I have been meaning to write this piece for three weeks now. I kept procrastinating each time and all for a good reason (Which is not laziness). So now that I found a few minutes…here goes.
Rich dad poor dad
The best book I have read as of yet is Robert Kiyosaki’s ‘rich dad poor dad’. To date, it’s the only book I have read twice and I have a feeling I will be reading it many more times. This book is to me what the bible is to a Christian (a staunch one not like most of you reading this). I always suspected that I did not want to be employed but after I read this book for the first time about a year ago; I was certain.
Here are some random lines from the book that I found memorable and inspiring;
One dad recommended, "Study hard so you can find a good company to work for." The other recommended, "Study hard so you can find a good company to buy."
One dad struggled to save a few dollars. The other simply created investments.
One dad taught me how to write an impressive resume so I could find a good job. The other taught me how to write strong business and financial plans so I could create jobs.
Once a dollar goes into your asset column, it becomes your employee. The best thing about money is that it works 24 hours a day and can work for generations.
Financial struggle is often directly the result of people working all their life for someone else.
The mistake in becoming what you study is that too many people forget to mind their own business.
They spend their lives minding someone else's business and making that person rich.
I felt challenged with most of these and am not known to take a challenge lying down. I looked into several businesses and initially I was into generating ideas coming up with the body arts festival and Tuwashow junior media before that with Dexter.
Tuwashow has been a good teaching ground of persistence and hard earned and deserved money.
The body arts festival while a success, I discarded because the effort was not equal to the reward. Too much work and pressure and not enough money at the end.
After B.A.F I toyed around with the idea of opening a lounge around USIU; coffee board games and good music. However it had no defined product or service to sell hence no income. I put it on the shelf till I first visited trickstar an arcade that had just been opened at the city center.
Now lots of people in Kenya have play station joints but this one had gone the extra mile. Comfortable couches, large screens, good ambiance and a different charging scheme. I fell in love with the place. I took several of my friends to the joint and they became more addicted to the place than I was. For instance Zaydee whenever he had a few minutes to spare he’d rush to the place and play a game or two…or eleven.
So from there, the idea of the game court was born (who said you have to re-invent the wheel) initially I didn’t have the name game court; I toyed with zee lounge and Noey’s.
Another good business writer Tory Johnson in her article 7 tips for starting your own business says that most people worry too much about perfecting their business plans. About dotting every ‘I’ and crossing every ‘t’. They perfect the plan so much that they never actually do it.
With perfection out of the way, I jumped right into it.
Partners
1st step was to research and get as much information as possible. I went into supermarkets looking at electronics, to carpenters, to banks, government offices and of course the internet. The second step was sharing the idea with Muchi and later on Dexter, Zaydee and Benson.
First to be interested in partnership was Muchi and later on Zaydee so there I’d found partners.
Challenges
The first challenge was to find a suitable location…scratch that…the first challenge was finding any location. As around any university, space is close to impossible to find. There were simply no vacancies. The options were to either give it up all together or creatively work with what we could get. The 1st idea was to put up a metal ladder leading straight on to a 1st floor room upstairs to a building where the game court is currently located.
Ofcourse to do this we needed the land lord’s permission and we simply could not get to him. It took close to three weeks of pestering to finally have the care-taker trust us enough to give us his number. We finally met the landlord and thanks to the bad reputation that the Kenyan youth and youth all over the world have been able to gunner; he did not trust our intentions. The only space he was willing to give us was open, concealed, next to a smoky restaurant and made of old tattered wood painted in peely black and white paint.
He was not willing to give any other space and simply shooed us away to go think about it. It was a Wednesday evening and I was headed to a photojournalism exam right after. I can’t remember ever being so distracted (but I got a B+ in the paper so it’s all good). Now in some of these situations you either have to work with what you got or walk.
Again I remembered a line I had read in my bible (the one by Kiyosaki of course)
If you can't make up you mind decisively, then you'll never learn to make money anyway. Opportunities come and go. Being able to know when to make quick decisions is an important skill.
I called the landlord after my exam and told him we’d take the space.
What followed was hours spent staring at the former 5 5 bar trying to think of ways to make it work. If you know me then you know that once an idea creeps into my head I spend days thinking, talking and dreaming about it.
Drawing mental pictures, searching for artists, metal workers and carpenters to do the work and etcetera etcetera. On 18
th of august 2011 work officially began.
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| katumo at work |
I have to thank one short and very hard working man named
Katumo for putting all of his heart into the project, an always drunk mkokoteni guy called
captain for ensuring the supplies were delivered even defying the USIU guards and passing by the VIP lane on the graduation day. And a welder called
Karanja for buying me beer right after I’d paid him…good man.
Finances
Anyone who has ever started a business will tell you that the hardest part is getting anyone to put their money into your business. Unfortunately for me I didn’t have an easy time as my partners did in getting the money. Being the proprietor though and having invested a good amount already, there was no backing out at this point. If banks were girls lets just say I’d be quite a stud by now because I did get into quite a number of them.
And I cannot thank enough one
Benson Mbugua. It would take several life times for me to return the favor.
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| Benson pretending to be a workman |
Government offices
Now you would have to try and properly register a business to understand why corruption in Kenya is a very hard war to fight. Take the registrar of companies for instance…normally it should take three days for a name search and ten days for the registration certificate…but this is on paper. Without a bribe, it will take at least a month and that’s if you are lucky. Ironically with a bribe, it takes less than 24 hours. I tried to go the right way but after several trips and a lot of frustrations, I bribed. What we had to loose was greater if I did not.
6th of September with a few thousands parted in bribes I had all the licenses and a few contacts ranging from the city council to the ministry of information and communication (so ukishikwa na kanjo nipigie)
I hate myself for it but I hate the system more for making me do it.
The game court
Two days later on 8
th of September 2011 the game court was officially open
All too often, instead of trusting their inner wisdom, that genius inside of them, most people go along with the crowd. They do things because everybody else does it.
Well, not me.
Here is a poem by Robert Frost that is also featured in Kiyosaki’s book
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler,
Long I stood And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads onto way, I
Doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence;
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by
, And that has made all the difference.
Legoooooooooooo!!!
