As a child, I always knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur. Long before it was cool to be your own boss, I was inspired by seeing my parents build their business together. Having been a business owner since 2013, the biggest lesson that I have learned in business is to be careful and vet who you choose to go into business with. Even as I say this, I have to also admit that in certain instances, I may not have always been the best business partner. Going into business is something akin to getting married to someone. Nobody goes into business or marriage wanting it to fail, but even good businesses and marriages fail when communication stops, and the people involved stop seeing eye to eye or have different visions for the business or marriage.
As I reflect on my over 12 years of being a business owner, I sometimes wish that there was someone older to guide me on how business works. Unfortunately, the loss of my father 12 years ago was actually what made me a business owner and business partner at just 18 years old. After my father passed away in 2013, I became my mother’s business partner in the business that she and my father founded, as well as a business partner to my father’s other business partners. At 30 years old, I can confidently say that at 18 years old, I knew nothing about running a business. But 18-year-old money would never have admitted that, that version of me knew everything. The person I am today knows nothing and is learning every day.
I often wondered why my father chose the business partners he had. With him gone, I had many unanswered questions. For a long time, I was angry at his business partners. I felt like they should have done more for me and my family after my dad died, but like I said, 18-year-old me knew nothing. Today, I am aware of so much more and forgive them. Unfortunately, as I got into business, I did not choose the right business partners, but even that has been a great lesson for me and one I hope you don’t have to make. I hope that you can learn from my mistakes and really take time to choose the right business partners. Maybe you don’t need business partners, or maybe you do. At the end of the day, you cannot do life on your own. You need people, but in business, especially, you need the right people. Just anybody doesn’t cut it.
In the sweltering heat of Ubungo, Dar es Salaam, on October 29,mere hours after Tanzania's polls closed under a shroud of blackouts and boycotts, John Okoth Ogutu, a 38-year-old teacher from Siaya County, was gunned down in the streets. He'd spent eight years molding young Tanzanian minds, sending remittances home to his wife and three children in Kenya, only to become the first confirmed Kenyan casualty in what has spiraled […]
