The Iroko Strategy

Nine years ago I entered what I now call my “shut up and build” phase.

Long before Covid, I had already begun withdrawing from most social circles. I stopped talking about what I was building and started working quietly instead.

Someone once told me something that stayed with me.

If a man plants an iroko tree in his backyard, the day will come when you will finally notice it. And by then, it will be too late to cut it down.

Majestic Iroko tree stretches skyward with the sun's rays filtering through its sprawling branches.

At the time it sounded like a proverb. Now I realize it was a strategy.

My first real lesson in business came years earlier when I started a small clothing venture selling fabric. The first few weeks were exciting. Friends and family showed interest, shared posts, and encouraged the idea.

But encouragement is not the same thing as customers.

Soon the attention slowed. People asked about fabrics but rarely bought. I found myself sitting on inventory I couldn’t move.

That experience taught me something early:

Friends and family are not your customers. Marketing matters.

Over time that lesson hardened into a habit. When I start something now, the last people to know are the ones closest to me. Often they discover what I’m doing independently and only later connect the dots.

There’s a strange satisfaction in that. A quiet “I told you so” that doesn’t need to be spoken.

But sometimes I wonder if that instinct has gone too far.

Perhaps this is my iroko tree strategy: build something so large and established that by the time people notice, it cannot be cut down.

Or perhaps it is something else.

A need for control.