This is a very interesting thread. Always perks up my day to know that I am not alone in this jungle.
I have had several failed businesses from remote farming eucalyptus trees sending money for farm clearing, hole digging etc and when I went to the farm it was still virgin land. A guy had eaten my 150K and not counting my losses when I went to take the seedlings.
Lesson: Remote farming is not a farming strategy!
Second business was leasing kanjo houses and renting them out. This is how it works you "lease"/buy a Kanjo house in Eastlands from a owner and then you rent out. Very straight forward business. Failed in several ways I overpaid for the house triple the going rate, the house was in a horrible state of disrepair and worst was the huge pending water and electricity bill. I ended up paying rent for my house and the Kanjo house with no tenant and had to sell it at such a low price to someone who I later found out was the original owners cousin.
Lesson: Always always do your due diligence. Trust is not due diligence and back of the envelope math is always wrong. Always.
Business 3: Leasing vehicles to a taxi service. Hii ni shamba la wanyama. This story has been told so many times on Wazua.

I haven't even metioned the tuplots and shamba here and there for specualtion that have been duds.

Anyway ready to go to business number 4 and wondering how do the successful Wazuans manage business. What are these systems that people say you should put in place to succeed as a business?

Biashara is a hit & miss game...had to discontinue one business line recently because sales were so slow but overall I'm happy with other business lines...i think the key is patience & persistence.

Hahahahaha. Too funny. I always remember how naive I was when I started my first business. I used to walk around town with my chest puffed out thinking that everybody that is not rich is stupid and even used to laugh at people who drive cheap cars thinking that my V8 was only a few months away. The projections looked very good on paper, but reality hit me like a ton of bricks after things started going south very rapidly. Dreams went from V8 to maybe X5 to maybe Premio to probably Bluebird and eventually to nothing. I have learned my lessons in business. Honestly, the experience I got from my failure made me a much much better businessman.

Just last month I started helping a friend out with her new restaurant and she is the typical deer in the headlight case right now. At least she listens and follows advice unlike I who thought I knew everything. Unfortunately, the numbers are not adding up and it's been a rough start for her so far. Hopefully I can help her turn things around.

Anybody that wants to get into business, get a mentor first, sit down, listen and be humble. It goes a long way. Oh, and don't window shop for that Cayenne just yet.

This thread is definitely one of the most interesting ones on Wazoo.

Dunia kweli kuna mambo.

The common themes of failure seem to be able to be summarized as follows;

1. From my desk in my office on Haile Selassie avenue I opened a stall in XYZ and employed others to run it for me...

2. I saved X million from my day job then rented high end space at XYZ, rosy projections did not work out and rents ate me alive..

3. I went into partnership with my neighbor/cucu/mum/brother/ (add your unique friend/relative here) and it was all downhill from there...

4. I bought a plot hoping it would double in price in two years, now I'm stuck with it...

5. I bought a plot and put a greenhouse on it and the wind communed with it. I'm still hunting for it as we speak...

6. I guaranteed a Sacco loan, the borrower died and left me holding the bag...

7. I bought a nduthi, loaned it to my associate for a fee and was shocked beyond belief to see it on TV being used to commit armed robbery in Kayole. I'm laying low from the po po as we speak.

8. (My favorite); I deposited 4m in KCB, took out a loan on the deposit at net interest of 4.5% (for the tax break of course) and proceeded to use the money to lease a building in which to sell beans. High tailing from auctioneers as we speak. What on earth should I do?

As I said, dunia kweli kuna mambo tena sana.

The funniest thing to me is that in majority of the failure cases fellows are seeking huge returns for very little to no effort. As you say they listen to the watchman say his cousin is making a killing selling snake bones to tourists and the next thing you know they are borrowing to the hilt from their Sacco to invest in a snake bones business (remotely of course) and then getting shocked and surprised when they lose their shirts with swarms of auctioneers after their hides.

I've said it before; unfortunately, most people are just talkers with very good ideas in their heads but when the rubber meets the road and it's time to implement said ideas, everything crumbles to dust.

Either because their cucu swindled them, the crop was destroyed by mildew (why didn't they spray?), their leased Uber was stolen and dismantled for scrap metal, the list (of excuses) is always endless. In other words they did not have the talent, time or energy to be hands on and/or basic financial literacy escaped them completely. Biashara si kalongo wala birikicho/banta where one plays for twenty minutes then goes home to sleep. It takes talent, time, financial literacy, long-term persistence and good old buckets of jasho.

@MugandaMan thumbsup .You're doing the right thing highlighting the realities on the ground.