Producer J Blessing and Singer Chantelle have now joined the parenthood wagon after they welcomed their son Kyle. Chantelle was happy to post his first picture on Instagram on Monday morning as she celebrated her birthday saying, “Today twenty something years ago I was born, I’m thankful for everyone who has been a blessing in my life, but mostly I’m thankful for my little family, my husband and son mean the world to me…happy Birthday to me.”

The good news dulled J Blessings fear over his life after four gunmen broke into his Westlands studio office and made away with recording equipment and other equipment worth millions on Saturday night.

The four men who have been trailing the producer for days now broke into the office and tied up his assistant, who was later rescued by police after alerting them hours after the gunmen had made away with the valuables.

J Blessing has constantly been complaining that some unknown men are after his life, a matter that is now being investigated by police.

Safaricom’s MPesa, is Kenya’s 2015 leading super brand. Interestingly, MPesa has defeated its parent company Safaricom to the top slot. In a survey managed by London-based Centre for Brand Analysis MPesa is seen to have improved its brand equity considerably from 2012, where it was placed sixth. Safaricom itself dropped to position three, behind Red Cross Society, a humanitarian relief organisation, which emerged second after Mpesa.

“The leading brands not only prove they offer quality products and services that consumers can trust, but do so on a consistent basis,” explained Centre CEO Stephen Cheliotis, while announcing the results yesterday.

“We surveyed both informed experts and the end consumers who ultimately decide what brands to buy to determine the region’s Superbrand,” he added.

Others companies that made it to the top 20 brands were The Daily Nation, Facebook, Google, Nakumatt, Citizen TV and Mumias Sugar company. Other brands in the top 20 list include Coca-Cola, Samsung, Kenchic, Colgate, Dettol, Supa Loaf, Bata, Equity Bank, Farmer’s Choice and Crown Paints. Eleven brands retained their top 20 positions in the 2015 survey. Kenya Red Cross and Equity Bank Kenya maintained their top 20 rankings and remain the only representatives of their respective sectors in the top grouping.

Leading supermarket and food retailer Nakumatt maintained its top 20 placing, moving up from 11th to eighth as the only representative from its sector. New entries into the top 20 included three US digital giants Facebook (fifth), Google (sixth) and Microsoft (seventh) and Japan-owned Samsung (12th). Other new entrants were Bata, up from 27th position to 17th.

“Close to 1,000 brands were reviewed so those brands placing high in the rankings can be rightly proud of their performance and success in generating respect among experts and desirability among customers,” Cheliotis said. The leading brands were judged on three core criteria, namely quality, reliability and distinction. Separate surveys are currently taking place in Tanzania and Uganda to inform on which brands can enter the East African edition of the global branding publication Superbrands. Cooking brand “Kasuku” failed to benefit from the upward trend of food brands as it dropped out of the top 20 category, from position 18 to 44.

Heshan De Silva: Entrepreneurship is hard. That in itself is a huge understatement. Many young people and those young-at-heart take the leap into self-employment without understanding just how challenging the space really is. My piece this week is to shed some light on what awaits you on your entrepreneurial journey and to hopefully give you a few pointers to make your path to self-employment a little less tumultuous.

Odd, when the notion of entrepreneurship is to be your own person, right? Wrong. I think this is the single most important thing any entrepreneur can do when starting out. In our arrogance of wanting to be our own boss, we forget that every great company has a greater TEAM behind it. Do you have the skills off the bat to hire the right people, manage them efficiently, and keep them working towards a big goal? Chances are you don’t if you have never been part of a team. Well, not immediately anyway, and if you think you do – you’re probably fooling yourself.

“But Hesh, it’s so hard to get decent paying jobs in Kenya”. Yes it is, it’s the case all over the world. And it’s even harder to make a solid living out of your first company. Volunteer at companies. Offer yourself at entry level jobs. You must be a willing learner. There are programs in Kenya such as those offered by the Kenya Private Sector Alliance (KEPSA) and United Nations Volunteers (UNV) that place you into internships around the country. GRAB opportunities. When you’re working for someone else you’ll learn crucial lessons about employee morale, waste, strategy, resource management and so on. The list is endless. Get stuck in and learn, it will open your eyes to how naive you would have been had you jumped head first into entrepreneurship.

We are a shortcut embracing culture. From falsely acquiring odd qualifications, to our hustler mentality. As an entrepreneur, your odds of surviving beyond your first 3 years are roughly 15%. Terrible odds. So why do so many startups fail? I want to focus on Kenya and give you a few points to look out for.

1. Waste. If you’re spending money on rent you cannot afford, a large team in anticipation of large orders coming, unnecessary infrastructure (eg. Core i7 laptops when an i3 will do), and any other overheads that are unnecessary towards your direct goal – you will most likely fail.
2. Sales are King. At the end of the day, if you’re not making sales, you’re finished. Doesn’t matter how glitzy everything is, if you can’t get clients – nothing else matters. When you find yourself sitting at a desk twiddling your thumbs, get up, go out and start looking for clients. Go door to door with what you’re offering. It may sound exhausting, but if the client won’t come to you – go to them.
3. Do not lose focus. It’s too easy to say “This isn’t working right now, let’s try this as well” every time business is slow. The problem with that is you do not have enough time to manage more than one thing exceptionally, especially when starting out. When you find you have a lot on your plate, you’re already well and truly in the quicksand. Stay focused, work on the original goal, learn what you must from the shortcomings and adapt. Don’t think that starting something new on the side will help your short term shortcomings.

I hope you realize that there are many more hidden challenges that await you on your entrepreneurial journey. Did I mention that it’s HARD? It is not a journey for everyone, and it will knock you repeatedly. Just remember, every knock has a lesson to be learned. Learn the lesson and adapt. This is why I encourage every wannabe entrepreneur to get out and get a job first – the lessons that you learn through employment will save you a lot of grief on your journey to being your own boss.

MBA Students from IESE Business School, a leading business school in Spain and the world had the opportunity to discuss a case study on M-Pesa at the Strathmore Business School (SBS) campus, Kenya. The students are in SBS as part of the Doing Business in Africa program which will see them stay in SBS for two weeks.

The program is designed to provide participants with a unique exposure to the African continent by providing practical skills and knowledge required to successfully operate and grow a business in Africa.

Guided by Prof. Alejandro Lago, the IESE MBA Academic Director, the students analysed the case from three angles; context, concept, and execution. The runaway success of M-Pesa, they decided, resulted from the favourable interplay of the three factors in the market. This ensured that the market was in the right condition when the product was launched i.e. a poorly served currency transaction market, not burdened by legacy regulation, and complemented by an open and existent clientele, resulted in the immediate adoption of the product.

Each year, students come from other international business schools convene at Strathmore Business School to study the African economic environment as part of the Doing Business in Africa Program. In addition to the sit-in class sessions, the participants visit local industries, markets and neighbourhoods. This ensures that their learning process is well-rounded and interesting.

You may feel like there’s never enough time in the day. Jumping from task to task, you work from dawn to dusk only to be disappointed by your progress. When you try to relax, you’re subconsciously focusing on the tasks you have to do afterward. Because of your hyper packed schedule, you end up doing 50 things all at 50%.

Below, are three ways to better manage their time. Try incorporating this advice in your daily schedule, and your co-workers will begin to think you never sleep.

Home in on Major Tasks

Some people give the advice to say yes to everything, when in fact the most efficient say no to most things. This clears their schedule so they can just concentrate on what’s crucial for them to do. When you wake up in the morning, write down the most important objectives for the day. If other things come up, say no or delegate them. Your success for the day should be based on what you wrote down. Doing a few things well is much better than being average at everything.

Realize That Discipline Runs Out

Studies have shown that you only have so much discipline to give out. If you overuse it, eventually you lose it. Because of this, it’s important to take time to relax and reenergize. A perfect example is people who eat healthy. When you ask most of them, they’ll tell you that they incorporate some kind of cheat meal or cheat day in their diet. This is so they can give into their craving and recharge their discipline for the week ahead.

Drop Time Wasters

Take a hard look at your schedule. Do you have any meetings that seem to run on too long or phone calls that have no purpose? These are perfect examples of time wasters. One way to get rid of these is to have a clear agenda for every meeting you go into. Another way is to try and push unnecessary meetings and phone calls to emails.

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An American company called New Tech City has launched a project called Bored & Brilliant based on the premise that being so connected to technology may actually be killing our creativity.

Work by Sandi Mann of the University of Central Lancashire suggests that time for aimless thought could be important for creativity. In a study called “Does Being Bored Make Us More Creative?” she gave research subjects tasks of varying degrees of boringness and then used a standard measure of divergent thinking involving plastic cups. Those given the most boring task—reading the phone book—came up with more interesting uses for the cups.

“You come up with really great stuff when you don’t have that easy, lazy, junk food diet of the phone to scroll all the time,” Mann explains.

Visit Bored & Brilliant to sign up and listen to this 16-minute segment to hear experts make the case for boredom:

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