How Rose Soared, Fell and Bounced Back

By Diana Ashley

Posted on June 12, 2018

19 min read

1,474

It’s never easy running the show, especially when you are starting a new business. When Rose Maghas started her business, sometimes she was unprepared, or ignorant. Most of the time she never saw the hurdles coming until she tripped right over them. Rose, a mother of six, started her business in 2006. Having completed her Masters in the US, she had been offered a position with Safaricom and 9 months later, what she thought had been a lucrative offer failed to give her the much needed high she was seeking. So she resigned and started her own business. Three years later, she learned a few golden rules of the entrepreneurship world: It is okay to mess up; to feel overwhelmed and beaten. Every entrepreneur, no matter how prepared, trips over unexpected hurdles, and it’s the successful ones who learn to get back up as soon as possible. This is her story as she narrates it to us.

The Dream

All along I have always thought to myself that I would run a business, but just wasn’t too clear on what exactly I could do. Before my university days, I started selling vegetables. I would go to Molo and get them and sell to various traders in Nakuru. Later on I graduated to selling charcoal, and soon I was on the master level as I began selling solar lamps to some customers in South Sudan. When I joined university to study my degree in engineering, I founded an E-learning center at the University of Nairobi in conjunction with the founder of NairobiNet. For the five years I was in university I worked at the center managing it from 6pm – 9pm. My aha moment came in 2003 when I went to the US to do my masters in IT and Business Administration. Our first project was to build a personal website from scratch. The project was very engaging and exciting for me and it made me realise that I could actually contribute to the information growth back in my country. Then the online world wasn’t as big as it is today, but the thought that I could be a part of sharing information to the world by building websites was enough to get me sold. I came back to Kenya in 2006 and registered my business. Our initial name was Bluebell Communication. However to fit in with the environmental theme, I chose Greenbell Communications Limited instead.

To start out, I needed two laptops which I had bought from the US at a fair price. Together with two chairs for my soon to be employees, it’s safe to say that I started with roughly Kshs.250,000. I started operating in August of the same year with one employee who was working from my house, then in Westlands, and in November I had gotten a second employee. In our first year of business, we got our first client. A gentleman had contacted us to do a dating website that was then called “My Lover’s Link” and once we were successfully with that the calls started coming in. At the end of 2007 we got a contract with the government, which caused us to shift our office space from the house. This was a huge deal for us, as the project propelled us to greater heights and as they say the rest is history. Twelve years later, we are still growing strong. I would also like to say that, starting out for me was scary, but all my life I have always believed that the courageous will eventually win. It is easy to quit and go back to the employment field; however I choose daily to remind myself that I am in it for the long haul, and that is what has kept me going with the ups and downs that running a business comes with.

The Setback

In 2009, three years after establishing what I then considered a successful business, things begun to change. Before then business had been flourishing, and slowly what was once a flurry of activity in the office suddenly became still. For the first time since we began operations, we went an entire month without any phone ringing or anyone coming to our offices to enquire about our service. What started as a one month stalemate quickly escalated to 3 months of no business, and then 6 months. Before I knew it, we were in September and we hadn’t had a single client. My staff had since increased to a whooping 12 and we had moved offices to Kileleshwa. The bills were high and kept piling up month after month, as our profits kept dwindling month after month. By July of the same year, I began to weigh my options. Our finances were tight. I had gone a few months without paying my employees now. We had also made a few financial mistakes along the way, developing apps that I thought would be readily received by the consumer market only to discover that not every idea I hav, fits the consumer market; thus losing some money along the way.

During that time, I also had my own personal problems and with time, it was hard to keep my head afloat. I had mistakenly thought that starting a business would lead me to achieve the financial success I really desired. I wanted to travel, take holiday trips, and enjoy the fruits of my business labourg. So I started making plans to go back to school to do my PhD and shut down the business. It had been a good run. My staff had gotten grumpy; I had managed to pay them out of my own personal finances albeit late. In September, I organized a trip to go to the US. I needed an escape, and for three weeks I took solace away from my problems. I remember telling my staff that I was leaving, and they were free to do whatever they wanted. Not very boss like I admit, but at that point in time, I did not care. They were free to do any work that came their way while I was away and free to do as they pleased. I had thought that if I left, things would get magically better and eventually sort themselves out but that was yet to happen. I remember sitting down with my sister who was also in the US at that time, and sharing my thoughts about closing down the business. I was sure she was going to support my decision. However she sat me down, reminded me that I had a very strong personality and going back to employment wasn’t going to work for me. Her final piece of morsel was that I was better off running the business. Her words reverberated through me, giving me a fresh perspective, even though I was so ready to call it quits. All in all, I went back home and decided to continue with the business.

The Bounce Back

In 2010 things began to look up. For starters my husband came into the business as my partner and brought with him new energy. Previously we had slackened on the marketing aspect of the business, and his enthusiasm and drive was all we needed to push through. We also took to reducing our workforce. Some had left, understandably so. We were back to two employees. I was starting all over again. I had also made some mistakes in the past with the business which I had to come to terms with and purposed to do it differently this time. It did not happen overnight, but the clients started to come. Our first big client was Toyota Kenya. Once we had our first big brand, we felt confident enough to knock on more doors. We employed more marketers and knocked on more doors. By the year 2012, we were back on our feet once more, handling a portfolio of over 100 clients. Our staff force had grown too, 16 in number, and we once more moved offices.

So how did we do it? We became aggressive. We got the right staff who were passionate about our brand, and were willing to stick it through during the silent periods and in turn, we invested heavily in them with a bonus program every quarter to motivate them. In 2014 we invested in a program that was running then by a company called Enablis, and even though they no longer exist, they were a big part of shaping our business. In partnership with CBA Bank, Enablis had run a program for small medium enterprises (smes) to train us on the importance of corporate governance and stressing on the need of having a board of directors in place. With the help of Enablis we put together our team and in 2015, we had our board of directors in place. To date, I feel setting up the board has been our biggest win, and what we needed to move us to the next level.

Twelve years later, I attribute my success to three things: 1. Invest in your employees. 2. Have a Board of Directors in place, for they see the things you cannot see, or that you overlook, and keep you accountable of all your actions as a CEO; something we entrepreneurs are in dire need of, as most of the time as bosses no one really questions us. 3. Treat your clients well, for in turn they became your marketers, and in the end everyone wins.

I have learnt that when developing a product for the mass market, it is nice to do proper market research. For in the end, it saves you money and you don’t waste time developing a product that no one will consume. Also having a keen interest in the business finances can save you a lot of trouble in the long run. We are all on a long journey. I believe that if we do our best today, and keep at it the next day and the next, eventually we will get it right. My final word to entrepreneurs out there is “Keep at it.” Keep assessing where you are in the business and where you want to go, this will motivate you to keep going when the entrepreneurship storms come your way.

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