Member-only story
Our journey to harness great stories takes us to Kenya, the land of the greatest safaris in the world and epic natural beauty. And here we learn a lesson in the strength of failures from Gathoni Mwaniki:
My name is Gathoni Mwaniki, a 3-time tomato farmer under the Young Africa Works (YAW) by KCB and MasterCard Foundations. I’m also a budding agro-tour host.
What does an agro-tour host do? If you’ve ever thought, I need to see that farm or farmer, I am the one who will facilitate the visit.
When I got the call to feature in InspireME, I was on Quora. My search question had been, “How to move on from failure”.
The thing with failure is that I haven’t failed a lot. And the few times I have failed, I have not really owned my failures. In the hat business, for example, I made a loss. Yet, I had conveniently forgotten that my journey into entrepreneurship began with selling hats. Because of this amnesia, 5 years on, I have no lessons from that business.
I have grown tomatoes for two seasons. This is my third. In the two seasons, the closest I came to the projected income was 50 per cent. Hence, “how do you move on from failure?” Because, you see, I have been a high-achiever all my life. Consistently holding the top position for 12 years of…
