From a Cyber Café Attendant Earning K’sh8,000 To Starting a Successful Business

Source: Daily Nation

Just five years ago, her job entailed cleaning a cyber café, charging customers and printing their documents.

This was when she was being employed as a cyber café attendant at the Care Connect Cyber Café along Wabera Street in Nairobi earning 8,000 a month.

But Keziah Nyaga who now owns Kezdelight Planners and a mitumba clothes wholesale shop felt the need to do more.

“It made me feel stuck. I wanted more; I wanted to be like my employer. I wanted to make my own money, perhaps even become a millionaire!” she tells Daily Nation in a recent interview

However, she couldn’t think of any business that her little savings could afford to set up in the Nairobi CBD.

Keziah was then convinced that entrepreneurship was the way to go but the cost seems to hold her back.

“Setting up a business in the CBD would be too costly. Rent was too high,” she says

After saving some money over the course of a year, Keziah opened a stall at Gikomba Market and began to sell kids’ mitumba or second-hand clothes.

Her mitumba business managed to pick up so well that she made a gross of between Sh200, 000 to Sh300, 000 in a good month. However, much of her income went back into the business.

“I had a lot of cash passing through my hands, but my income was little. I could transact combined sales worth a million or more within a few months, yet my worth was nowhere near the Sh1 million,” says Keziah.

In early 2013, Keziah opted to try her hand at a new business where she set up an events company Kezdelights Planners with 200,000.

“I was cautious because I wanted to get things right from the beginning.”

At the back of mind, she knew this would propel her to be of a millionaire status.

She then enrolled for a short course at Samantha Bridal’s WMBA while interning with an established events planner to gain exposure.

To get acquainted with the event planning skills she needed, she started off organizing small birthday parties, and began to market it through word of mouth.

“It looked like an effort in vain at first. Clients were hard to come by and I feared that I’d fail. But I stuck to my guns.” She says.

“I would get one customer per month. Many of those I approached seeking business were hesitant because I was not an established name.”

Her planning business finally caught on and she was contracted to set up events for Village Market and State House.

In her own words, she says that, “I made my first million the two events last year.”

Looking back at her journey, Keziah says that she would not be where she is today had she not put her mind to it.

On her final advice to young aspirants, she says that hard work and determination is the secret.

“I’ve found that there is nothing a woman cannot achieve if she puts her full mind into it,” she concludes.

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