Young Billionaires Investment Club.

25/08/2016

Kenyan Youth Please look into this.
NAIROBI, Kenya, Aug 24 – Brand Kenya Board Chairman Dr Chris Kirubi has urged President Uhuru Kenyatta “to pay attention” so that Kenya doesn’t get a reputation for being a “gambling nation as opposed to a working one.”
Speaking on Wednesday during a courtesy call by the Communications Authority of Kenya Chairman Ngene Gituku and Director General Francis Wangusi, Dr Kirubi said the virtue of hard work was being tarnished by the glamourisation of mobile based sports betting, and gambling in general, as an easy way to make money.
“We have allowed gambling to take the centre control of the mind of the young people and for them to spend the little money they have buying luck slots. They lose, one of them wins and through the media you show the guy who won but they don’t show you the people who lost. By the time one wins, there are 10,000 who lost.”
The ‘easy money’ mentality, he said, only served to further entrench the culture of corruption that Kenya struggles to shake.

31/10/2015

A life changing book by john c.maxwell for all leaders out there

31/10/2015

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”

17/09/2015

Heshan DeSilva, 26 – VenCap Kenya

Kenya’s very own venture capitalist running a multi-billion shilling company. His company invests in people’s ideas and gets equity in their businesses. More like what happens in Shark Tank. He sold his first company fro ksh122 million and guess what? He did not even have a university degree.

17/09/2015

Inspiring music is what keeps us going....PSquare - Bring it On [Official Video] ft. Dave Scott.

06/05/2015

www.jambonewspot.com/kenyan-women-under-30-and-in-charge/

Wanjiku lives by a saying that her father drummed into her and her three siblings during their childhood years in Buruburu, Nairobi. She grew up believing that anything can be done, an attitude that has seen her build a successful corporate events planning agency.

06/05/2015

Janet Mwaluda, 27, founder Ink House Pals, a print advertising company, and Ink Productions, a film production company
At just 27, Janet Mwaluda is at the helm of two successful companies. She looks glamorous, is bubbly and laughs easily. She makes it all look so easy but make no mistake; she works hard and long. When she is not busy organising shoots for a television show, then she is chasing tenders for her printing company. She studied actuarial science at JKUAT but she has always loved the arts. She was the girl who fought to write her own poems to present at drama festivals in high school.
Working on a TV show called Upishi Extra two years ago, Janet realised that production was too expensive for her to start off with; she needed income from elsewhere. Motivated by her production dream, she started a print advertising company, Ink House Pals, which she aggressively marketed. Her aggressive nature can best be demonstrated in how she got her first job aged only 22. She walked up to a company director at an event and told him how his company was missing out because of not having her on their team. She got the job on the spot.
After a year of running Ink House Pals, she had made enough money to produce her first show, Fitness Chasers, a work out show which aired on Zuku. Preferring the creative side of the business rather than the finance one, she partnered with her sister who is in charge of the money. Then she focused on putting together a team of writers, editors and a director.
All what she knows about production, she says, she has learnt on the job. “It is a competitive business. Shooting a pilot is the first part. Getting it on television is the other part,” she says.
She also gets to travel a lot on the job and experience different cultures. She loves to incorporate concepts she sees abroad in her productions.
The company is working on the finishing touches of a television series they have been shooting for the past year. On running a production business at her age, she says, “It’s not easy but you can make it if you keep your eyes on the bigger picture.”
ui Munderu, 28, MD, Travel Shore Africa
When Kui wants something, she goes out and gets it. Four years ago, she quit a well paying job with a prestigious airline to take up a job at a small travel agency.
“I had been employed as a reservations agent by an international airline for two years at this point. The money was good but I was tired of spending all day at work taking instructions.
Travel has been a passion since childhood. I wanted to start a travel agency but I didn’t understand how they made money. I took up this smaller job to understand this,” she explains.
At the start of 2012, after eight months earning just Sh16, 000, she felt that she had acquired enough knowledge to run her own business. She had Sh100, 000 saved for this venture. She used it to acquire a one-room office, a desk, a computer and to install a ticketing system into the computer.
“I had just three clients who were my mother’s friends regularly travelling for business. I was running the business singlehanded,” she recalls.
As a young woman in business, her biggest task was finding a bank that would accommodate her. The capital she started with wasn’t nearly as much as she needed. When she went for funding, her bank asked for land as collateral. “How much land can a 24-year-old starting a business have?” she asks.
She has had many people doubting her ability to handle big jobs but she interacts with people well and easily works her way round such situations.
Her company has grown to include a long list of corporate clients. Apart from ticketing, she has expanded into travel and safaris. In the past year, she has acquired several vans so she doesn’t have to hire some when organising safaris.
“I had doubts about going it alone when I quit my job and even considered going back into employment several times but now I have no regrets,” she says.

06/05/2015

Mary Njoki, 26, MD, Glass House PR

Three years ago, Mary Njoki got fired from her marketing job via text message. Many women would have been shattered by this job loss but she instead felt relieved.
“I am personable and I was good at marketing but there was no challenge,” she explains. Today she runs a successful public relations firm with big names on its client list. “The thing that I love most about entrepreneurship is the challenge,” she says.
A year before this sad morning, Mary had attended a Business Networking International (BNI) meeting by chance. Here, she had interacted with CEOs who instantly changed her perception on entrepreneurship. Now jobless and armed with only Sh6, 000 and a laptop, she believed in the possibility of founding a company that would give her millions.
“I was curious about public relations but I didn’t have a clear picture of what it entailed. I started doing my online research. The more I found out about it, the deeper in love I fell with it.”
In her parents’ house in Ngarariga, Limuru, she put together the concept of Glass House PR. She created a website, Facebook and Twitter pages and then started sending her company profile to the network she had built at her marketing job.
“When marketing a business, all prospective clients will want to know who you worked with. My first year saw me doing a lot of pro bono work or work at a minimal fee just so I could prove myself and to build my brand,” she says.
She admits that there were times that she got tempted to get back into the job market but the conviction that she was building something bigger than her kept her going.
In 2014, doors started opening and she began working with artistes and public figures. Now she dreams of her brand birthing other brands, especially a media outlet of the future. Meanwhile, she stays loyal to clients who don’t always bring the big bucks.
“I can’t forget where I came from,” she says.
“I still work with small businesses and while I can give them value, it is sometimes a challenge for them to be able to pay me,” she says.
This year, her company launched an entrepreneurship programme, Passpreneurs, where one aspiring entrepreneur is trained for 16 hours on how to run a business in Africa and then commissioned to train 16 others and get paid for it.
“There are times that potential clients frown at my age but a show of professionalism always earns me respect,” she says.

06/05/2015

Successful Kenyan Women Under 30.

Wanjiku Kariuki Kandie, 30, founder of Waridi Events
Wanjiku lives by a saying that her father drummed into her and her three siblings during their childhood years in Buruburu, Nairobi. She grew up believing that anything can be done, an attitude that has seen her build a successful corporate events planning agency.
“At first, I imagined that being young would be a hurdle in my quest to build a business but it has been a great asset. Because I was young, I could afford to take the risk of starting a business. It also helped that many organisations believed that our young team could bring freshness to their events,” she says.
The idea of Waridi Events was sown in a University of Nairobi hostel room eight years ago. While final year students were planning for job searches, Wanjiku, who studied actuarial science, was dreaming of owning a business and drawing up business plans.
“I had seen a need for a platform for brides and grooms to access wedding planning information in Kenya. Upon graduation, I set up a website that was a directory and an information hub,” she recalls.
Her mother and her sister invested in her business, but it was a hard idea to sell. Slowly, the website transitioned to providing wedding planning services and then eventually, corporate event planning services. With no knowledge on running a business it wasn’t easy but she found a great support sustem in friends and in her husband Chris.
“Our biggest achievement so far has been developing a comprehensive event management cloud based software,” she says.

06/05/2015

THE SECRET OF A YOUNG KENYAN MILLIONAIRE.

Eric Kinoti is among the 2014 Forbes list of the Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs in Africa.

Being a millionaire at a young age makes people imagine you are lucky. It could be luck, but you have to be natured well. Starting a company that makes Ksh150 million and an affiliate raking in Ksh3 million annually is no mean feat.

But for Eric Kinoti, a Forbes Top 30 below 30 finalist for 2014, is living his dream in Shade Systems East Africa, a growing empire that manufactures and supplies military tents. Born in Mombasa 29 years ago, Mr Kinoti was brought up in a business-oriented family and it’s from this upbringing that the CEO of Shade Systems learnt the ropes of entrepreneurship. “I started assisting my mother in her business while still in lower primary,” he says. “At school I sold sweets from my father’s wholesale shop to the other pupils. At age of 10, I was the cashier at the shop.”

This inspired business in him, a mindset he carried on to high school. “I was allowed to sell cakes to students at the school canteen,” says Mr Kinoti, whose company emerged second runners up in the KPMG 100 Midsized Companies 2014 and the industry leader in manufacturing. After completing his Diploma in Business Management in 2004, Mr Kinoti started working as a cashier at a hotel in Malindi and working mostly on night shift, he had a lot of free time. He had the option of hanging out with friends or even basking in the Malindi sand beaches, but he chose to do business as his side kick.

“I started distributing eggs around Malindi during my free time,” he adds. Three years later, Mr Kinoti quit his job in 2007 to venture into business. “With a capital of Ksh20,000 I started buying milk from Kinoo and Kiambu and supplying city hotels both in Nairobi and Mombasa. The milk business was very challenging because it has a lot of licensing and a lot of capital involved,” he says. Things did not work well and he found himself working at Standard Chartered Bank, only to get frustrated after two months.“The milk business became a challenge for me and I had to look for a job which I got but after working for Standard Chartered Bank for only two months, I realised this was a bad move,” says Mr Kinoti.

The political upheaval after the disputed 2007 presidential elections was a blessing in disguise, as he was forced to relocate to Nairobi. He started supplying foodstuff to schools in Mombasa, Nairobi and Eastern Kenya. It is while in this business that he met a client who didn’t want anything that he was supplying but a tent for a function he was planning. “I took the challenge and supplied it. After making some money out of the deal, I went and withdrew all the savings I had and ventured into tent business,” he says.

Breakthrough, three years later

At 24, and armed with Ksh60,000, Mr Kinoti started Shade Systems East Africa, to manufacture military and relief tents, branded gazebos, restaurant canopies, car parking shades, marquees, luxury tents, wedding party tents canvas seats and bouncing castles. “Capital was my biggest bottleneck and I tried a shylock. I had my stuff auctioned when I did not pay on time,” he says.

After several years in the business, Shade Systems made a major leap forward in 2010 when the company sold a canopy tent to an Asian family and those who attended the function loved the canopy idea. “After that I got a big tender to supply military tents and I’ve never looked back since then,” he avers. Mr Kinoti draws heavy inspiration from business mogul Chris Kirubi whom he terms as a shrewd businessman who ‘sees a gap in market and fixes it with a solution.’ In his job, every day presents a different challenge, mostly unwelcoming clients.

“Every choice has consequences. In business you make many mistakes, some haste decisions that don’t work, but at the end, you learn from every past experience. However, it takes hard work, sweat, dedication, focus, having the right team and God,” he says.

Listed in Forbes 30 Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs in Africa 2014, Mr Kinoti wants to expand his business to the entire African market. Getting the right positioning of the business in terms of location, name, staffing and expansion hasn’t been an easy task for him and he has been forced to relocate twice. Mr Kinoti owns two other companies affiliated to Shade Systems. Bag Base Kenya makes leather and heavy duty canvas bags, school bags, laptop bags, corporate bags as well as iPad covers. Safi Sana Home Cleaning Services offers house cleaning and residential laundry services.

Mr Kinoti wants young people to learn from him and not emulate him. “Entrepreneurship is a journey, not a one-off get-rich scheme. When you imitate what your role models are doing, you limit yourself, be different,” says Kinoti. “Young people willing to venture into business should not wait for the fat lady to sing; start with what you have as it is the small things we do that make us the most important people in the world.”

In entrepreneurship, he says, patience is a virtue. “Most of the young people are not patient enough to see a business grow. They want to start an enterprise and start earning profits the next week. It doesn’t work like that. I stayed for over three years without making real money, but I kept my focus, faith and worked hard.”

He says the biggest mistake entrepreneurs make is jump from one business to another, hoping the next is better. “Every business, every industry, has its own challenge, it’s upon you as an entrepreneur to stay put, work hard and remain focused from where you are.”

His last word? “Think Big. Start Small. Start Now.”

06/05/2015

We can eradicate poverty by young men and women establishing their own business start ups.

05/05/2015

“Don't Gain The World & Lose Your Soul, Wisdom Is Better Than Silver Or Gold.”
― Bob Marley