Joanne Mwangi is one of Kenya’s most respected
entrepreneurs, and has won numerous awards for
her efforts in building and transforming a small
marketing agency into a leading regional group.
Mwangi’s firm, Professional Marketing Services (PMS),
offers a wide range of services including advertising,
public relations, event management, trade and
consumer promotions, trade merchandising and
marketing strategy development. The company has
since grown to include four subsidiaries with a
presence in Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and
Tanzania .
In 2010, PMS Group became the first woman-owned
business and the only one since to be voted number
one in the Top 100 SMEs competition in Kenya. In
2009, Mwangi beat women entrepreneurs from 75
countries to win the Organisation of Women in
International Trade’s Woman of the Year award.
Mwangi ventured out on her own 18 years ago after
realising her ambition to climb the corporate ladder
was hindered by her gender.
Mwangi was then at her third job, working at
American multinational Colgate-Palmolive Company.
People with lesser knowledge and experience were
hired as her bosses and earned more than she did.
“At that time the world was different… being black
and being female were things that blocked your
progress. It was the worst possible combination,”
says Mwangi. “I realised I [had] to be either a
trailblazer breaking through that glass ceiling or
knock my head on that glass ceiling for the rest of
my life. I have always been ambitious. I didn’t want
to be just a mid-level manager. I wanted to rise to
the very top.”
Mwangi attributes her success at PMS to the lessons
she acquired at Colgate which she describes as “the
best employer I ever had because they took the
trouble to train us”.
“They wanted us to be world-class marketers. Colgate
is the reason I would give, more than even my
degrees, for my success,” she says. “I was marketing
manager [but] I was taken to the factory to learn how
the product I was selling is made. They gave me an
all-rounded perspective and that helped me a lot
when I started my entrepreneurship journey.”
A tough beginning
Mwangi started her journey in marketing straight out
of university when she joined a local newspaper to
sell advertising. With a dismally low success rate,
Mwangi’s job was “depressing” and she sometimes
cried when proposals were rejected.
“Anybody in marketing knows that the two hardest
things to sell in this world are insurance and
advertising space. So I think I started in the hardest
possible environment. It toughened me. I just had
to grow thick skin. I had to learn that rejection is
not personal. It was the product that they were
rejecting, not me.”
Mwangi tells How we made it in Africa that leaving
the corporate world to start her own business was
“extremely difficult”.
“It was not easy. Being self-employed [at the time]
was the least glamorous thing in Kenya. It was only
failures who were self-employed. Anyone who was
worth anything was employed in corporate Kenya ,
wearing a tie to work.”
But Mwangi says she was optimistic during the early
stages because she had enough money to keep her
going for at least six months. However, when her
savings dwindled she went into “panic mode” and
contemplated going back into formal employment.
“One lady, who was also an entrepreneur, told me
not to quit before 18 months. In my mind I figured I
still [had] 12 months to hang in there. It wasn’t yet
time to give up. Of course, there is no magic to 18
months, but it gave me an end date. On the seventh
month I got my first good deal.”
Handling the success
Deals starting flowing in and so did the money. This
became Mwangi’s next big challenge. At 26, she was
dealing with being an employer and managing
millions of shillings in the bank. The business, she
says, was operating matatu-style, referencing the
chaotic public transport vehicles common in Kenya.
“It was total confusion. All of a sudden I was dealing
with money yet I had no real financial background. I
was mixing my personal money, the business money,
everything. It was a complete mess, but in this hot
mess I was learning.”
A major challenge Mwangi faced, and one she thinks
many entrepreneurs encounter, is limited
management capabilities. Quoting American author
Stephen Covey of The Seven Habits of Highly
Effective People fame, Mwangi says many
entrepreneurs spend all their time chopping the tree
and have no time to sharpen the axe.
“It was a struggle. I wasn’t improving me.” She
overcame this by attending trainings, reading
management books and eventually going back to
school to study finance.
“I realised the heart and soul of your business is the
finances because business is about making money. I
had to learn. In school I hated maths, [but] today it
is my favourite,” says Mwangi.
“After learning all
these things it gave me the confidence that I had
what it takes to run the show.”
Succession planning
Three years ago Mwangi made a deliberate decision
to reduce her involvement in the day-to-day
management of PMS. She started delegating more
work and took the company through change
management training.
“[My team] were used to Joanne being mother hen. I
told them I will be coming in to sign cheques, to
review proposals… but day-to-day operations, I don’t
want to know. At first it was not easy for me because
I was so engaged in PMS. I felt like I was becoming
irrelevant. The good thing is I could now focus on
strategy.”
Doing this, Mwangi says she was able to discover new
lines of business and ways to further expand the
firm. Her sights are now set on expanding PMS
across the continent through representations,
partnerships and by riding on the back of current
PMS clients who are expanding regionally.
“At a pan-African level, one of the things we need to
embrace more is mergers. I would rather have a
small percentage of a massive pie than 100% of a
little queen cake,” says Mwangi. “We need to
combine forces.”
Moving forward, Mwangi says her ultimate goal is for
PMS to go public or merge with another entity.
“I just feel that it would very wrong for me to keep
holding on to the company and not allow other
people to come in and bring in their strategies and
knowledge. That is what will keep this company
forever.”
0 comments:
Post a Comment