Running a cleaning company wasn’t always Damaris Ngina’s dream. Offering professional cleaning services as a business venture was something she stumbled upon, and became passionate about.
Damaris had always had a passion for kids, and this informed her decision to enrol for a counselling degree at the Kenya Methodist University. When she graduated in 2010, she worked as a doctor’s assistant. But she wasn’t happy working there, so she quit after a year and went home to Namanga to regroup.
“That one-year break gave me the push to try my hand at business,” she recalls.
In 2012, Damaris attended a four-month intensive training on entrepreneurship, a programme run by Sinapis.
“We learnt everything about running a business, from managing finances and human resource, to marketing, customer service and legal matters,” she says.
It was the best Sh16, 000 she had ever spent.
Damaris returned to Nairobi then dabbled as an insurance agent for a few months as she set money aside for capital. For this committed and prayerful Christian, the sign that it was time to start her business came when her fellow congregant gave her a brand new high-end industrial vacuum cleaner.
“She (Angie) called me out of the blue and said she had something to give me. It was a clear go-ahead that it was time to implement my business idea,” she says.
SETTING UP SHOP
With a business plan and a five-year strategy in hand, Damaris set up shop in 2013. She started by offering residential cleaning services: general home and upholstery cleaning, furniture polishing and fumigation. Her clients were mostly referrals who paid for services in cash, so she had no liquidity problems in the first year.
However, the returns were not sufficient to sustain her lifestyle. After buying cleaning implements, paying her employees and settling other business bills, she was often left with nothing to take home for herself.
The other challenge Damaris and her team encountered was mistrustful clients. It takes a certain level of trust to invite strangers into your home and let them clean your mess, understandably so. But it becomes a challenge when it suffocates your staff and threatens the quality of your service.
“There was an occasion when a man, his wife and their house help hovered over my staff while they worked. It was terrible. I had to have a sit-down with them to make them step back,” she recalls.
DIFFICULT FINDING RIGHT PEOPLE
After playing it safe and observing the situation in 2013, Damaris registered her business as a limited company the next year. She then expanded her services to cover commercial cleaning, gardening and landscaping (through competitive tenders), and training house helps to equip them with life-saving first aid skills. With the expansion of her business, came the expansion of her team – permanent staff numbers grew from two to 11, to the current 22. Casuals were hired when there was more work than the regular staff could handle by themselves. And with this came new challenges.
“It was difficult finding the right people to work with,” she says.
“Most people have a negative perception towards cleaning, they look at it as if it’s not a real or respectable job. And because of this, they don’t do the work well. Which means poor service which clients are not happy with.”
The ballooning staff numbers also made Damaris realise that she was now responsible for their income and welfare.
“Thinking of my staff reminds me that I can’t afford any slip-ups, not as an employer, not as an entrepreneur and not as a woman in business.”
2015 marks three years since Damaris drafted her business plan and she believes she’s on track to achieve her five-year plan just as she had strategised. She closes by quoting from her favourite book, Knockout Entrepreneur by George Foreman: “The best entrepreneurs have found a way to serve others and as a result discover their greatest fulfilment.”
HOW SHE DID IT:
- No matter the type of work you are involved in, always give excellent service.
- Be a woman of character and integrity.
- Remember to pray for your plans. People who pray are the happiest.
- Surround yourself with people you admire.
- Quoting from George Foreman’s Knockout Entrepreneur, “As an entrepreneur, don’t follow the crowd, let them follow you.”