“I Came To Nairobi To Look For a Job” Meet 26 Yr Old Who Uses ‘Talent’ To Make Millions

If you had an opportunity to use one of your abilities as an individual and earn lots of money, what ability would you choose?

Meet a man who decided to use what many have; his voice, and make millions from it.

His voice can be heard at various shops in the downtown of Nairobi urging you to have a meal, buy a shoe (kiatu mia tano, kiatu mia tano…..) or check out the newest mobile phone in town.

Collins Musungu, 26, is the man behind these voices. He cleared secondary school in 2009 with a dream to pursue journalism. He however failed to raise enough money to allow him join his preferred training school in Mombasa.

“I therefore came to Nairobi to look for a job,” he reveals to Money, adding that he wanted to be a taxi driver.

He failed to secure an opening but landed another job. He started selling shoes for his employer at Muthurwa market in 2011.

To add on onto his unemployment frustrations he lived in Muthurwa with street boys as he did not have a proper home.

This did not stop him from making frequent visits to the Kenya National Theatre hoping to get discovered by people in the drama industry.

His efforts bore fruit because that is where he met his current manager, Mr Edward Thomas Junior, 24, who was also seeking to venture into the entertainment industry.

For many with great dreams and inspirations, a shoe selling job would be regarded as humiliating. This was not the case for the ‘voice artist’. He gives credit to his first job as a shoe seller for helping him discover his talent in advertising.

“I did my first audio and took it to the studio for editing, then gave it to the shoe seller to sample it — for free. Soon traders became interested in the audio and began asking me to do more audios advertising their specific products,” Mr Musungu revealed.

It was then that his manager and friend told him to patent the idea and establish a business. This saw them come up with a strategy on how to run their idea as an enterprise and subsequently registered it as Voice for Business Advertising, a voice advertising outfit and came up with the pricing for the product.

Their business began by charging Sh6,000 per recording but later reviewed the price upwards on realizing that they were not making any profits.

“Soon, we started getting orders from various traders ranging from hotel owners, warehouses and traders within the city and other major towns in Kenya,” says Mr. Musungu.

Four years later as Money reveals, the trio now charges about Sh80,000 on the high-end for an audio annually, and a monthly fee ranging between Sh1,000 to Sh1,500.

It takes less than an hour to come up with a complete audio ready to be placed in a store after which we give the client a demo to test and confirm if it fits their specifications. The final product is delivered in a flash disk ready for use and a monthly fee is then agreed upon depending on the specifications of the store.

How did he make his first million?

The firm also has a call-back tune service where users download Skiza tune from Safaricom. This is their alternative revenue stream.

“The biggest cheque I have so far received from Skiza tune product was for about Sh1.2 million,” said Mr Musungu.

All businesses are faced with a few challenges. His is to keep the customers coming back for new recordings, new advertising audios, each year.

He also has to ensure that the audios are not duplicated and used in other stores which would mean no income his team of three men. Each audio lasts between 10 and 15 minutes and keeps re-running.

He attributes his talent to having requests to record for their return customers even before an year is over.

“Some customers come back immediately they have added a new product to their collection and ask us to include it in the audio,” said Mr Musungu.

His business has also attracted interest from entrepreneurs from Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania who are referred by other users who have found the product helpful.

Mr Musungu now looks to diversify his enterprise and venture into video advertising.

Musungu would be a perfect example to the youth who fail to believe that yiour background has no effect on your future success.

Source: Nairobi News

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