“I Want to help improve lives”: A Conversation With Jide maduako
When moves to Hartlepool United and Luton Town fell through, former Ipswich Town and Leicester City youngster Jide Maduako set off on a path to build his own business.
Maduako co-founded creative agency Yoke Network with his friend Mustafa in 2018 and together they have built a thriving creative agency that has worked with the likes of Revolut, Cleo and 9count, and has a growing network of over 4000 influencers.
In a nutshell, Yoke create videos that help apps build their user base, drive installs and achieve their CPA targets. But there’s a lot more that Jide wants to achieve.
To kick off our brand-new interview series, we spoke to Jide to discuss his journey from Bootroom to Boardroom and how he went about founding Yoke; the triumphs and challenges of going from footballer to founder; the skills required to become an entrepreneur, and everything in between.
DRIFT: Jide, let’s start at the very beginning - tell us about your journey into football and where that began?
JM: In comparison to others, I probably entered the game late, as I signed for Ipswich Town at 16.
I always had trials growing up - West Brom, Norwich, Chelsea, Spurs. I travelled all over the place with football, but always went back to my local team.
Eventually I got offered a two-year scholarship at Ipswich Town when I was 15 and that was my entry into professional football.
I was always confident that I was going to get my chance at some point, even when I got rejected from those clubs. I didn’t have no other eye sight for anything else - I just wanted to play football.
Ipswich was a proper family club. It has a real nice community feel. Everybody knows everybody - and it’s got a lot of history.
I got released at the end of my scholarship and signed for Leicester City’s Under-21s, which was mad, because I actually went up a few leagues. Usually you drop down.
That was a different environment. It was a lot more aggressive. Obviously it’s a city,; it’s in the Midlands.
It was a really good experience and I would say that was where I built the foundations of being a young man - having to deal with pressure.
DRIFT: Having been at Leicester myself, I know that it is a demanding environment, but one that taught me a lot. I grew up fast there. Has that experience helped you with running your business today?
JM: I know it has helped me because people in the office will be talking about how they're stressed about this or stressed about that. And I'll be thinking, with football your whole livelihood at the time is on on the ropes and everyone in your friendship circle and family is looking at you in a certain way.
If you can wake up every day, be punctual, and run and fight for your spot, then it's easy to turn up to office and have a few meetings, and try to convince people to trust your product or service.
And I think in the office, at least you get given a time, you know, like when to start, when to finish, and your protected by employment law. You have an employer who is going to look out for you and your days and weeks are structured.
But, in football, you never know how long you're gonna be in a job for you know. You don’t enter into any employment law with the PFA.
DRIFT: So, after spending 18-months at Leicester, did you exit the game after this?
JM: I had agreed to sign for Hartlepool, but in between me talking to them and signing the Head of Recruitment and senior staff got sacked. So, then I was like okay, cool, what am I gonna do now?
Then I was supposed to sign for Luton, but I was an idiot. I was negotiating with them over money. And it's not even a lot, it’s like hundreds of quids, it’s stupid. So I never I never signed there.
And then I was playing non-league for a bit, and I was just looking at the money and looking at the 25 and 30-year-olds around me, and for me, I was like, I don't want to be 25/30 doing this, you know what I mean?
DRIFT: Absolutely. I had a similar decision to make, in regards to dropping out of the league and trying to work my way back up, or stepping away and building my next career. It’s not an easy decision to make at the time, when you’ve given so much to the game.
JM: Yeh, I think you’ve done the right thing. Even though we haven’t gone and made millions in the game, in the way that the Poem and Champ players have, it’s about getting ahead of that crop of players beneath that.
When you go lower than that, it comes down to the type of person you are. Of course, you can earn good money and make a good living playing lower league football - you can invest it and leverage it.
But some people can have a career, are never known, and actually never make that much money. Then they are struggling at the end of their careers financially and have to fall into something they don’t really want to do.
That wasn’t why I played the game. I played so I could get to the top, not to have an average career, you know?
DRIFT: It’s an interesting perspective and not one that everyone can relate to. In any other career, if we don’t hit the heights we want to or it doesn’t materialise how we expected it to, then we pursue other careers. But in football, that’s totally unique to walk away from it to do something else. I think that takes a lot of guts. So, how did you make the move into business and when did you know that was the route you wanted to go down?
JM: To be honest, I always knew I would be involved in business. Even when I was playing football, I was doing little things on the side.
I used to sell hats on eBay and and would always be looking for different business opportunities.
I think maybe football wasn’t my calling. I was so in love with the game and it was my passion, but maybe my calling has always been business.
Growing up, the only entrepreneurs we were told about was people like Bill Gates. You were never actually told that other people were entrepreneurs and so I was never aware of the opportunities. One of my uncle's was a big businessman, but I never registered, you know.
I think my eyes were opened when I went to uni, which was tough because obviously leaving the football world and going to uni is a big culture change.
Then I went to work for a start-up called Sweatcoin and I just wanted to hustle; I wanted to learn how to run a business.
And it was after that, in 2018, that I started my business, Yoke, with my boy, Misty, who I met at uni.
We didn’t really have any experience of the industry we were getting into, but I’d worked with creators and influencers in my previous job. I felt there was a big opportunity to get them more brand deals and shake the industry up.
The concept was very similar to what is now TikTok Shop. People would pay a commission and we had a big network of creators who could activate their brand.
With TikTok it worked really well, because they own all their data. When we were trying to deliver the same experience on other platforms, it didn’t work as well.
So initially, Yoke blew up and then the momentum died a little, which is when we pivoted to paid marketing, using everything we learnt about driving sales through creators.
DRIFT: Talk me through that pivot and how you know when to make the call to change direction?
JM: Yeh, in 6 years, we’ve pivoted two or three times, and even now we’re going through a little change.
We’re at a point where everyone is trying to do UGC content, and it’s not as appealing to me anymore.
Knowing when to pivot is the challenge, but I view it in the same way as as you go through your football career. You might lose pace, you might have to change position, similar to Gerrard.
Gerrard went from a high-energy, box-to-box attacking midfielder to a deep-holding playmaker at the end of his career. Other players go from wingers to full backs, midfielders to centre-backs.
DRIFT: Did you expect the business to take off straight away, as usually it takes time to build these things?
JM: I feel like we got lucky, because we were making money from the beginning. It didn’t start to properly fly until about 18 months in. And when I say fly, we started to see hundreds of thousands, instead of 10 to 15 k a month.
We had to hustle. It was a lot of fun at the start. We were going to lots of events and doing a lot of email outreach to get people’s attention. We had to think outside of the box because we had no experience in the industry at the start.
DRIFT: Talk me through your role in the business right now. I know you’re the co-founder, but what are you responsible for at Yoke?
JM: I am now overseeing the deal making and marketing. So I'm looking at different things in the market, giving a lot of advice.
I play the role of like a senior player, where I genuinely I don't feel like I have as much as the legs within the business. I don’t have to run as much!
I've been doing it for so long, you know? I tend to let the younger people, who’ve got more energy, to make those runs. It’s not an efficient use of my energy or time to be involved in every area of Yoke, like I used to.
I like to make sure that everyone has OKRs and KPIs. I look at the big vision of the company, and where we want to get to by the end of the season, so it's a mix of the manager and the senior player.
DRIFT: Who do you look up to for mentorship right now, and how important is it to have somebody to turn to for guidance?
JM: We have investors in the business, who mentor us on a regular basis. Our financial director helps us a lot.
I’ve then made friends with a lot of people in the industry that I lean on, who are young than me, my age and older than me. I’ve been able to learn from all of them and apply that to Yoke.
DRIFT: Obviously running a business is never plain sailing and the highs are usually followed by the lows. Are there any points in your journey that you’ve failed or doubted yourself?
JM: All the time! To stick with the football analogy, a striker is always going to miss the target, but as long as you keep shooting, you’re gonna end up scoring. If you keep making those runs, eventually someone is going to give you the ball. You have to just keep getting in the box.
There’s been times when I haven’t had the confidence to make those runs. But what I found is, when I do, it might deflect in off your nipple! That’s how it goes.
Business is similar to football in that sense. Like maybe you’ve had a couple of good quarters and then a couple of bad ones, and the business is just going through this cycle of success and failure. You’re never going to win every game, so you have to embrace that it is just part of the game.
And if you’re able to stay level headed, never getting too high or too low, everything tends to work out.
DRIFT: And you’ve ticked off something that is on a lot of bucket lists, delivering a Ted talk - tell me about how that came about and how you felt when you received the news?
JM: It came about through LinkedIn! I’ve always been authentic on LinkedIn and used my platform to share my own thoughts and opinions. I can’t do two personalities, because I can’t keep it up, so it’s easier to just show your true self online.
I was actually climbing up Everest when I got an email from a woman called Sabrina, inviting me to sign up. She was putting the event on and looking for people.
It has picked up som views online, but it hasn’t been crazy because I haven’t promoted it much. I didn’t like the way I executed it. But what I has done for me is provided a reference point and something to look back on.
DRIFT: It’s definitely something to be proud of. So with a lot already achieved, what is the future of Yoke - where do you see the business going in the next five years, in an ever-evolving industry?
JM: I want to have more impact. I think we’ve been conversion-heavy, with a lot of focus on scale and driving conversions, with not much meaning behind any of it.
I want to build a company and product that has a lot of emotional resonance. I want it to live beyond just the sale. I want people to talk about it and share it with people, and actually help improve people’s lives.
I’ve helped promote games and apps that you don’t really need in your life. I want to be part of something meaningful.
Playing for smaller, community-focused clubs like Ipswich. They may not be as known as the big teams, but for the people in those communities, those clubs are everything. They have a massive impact. And that’s the type of business I want Yoke to be. It might not be a massive one, but the impact it has is huge.
DRIFT: That’s a brilliant mission. And to round off our conversation, what is your advice to any athlete reading this who has an ambition to set up their own business one day?
JM: Athletes have 24 hours in a day, and more down time than the regular person. There’s so much time to learn about these industries. Do research and don’t be afraid that just because you’ve played football you can’t do something else.
You’re already in the 1% if you’ve made a career out of the game. If you apply all of the things that got you into that 1% to the business world, then you’l have a good chance.
Business is just like football - just a different language.
You can follow Jide’s journey via his website: https://saintjidz.com or on LinkedIn. To check out the business he has built, visit: https://www.yokenetwork.com
