Latest / Daily Influence / 806. From Setbacks to Food Transparency: Samuel Oyedemi on Responsible Innovation

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806. From Setbacks to Food Transparency: Samuel Oyedemi on Responsible Innovation · Daily Influence

• 0:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Welcome to Daily Influence, your daily dose of positive influence.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm Brian Smith founder of IA Business Advisors and co-author of the Iain team series.
• 0:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Each day we share stories and insights to help you find be and build your influence in a positive and responsible way.
• 0:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm Greg Clino, partner at IE Business Advisors, and co-host of Daily Influence.
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• 1:02
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• 1:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now let's move into today's conversation where we'll continue exploring the ideas, actions, and influence that helps us lead and live with greater influence.
• 1:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Daily Influence.
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm Greg Colino.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: What happens when an entrepreneur stops chasing ideas and starts paying closer attention to the problems people encounter every day?
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: OEDME, founder of SCAP, a technology platform designed to give consumers clear information about the food and personal care products they use.
• 1:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: By scanning a barcode, users can review ingredients, allergens, additives, and other product information and plain language.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Samuels journey began in Nigeria.
• 2:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: and continued through Canada and the United States.
• 2:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Along the way he tested ideas, based setbacks, question his direction, and ultimately learn that meaningful innovation begins with understanding people, not simply creating more technology.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Scab itself has evolved from an original mobile checkout concept into a broader platform focused on food intelligence.
• 2:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: product transparency and more informed consumer decisions.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Today we'll discuss resilience, responsible innovation, intentional leadership, and how setbacks can provide the information we need to build something more meaningful.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Samuel, welcome to daily influence.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm happy to be here.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Samuel, you grew up in Nigeria, moved to Canada, and eventually came to the United States with the goal of building something meaningful.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: Before Scat became what it is today, you spent nearly two years testing ideas and questioning whether entrepreneurship was the right path for you.
• 3:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: What experiences shape the way you now think about opportunity, leadership, and the responsibility that comes with solving problems for other people?
• 3:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Having been to those places, like being in Nigeria, then learning the humility from just being Canadian, and then coming to the States, and it's all about, you know, veteran progress and opportunity, if I put those three things together, one of the things it taught me is leadership is responsibility and accountability.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And when you see problems around you on your society, you should be more compassionate towards solving them.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: So compassion in this regard is empathy for the action.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I feel, I put myself on the shoes of the individual's personal problems and I think of taking proactive steps.
• 3:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I was helping them so those problems.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: So now it's responsibility, compassion.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then obviously, it turned out for women to know what unity that can be very, very valuable to everyone across the board.
• 4:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think that's something that's taught me.
• 4:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's just paying attention to your environment, really paying attention
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: Looking at problems facing people on a day-to-day or re-to-week basis and going, how can I help to alleviate some of that discomfort?
• 4:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: How can I help to de-risk some of the risk people face every day?
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that's really being the core message for me from these experiences, training, problems into opportunities, and there'd be more compassion it to or it's solving them.
• 4:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Your story demonstrates that clarity does not always arrive before we begin.
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it develops because we are willing to keep learning and adjust our direction.
• 4:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Skip initially focused on helping shoppers bypass traditional checkout lines, but evolved into a platform that also helps people understand ingredients, nutrition, allergens and additives.
• 4:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Can you walk us through?
• 4:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: The framework you use to determine what should be preserved, what needed to be changed, and when a pivot represented progress rather than abandoning the original vision.
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, um, two years prior, I mean, starting in Canada, we had a thesis of check out should be frictionless, right?
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we know that to market inevitable, based on how the world is moving, we're going to get to a point where we have more intelligent stories.
• 5:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: But with market, creating opportunities is always timing.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: So time is always a big factor.
• 5:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we were a little bit too early to markets.
• 5:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we had,
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: to make a choice.
• 5:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do we shut this down or do we look around the same industry that we are operating in and see what is zero to one step to the market?
• 5:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: So what does this mean?
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: If I wanted to get to 10, 9 plus 1 is not the only way to get to 10.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: I could go 8 plus 2.
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: I could go 5 plus 5.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: I could go 7 plus 3.
• 5:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we pivoted to food intelligence, starting with food intelligence,
• 6:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: How do we demonstrate a manifest disintelligence in a minute we thus supervise value for people?
• 6:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we thought about health.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's one of the core problems we face on the day-to-day people are increasingly becoming more suspicious about the product that they're bringing into their lives.
• 6:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we thought, hey, why not provide more context for people?
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of people don't have a chemistry degree they don't understand all the technicalities between the kind of product.
• 6:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: So how do we distill
• 6:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: a lot of that information into simple cleaning with the language that anyone can understand.
• 6:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we have product intelligence.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that's why we pivotate to the okay.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: How do we get to the final destination?
• 6:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: But what are zero to one?
• 6:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: How do we forget this idea we've been holding on to for so long?
• 6:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Will be flexible on a solution that still helps to solve a problem and still gives people their frictionless experience because previously,
• 6:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're taking you about five minutes to make a decision whenever you're purchasing a product because you've always have it to search, keep your name, and look at your different hours.
• 7:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: But now it's scab, but that brings that down to about two seconds.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that's for us, that's still some form of friction.
• 7:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we pivoted because of that particular reason.
• 7:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Great in scaps evolution is especially relevant because it's initial mobile self-checkout concept was tested in Canada before the company expanded its focus towards product and food intelligence.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that willingness to listen and adapt is not only a business discipline, it also determines whether our influence remains centered on what people generally need.
• 7:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're giving,
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: customers information that can affect what they purchase eat and use on their bodies.
• 7:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: Can you share a specific moment when you saw scat positively influenced someone's decision and realize that the platform was becoming more than a technology product?
• 7:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: Oh, absolutely.
• 7:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: One that definitely comes to mind was a mother that had this
• 8:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: And she realized that for a while that the product or ineffective, it wasn't doing what the magic idea promised to do on their skin.
• 8:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And with Scott, he was able to figure out that there's a particular ingredient in the product that she's allergic to.
• 8:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then knowing that information and then changing because you provide recommendations to her and changing the product that she now uses and seeing how that's given back how that's given her back our smell and our confidence is something that really really it keeps me going it makes me like yeah I feel I feel fulfilled seeing that like someone someone's life can be better because of scab right because of scab.
• 8:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, someone can have some form of confidence, someone on a weight loss to be any can now go to the journey faster because of scub, someone that that might have been sick consistently because of what they've been eating now, no all okay, there's excellent ex chemicals here that's been banity Europe that I should not be eating and now they can leave more health to your eyes and I think.
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's just that impact.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: The broader impact of the product are all set of the technology.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's truly, truly inspiring and remarkable.
• 9:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Once information begins influencing people's health and purchasing decisions, the responsibility behind information becomes even more important.
• 9:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: A platform that interprets ingredients and suggests alternatives can shape people's perspectives on products, brands, and health.
• 9:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: How do you approach that responsibility, particularly around accuracy, transparency, privacy, and avoiding unnecessary fear or oversimplification?
• 9:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, that's a very good question.
• 9:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: We ensure that our data is going to directly from the government of the countries that we are pre-tuned.
• 9:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: So we have from Japan, we have a regulatory access from the EU.
• 10:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then we have from the United States Department of Drug Agency, USDA.
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: any of the aid to food development agency.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: So our data is accurate.
• 10:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's what's given to the government by these companies.
• 10:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: What you might find is that because the companies want to sell faster, they will not publish all the information or they present them.
• 10:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: They try to overwhelm you with information so you don't bother looking at it.
• 10:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then they only champion the ones that they want you to see like sugar, protein, carbohydrates, and calories intake.
• 10:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: So our data is very accurate.
• 10:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: We don't want to overwhelm people with just too many information.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: How do we distill all this into something simple and understandable?
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's why we have something called a SCAP score.
• 10:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: We don't tell you if it's bad for you.
• 10:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can opt in for that option.
• 10:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: We just presented to you in a, in some form of generic minorities at first, to say, hey, based off on our analysis of this product, these these and these are not helpful to humans in general.
• 11:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then you now make a decision.
• 11:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, you know, you can eat whatever you just know what's in it.
• 11:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's the joy for us.
• 11:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you know, you go ahead, that's good.
• 11:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's better than not knowing at all and just, you know, just taking it in.
• 11:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Responsible influence requires more than having good intentions and require systems that help people consistently make thoughtful decisions.
• 11:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: For entrepreneurs and leaders working through uncertainty, what is your practical process for moving from an assumption to a decision?
• 11:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's two ways.
• 11:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, there's the impractical way, which is the one I lean on to a lot.
• 11:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's the full buffet, which is to believe in what you've seen internally and then believe that you have the power to make it come to past.
• 11:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I know obviously, as you move into like helps, well, and as you can become more practical with that decisions people's lives you're talking about.
• 11:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it depends.
• 11:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Different people have different frameworks, but one that I've found to be very, very old for is,
• 11:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: They can look at where we are, where we're trying to go and who we serve.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the customer experience is very critical to every step and decision that we're taking.
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're asking, how does this help the customer, not how does this help the product would better?
• 12:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, how does this for instance, our website or progressive web app that we have, is designed with a first time user in mind.
• 12:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's like you go on it and you don't have to search for the button.
• 12:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: The website, the first feature you're going to see is click this button, get the free scan as simple as possible.
• 12:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the framework is to keep the user and the customer at the center of everything that we do.
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: How does this better fit them?
• 12:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: How do we do what's right for business?
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because doing what's right for business is literally doing what's right by the customer.
• 12:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the customer always comes first because the ones who ultimately serve it.
• 12:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, keeping them at the center, what's best for them?
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: How does this make it easier for them to kind of product?
• 12:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: How do we make sure this information is understandable to anybody?
• 12:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: We got this of what are the educated or not?
• 13:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: How do we ensure that we keep this viable enough for the people that are working on this product to have some form of economic or duality?
• 13:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a strain of things, what the customer is doing is the ultimate framework for deciding what to do.
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Entrepreneurship often requires leaders to remain disciplined when there is no guarantee that their work will succeed.
• 13:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: What specific habits help you manage doubt, maintain accountability, and continue leading with purpose when the results are slower or different from what you expected?
• 13:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: The first one is always too going to be fake.
• 13:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: I don't understand the process of life.
• 13:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you look at a tree, for instance, right, in a matter of how hard you rush to plant trees or no matter how many, how much the quantity of water you put into it, it's still going to grab it on pace, right?
• 13:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: So understanding that in business, there is something called a law of process and you're not going to take that process.
• 14:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: You're going to have to go through it.
• 14:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Some days and sometimes things will be slow and it will not go as fast as you wanted to go.
• 14:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like a good example is when we started,
• 14:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: I remember I was just having 284 users and I was like
• 14:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, that's the world.
• 14:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Then a few weeks went by and it wasn't as fast as the growth was imagined and I was like, oh my god, this is a bum, it's filled.
• 14:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's, you know, this is not going to work or go in forward.
• 14:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: But we persevered because if you serve 200 people and you serve them very well and what you're doing is very valuable to them.
• 14:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: It says that there are other people facing that same problem.
• 14:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Else we're in the world, right?
• 14:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Our job is now, how do I ensure that the people facing those problems
• 14:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: and that was that we shifted gears a little bit a few months ago and then a few thousand people just poured into it.
• 14:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: So it took a while, but we still had to go to that little process.
• 14:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And in fact, I'll see if we're still in that little process, because there is a part with the millions of users, but we're not there, but we understand that this is a process that is going to take.
• 15:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you first of few thousand people trust you, it's, you know, helping them make a decision, then a few more thousand, then more people, then, you know, you get interested with.
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: more people.
• 15:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: If you'd be fit with a little, you know, more of the interest of them to you.
• 15:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: Growth often changes the advice we would give our younger selves and it can also clarify what we want others to understand sooner than we did.
• 15:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you think about the younger Samuel who was experimenting with businesses and countering failures and still searching for clarity, what would you tell him now?
• 15:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what one specific action would you challenge our listeners to take
• 15:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: that they care about into a positive responsible influence.
• 15:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: I would say keep the fate because like not everything you do will work, but being open to, making failure out to the extent making failure cheap.
• 15:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: And what that looks like is getting comfortable with rejections and getting them constantly.
• 16:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you keep in the value of failure to lessen, like, oh, every failure gets me closer to a yes.
• 16:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Every failure is a lesson on the way.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I'm going to quickly go feel, because that's my school fees in this junior entrepreneurship.
• 16:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think that's what I'll say to my younger self, like go and get the school fees, go pay your dues, go feel faster, learn, adapt, move on.
• 16:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And to just anyone that's worth watching them, do you want to have like ton problem or positive influence?
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think one of the first things is to, I mean, create one yourself.
• 16:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think it's very local for me, by the way.
• 16:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: I just, if it's to take a walk, you know, take a walk, sit in your car, just ground yourself and go, why am I doing this?
• 16:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, why does this matter for me?
• 16:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Like, would I do anything else, right?
• 16:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: If I could do one or two thousand in the world and positively impact my world, you know, would this be one of those things
• 16:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And if the answer is yes, yes, and yes, it's just a matter of time with the right effort, right ingredients.
• 17:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: You begin to see the impact of the work you do on other people.
• 17:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, from that impact, draws your purpose to why the company exists outside of the our functionalities of the product of the business.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think that's that would be my practical advice.
• 17:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for sharing that.
• 17:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And for reminding us that setbacks are simply obstacles to endure.
• 17:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: They can reveal where our assumptions were wrong, where people need something different, and where we have an opportunity to leave more responsibly.
• 17:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: If our listeners want to get in touch with you, what is the best way to do so?
• 17:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: LinkedIn and Instagram add, it is on their
• 17:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: All right, we'll put that information on the show notes.
• 17:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for joining us and sharing your stories and advice, Samuel.
• 17:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 17:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: I really appreciate it.
• 17:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I hope this has some, this inspires someone to go do what they also want to do.
• 18:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, and to everyone listening, consider one problem you regularly notice, but have learned to accept this normal.
• 18:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: Do you not try to solve everything today?
• 18:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Take one intentional action.
• 18:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ask a better question.
• 18:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Speak with someone affected by the problem.
• 18:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Test an assumption or share information that helps another person make more informed decisions.
• 18:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Influence becomes positive or responsible when we move beyond intention and choose an action that improves the experience
• 18:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for joining us on daily influence.
• 18:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: If today's conversation inspired you, please share with those around you to help spread the positivity.
• 18:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Remember small actions create the impact, keep showing up, leading and growing one day to time.
• 18:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Until next time, stay inspired and keep having a positive, responsible influence.
• 18:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Bye-bye.