Navalayo Osembo — transcript

Kenya Breeds Champions, Made No Running Shoe. So She Built Enda | Navalayo Osembo. AfriCAN Do! Ep 2

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.

0:03 uh good afternoon ladies and gentlemen welcome back to African do episode number two um it's a pleasure to be back here and today we have an extremely exciting guest someone I'm very excited to have on our second episode I think a very worthy African entrepreneur um she's she goes by the name navalo emble and navalo is um many of you know Ender athletic or the Ender shoe which was Kenya's first homebased shoe targeted at athlet at athletes and uh it's quite a story I look forward to having you na welcome thank you very much it's a pleasure to be here finally yeah excellent so this has been a long time coming yeah our apologies for taking time to to get this second episode up and running but better late than never and so we'll get right into it so NAA you're not trained in shoe manufacture or or anything to do with Athletics or or where our Sports where yeah yet uh you decided to set up a shoe

1:15 manufacturing company and I think if you if I recall right your background is in the NGO space or you in oh no no I I I'm actually a lawyer you're a lawyer by a lawyer and an accountant so found myself in Footwear and then you decided to don't have to yeah yeah so so maybe tell us a bit maybe let's start from the beginning so how did you get into shoes what made you decide to design a shoe and you went at it I dare say the the difficult way in the sense that you went and you you got into design all very new spaces yeah and you you you set out to make a shoe that was at par with the the big Global brands in the world so maybe tell us your story and let's let's take it from yeah yeah so I'd say the interest in sports uh comes from different areas so my dad was in the military and this was just back in the days I didn't realize how much it was impacting me um but Sports and

2:13 Fitness is a key part of it and so seeing soldiers run in the morning was something very you know you grew up with yes I grew up with and then the disciplined forces in Kenya are among the very few employers who actually hire you to be an athlete so a lot of people um a lot of the athletes who were in The now it's Kenya Defense Forces we call it differently back then um so those were people like grew up around kind of grew up seeing and then um my dad also comes from this place in Western but Elder is like our main town so Elder is a place that I've seen being built by Athletics money and price money and you know we're kind of like uh proud of that it was like the main big town and last but not least it was this seeing this vicious cycle of an athlete makes it and then they become poor and then they die poor and you know it's like we have to do

3:06 something we can't always be consuming and not really planning in terms of uh being in the in the space so the idea for Ender just was more of can we try to not be purely consumers what can we do to get on the producer side so that we can add value for money and hopefully create a bigger economy for everyone and you know people don't necessarily have to I so much on athletes but to spread that industry to many others interesting so your that that upbringing of yours or you being a daughter of a military man and growing up in military I'm assuming on bases and the like and seeing this whole Athletics I think that's a very interesting thing that you raised about Kenya policemen prison Waters exactly it's always police pron and Defense Forces that most of our Runners are from there yes yes so um so it's it's an idea you want to participate I think it's

4:02 fair to say you want to participate in the ecosystem you have been you've been lived in this ecosystem of sports and you know it's not just running their agents their shoes their uniforms there's kit there's there's a lot and in Kenya we we hear a lot of stories around them not all positive but we all grew up with them so how do you how does this then you having been a lawyer and an accountant yeah how do you then transition to say yes first of all house shoes how did you end up saying that I'm going to make a shoe and not I'm not going to design a tracksuit and so on what did you said how do you land on shoes so there were two two key thoughts one was that if you're getting into the production space where is more value created what was the place where we couldn't really argue what Kenya was you know and apparel I felt like you know now this coming from a business perspective it just felt like apparel

5:00 is an easy entry and therefore we would have more competition but Footwear is kind of like harder exactly so I was like if if we give ourselves time to grow as a brand footware is much harder let's go there at least it give us time before we get like proper competitors so it was purely economic and then from um uh one of the things I I think I had a privilege of when I was younger was I I started my career off at deoe and I was in the risk department so mapping processes was something we did for every single client you kind of have to understand what's this process and draw it and map it and so I think that kind of thinking made me think that footwe is not hard because you map the process and you're like okay you kind of design you Source you test you so from a logical perspective it made sense it wasn't so scary and I was like okay we could do it so I think

5:52 those two combined uh give me that energy of this is possible let's do it yeah so now you conceptualized a shoe youve decided it's shoes that you're going to go into so where did you start from what did you do um yeah so the first thing is we went to the source which is the athletes what's the best running shoe what are the characteristics of a good running shoe so we did like a survey and they were like we want a shoe that you know is uh you feel like you're not wearing a shoe when you're wearing it so of course you translate that it has to be light um kind of has stability when you're of like running with it not too high not too you know so getting that and also just the knowledge that there isn't a perfect running shoe they are different running shoes for different running um styles and types and so that again we were thinking of making one shoe but

6:45 from that we discovered okay we have to think of the breadth of running and how to create that and then the next stop was who's going to design this shoe so go to LinkedIn and email all the designers that you can designers yeah there are and they were really nice I think a lot of people where we ended up was through references someone says okay I don't know but you can talk to this and this person or maybe I'm freelancing I don't have the capacity but I can talk to this person so that's how we found a shoe designer and then the good thing was that the designer had already linkages in China in terms of how to produce a prototype and everything and pretty much that's how we ended up de by this time oh yeah I left de a long time ago de was more of a I left it uh probably two years after after campus because I started interning there in my second year so by the time

7:39 you're now talking looking for shoe designers of LinkedIn have you left your employer whatever your employer was at the time uh no no so it was I was in between I was in between because I had just come from doing my masters and actually didn't even start as a running shoe company started as a tennis academy okay so because when I was in uh in London I got to see Wimbledon and one of the things that really blew me away was the prize money and I'm like why are we hustling for 100,000 2 million million I think back then it was like almost 860,000 pound you know and I was like why are we fishing in the pond when there's a whole ocean so I came back with the idea of starting a tennis academy which I did in bungoma yes and of course now I realized the challenges of what it takes to create a a tennis academy uh we rain it for 2 years it didn't work out and so I went to this

8:33 accelerator and the idea was how do you help me fix this business to make it work and they were like okay let's put tennis aside what other Sport and running came and Ender kind of came into that progression so by this particular time I'd just come back from London I was home U looking for jobs and so Ender kind of started when I had just found a position at the UN and it was all this was kind of like research in between but I didn't think it would become as big as it was the UN position yeah I did because back then Ender was just an idea like I had just literally come out of the accelerator program I had just met my co-founder we were literally I met him for the first like for the first time to discuss the business and then I was leaving like five days later okay so we weren't sure what it was going to be but um we just kept on discussing uh but

9:22 I was still doing my regular employment okay excellent so now you have found your shoe designer yeah you found your shoe designer you've carried out your survey with the local athletes who you know from your network they've given you feedback M now what now is to go into mass production right and then now is when you come now to realize the supply chain and minimum order quantities you just can't go and order 50 shoes you know you have to order a big bulk but it's also not just about demand it's Supply it's also about demand who's going to buy the shoes and then most importantly where are you going to get the capital to make the SHO shoes so have you prototyped a shoe by this time we had a prototype we had I think a made prototype or just a drone sketch out we had a mid I think we had went through that whole journey of sketching it out

10:12 and then pieces exactly and it's okay yes and and even who's going to make it so we did that and um sometimes I'm like am I ready for this when I look back it's always like yeah so we when we need started actually we were three co-founders yeah and then um we had a slight misund okay we had a quite a misunderstanding in terms of the future of the company so this happened when we had just created that prototype and at that particular point we decided to break away like the third co-founder left and so we had to buy the assets and buy the like pay them for their work basically which is a lot of money and so getting that and then now we are left with prototype but with no supply chain right so because he had the knowledge and so he walked away and we kind of had so you haven't made a single shoe and you're already buying off things to make shoes that don't exist that don't exist

11:16 don't exist okay yeah and so we went through that thankfully but you know again I had just been from a student we didn't have money and you know my co-founder uh he's American Brit but there's also so I don't know you know in Kenya we have this um a lot of people always say like foreign Founders get more money and stuff like that but I'm like it really depends on the on the um it depends on the context and the industry because we didn't see that we literally script by and saved and had to use our savings and stuff like that to get by um and eventually um we got to the point where we realized okay we talked to like almost every Bank every financial institution you can think we talked to them and whatever it is they were asking for we didn't have and so we had to think of a creative way to launch the product we decided to launch it through crowdfunding which yeah everybody was

12:10 like yeah you might look too cheap but you know in retrospect was the best decision ever because it allowed us as a company to be an export oriented company from the word go which we didn't realize back then but I think that's what saved our behind like so many instances where that Revenue was critical to helping us move to the next stage so you crowdfund so you you you went into a crowdfunding site yes and you say we are end athletic we want to start making shoes we have prototyped a shoe exact and we're trying to raise what we are trying to raise back then we're trying to raise I can't remember I still have these figures at the top of my hand we were trying to raise I think 100K $100,000 or something $100,000 to make what to make the first batch of shoes and the batch was how big um I can't remember I think we had agreed on like 2,000 pairs to the

13:04 supplier or something like that um and then also crowdfunding I think also just to clarify people always imagine it's just to go on the platform and put you on your idea like I would say it's a six-month process because you it's almost like a harambe you have to go and find the people who are going to back you by the time you launch you know exactly at least you have a 60 to 70% knowledge of who's going to back you up exactly yeah and so we did that we raised the money I remember we hit our Target uh pretty well we think we hit our Target in a week which was like really good yeah yeah it was really good proof of concept that the world was like yeah Kenyan running shoes made sense and then after that um we were super excited on a really big high then we went to the supplier and they were like yeah we changed our minimum order quantity you

13:52 need like 2,000 we have troubled it we have yeah and there we have people's money expectations of shoes in a certain amount of time and we didn't have a supplier again and we had to start looking for a supplier real quick so in summary what was supposed to be a six-month process became almost a two-year process to get the shoes and yeah allow me to take you a step back because okay we'll come back to that um 6,000 or increase in minimum order quantities but why you're making a Kenyan running shoe yes H What stopped you from making your Kenyan running shoe in Kenya we don't have the infrastructure and the capacity to so tell us a bit of what we don't have uh first we don't have the machiner like okay let's start with the raw materials you know like when you're making Footwear the mid so component is made from something called EV uh ethyl venile acetate something like

14:49 that so it's a the compound matters and how you mix it up to get it matter so we don't have spongy like exactly yeah to get that consistency we didn't have have the we just didn't have the supply chain for that and also it's not just about having the thing it's the mixing and the chemicals to go into it and the ratios and stuff like that we didn't have that that's like the core part of the shoe we do have a very good apparel industry but not necessarily for shoe ERS mostly for clothes and things like that and then also it's about quality and how the workers um put the pieces together a shoe actually has very many components it's not just an upper and bottom it's the eyelets it's the laces it's the TPU overlay it's the it's just like so many things and you need little micro ecosystems that are each creating this thing and then you bring it together and

15:43 then now uh once you have the upper in the bottom then how you also um like what's the word you basically put the upper on the foot on the on the Mido so we have that like the assembly but we didn't have the major components in terms of water require is required and then again from an economics perspective you're doing 2,000 pairs that is an you know it's an intensive amount of capital that you need for those Machinery it just didn't make sense to do it just go where it was being done so it was not for a lack of try you were explode locally yeah we exploded I think I went to every shoe factory that exists like formally and informally yeah it's not um yeah but the idea we had was to eventually bring it to Kenya you know like learn from China and Vietnam and other countries and bring it here and do a knowledge transfer kind of ex but I I find it very

16:36 interesting that you you now speak I don't know if you recognize this yourself but you speak like a shoe you are a shoe expert not like you speak You're a shoe expert and it as I listen to you I hear that but you are not you know when you started so how did you then bridge that Gap is it in the process of design that you start being asked questions as you're interacting with the shoe designer yeah and then you start learning the different terminologies and and and all that and how long did that take you to now feel that when you're talking to a manufacturer you're speaking with confidence and and you you feel like you're you're asking the right questions and getting the right answers um I'd say it's a work in progress because even now where I am I'm learning more about Footwear right but I think it's just first we got books about shoes and then

17:33 we also like the you know like the nice ones about fil night and then now you go to the technical ones of what does it mean to make a shoe these are the different parts of a shoe and then we had a designer who was very knowledgeable and they were patient with us in terms of okay this is the process and this is what you need and stuff like that and then of course the good old school way of making mistakes you make mistakes and then you discover ah okay it was because of XY Z you know and then now you come back and now for example if it's the how uh the springiness you know you know that was the issue maybe someone was saying it feels a little bit hard then now you go to the manufacturer and they tell you it's called the drometer you're like okay now I know it's called so it's it's just by trial and error okay and um I'm still a huge believer of you don't need to be an

18:21 expert you know unless you're a doctor and you're cutting up someone I'm like the rest of life I feel can be apprenticed you know I I agree with you in that I think you could do anything you put your mind to yeah you need the knowledge yes I think what you need to do is be open to learn yes you have to be open to learn you have to be open to learn and one of the interesting things that I tell a lot of H existing and emerging entrepreneurs is that there's no knowledge you can't buy no there isn't particularly in this world as it's evolving today yeah you can find someone to teach you anything you want to learn in any sector exactly I was we were discussing nuclear power plants the other day and I was like if you want to build a nuclear power plant in Kenya you can you'll just buy the knowledge and you'll have to recognize but the recognition that the knowledge is important yes is a mindset that that we

19:16 require exactly yeah you always need to be learning but I just feel like if you're curious by Nature you don't even realize your learning it's always about asking questions and I'm a huge huge huge believer that we need to it's something we need to keep um it's something we need to encourage more especially in the Kenyan context and the Kenyan culture we always have this thing of don't don't speak too loud or don't embarrass us in front of other people and stuff like stupid question exactly just keep asking and that's how you get to know what you don't know H you have $100,000 yeah you have gone back to your guy yeah and told you me I've upped my minimum quantities from 2,000 shoes to 6,000 shoes so where do we go from there we had to literally find um and remember we lost our designer who was like the third co-founder yes so we had to Now find another designer and we had to find

20:16 another Factory so that process took a while because then you also have to make the Prototype with this other uh again because you had made it with the other guy exactly you have to do it again and remember you have money people's money from the crowdfunding campaign so that was a really good lesson in customer service because you hear all the crap that people have to say about one I know you know my have to be like wait wait wait so I learned a lot in terms of communication management and just being open and transparent in the sense of guys here's where we are like here's where we and I feel like again that process was very difficult in the moment but when I look back I'm like it really taught us as as a brand transparency and I feel like that was one of the key things that really helped us grow where you just say here's where we are we're

21:06 doing our best but this is where we are and we'll do XY Z so yeah we did that and eventually we found a designer we found a factory we were able to make it but as I said we delivered product two years later which is a big fail in the industry standards but I think it was also super critical in really helping us find that core f fan base that was like we we totally believe in you and you can do this and I honestly feel like those are the people who propelled us to go on forward even on those moments or you feel like you want to give up so you have uh now found your new new um manufacturer of shoes he has accepted the 2,000 yeah you action mhm and where do your shoes come to they shipped to Kenya or uh yeah they were shipped to Kenya because again now this is also learning the hard way the business of logistics and taxes because we were very silly enough to not factor

22:09 in taxes in the cost of deliver so you say the manufacturer is G me at this I'll bring youo I'll it's true and then now you start realizing especially I think we had customers from like 32 countries so those were 32 different jurisdictions and some of them you could send direct others you had to pay the tax and the tax so sometimes even more than the value of the shoe and then now already this customer is angry for the delay and now you're like sorry now you have to pay a little bit more to get your shoe oh wow yeah so it was a very it was it was a very humbling learning moment but also just a true true appreciation of logistics and what it takes to deliver a product from one point to the other and why it's such a you know huge cost component when you're talking about moving product yeah I when you're as you're talking about logistics it's interesting for me because I I like

23:02 when you're looking at businesses to dig into those little things that people don't think are things you know but they actually very big and you have touched two of the biggest I mean because tax and Logistics uh in almost any industry are going to come and bite you we lost money in fact I feel like we those fast 2,000 shoes yeah we didn't make any money in fact we had to dig more into our capital because we the key thing for us was to just deliver the shoes right just to deliver and um yeah it was significantly more expensive than we had thought and it actually took us negative at least we proved concept but it was just that one thing I was like you really never never underestimate Logistics yeah so now you you've now become a shoe maker because now you could say you're a shoe maker you've made your 2,000 shoes have you sold all of them or you so because it

23:59 was pre-orders so this was the beauty of uh crowdfunding that there was a customer for each shoe and we had a few but then also we had a few challenges of sizing um yeah our sizing was a it was running a bit small okay yeah so slightly smaller than it should have been yes yeah so that was again more frustration because we couldn't we first we didn't have the product to do refunds and exchanges MH uh we didn't have the money to do refunds we didn't have the product to do exchanges and it was too expensive for either the customer to send back to the shoes to ask for us to call the shoe so I think we just had a bunch of shoes people had floating and you know it was just more like okay you can give your friend you can give your friend who has a slightly smaller foot than you than you do I know I know I look back and I'm like my God you know but Priceless

24:47 lessons would you say extremely extremely I feel like that's the that's basically how I learned what I know like we just made mistakes and mistakes and mist but um there was no there was no guide book there was no rule book and I'm like isn't that life you know yeah that's life and I feel like I try to keep that same spirit of it's okay like we are discovering it's okay you lost that money it's fine you made that mistake it's fine we are discovering I feel like if you take that approach you're more gentle on yourself yeah but but also I think you have touched on something that I think is quite a a interesting and important y if the goal is to make a good shoe yes and not profitability immediately then you're right you you are a lot more gentle on yourself because you're able to take those lessons yes I'm not belittling the impact losing money now my other lesson

25:52 is that profitability first okay because a business must be sustainable yes we have very lofty goals and dreams but economics is always hard facts and hard facts means you're either making money or not and so all your dreams and aspirations have to be based on making money I think I used to be on the other side but um there's a guy who um I remember he sponsored I got a scholarship to LSC uh back in the day and there's this guy I was like how how do you have enough money to sponsor all these kids to come to London and do all these things and one of the days was talking to us and he said make money then help others and I was always like no that's not how it should be but going through this process I'm like become a convert I'm like I get what he means you need to be able to sustain your giving true otherwise you're spoiling it from the first you know you're just kind of

26:50 like telling someone okay here has enough to make you not hungry today but you know let's not talk about the future and now I'm like okay you know what a business must make money and that must be the primary objective otherwise I think in our case we spent a lot of money doing development work work that should have been ideally ecosystem done by the government or done by something policy work exactly oh yeah we were getting guys from China to come to the factory to train the workers none of the other companies were doing that yeah I was busy trying to see the the at your expense sorry the from CH who was going to because we had the dream of building in Kenya and so how do you build if you don't have a road map and this guy's already doing it I'm like okay nice Factory guys would you want to come in and treat so we were training the workers ourselves and paying for that we

27:43 were getting the designers also to come and you know Mentor some of the talent we were um trying to go to the epz to Lobby that you know you don't need to have an a factory in the epz to be an epz because that has huge implications for small businesses here so you are doing all that and your key responsibility is to make the business flourish you know and so we were doing a lot of other expenses which I'm like you know if we went back we would probably have built a different business if we wen't so busy trying to fix the systemic issues around the industry okay yeah maybe now is a good time to segue into those systemic issues because now uh before you you you Pro proceed to make more shoes yeah you must have encountered you have touched on a few of them but you must have encountered quite a few systemic issues that uh if you were to be uh a government advisor on industrialization I'm sure you would

28:45 have some really good and hard-hitting facts and and and figures to share and say listen if we did this better or if this existed and that existed then we could be on our way yeah to to to doing maybe you can walk us through a few of those things what they are yeah I I had a trip to China Cy of the Africa business hero shout out to them very good community and I saw at least from my experience I'm like they're building for their people like you see that it's more of what do I need to do XY Z and they build it for their people we build for others or we build for the higher people of society which I'm always like doesn't make sense attractive it is extractive and it's also nonsensical in the sense of you kind of also have to realize how economics works it's not about a cake that ends it's about a cake that grows like the more you grow the

29:43 local base the more there's opportunity even for you I don't want to use negative examples but I'm just like you kind of have to switch that mindset but my point is number one if we come back to the context of Kenya who are your people what's their GDP what is the money in their pocket okay fine let's start there and how many small businesses can even afford to be in a factory to manufacture right so first things first is create the local incentive that makes the factory guy basically say oh I can actually let a local entrepreneur come into my factory and be able to manufacture we were only able to manufacture here because umoa with the shoe company basically gave us a chance to go into their Factory but I was like how many other entrepreneurs of Big Dreams it's just like this setup you don't need to have a studio you just need to exactly you need to have the

30:34 same mentality and this is what I was basically trying to tell them that I don't need to be um you know like how you have Uber and you have Airbnb and I'm like I don't need to have an asset to be recognized for who I am and that means so for example when I'm importing I get to pay the taxes upfront I'm being charged Duty I'm being charged everything and I pay it upfront I don't have the money remember okay so I pay it and then at export the theory is that you should be able to export it and get back your money right but whoever gets back there from from yeah who gets the refund and so you when does it come you're like cash reach in your books but you got no money you know because it's all SE somewhere and I'm like guys this actually it is it is um what do you say it it's like disadvantaging local businesses because the other guys don't

31:29 go through that like guys who have the capital already remember they have the capital and we are basically saying foreign direct investment which is what we are thinking of we again going back to my point we think of very lofty instead of going to the base so foreign direct investment yeah come we'll give you the work permits we'll give you this we'll give you that tax holiday blah blah blah local person you have to have the capital to have the presence to be there and keep in mind you're keeping my Capital right and you're not giving me access to Capital and then you have to now grow and get into that uh designation and then yeah so I just feel like it's another case where the wealthy have like a 100% Head Start and the poor who are your people which is what was mind numing for me are like way behind and we talking about you know smes are

32:18 like the backbone of the economy and I'm like are they really anyway you have built this business y um now you've made shoes back and forth I'm sure after that you had several other orders and lots of learnings there in um and maybe just to contextualize for the viewers this was start was around when 20 2015 so you're at 2015 now maybe 2017 yeah two years it took you to get product you thought 6 months it took you two years but you now have product you're selling you go through Cycles where you get more capital and you order more shoes and you have understood tax and so on yeah um but fast forward now to um closer maybe eight years in yeah um one of the things that I say about the entrepreneurial Journey that is not discussed is the weight yeah of the emotional tool of you know you you speak quite eloquently about all this stuff and how you're going through and the taxs and the V

33:22 delays but I used to tell friends that I used to get cold sweats when p because I know I don't have ITA and so on so you're now 8 years in you're feeling a bit tired what conversations are you having um first things first I think entrepreneurship is about the quality of people right quality of people I think I was extremely lucky in having a quality co-founder we had our different differences in terms I mean we're humans we had different systems sometimes how we run the business and stuffff like that but the fact that he was someone and is still someone who says what he means and means what he says I feel like that was instrumental in getting me to towards the end you know of the journey I think we didn't have like a very strong HR now I actually value HR at the same level as I value I value Finance because usually you're like oh what's the books what's the money and stuff like that true HR is

34:17 the Gateway of culture H is the Gateway yeah and it's you know how it says it's just one bad apple and spoils everything what it takes to build culture is so so difficult like you can be the head of an organization and you're like I hate this organization how did I become the head of IT what happened it can happen and so you know I have a high high high respect for each other and just looking at it as the Gateway of the culture Keepers like who are you letting into your house and who you know how are they a fit and stuff like that and also for someone like me who had really had time having difficult conversations the lesson of it's just easy to nip it in the bud you know like it in the like I don't think I I had issues with difficult decisions but I don't have them now because the the emotional toll of bad decisions is not worth it it's just not worth it like

35:13 if I see it and I can see her and I disagree with it I feel like that whole journey taught me to just say I'm good I don't have to go down even if it means walking away from the money exactly you just walk away peace I think peace is you know we have peace of mind it's and we we' they things which don't have value but because they don't have value we think that I don't know how to say this like they the their price is so high that you can assume they have no value we underestimate the worth exactly you underestimate the worth and for me I'm like that peace of mind and also just being in tune with my inner Vision what did I want to achieve and am I heading there and if I'm not heading there just having the grace to walk away and say you know it's been good it's it's it's been good so you you you many might not know this because it was not

36:07 highly publicized but you you are you have evolved from being founder in majority shareholder or or or and you're now a minority you're now a minority shareholder yeah and the business has changed hands successfully which is something that I always admire because entrepreneurs are like baby the business is like a baby so to to reach a stage and I have h a peep behind the curtain on how a journey it was even for you mentally to just reach to the stage where you say okay I can now take a break for myself uh give uh someone else to run this this other leg of the business and and is I mean he's thriving we we saw them King Olympic athletes I was very happy for them it was a big dream that I had I never realized it but that's also the importance of handing the Bon to somebody so you you did that you you did that and you're you're you're enjoying a I guess the Peace of

37:10 Mind of being an employee again of mind I'm like I think I don't think you're done for me I I think I I I really am Keen to see how your journey will will evolve if I was to peer into the next decade because I think you have some unbelievable lessons that that you have collected along the way and yeah the lessons are many I'm still processing them I actually am because even when I was coming for this I was like am I ready to talk about this but then you know I always believe life is never for the ready because you never really get to a point so um yeah I still honestly believe like I feel like Ender was such an emotional roller coaster that I still I I still don't know what to do with it like there are moments when you're okay and there are moments you're like okay and there moments where you know and there are also some people along the journey that we don't speak anymore you

38:05 know and so those are some of the things and I think the thing looking as an observer looking in is also now I see a lot of proliferation of um entrepreneurship lessons and stuff like that and have them them I'm like yeah but you could Google that like you're not telling people the truth yeah so just a huge caveat that entrepreneurship is not a ROM antic idea like there's some pain there yeah there's some some significant pain but it always has to come to what do you want to achieve but at the same time as much as there's pain there's also significant opportunities that come from that if you had told me I was going to be in Footwear I would never have believed you but it was just following and following and now I feel like okay this is my this is my at least for now this is my industry yeah yeah and you are in that industry now you are I think Heading an Africa division of a

39:00 food is that right is that uh yes I'm the director of Africa for on um the Swiss running shoe company excellent um yeah good transition they're good guys I knew them from a long time ago they were a nor star for Ender uh way before I even um met their team but it was just you know like uh they won like the espo award and I'm like we're going to win the ESP award as well and we won that so I feel like on on is uh um I really liked that they could come in and you know like change an industry where everybody kept on it was almost like laughable when was like oh you want to compete with Nike ha cute but you know and I'm like yeah you know on has been the dream that has made that possible and um yeah I'm think like now to be able to work with them as well and make that um happen in Africa yeah it's going to be good times I I I I you've you've

39:56 touched on three or four topics that I I think are extremely important and I think I'm just going to repeat them for the purpose of emphasis okay because I think they are Priceless and as we continue in this African journey of building African entity and the first I think is the biggest yeah it's can we start building for our own you know uh I I keep on saying that Africa is for Africans and Africans should consume the Africa that they want and they should be given the freedom to design that Africa the way they want it to be so I I I struggle with sometimes funders when I tell them listen uh have you asked the people you know are you just coming with a solution that you think is a problem that they have um or or do we have solutions that are for Africans by Africans that's a very wide thing because it's a big one like I said and that's why I touched on it I know

40:56 because the same way people feel like I I sold out on Ender and not you know because they're like you should have kept it African it's still African but it's also you need to realize the role of systemic versus individual ability true and I feel like we cannot speak there there again it feels like lofty when we're like let's go back to the basics and from a basic perspective can the people do that right can can you kind of like try and do that so I feel I'm I'm a big skeptical now of what exactly is African by Africans for African I'm a bit more of I think we cannot do it without collaboration with the key actors yeah but there's also that internal assessment and say it sounds nice to say we can do it but we are not creating the opportunities and the environments that make it possible we just and yeah yeah and so I'm like is is that I struggle with the practicality basically AG yeah

42:06 the other big thing that stands out for me is just and I think it's something that we we we really Bel little the depth of your knowledge and the knowledge that you have got and that's why I say I don't think if I was a betting man I would say that this is a stepping stone in your journey yeah because I think you have such depth of know know of a sector that you're now an active player in and that knowledge we belittle we we tend to take it for granted yeah and you now have it and I think maybe it's Kenyan humility or what do you call it you're like ah okay I know but not that I'm trying to also get over that I'm also trying get and I think that the job that you have transitioned to speaks to what you do know and what what knowledge you have but the other interesting thing that you mention that I just want to emphasize is man someone said to me once as saying that I I've

43:04 come to really like he says culture with Trump strategy and yeah eat it for I love it I love it because we underestimate culture and a lot of people say uh oh yeah once you get the funding you'll be fine but culture is everything yeah in fact one thing I learned is you always think you need the money and you don't always need the money this is one thing I've taken away from because somehow in your entrepreneurial Journey you imagine that if you had this you would be so successful but the thing is it's like a seeve or it's like a thing like if you pour water with something that has holes it kind of pours through so it's a same thing with money if you have something that has systems and structures like that it'll kind of be contained so even before entrepreneurs think of money they have to think of their internal systems it has to make sense it has to work and

43:56 it has to be able to withhold which goes back to the cultural you know the cultural thing like what's the are people caring enough for the company or are they just like I'm just here to get my paycheck and go are they in are they bought into the vision you know are they um you know like I I don't know but I just feel like there's a passion and now I see it at on which I was trying to put a word to it and I'm like this is what I was missing when it's almost like you have an army of ants moving in One Direction and you don't have to be the be it all know it all like you can count on your teammates I feel like that actually makes the entrepreneurial Journey better but here locally I think we still have a lot of problems and I don't know if it's the education system there's just something about us where we are like what should I do next what should I do next like we don't we don't

44:43 think the whole nine yards and say okay let's think about uh this and stuff like that so and I guess what that's why we're doing things like this or having this conversation so that you can trigger thoughts yes uh the last the last point I think just as a as we as we wind down is the relationship between local context and capital yeah yeah you always come back to Capital because I feel that sometimes that the price that you pay yes of course knowing what to do with the money when you get it is equally important but we just need to find a way to address access to Capital we do I've been thinking about this issue for a long time because there's always an issue of well you know the foreigners are coming in and they're not funding locals and stuff like that but my conclusion is if we can lose the amount of money we lose to corruption we can

45:38 lose that amount of money to entrepreneurship we have it's our risk appetite so for me I genuinely believe Kenya has money you can't like my personal belief but I'm like it's there it's just not circulating where it needs to circulate and so when we think about this and again going back to asking questions is why do we allow ourselves to Hemorrhage money in one sector but not allow ourselves to Hemorrhage money in another sector you know because we say oh entrepreneurs are too risky they're going to lose all the money or they're going to squander all the money let them let's see what it does when actually money is in circulation true so I think my own take from this first is of course for Ender we were able to raise money from um variety of people including Africans and non-africans but it always comes to me that there has to be be someone who's willing to put skin

46:29 in the game and we again from a I don't want to say policy perspective I feel like that's where it stems in because again we're not creating for the masses we're creating for we have all these lofty M and blah blah blah but when it comes down to everybody saying entrepreneurs are risky I'm like no you've just decided that we have more risk appetite to lose money to corruption as opposed to lose money entrepreneurs very nice we have the money we just need to love ourselves enough to give money to the people that need it I genuinely feel and maybe this is more from a Biblical perspective but I just feel like we lack love we really we really do because when you see how the other day I was in uh I was in karako I've I've kind of like been going to different places in Kenya and I'm like Kenya has extreme wealth and extreme poverty and I I don't understand how but

47:27 I've also seen that there's a huge separation in this world huge so you can exist in the this world and never be in the other world so you never see it never experience it and just like why are they complaining it's just the price of bread or why are they complaining you know and so we need or rather the higher classes need to remember that the lower classes are human beings they are people they have families they have loved ones ones it's not just a random death it's not just a random statistics we need to recognize that going back to my point of we grow as a country when the base is strong this is economics whether you're looking at export import GDP gni all of that you know so I just feel like we have this scarcity mentality but we also lack love we lack love for ourselves and therefore we're okay with doing shagala Bala things because it's just for the Kenyans

48:23 you know but if it's just for like a visitor maybe it's a visitor mental African Excellence we need a dose of African Excellence for ourselves for ourselves not for external audiences Yeah question do you feel that there's a disconnect between yeah African Capital yes and African intellect ah yes because African capital is not necessarily in the hands of African intellect exactly look at how much money we have no museums no cultural Investments no we're just building to I'm just always looking around I'm like you you see the lack of you see and even in the buildings we're not putting our culture our creativity even at the I don't want to point you know some places when you go that represent Kenya it's just concrete or it's just and yet if you go to a place like Kona you are like there's so much art there like we have so much but we don't use it but I think it's because

49:28 we don't engage with it and so it comes back down to I just feel like we have such individualism that it is making us miss the bigger picture and the bigger picture is that a country that succeeds at the base which is also just the law of gravity the stronger the base the stronger the thing but you cannot do that if from the beginning you're not thinking about your people you're not thinking about that I don't know how we solve it I don't know if it's a leadership thing I don't know if it's a thing but I think for me it's just that I feel we have what we need we just don't allocate it and we kind of have to be the ones that fix it nobody's going to fix it for us so naalaya assemble this has been an amazing conversation for me I've really enjoyed it uh I I really do wish you all the very best as your journey continues uh maybe as a parting shot if there's anything that

50:23 you feel you'd like to share with our audience um or if there's any titbits you want maybe people would be curious about your next steps what what is what is going through your mind what are you think you of doing maybe we could you could just tell us a bit more about that yeah I think now my current focus is just on Sports in Africa and in Kenya but again going down to the level of who are we serving in sports you know and basically getting allies in that and that's something I'm really hoping to be able to do that we have to remember we are serving at athletes and we have to remember these athletes are coming from extremely dire circumstances in most of the cases right and so how are we how are we being stewards of the assets that we've been given how are we being fair to them how are we making sure that the system actually serves them how are we getting

51:18 them to the global light you know how do we make sure that we are not just you know like how do we just basically take care of them so that's something I'm really keen on in addition to also just really exploring how uh Commerce can make sense for Africa from a sporting perspective I think we we right now we are very much in the Sporting Goods so a lot of people think Sports and sales but I think there's a deeper underlying uh thing that we can do with culture that we can do with you know arts and stuff like that and how how is that merger because I just feel like Africa hasn't yet emerged you know we we have little pockets but we have to create an ecosystem that actually brings up you know I don't know how to say it but I just feel like our Global culture and Global culture and sports have to come together and I feel like Africa is the place where it comes

52:11 together it's the Last Frontier like we have to do it no I'm I'm very confident and inspired by what you've said and what you're doing and I think I dare say that uh the future of African Sports and African athletes um is in good hands because your you have dared to dream and you are actively participating in understanding the ecosystem first and then being an active participant in that ecosystem so yeah congratulations for what you've done so far thank you very much and all the very very best uh in the future it sounds good thank you and yeah all the best you too thank you very much e e e e e e for