(So) How's Business?

Why do so many founders hire the wrong people and hold on to them for too long? Juliet Gateri is the founder of Alternate Doors, a Kenyan HR consultancy that helps small and medium businesses hire, build and manage their teams. Over 13 years in business, she has seen the same people problems play out again and again, including in her own company. In this episode of So, How's Business?, Juliet shar...

What does it take to build a successful business without losing yourself in the process? Ogake Mosomi is the founder of Ogake Bridal, a Kenyan fashion brand specialising in bespoke bridal and wedding gowns. Over 15 years in business, she has experienced the highs of a growing brand, the challenges of managing a team, creative burnout and the realities of balancing entrepreneurship with motherhood....

What happens when the foods you grew up with, chapati, mandazi, bread and cake, suddenly aren't an option? Anna Wanjiru, founder of Home Chef, joins Alma to talk about building a gluten-free food business in Kenya after her daughter had to go gluten-free. What started as a mother's search for better food options became three years of experimentation, a bakery, a gluten-free flour business and a mu...

Luxury weddings look beautiful. Running the business behind them is another story. Naitore Mugambi, founder of Luxe & Allure Events, joins Alma to talk about the reality of building one of Kenya's luxury events businesses. She shares the story of losing KES 600,000 of startup capital to theft, raising the money again, navigating the breakup of an early business partnership and eventually build...

What's the difference between believing in an idea and knowing how to build it? The founder of Braiding Nairobi found out the hard way. A journalist by training, she came to Nairobi for a National Geographic storytelling fellowship, noticed how many skilled braiders struggled to find clients in a city where nearly every woman pays regularly for her hair, and decided to stay and solve it. Then she...

What does it actually take to walk away from a stable government job, twice, for a creative career nobody around you fully believes in? Neema is a model, content creator, and the owner of Flora by Florence, a Nairobi boutique. But before any of that, she was sitting in a government office feeling something in her go quiet. This episode traces the messy, honest path out: a spa that failed on locati...

After losing her job while seven months pregnant, Angel Nderitu entered motherhood carrying uncertainty about her finances, her future, and what came next. When her breast milk supply changed unexpectedly after giving birth during the COVID-19 pandemic, she began searching for answers through nutrition, traditional foods, herbs, and lactation support. That personal experience eventually became Lac...

Shamim Quresh is the founder of Koro Gaia, an African skincare brand built around African botanicals and research for melanated skin. She talks about the realities of manufacturing in Kenya, including 60 to 70% tax on imported inputs, what happened when funding stopped and she shut the business down in 2023, and how third-party manufacturing helped her generate income while rebuilding. She also sh...

Lorna Joyce has lived several lifetimes in one. She lost her father, her brother, and her mother before she was 18 — and found herself caretaking, surviving, and building from scratch while most people her age were still figuring out what they wanted to be. That foundation of loss, faith, and raw determination is what eventually gave birth to Binti Marvels, one of Kenya's most purpose-led femc...

What happens when you come back home and the thing your daughter needs simply doesn't exist? You build it. Grace Muritu is the founder of Elite Gymnastics Academy in Nairobi. A former pediatric nurse who returned to Kenya after 12 years in the US and created a competitive gymnastics training facility from scratch. No blueprint. No investors. Just land she was willing to sell and a vision she c...

Dr. Faith Wambura Ngunjiri is a certified Impostor Syndrome Informed Coach, Emotional Intelligence Practitioner, and leadership scholar with a Doctorate in Leadership Studies. She spent over two decades as a tenured professor in the United States before burnout, racial bias, and a heart attack brought her home. In Episode 21, Dr. Faith and Alma go deep on the real cost of imposter syndrome for Afr...

Ritu Bahal built a 37-year career in corporate Kenya beforeleaving to solve a problem she'd lived for decades. Her company KPM Tech makes Trackright, a logistics platform that gives trucking businesses real-time visibility across every stage of a delivery. The pitch sounds simple. The problem is massive: 90% of African truckers are non-digitised, and logistics costs account for 40% of what goo...

Melanie Hapisu- Wambugu is the founder and CEO of Digipath Africa, a digital marketing agency based in Kenya. In five years she has built a client list that includes some of Kenya's largest corporations, trained hundreds of business owners and marketers, and figured out how to run a business from Muranga without losing a single client. This episode covers a lot of ground. We talk about how she...

Zanelle Wanja just wanted somewhere to go that didn't revolve around alcohol. What she built instead was one of Nairobi's most talked-about social movements. Nani's Cafe Party started as a free pop-up. 150 unexpected guests showed up. Now it's 11 sold-out editions, major brand sponsors, and a community that keeps growing. But behind the branding is a founder who hit rock bottom, lo...

Bonni Mulinge was 6 years old when she decided she was going to fly. By 28 she was a commericial airline captain. By 37, a seizure with no known cause ended her career overnight.  In this conversation, Bonnie talks about what it felt like to go from commanding a Boeing 777 to standing still and figuring out what comes next. She talks about the financial hit, the identity loss, the bender, the pivo...

Akoth Aluoch is an Advocate of the High Court of Kenya and the founder of Triple A Dispute Resolution (Triple ADR) and AkothAluoch Media. She left a stable law firm career to build a boutique ADR practice full-time and a media platform dedicated to humanising law. In this conversation, she gets into what it really looks like to be in a building season, the businesses she ran on the side while empl...

Dija White is a multidisciplinary creative director and founder of The Block Studio, a brand design, strategy and experiential design company dedicated to spotlighting African talent. She is also part of the team running Village Creative, one of Nairobi's most interesting creative ecosystems. This conversation goes deep. We talk about what it actually costs to build a creative business, from t...

Yasmin started selling cupcakes at 50 bob each from her mother's kitchen at 25, with no formal training, no business plan, and no nozzle. Today, she runs Cake Hearts, one of Kenya's only internationally accredited culinary and hospitality schools, in partnership with BHMS Switzerland. In this episode, she opens up about building from scratch, navigating a market that doesn't take young...

Dr. Becky Omodho shares the unfiltered journey of building joojoostores.com , a Pan-African e-commerce platform connecting African artisans to the world. From getting conned twice to taking six years to break even, Becky opens up about resilience, systems thinking, privilege, male bias, and motherhood. This episode challenges the idea of “small business” and explores what it really takes to build...

In this episode of So, How’s Business? , Alma Mabachi speaks with certified master coach Wangoy Mongai about why procrastination, self-sabotage, and playing small are often trauma responses, not character flaws. They explore how fear of being seen, identity shifts, and survival mode shape our behaviour, especially for women in business navigating confidence, visibility, and growth. This conversati...

How do you build a scalable, African-born brand in the middle of a pandemic? In this episode of "So How’s Business," we sit down with Nanzia, the founder of Roro's, Nairobi’s go-to fast-casual healthy food brand. Nanzia gets incredibly real about her journey, from launching her first salad shop in Dar es Salaam to securing prime real estate in Nairobi’s top malls. This isn't just...

What really causes businesses to fail , lack of funding, or poor systems? In this episode of So, How’s Business? , Lucy, founder of a Kenyan manufacturing brand built around purple tea, shares an unfiltered look at the highs and lows of entrepreneurship. We talk about scaling too fast, cash flow traps in retail, the realities of manufacturing in Kenya, and why fundraising can actually make problem...

How Self-Awareness and EQ Change Everything for Business Leaders with Vicki Karuga Emotional intelligence isn’t a soft skill, it’s a leadership advantage. In this episode of (So) How’s Business? , host Alma Mabachi speaks with Vicky Karuga , psychometric specialist and EI master trainer, about why self-awareness is the foundation of effective leadership and how low emotional intelligence quietly c...

What happens when you try to build a business in a system that doesn’t always make the rules clear? In this episode of So, How’s Business? , Alma sits down with Eunice Migwi , founder of Her Legacy , for a candid conversation about tax compliance, entrepreneurship, and what it really takes to build a sustainable business in Kenya and similar emerging markets. Eunice shares how she turned her exper...

In this grounding and deeply honest conversation, Alma sits down with Debra Ouma-Weya , women’s leadership champion and founder of Positive Circles , a women-centred community built to support growth, connection, and self-advocacy across different seasons of life. The conversation opens with an important discussion on menopause and perimenopause, why these transitions are often misunderstood, how...