No business person actually shares the truth of how they started

Let me say this, the skills of managing a business are different from those of starting one, in fact, at some point, they could be contradictory and conflicting.

Because you do so many things when you are starting a business, some of them do not even make sense, some of them are out of desperation. Have you ever seen a man drowning? He will try to hold onto anything you throw at him. When you are drowning, it does not matter what swimming stroke you use, all you want to do is to survive.

The most important thing in the early years of your business is survival, nothing else. It is survival. Those who survive are the ones who get to tell the story. If it means to sell the business tables for you to have another day alive, then so be it.

That is why most founders cannot remember those days. And I always thought that capital could make you dodge that process of 0 to 1. 

On the contrary, it often postpones your suffering.

Let me use the example of my mechanic friend. He wanted to venture into a spares shop business. And it made sense. If he could buy spares from his own shop, it would enable him to have a better business. Both his mechanics service and the spares shop. I remember when he started out, he came saying he needs this much money to stock up on everything that people keep asking for. Because again, people hate going to a shop and being told that a certain belt size is not stocked.

Basically, I want to go to one shop and get all the stuff I need.

Luckily, I did not have the money to invest or loan him, I told him to start in whatever shabby way. But three months later, he came back happy that he had started that way. He learned that even when purchasing oil, people will sell you the first consignments as genuine oil, then trick you on the 4th or 5th consignment. Now imagine you work on someone’s car, and you place in fake oil. Every business has its own secrets, its own tricks. And when you start with so much money, it is likely you will end up making expensive mistakes.

The journey of 0 to 1 unlocks your creativity, it teaches you to respect your money, it teaches you to do your homework. And you come to learn that every industry gatekeeps. Like, they must welcome you in, test you, before they accept you to join their club.

You should never think you are the first to have an idea, and that is it is so rare, you are the only person who has seen this opportunity. Chances are high, someone saw that opportunity before you, went in, got burnt, and they are silent.

One time we were joking about business, and the topic of mushrooms came up. My friend laughed, “Ian, I can take a whole day talking about the mushroom business, obutikko bwali bunzisse.” He says he was not sleeping. He was working a day job, then at night, he had to go and harvest the mushrooms, then come with them early in the morning to Nakasero market before going for his job. And mushrooms reproduce like crazy. And you must arrive at Nakasero before the other suppliers arrive, otherwise you will be forced to dry your mushrooms.

And the thing is, everyone’s zero to one will be different. 

We can all start the same business, but we shall approach the first days differently. We shall face different issues. But it is those early days that toughen you, they build your business muscle. Once you have survived the first, second, and third year, you are now more likely to go to five years, or more.

As you optimise for survival, especially when you are bootstrapping, you want to spend on only the necessary. If you can dodge a cost, dodge it. Because anything that costs you, is bleeding you. And you do not have enough blood to lose. But also, you are learning the gimmicks, you are learning how to walk, how to balance. You are building your own unique culture, ways of work.

I wish one day, the story of Kisenyi, Kafumbe-Mukasa is documented. Because there are many businesses that came out of that place. Even now, when you go there, you will find women who kufumba bizigo. They blend cosmetics. But it is from here that the big boys emerged. It is zero to one, they used what was available to them at that time.

The professional machinery comes in later, those well-documented SOPs come in later, those great practices, those are things of later. You have to first survive.

You could choose to start out by renting the best premises, designing the best uniforms, having a gym at the workplace, get the journalists to interview you, do the PR, but it is largely wasteful. 

You cannot escape going to the trenches.

0 to 1 is you being a guerilla fighter. You count day by day. You try to look for big results with the least spend possible. In the early days of Red Pepper and Observer, the people would write the stories in the morning, look for adverts in the afternoon, and get on the buses at night to distribute the papers. The early years are about the soul, it is about missionaries. 

It is about you getting your girlfriend to do the finances for your business until you develop the muscle to hire an accountant.

That journey cannot really be explained. That is why Ugandan businesspeople struggle to explain it. Because they did a million things to survive.

They knocked on a million doors, they advertised in a million ways, to the point that they cannot tell which of those many things was the magic bullet.

The best they can always tell you, it takes patience, persistence, hard work, being trustworthy, making the right partnerships, discipline. You get the song ...

Ian Ortega is a consultant and managing partner of Ortega Group