Taking a cue from wazua about the said topic,juu hii kijii ndio numero uno,can guys share their biashara failures.Hii ni
moja ya wazua i have copied(eerily similarities to a diaspora jamaa i knew)
Mine cannot be said in five sentences. Way too much stuff has happened in my life it’s almost fiction.
“Ok. Let me try. Came back from the States Circa 2008 with over 9m and used it all to buy an upscale restaurant which had a rent of over 150k plus other overheads. Very expensive location. Tried to operate the restaurant semi- remotely as in do other things while I let my manager run the restaurant.
Well, after about 8 months, I fell behind so bad, had to take a loan of 1.5 m just to try and catch up on bills. It got so bad that I was maybe a week away from losing it all. Luckily I found a last minute buyer who sensed my desperation and low balled me with an offer of 5m. I didn’t have a choice and had to take it otherwise I would have lost it all. I paid the loan plus interest which came to about 2m and was left with roughly 3 million. Bought three cars and rented them out for car hire business and was only paid for maybe one month before I started getting the run around. I decided to literally hijack my cars back and sold them for pennies on the dollar and was able to salvage something as the cars had already been tore up within just two months on the road. Unbelievable.
Was left with like 2m or so and didn’t have a choice but to go back to the States limping and embarrassed at my failure. Luckily for me, I have a great network of college mates in the US and i was able to get another good paying job. Worked like a dog and saved saved saved while also doing some house flips on the side while doing my best to stay away from Las Vegas sevens, Heineken and the ladies. Did that for about 4 years, came back with enough saved money for round two in 2012.
This time, I am doing very well but the bruises and scars are still very fresh in my mind. I felt like I had fallen flat on my ass in business but in retrospect, now I feel like all those were very good lessons in business that have given me so much experience. Nowadays, nothing and I mean, nothing fazes me anymore. I have ice water flowing through my veins after what I’ve been through. I don’t think there is failure in business, naivety, inexperience, bad luck, circumstances, maybe, but a real business person should not have the word fail in their vocabulary.”
Boss unajua Nko na 2300 Pekee,
Failure ni lazima especially when you are starting up a biz, but successful business people are those that learn from such failures instead of giving up
Been there failed 9 out of ten times still soldering on,nothing can take me down i repeat nothing.Am the greatest.
Which biz are you doing now and what, in your opinion, sets this one apart from earlier failed attempts?
Kaizen folks. Always get better.
Failed horribly after resigning a nice job, downgraded life drastically mpaka nikaona I have nothing more to lose
Should have gone for flats in 2008…real estates was viable
I have successfully failed in about five different businesses. From mutura to taxi biz. Currently im in a different hustle and its not going badly. Biz sio rahisi
My first business failure was in highschool. Nilikuwa nasomea place canteen ilikuwa inafunguliwa only lunch time na jioni…kulikuwa na chai ya saa nne but canteen haikuwa inafunguliwa, so the only way to buy a quarter loaf was from fellow students/businessmen. My friend made a kill in term 1. Term 2 jamaa akaunda pesa poa sana pia. Term 3 singeachwa. I invested a whole 2k on loaves…nikaziweka kwa box yake peke yake. 2k was a really big deal in highschool. Nilikuwa nahesabu profit ya kama 800bob the next day, or so I thought. Kuamka, kumbe ni third term na form 4 hawataki kufanya mock exams, there was a strike immediately after breakfast…how convenient. We carried a box full of loaves to the nearby shopping center tukaziuza 5 bob each zituondokee. Shopkeepers must have had a field day.
Mine wasnt a business
I angukiad a consultancy in som. Coming home all that i wanted to do was buy a plot n build a hao. So an uncle of mine hooked me up na plot mahali secure near a govt owned plot. For The plot to be complete, the govt land had to be hived a little. A 2m plot was to cost me 800k. Saving mbaya.
When I started fencing 2 months later, cops came and now I was a criminal & not mwenye ameibiwa.
More info: the plot was a road reserve
Mine in summary [ATTACH=full]57988[/ATTACH]
Had a movie biz a while back, run it like 8 months but ikakataa ku break even, then on one seemingly normal day, my equipments got jacked in the premise I had to think fast. Closed shop weeks later. A month later, a friend calls…amepata job out of town and he wants me to buy off his running biz. Its now 2 years plus running and i have no regrets. You just dont give up!!
I used by last semester’s school fees in campo to set up a photocopying and stationeries biz but ikaanguka in one month. Sikua na pesa ya kui sustain. I could not do my final exams juu pesa haikutosha. Ilikua pesa kidogo kitu 25K but jiyo time ilikua inakaa mob sana. had to to postpone the same
Wapi yule jamaa wa kuuza gas mwenye alipata mlango imevunjwa na breakdown?
I failed in the Sportpesa business, still nursing my wounds
Cylinder thefts have become so common place as gas gets cheaper …
Nilipoteza 800k nikijaribu ku import some shower heaters from Brazil, niliskia kujinyonga
Hukulia?
I opened a shop in kitengela selling mobile accessories. I had gone to dubai and bought stock and even added airtel money ass an add on since everyone around me was doing mpesa to differentiate myself. My first mistake was hiring a very dry-fryable chic to work the counter. Although i didnt do anything with her i took a lot of her BS. She would sometimes not show up for work, mara she was sick etc…plus she wasnt really pushing sales or trying to drum up business on her end while i was printing flyers and putting up posters and stuff.
Final straw was whenbshe called me to tell me some guys had stolen 25k from the till that was for float.
I called the cops and they said in all likelihood she is the one who had stolen the cash but they couldn’t prove it.
So i closed the shop for 2weeks and let her go…
I reopened later and now got a young jamaa to shikilia the shop. I added a ps2 and ps3 to add money and even became an equity agent. At first things were ok. Imported chinese tablet and phones for sale at the shop. PC games and PS2 games were also for sale. But slowly income began to decrease. It got to a point where there was i was barely breaking even every month. The ps2 and ps3 were constantly undergoing repairs because of dust or control pads were broken. Sales of items is the shop had slumped. And more worryingly, the float that was there for the equity agency was beginning to reduce. one monday morning i checked my balance and found that 20k was missing and the guy of the shop said he had sent it to his bro because he needed some money urgently and he would repay it. he had given the money on friday. I lost it. I called the cops, closed the shop and had him arrested.
I then liquidated everything. Sold all items in the shop at lowest prices to recover what i could. Even the stools and chairs customers sat on to play playstation were sold. Luckily i owned the shop so rent was never an issue. I leased it out within 2months at 10k a month