Michael Musau

It is five years since I published a book titled “Unpackaged Gains: 29 Great Lessons that I have learnt as a young entrepreneur.” As you’d expect if you never got to read the ‘not so widely circulated book,’ most of the lessons were stated in the negative - what not to do! After having the book in the shelves and a couple of university libraries, it was no surprise that I had to get back to business and keep running the business that I had come to call my other ‘better for worse half.’  One thing about gaining momentum once you’re in business is that you never want to let go. But it got to a point two years ago when I had to let go; but it wasn’t easy- leaving me with such sad emotions, gloom, regrets, frustration, bitterness, you name it. Now that I am learning that it’s time to pick up the pieces, see someone else reap the benefits from my hard work, I have also come to terms with the fact that entrepreneurship is not what majority of business people out here think it is.

When I was starting my first business seven years ago, a few guys, much older than me would tell me: “you just won’t make money, at least not anytime soon.” It sounded ridiculous at the time, because even before I went into running my company on a full time basis, I was already making money, and lots of it. One thing that I didn’t realize was that any money that your business makes in its formative years is never your money but the business’ money.  If you’re unlucky to have started your business after making sacrifices to save, then perhaps better for you; because the idea of ‘making it’ yet doesn’t fool you too soon.

One thing that I have learnt from the older business men who have been in it for over 20 years is that sometimes, what seems to be a few months before loads of money starts coming in could be many years of wait. And that’s why they say that entrepreneurship is just not for the faint hearted.

Another thing is that no matter how committed you are at first into making your personal relationships work, they will definitely face a blow because the reality is that you’ll always be distracted; mentally, physically or financially.  I have on many occasions found myself having to walk out of events just because the emergency call came and I just wasn’t confident that anyone else was well suited to solve the problem at hand. And even worse is the fact that you have to contend with being the last person out of the office, the first one in every morning and sacrifices over the weekends; sometimes to the extent of working on Sundays.

Being the jack of all trades again will hurt you even more. I recently had the opportunity to be on a panel that was interviewing for a value chain position for a regional firm supporting young farmers.  My colleague was surprised at just how much I had perfected my human resource skills; something that I didn’t even know about myself because everything just felt like my everyday life. I have found myself having to edit the content of my website without having to call for IT professionals, having to stock up on office basic supplies to doing my own Quickbooks, PowerPoint presentations to the extremes of being the agronomist in a rural plantation.  It’s tough; it’s at times exciting but also a way out of the comfort zone that our careers entangle us in. But does it define the success of what we do in the long run? Arguably not - we end up so tired and unable to do anything much after those work hours. 

Then comes the harder problem; the toughest challenge that I had when running my business was having to separate myself from the company. Few of us get too entangled into the affairs of the company that we forget that the two are separate entities. Due to this, you end up biting the harder challenges of your growing enterprise, making personal payments for company expenses and worst of all, spending ‘your personal’ time on the business. This is the one problem that most entrepreneurs don’t treat as a such, but one whose implications can be costly. I have found myself years later personally carrying the baggage that should have been the company’s.

Sometimes, entrepreneurs go an extra mile and spend a lot of money to have professionals write for them well laid out business plans. The sad truth is that those business plans are never the Bible they think they are. In fact, there is usually a high chance that your performance is never anywhere close to your performance. I am not saying that you shouldn’t have a business plan. However, your business’ initial goals should be to aggressively drive a demand for its products and/or services. Trying to match up performance with expectations can be quite gloomy, if not plain frustrating. There is no pain in always abandoning the plan if it can’t work at all, or the business because you can always start all over again.

Then there’s always the frustration over making some decisions that you’ll find yourself having to make along the way. These could vary from taking a loan to bringing in shareholders, hiring relatives to making some commitments.  I have over the years been haunted by mistakes that arose from decisions I wish I never made. One best way to deal with this is just learning to let go, after all, they shape the person you become.

Finally, running a small business is about risks; it is taking chances and we could either succeed or fail miserably. Learning from the past, I have taken every new challenge with the hope that it will succeed. I however handle each one of them like it could be that one good thing that could just go wrong. I am a risk taker but risks aside, the thing we think we see too clearly could be the worst thing we wish we didn’t see at all.

By Michael Musau

The author [email protected] is an Independent Consultant.