Before businessman Chris Kirubi became the wildly revered billionaire both locally and internationally that he is, he had to learn to accommodate failure and was at one time forced to abandon his company and start from scratch.
In a sit-down with a popular series on Capital FM known as Ask Kirubi, the mogul recalled one of his biggest defeats having happened at a time he branched out to the paint manufacturing industry.
He admitted that he could not understand the routes to market and that the industry was infiltrated with cartels that no big contractor wanted to buy his products.
"One major challenge I encountered when I embarked on the manufacturing of paint was when I found the sector run by cartels where no big contractor would buy my paint.
"They were threatened by the big boys that if they bought my paint they would not get better deals next time," the mogul narrated.
Kirubi added that his company's set up in the market continued to suffer losses and rejection until he decided that it was finally time to move on to other industries.
"Equally, I found a challenge in stocking the product. There was nobody willing to stock my products.
"The few who took my paint were those who were bad boys and could not pay me and by the time I went to them they had finished the project and had walked away so I ended up with so many debts," he continued.
It was then that he learnt he was spending a lot of energy and resources on a losing venture and decided to close the business altogether.
"I learnt: you fail, you get up and you walk. You move on. I had the proceeds from the assets and some land that I still hold, so it wasn’t a total disaster.
"I moved on to new things that I specialised in which gave me the opportunity to succeed in producing other products," he concluded.
Watch the video of Chris Kirubi's narration below:
