Blankets And Wine Must Have Sounded Like An Idiotic Idea In The Beginning

I don’t know about you, but if my friend had once come up to me, telling me that they had an idea where they charge people 2,000 shillings to attend a BYOB(Bring Your Own Bottle), I would have laughed squarely in their face, spraying whatever liquid I was ingesting all over them.

 After that, I would proceed to call them an insufferable FOOL, and sternly request them to get out of my sight! This is probably the process Muthoni the Drummer Queen went through five years ago when telling people about her new idea for a “premier East African experience”. I know I got similar treatment when starting Ghafla. Thing is, when you are trying to start a new biz, there will be all sorts of critics, but what separates the boys from the men in entrepreneurship is the conviction to move ahead in the face of naysayers. Look at where Muthoni is now: the Blankets franchise is bringing in crazy cashflow, there is now Blankets and Wine in the coast, and outside Kenya. Muthoni herself was even recently invited to the finals of the Africa Cup of Nations. Kudos to her. In conclusion, let me leave you with a relevant quote from Theodore Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”