrait of Barack and Michelle Obama

On June 14, 2026, Barack and Michelle Obama stood before a 9-by-10-foot canvas and fell silent. What they were looking at was not just their portrait. It was their life.

The woman who painted it was Njideka Akunyili Crosby. Nigerian-born, Los Angeles-based, and now the author of one of the most historic art commissions of the twenty-first century.

The painting, titled The Obamas: Springing Forth (2026), will be permanently installed in the Hope and Change Lobby of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, a public space that requires no ticket to enter. It is the first official portrait of the former president and first lady together, unveiled just days ahead of the public opening of the Center on Juneteenth (June 19).

For many, the moment was a celebration of the Obamas’ enduring legacy. For Nigerians and Africans watching from around the world, it was something more. A reminder that excellence knows no borders.

A Portrait That Tells a Story

Akunyili Crosby did not simply paint the Obamas. She built a world around them.

The starting point was a photograph she took of the couple herself. From there, she layered in decades of memory. Michelle Obama’s Chicago childhood home visible through the window, her father’s Buick parked out front. The Charles Alston bust of Martin Luther King Jr. that sat in the Oval Office. A photograph of the 1963 March on Washington. The four Grammys the couple won for narrating their memoirs. Okra and coral hibiscus woven through the composition. Faded photographs of the two of them, quiet and tender, tucked into the layers.

Every detail was chosen with intention. “I wanted to make these decisions that tapped into those memories,” she told the Obamas, “so when you saw this, it felt familiar.”

Even the way the figures sit was deliberate. Michelle is seated cross-legged just in front of Barack, who is perched on a desk, slightly angled toward her. Neither dominates the frame. “I was thinking of a composition that would not preference one over the other but to treat them equally,” Akunyili Crosby explained. “It’s like, ‘Yes, he was the president and she is this incredible, powerful, amazing, super-respected person.’ They are like, equal.”

When the Obamas saw it for the first time, Michelle pulled the artist into a hug. “Oh my god, you got everything. You know how long I’ve been waiting for this woman to do something with and for me? I mean, we did it!”

From Nigeria to the Global Stage

Long before her work hung in some of the world’s most prestigious institutions, Njideka Akunyili Crosby was a young girl growing up in Nigeria.

She is the daughter of the late Professor Dora Akunyili, the renowned pharmacist and public servant whose courageous leadership transformed Nigeria’s fight against counterfeit drugs. Growing up in that environment exposed Njideka to the values of discipline, integrity, and excellence. Yet her path would take her in a different direction.

She moved to the United States as a teenager in 1999, and her work has since reflected her hybrid cultural background and experiences. In her methodically layered compositions, she combines painted depictions of people, places, and subjects from her life with photographic transfers drawn from her personal image archive as well as Nigerian magazines and other media sources.

Rather than treating the distance between her two worlds as a gap to bridge, she turned it into her greatest creative resource.

She is a recipient of a MacArthur fellowship, and her work sits in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Tate. Years of that kind of sustained excellence are what made the Obama commission possible. It did not arrive because of luck.

What Her Journey Reveals

Excellence travels. Akunyili Crosby did not become globally recognised by chasing visibility. She became recognised by dedicating herself to mastering a craft that was unmistakably her own.

Your identity is an asset. Much of her work draws from her Nigerian heritage and her experience navigating multiple cultures. Rather than distancing herself from her roots, she leaned into them and in doing so, transformed her personal story into a source of creative power.

Historic opportunities often follow quiet consistency. The unveiling of the Obama portrait may appear to be a defining moment, but it is really the outcome of many years of unseen work. Success is often less about one breakthrough and more about a thousand faithful steps taken before anyone is watching.

Representation matters. Every major achievement by an African on the global stage expands what others believe is possible. Akunyili Crosby’s commission is significant not only because of who she painted, but because of what her presence in that space represents.

A Brushstroke Beyond Art

At first glance, The Obamas: Springing Forth is a portrait. Look closer, and it becomes something more. A story about identity, memory, and the power of remaining true to one’s voice.

Akunyili Crosby has said the piece pushed her out of her comfort zone. That she did it anyway, and did it this well, is the real lesson. Her brush did not simply paint a portrait. It painted another chapter in the story of African excellence on the global stage.

The Brief Network: Inspiring Stories and Empowering Lessons.

Passion is not a strategy, Grit is

Seun Tayo-Balogun
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I don’t know who needs to hear this, but here it is: anyone can start a business, but building a profitable one takes far more than just passion. Passion may spark the fire, but it’s the ability to deliver real value that keeps it burning.

You need competence to deliver value.

Competence is the foundation of every successful business. Without the knowledge, skill, and expertise to meet customer needs, your passion will remain just that, an idea, not a profitable reality. You need to understand your craft, the market, and the dynamics that drive your business forward.

You need discipline to stay consistent.

Discipline is the backbone of consistency. The road to success is long and often winding, and only those who are disciplined enough to stick to their plans, even when the thrill of passion fades, will see it through. Consistency, day in and day out, will compound and eventually lead to results that match your ambition.

You need ingenuity to manage your resources.

Ingenuity is your greatest asset when it comes to managing resources. In business, especially when starting out, you’ll often have limited resources. How you choose to use them, whether that’s time, money, or talent, will make or break your success. Creativity in solving problems and leveraging resources efficiently is what separates the sustainable businesses from the fleeting ones.

You need perseverance to stay the course.

Perseverance is required to weather the inevitable storms. There will be setbacks, challenges, and failures. But it’s not about avoiding failure, it’s about learning to rise each time you fall. The most successful entrepreneurs are those who can stay the course even when the going gets tough.

You need optimism to keep going forward.

Optimism is the fuel for your forward momentum. Without hope in the face of adversity, it’s easy to get stuck. Optimism allows you to focus on the possibilities, to find the silver lining, and to move forward with confidence, even when the future is uncertain.

You need courage in tough situations.

Courage is necessary in tough situations. There will be moments when the decisions you need to make are not easy, when risks seem overwhelming, or when you’re standing at the edge of the unknown. It takes courage to take those steps, to trust yourself, and to make the hard choices that shape the future of your business.

You need a growth mindset to keep learning.

A growth mindset is essential for continual improvement. The most successful entrepreneurs are the ones who never stop learning, who are constantly seeking ways to innovate, improve, and evolve. Whether it’s through mentorship, books, or trial and error, the willingness to learn from every experience will keep you ahead of the curve.

In Essence, What You Need Is Entrepreneurial Grit

Entrepreneurial grit is the combination of competence, discipline, ingenuity, perseverance, optimism, courage, and a growth mindset that will allow you to turn your vision into a thriving business.

Passion might light the spark, but it’s grit that keeps the fire burning strong and ensures it turns into a profitable, lasting venture.

The Brief Network: Inspiring Stories and Empowering Lessons.

From Frustration to Shopify: How Tobias Lütke Built a Platform That Transformed E-Commerce

VIctor Akinwale
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From Frustration to Shopify: How Tobias Lütke Built a Platform That Transformed E-Commerce

Many of the world’s most successful businesses did not begin with grand plans to change an industry. They started with a simple problem that someone was determined to solve.

That was the case for Tobias Lütke, the founder of Shopify.

Tobias Lütke was born in Koblenz, Germany, in 1981. His interest in technology began early. By the age of twelve, he was already writing code and experimenting with computer hardware.At seventeen, he made a decision that many would consider reckless: he dropped out of high school and entered a computer programming apprenticeship at Siemens.

In 2002, at twenty-two, he left Germany and relocated to Canada. He arrived without a university degree, without a local network, and without a clear path forward in a new country. What he had was the ability to build things that worked. That would turn out to be enough.

It was in Canada that he met Scott Lake and Daniel Weinand. The three shared a passion for snowboarding and in 2004, they launched an online snowboard store called Snowdevil. Like many first-time entrepreneurs, they believed they had found a promising opportunity. What they had not anticipated was how difficult it would be to actually sell online using the tools available at the time.

The e-commerce software of that era was expensive, inflexible, and built without the small business owner in mind. Every solution seemed to create a new problem. Most people in that position would have accepted the limitations and kept moving.

Tobias did something different. Drawing on his programming background, he built his own e-commerce software from scratch using Ruby on Rails, a framework he was already contributing to as a core team member. He completed it in two months. His goal was not to start a technology company. He simply wanted a better way to run his store.

The software worked. In fact, it worked so well that it pointed to something much bigger. As they continued refining the platform, it became obvious that the problem they had faced was not unique to them. Thousands of entrepreneurs were running into the same wall. Business owners everywhere needed a simpler, more practical way to sell online, and nothing on the market was giving it to them.

That realization changed everything. The team made a decision that was equal parts bold and uncertain. They stepped away from the snowboard business and turned their full attention to the platform they had built. In 2006, that platform launched publicly as Shopify.

Walking away from an existing business to chase a software product with no guaranteed market is not a comfortable decision. Tobias made it anyway, because he believed that solving a widespread problem was a bigger opportunity than selling snowboards ever would be.

In 2009, Shopify launched its App Store and API, opening the platform to third-party developers and transforming it from a selling tool into a full commerce ecosystem. Between 2010 and 2013, the company raised $92 million in venture capital and grew its merchant base to over 80,000 businesses. In 2015, Shopify went public at a valuation of $1.27 billion.

Today, the platform serves millions of merchants across more than 175 countries, powering businesses of every size, from first-time sellers to globally recognised brands. Behind the growth, the valuations, and the headlines is a story that began with a straightforward decision: instead of accepting a broken system, one person chose to fix it.

What to Learn from Tobias Lütke 

Tobias Lütke’s story shows that problems often hide opportunities. Instead of accepting the limits of existing e-commerce tools, he solved the problem himself, and that decision became the foundation of Shopify. It also shows the power of building real solutions, starting small, and thinking long term. What began as a simple snowboard store tool grew into a global platform because he was willing to pivot when he saw greater potential. His path also proves that you do not need a traditional background to build something impactful. What matters most is skill, initiative, and the willingness to act. In the end, lasting success comes from creating value for others.

The Brief Network: Inspiring Stories and Empowering Lessons. 

Hamdi Ulukaya: The Immigrant Who Turned an Abandoned Factory Into a Billion-Dollar Brand

VIctor Akinwale
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Hamdi Ulukaya: The Immigrant Who Turned an Abandoned Factory Into a Billion-Dollar Brand

Meet Hamdi Ulukaya, the man who transformed a shut-down yogurt factory nobody wanted into one of the biggest food brands in America.

Today, millions of people know Chobani as one of the most popular yogurt brands in the United States. But behind that success story is a man who arrived in America with little money, barely speaking English, and no clear plan for how his life would turn out.

Hamdi Ulukaya was born in eastern Turkey to a Kurdish family of nomadic sheep farmers. Growing up, life was simple and connected to nature. His family raised animals, made cheese, and prepared yogurt the traditional way. Food was not business to them; it was culture, survival, and family. As a young man, Hamdi attended university in Turkey during a politically difficult period. He spoke openly about issues affecting the Kurdish community, and eventually decided to leave the country.

In 1994, he moved to the United States.

Starting over in a new country was not easy. He struggled with the language and had to adapt to a completely different environment. Like many immigrants, he had no powerful connections or financial safety net waiting for him.

At first, he focused on something familiar: dairy products. He began importing feta cheese made from his family’s recipes. It was a small business, but it kept him connected to the world he understood best.

Then came the opportunity that changed everything. In 2005, Hamdi received a random flyer advertising a shut-down yogurt factory in upstate New York. The factory had been abandoned by Kraft Foods and was sitting empty. Most people would have ignored it, but Hamdi drove there to see the building for himself.

The place was in terrible condition. Machines were broken, dust covered the floors, and even his lawyer advised him not to buy it. Still, Hamdi could not stop thinking about it. He believed yogurt in America could be made differently. The yogurt he grew up eating was thick, rich, and natural, and he felt there was room for something better on grocery shelves.

So despite the risks, he secured an $800,000 loan and bought the abandoned factory. At the beginning, things were extremely difficult. The company was small, and one of the first tasks for the team was simply cleaning and repainting the building. Hamdi spent months working on the recipe before launching the product because he wanted to create yogurt that tasted authentic and stood out from everything else on the shelves.

He called the company Chobani.

When Chobani launched in 2007, success did not happen overnight. The company started by selling to smaller grocery stores. Customers tried the yogurt, liked it, and began recommending it to others. Slowly, the brand grew through word of mouth.

Then demand exploded. Within a few years, Chobani became one of the fastest-growing food companies in America. By 2012, the company was making over a billion dollars in annual sales. But what truly made Hamdi Ulukaya stand out was how he treated people as the company grew.

As Chobani expanded, he began hiring refugees and immigrants who struggled to find work. Some could not speak English well, while others lacked transportation or opportunities. Instead of seeing problems, Hamdi saw potential.

He provided transportation, translators, training, and jobs. Many of those workers became some of the most dedicated employees in the company.

That experience later inspired him to launch the Tent Partnership for Refugees, an organisation that encourages major companies around the world to hire and support refugees as they rebuild their lives.

Then in 2016, he shocked the business world by giving shares in Chobani to employees. Not symbolic rewards, but real ownership in the company. Some employees received stakes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars because Hamdi believed the people who helped build the company deserved to share in its success.

Over the years, he has also supported refugee causes globally and encouraged other businesses to hire displaced people and help them rebuild their lives.

What makes Hamdi Ulukaya’s journey inspiring is that he did not start with perfect conditions. He started as an immigrant trying to survive in a new country. He took a chance on a factory everyone else had given up on and built something extraordinary through patience, consistency, and belief.

His story is proof that opportunities do not always arrive looking impressive. Sometimes they look broken, risky, and impossible at first. But with courage and persistence, even an abandoned factory can become the foundation for something remarkable.

The Brief Network: Inspiring Stories and Empowering Lessons.

Damilola Olokesusi: The Founder Behind Shuttlers Reimagining the Urban Commute

VIctor Akinwale
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Damilola Olokesusi: The Founder Behind Shuttlers Reimagining the Urban Commute

Every morning across Lagos, millions of professionals brace for the same ordeal. Not the work waiting at the office, but the journey to get there. The gridlocked bridges, the danfo buses stuffed past capacity, and the uncertainty of whether you will arrive at the office on time. For most people, this is simply the price of living in one of Africa’s most busiest cities. For Damilola Olokesusi, it became a problem worth solving. 

Olokesusi is the co-founder and CEO of Shuttlers, a technology-driven ride-sharing company reshaping how working professionals commute in metropolitan cities like Lagos. What started as a personal frustration with public transportation has grown into one of Nigeria’s most recognized mobility startups, one that has clocked over 3 million trips, expanded across Lagos and Abuja, and raised a combined $5.6 million in funding. 

Damilola grew up in Ibadan and studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Lagos, with hopes of working with energy giants like Shell or Mobil. Her exposure to entrepreneurship came during a lengthy university strike in 2009 while she was studying at UNILAG. She used that period to learn new things and began to question so much happening around her, unconsciously looking for problems to solve.

After graduating, she worked as a trainee engineer at Marine Professionals Ltd. and as an intern at Pan Ocean Oil Corporation. She later interned at Asset and Resource Management Company (ARM) before joining the Global Shapers Community as Vice Curator of the Lagos hub. These experiences gave her a close look at how systems functioned in practice. The one that failed most visibly was public transportation in Lagos.

The decision to build Shuttlers did not come from a business plan. It came from fear. One of Damilola’s sisters boarded what appeared to be a regular commercial bus on her way to work, only to find herself in a “one-chance” vehicle, the term Lagosians use for buses operated by armed robbers using public transit as cover. The passengers were taken to another location, robbed, and held against their will.

That incident, combined with the daily grind of Lagos commuting, pushed her toward an idea she had been carrying. During her internship years, she noticed that large corporations ran dedicated staff buses for their employees. She kept asking herself why that same option was not available to smaller companies and everyday commuters. That question, sharpened by her sister’s ordeal, became the seed of Shuttlers. Her family pushed back hard. Her mother was convinced she was throwing away a hard-earned degree on the wrong bet in the wrong country. Damilola moved forward anyway.

Shuttlers was founded in 2015 alongside Damilola Quadry and Busola Majekodunmi. The three women put their savings together and officially launched in October 2016. There was no app in those early days. Customers booked rides through WhatsApp, email, and Slack, receiving route details and schedules through those same channels. One of their first corporate clients was Andela, which used the service to transport its staff across Lagos. It was enough proof that the model worked.

In 2019, Shuttlers launched a dedicated mobile app. Passengers could subscribe to a plan, book seats in advance, and track their bus in real time. The service ran on fixed pricing with no surge charges during rush hour or bad weather, making it a more predictable and affordable option than conventional ride-hailing. Not long after, the founding team began to change. Damilola Quadry had returned to the United States in 2016. Busola Majekodunmi later stepped back to concentrate on a nonprofit education venture. Damilola Olokesusi was the last co-founder standing.

She kept building. Commuters could book seats on fixed routes at prices between 60 and 80 percent lower than ride-hailing services, riding in air-conditioned buses with trackable arrival times. Each bus on the road displaced as many as 14 to 29 private cars, quietly cutting congestion and emissions across a city that carries more than its share of both.

In 2020, Damilola partnered with Ford Motor Company and the Global Water Challenge to launch She Moves Shuttles, an all-female shuttle service built around the safety concerns women face on Lagos roads daily. The initiative also turned commute time into learning time, connecting passengers with online courses and peer networks. More than 600 female professionals have benefited from it.

For its first five years, Shuttlers was entirely bootstrapped. By the time the company closed a $1.6 million seed round in November 2021, led by VestedWorld, it was already generating consistent revenue. That discipline carried into the next raise. In April 2023, Shuttlers secured a further $4 million Series A led by Verod-Kepple Africa Ventures, bringing total funding to $5.6 million. Between those two rounds, the fleet grew by 150 percent, route coverage expanded 25 times over, and daily passenger numbers rose by 280 percent.

Recognition followed the results. Damilola was named to the Forbes Africa 30 Under 30 list in the Technology category in 2019, received the Digital and Tech Award at the Women in Africa Contest in Morocco, and won the Best Idea Award at the Aso Villa Demo Day. In 2020, the UK government selected her for a technology exchange programme. Two years later, Vulog named her one of the Most Influential Women in Mobility globally. She also serves as UNCTAD’s eTrade for Women Advocate for Anglophone Africa.

What We Can Learn

Damilola’s story carries a thread that any founder can follow. She solved a problem she lived personally, started without perfect conditions, and built revenue before she built a pitch deck. She watched her co-founders leave and kept going. She endured family resistance, five years of bootstrapping, and the unpredictability of doing business in Nigeria without losing sight of what she was building. The lesson underneath all of it is straightforward: clarity about the problem, and the stubbornness to stay with it, will take you further than the best circumstances ever could.

The Brief Network: Inspiring Stories and Empowering.

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