Carol Musyoka — transcript

AfriCAN Do! Episode 63:Carol Musyoka Founder & - CMCL Africa & The Nitpicker Podcast

This transcript is generated automatically by YouTube and has not been checked by a person. It misspells names and mishears words, particularly around Kenyan English and company names, so read it as a guide to the conversation rather than a quotable record. Each timestamp opens the video at that moment.

0:05 Greetings ladies and gentlemen and welcome to episode 63 of the African Do Podcast. Today, we are very privileged to have with us a good friend of mine, Carol Musyoka, the Net Picker. Uh the lady of all things governance. Carol, welcome to the African Do Podcast. So, Carol, as I was thinking last night, how do I take this podcast with Carol? I'll I'll I'll I'll I'll not go back to the back because we have seen your backstory quite extensively. But, let me start somewhere in the middle by saying that you are for all intents and purposes, um a high-flying corporate executive. You had ticked all the boxes that corporate executive ticked. You'd even gone to the next level where you are now being invited to to sit on boards and serve on boards, multinational boards, local boards. But, despite having reached there, which many would argue is the nirvana of corporateness,

1:06 you set on this journey to build Carol Musyoka Consulting, which is CMCL. So, let's start this story there. What is it that you saw in your corporate journey that made you think that building your I would say your your persona and even your business around governance is something that you wanted to do. I know it was not an event, but let's just start there and and flesh this out a bit.
It was full circle, Leonard. I studied law. As you know, I studied law all the way to master's level, then went into banking. And I went into banking largely because I did my pupilage at a law firm, and I was like, "What the hell is this? I can never Another day, I can never work in a law firm. I can never work in a go to court." And that's what I thought. So, when I went to do my master's, I was like, "I want to do something in the

1:57 financial space. So, I actually went to study securities regulation cuz I thought I want to come back and work at the capital markets. But, I got a great opportunity when I was in Washington D.C. just after I finished my masters to work in a venture capital was just starting at that time. This was back in the in the '90s. So, I got an opportunity to work in a venture capital firm and I got a taste for finance, which I really really liked. Even though, you know, I'm as thick as two planks in math. But, I actually liked the financial aspects of business. So, I came back and got a job immediately at at Citibank as a as a banker. Mainstream zero loan. And then when I left the banking industry in 1980 2008, I decided to start the hustle. And I've given my story about why I left the industry or how the industry spat me out, actually. So, I knew I never wanted to work for

2:49 people. I wanted to work with people. I was very very clear, but I didn't know what I wanted to do. So, so I long God, Blanco. I did that. Can I call you Blanco, by the way?
Yes, you should. You should.
[laughter]
So, I long God, I did everything. So, we with a friend of mine we we set up this small little consultancy. We were doing setting up helping somebody set up a factoring shop, helping somebody set up a REIT. So, we did all manner of things. And I was like, "Okay, this is interesting, but my I'm not into it, you know? You're doing it, but because it's what must pay cuz you've just started doing the hustle and you need to be able to put food on the table. But, your heart is not in it. It it brings home the bacon, but your heart is not in it. And then I Sunny Bindra asks me to to to join him on his program on his fast forward and he was on his fast forward program. And at that time he's also he had been one of the initial the the creator of something called the effective director at Strathmore Business School. So, between him and Dr. George Njenga, the the first dean, they

3:52 created a director's program called effective director. And leading the board. And Sunny wanted to come off it and he he needed to find somebody who could who could take over the program. So this was a governance program. Says, "Do you want to come Why don't you come? I think you can you're capable of doing this." And I loved it. And the rest is history. So between that and also starting a column, The Knit Picker column in 2009, where I found that I was I liked talking writing about business and governance. That that path just It just took its own its own course.
Carole, I think you you underestimate the intersection be- what you what you're actually midwifing here. And I'll tell you what I mean by that. So the capital markets have in a Kenyan context always been viewed as this thing. It's not a kawaida thing. And so governance is is an effort. In fact, I as an entrepreneur have several times been told that listen, don't go to the capital. The duty of uh of reporting, the governance requirements are too

4:55 heavy. And hence why we see a lot less family businesses, even some which become quite large, transitioning into this field of governance. Yeah? However, we do know that in more mature markets and even in our market, yeah? What happens when people go into the capital markets is quite phenomenal, yeah? From a growth perspective. It opens up to use a significant pools of capital. It attracts a certain level of investor who engages with you differently because they can see the governance part. So I put to you that you are actually midwifing Kenya uh and maybe the region into this space of better governance. And I I predict Let me make a prediction here. I predict this will lead to better, [clears throat] bigger, more sustainable businesses.

5:47
No, thank you. And I like what you just said. I put to you you've been watching a lot of a lot of legal movies.
Yes. Yes. I've been hanging out with you legal [laughter] folk. Yeah.
You know, one of the investments that I So, I've done my own private investment. There's one one firm that I invested in back in 2008. And we're a group of shareholders. And maybe 5 years into that investment, so we had opened sort of one branch and opened a second branch and uh there some private investors who were interested in putting money into the business to allow for greater expansion. And they came and they did their due diligence. Tax They were quite happy with the tax. Operational due diligence, they were very happy with it. What made them bulk and walk away from the transaction is that there was no governance in their mind. There were no minutes. All right? That we had had meetings and we used to record the meetings, but we didn't have a good record of what all those meetings were. And so, therefore, there were some that they couldn't quite pinpoint.

6:50 When was this decision made? How was it made? And because of that, they walked away. And I got And I woke up and I'm like, "Hiya. Hiya, you mean this thing is serious, right? That for an external investor, they the governance aspect The business may be really, really good, but if they can't see that you had some level of discipline at a shareholder level, they're willing to walk away. And you've [clears throat] said something interesting, which is family businesses don't want to go into the stock exchange because of the amount of rigor. I completely agree. It is extremely In fact, the cost of compliance on the Nairobi Stock Exchange or to be a listed or to be an issue of securities is insane. It's very, very heavy. You require to do governance audits every 2 years, legal audits. All of these are professionals you're bringing in. You require to have a board of directors. You know, at least a third

7:41 are independent. They need to be remunerated. So, it's very, very expensive. But that doesn't stop you from using the standard that they set.
Mhm.
The rules that the Capital Markets Authority sets in terms of the governance code as your code, as your true north. Because if you're able to at least get there Now, bringing in an external investor, when they come in and they see that you follow these rules, it it makes you a far more attractive um entity. A basic thing, Blanco, is having a company secretary. You will be surprised how many clients I have,
[clears throat]
family-owned businesses, who resist that. They're like, for them, a company secretary is the person who just comes and helps them set up a company and maybe files their annual returns. And that is it. Not understanding that this is the person who's the keeper of governance. Not only the keeper of minutes, but saying, "Have you thought about this? Have these directors been remunerated? Have they been trained? Have they been

8:38 inducted?" There's a whole slew of things that a company secretary does other than writing minutes.
Mhm.
And many people don't know that. And the few clients who have brought it actually appreciate the level of professionalism
Yeah.
that that company secretary brings in.
Are we then saying that from the perspective of the family-owned business uh businesses in a Kenyan context, that we just don't know what we don't know?
Uh very good. Exactly. So, we run this program called Founderitis, and we run it every year. And what we do is we bring in Blanco, who runs Cakes and Cakes, all right? And we say, "Come."
Mhm.
For 2 days, we walk through what is a company. You will be surprised how many business owners are directors, sole directors, but have no clue what that means from a legal perspective. What their obligations are under the Companies Act. And they're heavy. They're heavy. So, there are civil penalties and there are criminal penalties for failure to adhere to the Companies act, which if you have a something called something something

9:41 limited, you're already amenable to the companies act. So, we open their eyes.
Mhm.
We bring in some people sometimes come in with their wives. And so, you see very uncomfortable looks pass between husband and wife. Allah, I didn't know.
Yeah.
Okay? Or between father and son, because son says father says, "You come. I want you to be a director." But son has no clue
what being a director means.
director means. So, we run that program. We run it, you know, every year. And it has been really really good in terms of making people wake up and say, "Oh, okay." It's also a tool for succession.
Yes.
How do you pass your shares or how do you pass your interest in this business to your children? And if your children are not interested in the business, Blanco, what do you do? Cuz not all your children You can have five children. Two are interested, three are not. Three want to be professionals.

10:30
Yes.
Okay? Or one wants to be, you know, he's he's running a boat out in uh in what time? We're helping people do deep sea fishing. The other two want to be One is a doctor, one is a a lawyer. The other two are in the business. But they all have an equal interest from the eyes of the law
Yes.
in in this business. So, how do you start to differentiate? So, for example, the ones who are in the business, you can either differentiate it by giving them more shares
Mhm.
or you can remunerate them in the form of a salary. So, you you're not in the business, you don't get a salary. But when it comes to dividends, we give dividends out equally across. So, it's a tool for managing. How do we segregate this business from the family and how does everybody benefit from this business?

11:15
I would argue then that one of our challenges, and I go back to what we spoke about earlier where I said that few have seen the commercial and financial benefit. Cuz I noted when you were telling me about just now, when you were telling me about the cost of governance, the cost of compliance. Yes, that is true. It is onerous, it is expensive. You have to get the right people, you have to remunerate right. But there's the other side. It could potentially result in exponential increase in performance of that company. Having the right people guiding you strategically, yeah? Because I feel that in a Kenyan context, we are sometimes I would say many a times guilty of being big fish in a small pond. So, uh we're now seeing maybe led by the the the bankers and now Safaricom, yeah? We're now seeing uh Kenyan companies evolving into regional and some maybe

12:16 heading towards continental players, yeah? Uh you have Kenyan banks in multiple jurisdictions, about three or four, maybe five banks that emanate from Kenya are now operating in multiple jurisdictions. But I feel from the depth of talent we have as a nation, there should be a lot more that should be replicated in hospitality, should be replicated in manufacturing. It should uh it we should see it in the services industry in terms of uh uh establishment like yours that offer advisory services, but we're not. And I think it's because of how we look at governance. Get comment.
What do you mean by that? How we look at governance? In what sense?
In the sense that you see now some of the the the family owned businesses, of which I know a few, of the ones you're advising, are big. You know, they are big. And at this stage, they have taken 20 years to get as big as they are, yeah? But at this stage is they have now made a recognition, yeah? That there's value in what you're teaching them, even through your fund raisers programs, yeah? And the other programs that you offer,

13:27 they're now beginning to see this being packaged to them in a way that they're seeing, "Oh, wow." And I've had the privilege of of sitting on one of the boards of of the companies that you advise. And I can see in the 6 years that we have served on that board the mindset shift in the owner as to the value of the board. It started off as a tick box for for compliance and and uh uh for compliance. And then now you're seeing, "Oh, wow. This thing is adding real value, which is translating to growth in revenues, growth in the business, growth in the talent, growth and now giving me kind of opening your eyes to a bigger and wider world that you could take this company to."
You know, there's something that you said, you've actually triggered a thought I'd never actually even pulled I'd never connected those dots. That maybe the reason why we have the behemoths, cuz we do have financial behemoths, okay? I would say the top the top five banks, okay, in Kenya are all regional, all have regional claims, right?

14:36
yes.
And I now is when I'm sort of starting to connect the dots in terms of from a governance, but more important from a regulatory, because from a regulatory perspective, they are required to have independent members and to have boards. And your boards, one of the things that they get you to do is get you to sweat your capital, because they are there to represent all stakeholders, one not only shareholders. And a key requirement of the shareholder is a return. Return on the capital.
Yeah. And because banks are extremely capital intensive, the amount of capital you're required to have means that you're always being held to a very high standard. And this is something that at a board level is tracked and is tracked assiduously. So, if I was to pull that thread then to other businesses and the business that you joined from a board member is this particular business that you joined because I helped recruit for it.

15:31 The shareholder, the principal founder, was definitely looking to be stretched as an individual, right? Apart from setting up governance and, you know, having having a good board was also being able to be stretched. And one of the things then you have successfully done as a board is to say, "Are you getting the most bang for your buck?" Because that's what a board says, right? While responsibly taking care of all the other stakeholders. All right? So, you've put in the capital. How are you sweating this capital? Where else could you apply this capital that is far more efficient than how you're applying it now? While taking care of your employees, your suppliers, your customers. So, you've actually helped me sort of That's actually an article that I do need to write. The role of The role of the The regulator in sort of helping companies scale.

16:21 And unregulated companies, do they Is Is there a lack of skill because there's nobody pushing them from a governance perspective?
That's an interesting one. So, we will come to your writing because you brought it in. But, I want to take you into um when you in the early days of your advisory and you started up with a lot of board um what is it called? What What um board evaluations, yeah? But, you were dealing largely with Can I Can I Let me call them blue chips? You know, you were dealing largely with blue chips, yeah? And then you you decided to come into the wild and murky world of family-owned business. What informed that tradition What What triggered you because you were not there before? They are not required by a regulatory any regulator of any kind to get into that space. But, you then transition yourself and you find yourself starting to So, two things two questions out of that. Question number one is what triggered you to start looking into large family owned businesses in the region? And two, what

17:28 have been your major insights uh now that you have spent quite a bit of time working with those businesses.
So, I teach on this program called owner-manager program at Strathmore. So, being being a hustler, Blanco, you know you do many many many things, eh? Because you want to put a coin, you want to put food on the table. So, when I started first I was doing this CMCL work and then started working with Strathmore and I've got, you know, writing and many many um sources of income. So, working with Strathmore was has been and I've really really loved it. So, I course lead the course leader of many of their governance programs. But, they also ask me to teach on some programs that I'm not necessarily course leading. One of their programs, which is one of their flagship programs called owner-manager. And it's aimed at family businesses. A lot of the people who are sitting there are founders. Yes. Very typically, they're age between 30 to 50. All right? They're in their mid

18:29 30 to 50. Um very often it's the founder. Um less often it's the second generation, but largely it's the founders. And so, I started teaching governance and it and I've been doing this I think I started teaching on the owner-manager program round about 2016. And it became very apparent to me that there's a gap here. Right? So, they run this program. It's an excellent program that taught them about all manner of running a business. But, just watching uh and they would usually they have people from Kenya and from Nigeria.
Yes.
Okay? Just watching people's faces when you're talking about the role of a board. And just watching their eyes light up and say, "Oh, you mean a board is just not You know, even if you put lipstick on a pig it remains a pig. You can't. So for them it was window dressing. And they started to see this is what a director can do. I remember one of my attendees from Nigeria a number of years ago said, "Ah, as we only have directors because you need a

19:26 first of all you need a policeman. You need somebody who's a police who because you are going to deal with you're going to deal with very hard people and you're going to be shaken down. So you need to have somebody who was an ex-cop at a very senior level on your board."
Okay.
For them so for them it's utilitarian. What does it help them to do? But getting to see how people were reacting I was like wait a minute, there's a gap here.
Okay.
There's a gap and for all of us who are in business usually see a gap and then you go in to to fill that to fill that gap. Yeah.
And what insights have you garnered as a result of working with multiple family owned businesses in the context of this maybe new African Renaissance? What are you seeing in these businesses as you help the ones who have been accepting and help to structure and to to to have better governance?

20:14
Second generation wants it. Second generation understand what governance is. All right? First generation and I will not say I'm I would say I'm second generation. You know we've spoken about it. What's happening now there's a lot of our father's generation are passing.
Yes.
And therefore we are in a season as a country of next generation. And that's why you drive through Limuru which was traditionally tea and coffee farms but now you're seeing oh sijui wedding gardens oh sijui zip lining. You're seeing a lot of value adds. You're seeing people doing niche tea and niche coffee. It's a second generation that are doing this because they've gone they've gone abroad or they've gone to school here locally and they're seeing

20:56 the only way you're able to extract value is by adding value to this. Don't be a raw material supplier because that's what we've typically been.
Yeah.
So the next generation are coming in and the next generation gets it. So for me, what are the what are the insights that I've gained is target your next generation. They're already there. But, [snorts] there's a lot of I don't want to call it tension that this cycle, and it's also taught me patience, which, as you know, I don't have a lot of, but when you're dealing with families, you have to be extremely patient because there are very many stakeholders
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
you're teaching, and there are those who are not in the
Mhm.

21:37
Okay? So, you can have a son and a father in the room, but the mother is not in the room.
Yes.
And she's a huge influence
Influence.
Yeah.
on the outcome of whatever is being decided here. So, it's understanding that when you're dealing with families, what you see isn't necessarily what you get. So, you have to understand understand who is a key decision maker here, who's a key resister here. Do you engage that key resister, or do you leave it to the key person to address that resister? So, it's taught me a lot about uh family dynamics, and most importantly, emotional intelligence. Being in a room and summing just reading that room and understanding what's going on.
In that example that you've used of the mother who's not in the room, is that is the goal to get her into the room?

22:27
The goal is to be in a situation where yes, where when you're having that conversation, you're talking to all the stakeholders.
So, we've done a quite a bit of work with helping family businesses just set up boards and getting them to understand that
[sighs]
uh we had one situation, you know, where you've got everyone in the room. First, let me take a step back. The easiest ones I've found setting up governance is Leonard and his wife in the room.
Okay.
As the founders.
Okay.
Okay? Leonard and his wife are typically in their 40s and their 50s, they make the decision like that. Very, very quickly. We're going or we're not going. All right? But then, if you have Leonard's father in the room, Leonard the son, you with your brothers now, okay, in that room, it becomes extremely tricky.

23:22
Yeah.
It becomes extremely tricky because there's a dynamic. There are wives
Mhm.
of your wife could be in the in the mix quietly cuz she's whispering to you quietly here. And you're bringing that conversation around the table. All right? So, you until you understand that dynamic, what's what's what's cutting here?
What's the nuance?
What's the nuance here? So, I was giving the example that, you know, we we had one particular family where the father's like, all right, I want everyone, we are going to do all of this. All right? But the mother's body language those
It's not there.
Yes.
Mhm.
All right? The mother's body language was like, she sees it. And you know, you see her looking at at at one of the kids, all right? And the kid looks at her and then kid looks at at at at the other sibling, and you can see here there's something going on, but you can't quite pin it. All right? So, in the fullness of time is when I'm now starting to understand what's going on. And so, you have to you have to play the

24:21 long game with families. Leonard, you have to play the long game.
You know, you know what I love about what you what you what you're doing, let me tell you. I what I love is that I'm a big, big champion and believer in local context. And I feel one of the challenges because Kenyans are typically very well read. Yeah? So, even on matters business, we read, you know, we read Branson, we read Peter Drucker, we read, you know, we read all the gurus of business. But I think what has been missing in the books, which I think you're now feeling, is context. To understand that nuance in an African or a Kenyan context of a Kenyan family and not read about it in not read about it from the perspective of, you know, something that's happening in the States or in Europe and so on. I think that's extremely powerful. And I think you have tapped into the beginnings of something that will be extremely beneficial for this nation and

25:32 this economy, which is we need to study ourselves for ourselves, so that we can build our companies like ourselves. They can look like us, they can talk like us, they can walk like us. So, kudos for taking that
And And no, and thanks for that. And context, as you say, is is really, really important. We have uh again, back to what the work that I was doing at Strathmore Business School and the programs that we've been running, we're using a lot of Harvard Business School case studies. And the feedback, especially over I would say from 2015 onwards, you know, the end of the feedback is, "Yes, great, great, but we want local context. We want local context." So, we started writing locally written case studies based on the like I like to say the Nakumatt's of this world. We've got so many the Tuskys provide such good context and people relate. They understand. You've got a family dynamic there. Some members of the family are there, some members are not there, but the ones who are not there also eating from the trough in some shape or form because this is Africa. They've got to.

26:33 So, that, as you're saying, the local context is oof. Is Is Is absolutely absolutely critical.
You know, we have a I have a I have a joke. One of my favorite uh conversations about governance is um a major bank. I won't mention the bank, but it's a family-owned bank that has grown. It was a family-owned bank that has grown into a corporate entity. So, uh the son um has a a staff member who shows up uh to the to to the staff party drunk and and he causes a ruckus, yeah? And so, the the son um sees his staff member's unacceptable behavior and he fires him. Yeah? And so, the chairman of the bank calls in the the son and says, "Ah, you know, I'm sorry, but um you have to eat humble pie and bring that [clears throat] guy back." So, he's like, "Why? But he was in the staff party and he was drunk and and the founder says to him, "You know, uh that guy, that drunkard, is my mother's best friend's son." So, the social dynamic that you're

27:53 putting me into by sacking him, my mom won't understand. She'll just know that my son sacked my
[laughter]
My son gave gave my job. So, the that's nuance. And I'm going to say it's not I don't I I've ceased looking at it from a right or wrong perspective. It just is. And if we can put our minds towards working, we'll build more sustainable African businesses better than any business book from the West will teach you because you will now take your reality because they have also built their companies on their realities, how their families are structured. We are not really individual families, we are communal families. And so, what's that dynamic and how do you still stitch governance into that?

28:40
You know, one of the things that I've been again, uh a client who wanted to set up a governance asked us to help them set up an advisory board. And when we're having the meeting, the they say one of the, you know, the the head of the family says, "Okay, fine. We'll come for this. We want you to help us set this. But let me tell you what's really eating my mind. And I need to understand what are wills, what are trusts, how do you transfer property, success, how do you transfer wealth, how have other families done it?" So, then I said, "Okay." So, we said, "You know, what? Let's stitch together a a seminar where we're going to teach people about what are wills, what are trusts, and how business is set up that allow continuity." And back to your context issue, Leonard, which is you're Africans, and this is what is fascinating me, and I'm loving this piece that we're in right now, which is

29:32 we view the business as the trough from which we all eat. Okay? It employs our relatives. Okay? It's the one that will pay our salaries. It's the one that will pay school fees. It's the you know, what? This family business pays for everything, okay? Including the village, the whole black tax thing that we talk about. And not looking at it as a vehicle for for for generational wealth. So, why other markets, the West, have been able to do it, is they've been able to segment to segment. This is the business. The business generates dividends. Those dividends, we set them up elsewhere. And it is from those dividends that the family will eat. All right. So, then what we need to do with these dividends? We need to preserve. We need to grow, and we need to diversify. Those three things. But you don't do that with the business. You do that with what you have taken out.

30:27 So, that we can leave this business to run professionally, and to keep giving us, and to even bring in now professionals to run this business. If you want to employ a relative, employ them there what we call family offices. This office that's managing these dividends, okay? Because you've got to set up professionals to or people to manage that. So, segmenting that is really important. Second thing is African context. The fact is that African men are polygamous.
Mhm.
So, there's a primary, there's the one that is known, but there's one the insidious one which is becoming very, very common, the one that is not known.
Yes.
And in law, whereas what he's doing with with all of these women may be illegal from a marriage perspective because if you contracted a marriage in a church, from a legal perspective, you cannot contract a secondary one.

31:19
But if your first wife was polygamous, then all other wives can be polygamous. So, from a legal perspective, this may be viewed be viewed as an illegal wedding or an illegal union, but the children from a succession perspective are all recognized under the law. How do we take care of them?
Yeah.
Okay? Again, they all want to feed from what? The trough of the business. Segment. Segmented, put it aside. And that's the whole purpose of putting up a will, setting up a trust. The trust has got its advantages, it's got its disadvantages, it's got its tax implications, but just ensuring that you're then able to put something and that you do not interfere with the running of the business. That for me is what's fascinating me and what I'm

31:59 chewing on and what I'm trying to impart from an education perspective with the families. There's a lot There's a lot Hey, Blanco, you know there's so many businesses under cover uh doing their
Brilliant.
brilliant businesses turning over billions quietly, quietly. African led, Indian led, quietly doing their thing.
Yeah.
I keep saying, and you all you have to do is just look at the traffic. We're not a We're not a highly impoverished country. We're not a third world country. We are a second world country. And if you don't If you don't believe it, just go and walk in the streets and see how many cars are we getting traffic jams?
Yes.
How many cars are there?
Yes.
Where are middle income

32:42
from that, how much of our middle class is being built as a result of having both the loud, the medium, and the very quiet wealth creating companies in our midst. I think that's something that that we need to study more.
And the middle class that's not civil service. Because growing up in the 70s, the middle class was primarily people who were working in the civil service.
Yeah.
Your teachers, your police, your people working in the government and the parastatal, nurses, exactly. All right. There were a few businesses. The banks, there were a few banks, there were a few insurance companies, okay? There was a little bit of manufacturing that had very little middle management. Look at us today.

33:23
Yes.
It's incredible.
So, let's let's not speak about the Neat Picker. You know, the Neat Picker has evolved into a brand, you know, Neat Picker started writing articles in the Business Daily, but now there's the Neat Picker podcast where you have very interesting conversations with very interesting people. So, let's speak about that part of your life. And maybe at this point I do I should say I You really impressed me how your worlds intertwine. You know, you all your worlds kind of mesh together in some way. If you read your articles consistency, you'll see connection to your governance and you'll see how you teach your governance and then so on. So, let's speak about the Neat Picker brand, if you can call it the sub-brand

34:06
[laughter]
of Carol.
There are many many sub-brands.
Well, there are many many many many many to me brands there. So, tell me about the Neat Picker brand.
Yes.
So, what how did you get to writing in the Business Daily? And maybe speak to us about the evolution of Neat Picker as a brand, including now things like the podcast and whatever else you do with the Neat Picker.
In 2008, I I left the banking industry. And then in 2009, I started By this time, I had been interviewed by Sunny Bindra, all right? He was recruiting for a board. There was a board that was a client of his, and they said, "Help us find an independent an independent director." That's how I got to know him, actually, and and we hit it off.

34:48
Yes.
And he was a columnist, if you remember. He was a columnist on Business Daily. He was a columnist on the Sunday Nation and everything. And so, we got to talking, and then I said, "You know, I'm really interested." I had I had done this Eisenhower fellowship.
Yes.
And I was interested in in the whole global financial crisis. And I just I just wanted to write. I just wanted to talk about it, okay? Because journalists report an action.
Mhm.
All right? Columnists give an opinion. And so, I just wanted to ask you as a like, "Can I You know, that's what Sunny was." I said, "Can I give you a a sample?" He says, "Yeah, sure."
Mhm.
So, I did it. I wrote I wrote three pieces. He said, "All right, I'll help you submit." And they were submitted to Business Daily, and the rest is history. So, I've been writing for how many years is that now? 16 years. From 2009, March. My first article was in 2009. Weekly. And it drives me nuts, because I have to come up with a topic every week. And sometimes, I don't know My deadline is Thursday noon, and Thursday morning,

35:52 I've no idea what I'm going to write, but somehow, I manage to do it. Anyway, um So, I got to First, you start writing about anything and everything, and then you start to see what resonates with your writers, cuz I just put I put my email at my email at the end of it. And some topics, people are like, mhm. Some topics, people give feedback.
Send you, yeah.
Send you feedback. Let me tell you, Blanco, over the last 29 So, 2009 to now is what? How many years? 10 16 26 17 years, yeah.
17 years, yeah.
Since I got my farm, and since I put sheep on my farm, the articles that generate the most responses from from readers are the ones where I write about and usually when you see me writing about my farm, just when I woke up that morning, I had no topic. I just like I need to submit something. So, writing about my farming is the easiest because there's so many frustrations.

36:43
Yes.
But it's one that resonates the most with people because everybody's like me. We're telephone farmers. We've got a couple of place there. You've got a guy who's who you've you've employed. More often than not, he's robbing you blind. You've got shidas with your neighbors. You've got shidas with water. You've got shidas at the county level. Your You don't have enough food or you're being told you're being hit you're being hit. You know, your guys are robbing you blind. But and so I write. And people just resonated with it. So, that So, what I over over over over time, I then started to see that my articles fall in three categories. You either inform, you either educate, or you either or you entertain. If you can write 700 words and do all three, you've knocked them all out of the park. You've informed, you've educated, and you've entertained. So, [snorts] I then said, "All right, look, this is

37:31 just 750 words. That's what my editor allows. I want to do the podcasting because I want to write I want to I want more voice."
You want to dig deeper.
I want to dig a little bit deeper and not through my voice, through the original person. And that's how the the podcast started. Yeah.
I'm smiling because we have like this is our 63rd episode. And it's been an amazing journey because of the diversity of who we host. We don't have certain group of people. But I'm smiling because some of our most popular podcasts are the agriculture ones. When we talk about sheep, particularly livestock.
Yeah.
Maybe because everyone has some little livestock, you know. So, we've had our our mutual friend Bernard Wagitu.

38:13
Mhm.
And then we've had David Maina and Sammy Were all speaking about agriculture in some Most recently, Reeyan um Risa and and female rancher and that that that that topics around agriculture. There's something we need to scratch a bit deeper with Kenyan-ness and agriculture.
Well, first I want to first of all give you, you know, you know, I doff my hat because you've created a beautiful space for the most diverse group of business people. You know, cuz I really enjoy watching your podcast. 1 minute again, you're having agriculture people. Next minute, you're having You you've had completely you know, the the one who I really liked was Angela, the one who's doing the paints.
Yes.

38:58
Yes, locally manufactured paints.
Mzito Africa.
Yes, Mzito Africa, you know, very random random people who are coming. But the reason is and I say that in our blood um I'll give you a quick story that it is said that the reason why there so many black people incarcerated in the United States is that they have trauma in their DNA and this is trauma from the crossing across the Atlantic. First, they went through being captured and you know, you you know, the people who are capturing were not Mzungus, eh? It was fellow Africans. It was the tribe. It was the guy from the next village, all right? Yes. So, you're captured. You're marched to the Gold Coast to the point where you are then put on a ship, all right? So, there's all that humiliation. There's that being held in a cage. You're put on a ship. Not everybody survived that crossing. Many died. You come out on the other side. You're then

39:50 being put in cages. And then you're auctioned and then you're enslaved. And so, there's some research that says research that says that trauma can actually enter into the DNA. Similarly, I say that all of us as Africans have livestock keeping and growing crops
in our DNA.
in our DNA.
Yeah.
And we can't fight it and that's why you'll find the most rational person buying a piece of land, putting a worker, putting cows and sheep and goats, losing their shirt.
And still funding it.
And still funding it. It's just It's just in us. It's incredible.
Excellent. Carol, as we draw to the close, maybe I I let's speak a bit about the future, yeah? You've walked on this journey and one thing I really like about CMCL and you as a person is that you're you're not averse to challenging yourself to think better, to do better, and to unlock new opportunity. So, what does the future for you in an African context look like?

40:57
One of the things that we've been grappling with is artificial intelligence. You know, you know everyone's talking about it, AI AI. I actually think that AI is going to be like the dot-com bubble. Everybody will get very excited about it and at some point we're going to have to come with the reality. So, the news that Microsoft and Uber are saying that AI is costing them more than human beings, all right? But, we can't run away from it. One of the uh pain points as a business as a CMCL is we we especially around Q1, quarter one of the year, is that you've got a lot of statutory requirement to do board evaluations, and they can be very manual. So, we've taken a challenge as an as an organization, how can we automate this as much as possible, and how can we use AI tools? So, we're very excited. That's sort of we're looking and seeing how can we incorporate that. I'm a big believer

41:47 in the human being, and I don't know about you, but for me this whole thing of people are going to lose jobs because of AI does not sit well with me. And um so, I'm not looking to use it so that I can be able to reduce the number of people. I'm looking at it so it can make us better, and we can be able to take on more clients because right now we we're limited in the number of clients we can take because it's extremely data-heavy.
Yes.
All right? In terms of analyzing that data and putting that report. But, if you can use AI to significantly reduce that and take on more work. So, for us right now, it's how can we use AI? We can't fight it.
Yeah.
But, how can we use it in the work that we do to help us provide better teaching materials? Cuz we do three things. We do board evaluation, we do board training, and we do board recruitment. So, how can we use AI to help us analyze, get better candidates quicker, and evaluate faster?

42:38
Excellent.
Yeah.
Carol, allow me to give you your flowers while you're here with me and say that I think you are the midwife in a Kenyan context
Thank you.
of the creation of new wealth in this in this country and hopefully uh ultimately in this continent. So, I wish you all the very best. And I'll also give you an opportunity to speak to the audience and tell them where they can find you, what are your handles, where can they read you, the knit picker, or how can they contact uh CMCL should they be maybe there is a founder out there in our audience who's looking to structure their businesses better and to unlock greater value in that way. Give you a chance to tell the audience where they can find you.

43:20
All right. Well, we can be found we have a website uh www.cmcl.africa. It's very straightforward. On that website, we post a lot of our training programs. So, there's two training programs that we'd love people to to sign up for. One is communicating with impact, and this is targeted at mid-level to senior-level management who want to be able to be in a boardroom and communicate in a much more powerful ways. We spend 2 and 1/2 days training you up at an individual level, and you become a much more powerful speaker. The second thing that we do is founder rightness training, and that we are focusing on founders, owners of business, or second generation, or spouses of the owners of business. That program will be running in October. Again, you can sign up on our website. I'll say it one more time, www.cmcl.africa. Thank you.

44:08
Excellent. Ladies and gentlemen, that was episode 63 of the African Do Podcast. What a fabulous conversation with Carol Musyoka of CMCL. As she helps local business owners, local individuals to build businesses that are sustainable in an African context and can grow and create wealth that remains and is held in Africa. Thank you very much for joining us on the African Do Podcast. Do subscribe to our channel on YouTube should you want to hear more of these exciting stories, and we look forward to having you next time. Thank you very much.