Af­ter years of tire­less­ly work­ing to build their fol­low­ings through com­e­dy on so­cial me­dia, con­tent cre­ators Jamel “Cer­ti­fied’ Samp­son and Kyle “Kyle­boss” Mark have sought a new lane to build their brands through en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

On Ju­ly 27, Samp­son opened a new Ice Cream shop Cer­ti­fied Scoop at South Park Mall in San Fer­nan­do.

The store, he ex­plained, was an evo­lu­tion of the jour­ney he be­gan eight years ago when he start­ed cre­at­ing con­tent as Cer­ti­fied Samp­son.

Samp­son told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that his team start­ed look­ing at ad­di­tion­al ways to con­nect to his au­di­ence, two years ago.

“The first in­te­gra­tion or the busi­ness would have been the lol­lies part of it. We launched on May 5 of last year,” said the 28-year-old Samp­son. The lol­lies gained mo­men­tum to the point of be­ing sold at gro­cery chains such as Xtra Foods, Tru Valu and Su­per­pharm.

How­ev­er, when the op­por­tu­ni­ty to get his own store be­came a pos­si­bil­i­ty, Samp­son’s love for ice cream guid­ed a new ap­proach as his close friend, busi­ness part­ner and man­ag­er Ra­jiv Singh en­cour­aged him to pur­sue that route.

“He said let’s have an ice cream shop in­stead. So I was like hey, that’s a good idea,” said Samp­son, who then did re­search on flavours which would both ap­peal to the lo­cal palate as well as unique blends which would draw cu­rios­i­ty, all the while tieing back to his so­cial me­dia brand.

Al­though this year Samp­son hit the mile­stone of reach­ing one mil­lion fol­low­ers on Tik­Tok, he said open­ing the store was a ma­jor achieve­ment for him.

“Con­tent cre­ation, I think a lot of peo­ple I would say still don’t take it as se­ri­ous as a job job. They look at it as ‘he do­ing a quick video’. But I want­ed young peo­ple, es­pe­cial­ly those who do a lot of con­tent cre­ation be­cause they say this is the di­rec­tion our gen­er­a­tion is go­ing, to see a young per­son do this. To know that it is some­thing achiev­able,” said Samp­son, who al­so stressed that get­ting to this point took a lot of work and sac­ri­fice.

“This was lit­er­al­ly Ra­jiv and I do­ing work for cor­po­rate com­pa­nies and just sav­ing, sav­ing, sav­ing,” he said. “It’s some­thing I want young peo­ple to get in­spi­ra­tion from that in any way, shape or form. Whether it be stick­ing to your dream, per­sis­ten­cy, con­sis­ten­cy. Don’t feel like you have a lim­it. Don’t feel like you have to be an old­er per­son to be suc­cess­ful in busi­ness or have a busi­ness ven­ture.”

Samp­son ex­plained that even though he knew he was tak­ing on a risk en­ter­ing in­to busi­ness, he was cer­tain the ex­pe­ri­ence gained would help him in the long run.

How­ev­er, the first few weeks of op­er­a­tions have ex­ceed­ed even his ex­pec­ta­tions as long lines did not on­ly show up on open­ing day but for much of the past fort­night.

“Since we opened on Ju­ly 27. we have long lines as well. We had to close one of the days be­cause we sold a lot of the flavours and we couldn’t open. That was like three days af­ter we launched, we closed for one day so far. And we made sure that we stocked prop­er­ly for peo­ple to come in ex­pe­ri­ence the ice cream at Cer­ti­fied Scoop,” said Samp­son.

“It makes me re­alise that the sup­port is some­thing that is def­i­nite­ly re­al. The sup­port is def­i­nite­ly there. I was shocked of course, over­whelmed and grate­ful most im­por­tant­ly be­cause in no way, shape or form I ex­pect­ed that num­ber of peo­ple,” said Samp­son.

How­ev­er, it al­so served as an­oth­er les­son for him in ap­proach­ing and cu­rat­ing his busi­ness.

“I would say it is def­i­nite­ly some­thing that opened up my eyes a lit­tle bit, in terms of run­ning out of raw ma­te­ri­als from time to time. So we try to pre­pare our­selves now based on what we ex­pe­ri­enced,” said Samp­son who stressed that over­all he want­ed the busi­ness to be an ex­am­ple for young peo­ple in par­tic­u­lar that en­tre­pre­neur­ship is not out of reach.

“Young en­tre­pre­neur­ship is some­thing that you don’t see much of, es­pe­cial­ly on a large scale. Es­pe­cial­ly from the ground up,” said Samp­son.

“I def­i­nite­ly want to be a mo­ti­va­tion for those young adults com­ing up in­to busi­ness as well too. Be­cause I didn’t go to busi­ness school, I didn’t know a lot about busi­ness. I just knew it have a prod­uct and the con­sumer mar­ket al­ready wait­ing for the prod­uct. Some­thing could hap­pen once you build the cor­rect team and you have the right mind­set.”

Kyle Mark has en­joyed a break­through in the past year with his comedic shorts, swift­ly and con­sis­tent­ly go­ing vi­ral with his re­lat­able takes on West In­di­an fam­i­lies and so­cial ex­pe­ri­ences. De­spite al­so hav­ing 200,000 fol­low­ers, he too saw the open­ing of 5am Cof­fee Club in Cunu­pia, as a change to ex­pand his brand.

“It was def­i­nite­ly an ex­pan­sion of my brand. But that be­ing al­so the fact that I, pri­or to this year, trav­elled through Eu­rope and I re­al­ly got in­spi­ra­tion from some of the places that I trav­elled to,” said the 27-year-old.

“Some­thing about a cof­fee shop, the at­mos­phere, the am­bi­ence, and so many things can hap­pen at a cof­fee shop. Some of the most pow­er­ful deals in the world were lit­er­al­ly done in a cof­fee shop,” said Mark, “Through so­cial me­dia etc. I was able to ex­pand my brand in­to some­thing that I re­al­ly kind of grew a love for,”

Af­ter see­ing the vari­a­tions of cof­fee hous­es in Eu­rope and Italy in par­tic­u­lar, Mark was con­fi­dent he could es­tab­lish him­self de­spite the pop­u­lar­i­ty of oth­er cof­fee hous­es around the coun­try.

“Nat­u­ral­ly com­pe­ti­tion will arise that it’s al­ways been there, and it will al­ways be there and it will al­ways con­tin­ue to you know, push peo­ple in a spe­cif­ic di­rec­tion. Open­ing I didn’t face any com­pli­ca­tions in my think­ing about these oth­er busi­ness­es be­cause I was just so ex­cit­ed to kind of have my own brand,” said Mark, who was al­so blown away by the sup­port that came to his busi­ness from his so­cial me­dia fol­low­ing.

“I wasn’t even aware that the sup­port would be that tremen­dous, tru­ly love and the sup­port that I got from the so­cial me­dia world. I didn’t ex­pect that. But I was just ex­cit­ed to start my own brand, and I had faith in me as a per­son on my busi­ness ad­ven­tures,” he said.

Both young men ad­mit­ted that lessons learnt dur­ing their jour­neys as con­tent cre­ators helped build their busi­ness mind­sets.

“The biggest les­son I learned with re­gards to con­tent cre­ation again, I think some­thing along the lines of con­sis­ten­cy as well with putting out con­sis­tent con­tent is that where you see the max­i­mum re­ward, you have to you have to stay con­sis­tent,” said Mark, who al­so felt the world was still learn­ing the pow­er of so­cial me­dia.

Samp­son said his jour­ney had sim­i­lar­ly taught him re­silience.

He said, “Do­ing con­tent, I have had dif­fi­cul­ties on some days with maybe ideas or try­ing to fig­ure out what is the next step or some­thing un­ex­pect­ed hap­pened and it’s how could I work around that, for the busi­ness what I re­alised those things hap­pen, of course in a dif­fer­ent way. But it’s the same way which is to sort of keep com­po­sure, un­der­stand what is in your con­trol and un­der­stand what is not in your con­trol and sort of work from there.”

Mark has said he in­tend­ed to ex­pand his busi­ness to fur­ther branch­es, while Samp­son is ea­ger to ex­per­i­ment and bring more of his fam­i­ly-fo­cused cre­ations to Cer­ti­fied Scoop.