Jenny Luesby

7 September 2010

opinion

What do you say to people who have decided they too want to launch their own business?

Do you race to encourage them? Do you hear out their business plan?

Or do you ask them just how determined they are, and how much misery they can live though?

Because that's the bit that every entrepreneur needs to be "real" about from the very beginning.

I've seen many a start-up come and go, and write often about all the reasons why nine out of every 10 businesses fail.

But perhaps the single most outstanding characteristic of every business that succeeds is an owner who knows that nothing on the whole planet will stop them: as our own accountant put it to me when we were wading through our own hard, hard times trying to get to the vision ahead.

With enough determination, anyone can make a business stand up.

And without it, no-one can. It's a message I once heard too from an author, about writing a book.

I used to own and run a book shop, long ago, in the UK, and we used to stock that author's title. Then I met her at a wedding. What a buzz. A real author. Out came my own plans for writing my own book.

She looked at me, frowning, and said: "The thing you need to understand about writing a book is that you only do it if you have to, if you actually need to, and cannot live if you don't."

Research problems

Funny lady. And so right. I finished the book. Bizarrely, it's still in print a decade later. But it took a kind of determination I hadn't had to have before that.

It was so easy to let another month pass without solving all the structural, writing, and research problems, and such a mountain to climb.

So, hats off, to all authors who get to final manuscript. Yet, it was as nothing compared with launching a small business.

I never knew there were so many ways to raise an extra penny to cover payroll, or so many nights that could be lain awake worrying over how to keep it all going.

I never knew, frankly, I could be so broke, and carry on being so broke, for so long.

I never imagined there could be so many obstacles, from fantastical electricity bills - as high as Sh87,000 on a single bill - to being locked out of our offices with all our kit inside when the owner decided he wanted to reshape the building as a shopping mall.

We had partners who took what we had to give and then tore up the contract. We had staff who stole from us, and many who rode us.

We made mistakes

We made mistakes, and lost many deals. We also got help, from all sorts of people who believed in us, including on the last leg, from our bankers.

And then we broke through, to the space I remember from the last business I ran: the huge joy of a thriving business.

Now it's easy to remember what kept me going so long, and why I did it all.

Every product we have is into steep growth, as is revenue too, we're getting great feedback, our little SME is singing.

And it's a space, and a thrill, from which I can now look back and say: wow, was that ever a journey!

Yet it is a fact that our success today didn't come from nowhere. Painstakingly, painfully, we built a team. We built skills.

We built our dream products - and are still building them, with another 1,000 miles to go before we consider them as done. There were two times I nearly gave up.

I thought I just couldn't go another month of bare food cupboards, or through one more setback. And then we did. Every, single time: we found a way.

And now what we have is unique, and we created it.

More than that, we've learned something about ourselves as a business.

Last week, when we hit a problem, I discussed it with my deputy, and he said: "We'll find a way. We always do". And we will.

And you will too - if your life depends on it. And it will work, and unlike me, because I'm a big mouth, mostly no-one will ever know just how hard it was.

But you will: and hats off to you.