What is more challenging to an entrepreneur than carrying all the responsibility for your biz on your shoulders? Unlike in employment where you have the benefit of supervisory management, as an entrepreneur you are everything. Your life, that of your biz, employees, suppliers and even buyers depend on you. Most often, you do not possess … Continue reading A Board for your Biz? Why and How to Get One
As we have seen in the previous article… Every business can benefit from having a partner. The difference however, is how it goes about recruiting a partner and what the partner brings in to the biz. You want to get someone who really brings value into the biz and essentially someone who know comfortably well. … Continue reading Choosing the Right Business Partner (2)
Values is a set of principles that give character to your biz and define what your biz is all about. Values empower both your partners, staff and customers towards ensuring that your biz is able to meet the needs and expectations of its stakeholders. A rational being will have a set of natural principles that … Continue reading Building Your Business on Values
So. You have studied and eventually graduated? Congratulations, you are among the roughly 500k Kenyans graduating from our colleges and universities every year. Usually, the feel good lasts only a few days after graduation. You hit the streets searching for a job and realize there aren’t as many jobs. Nothing stretches the soul like the … Continue reading How to Run a Successful Freelancing Business
So. You have really decided that it’s time to get employees to help grow your business. While your biz has previously been easy and flexible, now you find yourself having a team of other people looking up to you as the owner and also as employee No. 1. You have to keep them motivated and … Continue reading Six Ways to Keep Your Employees Motivated
Imagine this. You are a founder/entrepreneur who has been having to pull 80 hour weeks. You find most of your time taken by menial and routine work in the office. The question of hiring extra staff is even out of your mind completely. In any case, your hustle is still small enough for you alone … Continue reading Five Affordable Employee Plans for Small Businesses
The other day, I was in a Matatu busy “reading” facebook when this strange number called me (is strange even the right thing to say?). The caller was a young founder who was curious. He didn’t waste too much time on the preliminaries (I trained them on making savings on calls), he shot straight, “Mwalimu, … Continue reading What is Success in Entrepreneurship?
An attempt to discuss the youth unemployment in Kenya immediately stumbles upon roadblocks and diversions and one ends up going in circles. While the official operationalization of the word “youth” is anyone within the age of 18-34, most of the data on the rate of youth unemployment covers the ages from 16 or 19 to … Continue reading Is Agriculture the Solution to Youth Unemployment?
DID YOU KNOW? Cash is to a business what blood is to a living thing? Without the right type and amount of cash, your business becomes anemic; susceptible to all manner of diseases and shocks. In most cases, what kills a business is really not making loses but lack of cash. Your business could be … Continue reading 8 Reasons Why Businesses Run Out of Cash
A colleague recently invited me to write on the challenge she faces in her work of supporting entrepreneurs; lack of patience in entrepreneurs. This is important if you consider that 46% of businesses established in Kenya often die within the first year. While death sometimes is inevitably a good thing, there is unfortunately a substantial … Continue reading What is the Place of Patience in Entrepreneurship?
