We were lucky to catch up with Akua Opoku recently and have shared our conversation below.
Akua, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about serving the underserved.
The whole focus of my business model is elevating BIPOCs (Black Indigenous People of Color) in sustainability spaces, often times the underserved. Many times people of color face many challenges in sustainability, like being written out or left out completely in their contributions to the movement, often the community most severely impacted by the downsides of the climate crisis, and disproportionally not financially supported in sustainability efforts.
Through my platform on social media and through my website ayobusinessfinder.com. I am able to serve the often underserved BIPOC business owners running sustainable businesses. On social media, I highlight these businesses through live video, carousel post, and short form video. Not only that but through my BIPOC business search engine, these businesses can receive free promotion to their target community.
One day I hope to no longer see BIPOC sustainable business owners in the underserved group.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
As I started going deeper into my low waste and minimalist journey in 2016, I soon realized no one looked like me. The prominent people that kept coming up didn’t share my lived experiences as an African American woman living in the U.S. with Ghanaian immigrant parents. I thought that was wrong. I saw a gap and I filled it with my story.
My blog launched in 2017, where I shared my experience in sustainable fashion, sustainable travel, and sustainability tips and tricks. Three years later I rebranded from Fullbyles to Akua Yamoah Opoku, LLC where I focused on helping people create a life they love that was also good for the planet with ebooks and social media content.
2020 shook up my life and businesses like it did for many and it was time for a pivot. With the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement people were looking for a way to be an ally to Blacks and the BIPOC community as a whole. I began the months long process of sourcing BIPOC businesses from all over the internet to eventually share with the world. 2021 I launched AYOlogue which was a membership-based BIPOC business search engine. Through months of reflection, I relaunched the search engine as AYO Business Finder and made it a free resource to all. I didn’t want to be apart of creating barriers to people living sustainably.
As of 2023, it’s my honor to support BIPOCs in the sustainability space. People can support my business through using and sharing ayobusinessfinder.com with others. I also provided content creation services to BIPOC sustainable business owners to help their businesses thrive for years to come.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
When I started my official sustainability journey in 2017, meaning I launched a blog to highlight my journey, people closest to me did not understand what I was doing. I was not prepared for the level of questions that would be asked, the jokes about what I was trying to do, and the resistance I would receive from my husband- all of this for years. Naively, I thought people would be happy for me and instantly rooting for me on on my journey.
The experience my first two years officially on my journey taught me a few things. You need to find a community of people that are on the same path as you for you will lean on them during tough times. Understand that you don’t need everyone (even people close to you) to understand your journey for it to be the right step for you. Lastly I learned how to double down on things I believe in and stick to it for more than a brief moment.
Now over five years in my sustainability journey, it’s stronger than ever. I continue to find people that support my pursuit and I am finding approaches that work for me in traveling, food, shopping, etc. I even made my husband a fan of secondhand shopping for items around our home which is huge for me!
We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.
My side hustle has remained my side hustle for over 5 years. It’s taken me longer than I want to admit to find my footing running a business and understanding what works for me. But when I launched my blog in 2017, I had just moved to Minnesota, started a graduate program, and got married so there was a lot going on in my world. However, every year I have invested more time and energy to my personal sustainability journey and business.
My side hustle has taken many shapes starting as solely a blog, then creating social media pages, to selling ebooks, to running a membership-based website, to managing a search engine and building relationships with BIPOC sustainable business owners. Through each iteration of my business I get more and more clear on how I want to show up in the sustainability space and support the BIPOC community.
Contact Info:
- Website: ayobusinessfinder.com
- Instagram: ayobusinessfinder
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/akua-yamoah-opoku-llc
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCq46etTaheGPr87b4S-VQxw
- Other: https://www.pinterest.com/AkuaYamoahOpoku/