Growing Femmehub through resilience and community support – my digital journey from side hustle to successful online publishing platform.
I got into my entrepreneurship journey as a digital publisher around 12 years ago, just when the country was getting curious about marketing on the internet. Understandably, there was a lot of skepticism and fear about the emerging industry, especially because decision makers in most companies were still old guards and therefore wanted to stick to mainstream media.
At that time, I was still employed and living in Mombasa, with writing and publishing as a side hustle. All my business came from Nairobi and that got me thinking about moving cities to come and build a business where more people were receptive of the idea. For two years, I juggled between my employer’s work and the exciting new business, working full days and writing in the evenings.
In 2013, someone gifted me a laptop and neither of us knew that it would be the catalyst for my major move from Mombasa to Nairobi. At this point I was still largely writing for fun with a project here and there, but nothing to call a business as such. A brand new laptop planted a seed in me to dare. Especially because that, and an internet connection was all I needed to be fully in business. The idea about leaving the coast grew and as much as I knew I was coming to survive on a business that had barely grown, I made the decision anyway.
In early 2014, I packed up and moved to Nairobi to join a community of other publishers who we had interacted with online, and that is how Femmehub was born. I was lucky that at that time, the online community was very tight knit and easy to translate into offline and business partners. To date, those are the people who have continued to shape my business, guiding me along the way and exposing me to networks that are still working for me now, 10 years later.
Growing Femmehub took time. Getting the name out there and building readership has been one of the biggest challenges I’ve encountered but I consider myself lucky because I landed onto a pool of people who were so willing to help. For instance, someone offered me a desk at their office and just like that, solved one of my biggest pain points. As much as I was in the digital space and could work from home, I was coming from a corporate culture where we reported to the office in the morning. This is one thing I’ve never been able to drop. I’m very much a digital nomad and sometimes I’m away from the office for days but I still like the discipline and structure that the office culture offers.
Fast forward, Femmehub has grown to a level where I’m able to create employment and partner with brands for long term engagements. One of my biggest blessings this year for instance is getting to work with NCBA Bank for a long-term project, and this is a massive boost not only to my confidence as a publisher, but also to my income. Thank you NCBA! Back in 2017, I was also part of the digital team at the launch of Loop, which goes to show my long relationship with financial institutions. Here was my article back then when the bank was CBA.
Today as the world celebrates World MSME Day, I have taken the time to reminisce on my journey as a small business and how far I’ve come through hard work, resilience and challenges. I’ve been lucky not to have too much trouble to go through, seeing that I’m in a space whose main inventory is myself and my laptop, but I stand firm with fellow entrepreneurs who are battling much more.
Just yesterday for instance, we saw entrepreneurs in downtown Nairobi count their losses after losing all their physical stock in the protests. Aside from that, we have seen business people lose their entire businesses due to other calamities, and still manage to crawl back. This is the spirit of entrepreneurship and this is what we are celebrating today.
Happy World MSME day!
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