(Little Flock Kindergarten)
This is a summary of an interview with Mercy Ndegwa, the founder of Little Flock Kindergarten on Kiambu Road, Nairobi.
Mercy was already successful in her career when she decided to leave employment for business. She settled on one business, researched it, and moved fully into business.
In this interview, Mercy shares her successes and challenges in the first 18 months of business.
This interview has a wealth of information for any entrepreneur.
Click here to listen to the interview or read the summary below
“Fear Kills a Lot of Destinies” ~ Mercy Ndegwa
Background information
Mercy has a BEd. from Kenyatta University. She got her first job straight out of university and worked in the corporate arena for about 15 years.
While she had specialized in education, she was more interested in marketing (advertising, brand promotion, and branding).
Her first job was in sales with an internet company in Kenya. She worked there for a couple of years before moving to another IT company.
In the second job, Mercy got experience selling to organizations. She eventually moved to insurance where she stayed for 10 years. This job gave her experience selling asset management and life insurance.
Selling insurance wasn’t hard for her. She moved up the corporate ladder and was at management level by the time she quit employment.
Before setting up Little Flock Kindergarten, Mercy had done part-time businesses while still working. These included selling towels and shoes and network marketing.
The transition from employment into business
Her transition from employment to business didn’t start consciously. She believes that God was guiding her and she was unconsciously doing things that prepared her for business.
One of these things was saving money and being prudent with her finances. However, the money was not specifically for business, she was just putting it aside.
Mercy had a strong interest in curriculum and would get bothered when she met people who couldn’t express themselves.
Mercy decided to provide children with a good educational foundation from a very young age. She knew what she wanted and needed to find out how to achieve it.
She didn’t do a lot of planning, but she invested in coaching. Initially, she had a lot of fears including fear of:
- Failure and the business not working.
- Letting go of her job and surviving without a payslip.
- The unknown.
This period was a challenge and she debated a lot with herself. Coaching helped her declutter and neutralize these emotions. Looking back, she’s now aware that “…fear kills a lot of destinies.”
It took 1 year and 9 months from the time Mercy decided to get into business to when she quit her job and moved fully into business. She says that knowing what she knows today, she probably would have taken a shorter time. However, she feels that she needed to go through that process in order to learn.
When she left employment, it was because the time had come for her to leave because she was restless. She wasn’t giving her all at work but didn’t know why this was happening.
The restlessness increased in her last year of employment. She had the entrepreneurial bug and was reading books about business while trying to understand why she was restless.
At the back of her mind, she knew that she wanted to start a business and had a vision about the school. She researched more about the business end of schools and kindergartens. This helped her make the decision to take up business formally.
Structure of the business
1. Ownership
The business is a sole proprietorship and is fully owned by Mercy. She does, however, get advice and support from a network of other people.
2. Location
The school is located in Thimbigua Estate which is off Kiambu Road. Their catchment area is the whole of Kiambu, Ruaka, the bypass, and a bit of Thika Road.
3. Employees
The school has 13 employees. Mercy is the overall head and director and there are two people reporting to her directly. These are:
- Head of curriculum: Teachers to report to this person.
- Administrator: Handles support staff including gardeners, security, cleaners, etc.
Initially, everyone was reporting to Mercy, but this was quite taxing. She has decentralized so that only 2 people report to her and the rest report to these two.
4. Specialization
Little Flock is a Christian school that is not affiliated to any church. Through their Bible-based program, a child gets:
- A foundation based on Christ.
- The ability to read and write.
- Eloquence.
- The ability to express themselves.
Currently, they take children aged 2 to 6 years.
The role of research in business startup and growth
Mercy still seeks knowledge and information from people inside and outside the education industry. For her, research is important because she didn’t want to walk into a territory whose requirements she didn’t know.
The research is not just about what is required legally, but also to learn what not to do. Such information will help you avoid the pit holes. It also reduces the time you spend setting up the business.
However, she cautions that there has to be a limit as to when you stop researching and start doing your own things. It’s easy to find yourself doing lots of research and not starting up because you’re not actualizing your business.
This is what happened to Mercy at the beginning. She had a lot of information that she wasn’t implementing. When she tried to implement everything she had learnt, she realized she was just copying others and losing her vision.
In her opinion, while research gives you a roadmap, it also requires an intricate balance. You need to:
- Know yourself.
- Know what you’re capable of at that point in time.
- Be original at some time.
When you have gathered a lot of information, Mercy recommends that you, take a step back and ask yourself, “How do I implement this to suit me, my business and vision?”
Business startup leads to burnout…and a change in the structure
Beyond researching the business, she had also talked to people who have started schools the right way. Despite this, she still had some rough times at startup, mainly because she thought she knew everything.
Mercy realized that she had to let go of a lot of things in order to reduce the burnout she was experiencing. She empowered two employees to take on some of the duties she was handling.
She started with the head of curriculum and then added an administrator. Empowering these two staff members is a continuous activity for Mercy.
In return, having them in place has allowed her to focus on the school’s vision and growth.
Going beyond startup
A normal workday for Mercy
| 7:00am | Arrive at the school and open up. Devotion with staff. |
| 8:00am | The arrival of children. Sometimes Mercy receives the children. |
| 9:00am | This is class-time. Mercy either does some work or sits in class so that she can evaluate what’s happening. |
| 10:00am | Break time for the children. Mercy spends this time watching the children play. She goes back to work after the break. |
| 12:30pm | Lunchtime. Mercy loves serving and feeding the children so she hangs around the children when they’re eating. |
| 1:00pm | Children sleep so Mercy has meetings with teachers or does a quick training depending on what she feels needs addressing. |
| 3:00pm | Children leave school. This is when Mercy does admin work while ensuring that children have all been picked up. |
She leaves the office between 4:00pm and 6:00pm depending on what she’s handling or the school calendar.
Initially, she didn’t think she’d be able to have a schedule that focused more on the children. Coming from the corporate world, she thought she’d be more focused on vision and growing the school. But she got drawn outside by the children.
Main challenges faced
1. Indecisiveness
This was Mercy’s biggest challenge at startup. Normally she’s a very decisive person, but at that time, she became indecisive due to fear. She was very scared of everything and afraid of things not working.
She also wanted to do everything at once and wasn’t able to determine what the business needed or could take on at that moment.
It took a few months before she was able to stick to decisions that the business could handle. These decisions also had to be in line with her business vision.
By the end of the first term, she had to learn how to make wise decisions. With time, she stopped copying what others were doing and came up with her own foundation.
2. Mental fatigue
She had taken so many punches that she got mentally tired and embraced everything that was thrown at her – both good and bad.
This in turn made her choose actions or make decisions that weren’t the best for her business at that time.
3. Dealing with suppliers
This has been a major problem all through. She didn’t have firm contracts and also took on some suppliers too fast.
Coming from a Christian perspective, it was also hard to deal with suppliers who want to do business in a way that collides with Mercy’s vision.
Getting the right fit of suppliers takes ‘…the grace of God.’ to quote Mercy. Also, some of their suppliers are having a challenge dealing with self-expressive children and can’t get that this is part of the school’s vision.
4. Pre-startup assumptions
She had assumptions about the school’s catchment area. She’s now having to make decisions that she’d have made last year if she didn’t have these assumptions.
For example, she set up the school with general ideas about her target group. This meant that she didn’t localize her market and target group.
5. Employee management
She went into business with a corporate mentality and had a clear vision in her head. It was not easy translating this vision to her employees.
Some of her employees had come from industries or environments where excellence was not a value. There was a lot of friction and fear played a role in Mercy holding on to them.
With time, she became bold and let the employees go. She is now aware that a lot of her challenges with employees and suppliers arose because she was not firm with them.
6. Growth
She initially thought she’d grow faster than has happened. Also, although she came from a marketing background, she was unable to market her business.
How did she overcome her challenges?
1. Meetings with self: She has meetings with herself and looks at things realistically.
2. Being her own brand: She no longer copies people. This has helped her reaffirm herself and become honest with herself.
3. Reading and podcasts: She reads and listens to podcasts from experts in business and personal development.
4. The Bible: This has helped her a lot, especially in making wise decisions. She’s gotten a lot of Divine help which she attributes to God.
Successes and achievements
1. Supportive customers
Mercy has been lucky because the parents in her school support her and her vision.
As the business grows, they’ve gotten parents who request very specific things. Mercy handles this by reaffirming to them that the child is the client.
The school appreciates the parents and understand what they want. But at the end of the day, as a school, they shall do what is good for the child.
Some of the things parents ask for are good for the parent, but they aren’t necessarily good for the children. In the time she’s been in this business, Mercy has noticed that a lot of times, we don’t bring ourselves to the level of the child.
By interacting with the children, the school is able to tailor-make a lot of things to suit the child. Unfortunately, this may not necessarily suit the parent. This is something the school spends time communicating with the parents.
2. Proper financial management
While finances have not been a challenge, Mercy acknowledges that had she known what she knows now, she wouldn’t have spent so much money at the beginning.
She was lucky to make purchases in places where she got quality products for a good price. Today, she makes solid decisions about spending by asking herself?
- Can I afford this now?
- Is there a place I can get this cheaper?
She’s now able to get things at her cost simply because she researches and looks for someone who’s selling the same thing or service cheaper.
Lessons learnt
- “Fear kills destinies and purpose.”
- Be decisive: Make decisions, close your eyes and bear the consequences. Embrace what the decision brings to you and handle it.
- Implementation: Move from being theoretical in your business. Take a step of faith and move to action.
- Be your own person: Be original and don’t copy.
- Have a vision: Write it down, execute it in your original way, and also give it to God. Keep working on your vision as this will help you improve. When you step out and execute your own vision, God helps you.
- Have goals: You must be going somewhere.
- Have a mentor: Have a benchmark so that you don’t think you’re it.
Mercy’s advice for aspiring businesswomen
If you never try you will never know. Just do it. You don’t have to be perfect.
1. Be realistic
Mercy came from the corporate arena where there were beautiful offices and big nice machines. This is what she’d have wanted for her business but she had to be realistic as she couldn’t afford it.
However, she knows that in future she will be that big business. So her advice is for you to start where you have. Start with the money you have, even if it’s 5,000/- or 10,000/-.
On the issue of capital, Mercy notes that when she was doing her startup research, she was dealing with eagles – people who had a lot of capital. She’d walk into schools and see exactly what she wanted.
Little did she know that you can achieve whatever you want with the little money you have. It’s a step-by-step process. Luckily, Mercy was averse to taking loans and was keen to start with what she had.
Dealing with eagles gave her a lot of pressure. After some time she came to know that she didn’t have to “…climb the tree from the top”. She can start at the bottom and move up.
When you do this, along the way you find that your money is enough or it’s more than enough. In Mercy’s opinion, at times we give ourselves a lot of internal pressure, which is not called for.
“Just accept what you have, a day at a time, the ducks will align.”
Many times, we limit ourselves because we think we don’t have enough money. In this way, we become our own undoing.
2. Set goals and work on them
Set your goals, give them timelines, work on them, review them each quarter and be committed to achieving them. Take a step of faith.
“If you fail, you will not die. Get up, dust yourself and move on”.
3. Pray
While you’re praying, know that God will not give you a starting date. He’ll wait for you to take a step of faith. For example, if you pray and wait for God to tell you when to resign, it won’t happen. It’s your role to take the paper, write the resignation and step out.
Mercy’s advice for businesswomen
Network with other business people
She’s associating with other business owners and looking for business networks. She does this so as to know:
- How they’ve done it.
- How they do it differently.
- What she (Mercy) can do it different and much better.
Continuous learning
She reads and listens to motivational and business podcasts. This surrounds her environment with what she wants to hear.
Cut out people who don’t match who you are
You have to weigh a lot of things and maybe even cut out some friends. As an eagle, you can’t hang out with chickens.
Maintain work-life balance
Take care of your family, friends and relationships. Be happy and enjoy life. Take time off to laugh, have a break and spend time with your family.
Initially, Mercy used to spend a lot of time at work. Since she created her new structure and has people overseeing the business, she able to take off early. Mercy is now able to spend more time with her son than she did when employed.
Serve others
When you’re helping or serving other people, you stop thinking you’ve made it. You become a normal person and don’t put yourself on a pedestal.
Personal and business growth recommendations
Books and podcasts by:
1. Myles Monroe.
2. Bill Winston (especially his book Faith and the Marketplace).
4. Robin Sharma.
5. Napoleon Hill.
Mercy prefers listening to podcasts because she can get them on the go. She notes that podcasts help her maintain integrity and focus. This reduces negative stuff and keeps her focused on what she wants to achieve.
Programs and courses
1. Biashara 360’s Create Your Dream Business coaching program (for startups).
2. Angie Murenga’s Purpose & Leadership Forum.
3. Laimani Bidali’s Renewing Self program (Alabastron)
4. Wahome Ngari’s Wealth Creation course.
5. Mothers of Sons program.
Mercy has also attended additional personal development and parenting classes. In her view, the business reflects on you as an individual. So you have to work on improving your view to life and how you relate with people.
Mercy’s vision for her business
Mercy wants Little Flock Kindergarten to specialize in the British curriculum. Her goal is to have a proper Christian school that offers the British curriculum affordably to middle-level income Kenyans.
By the time a child leaves the school in Year 13, they will be grounded and well-rounded. They will also have integrity, be more eloquent and can think outside the box. These children will be leaders in their own rights.
Currently, the kindergarten isn’t a full British school. However, children are able to transition smoothly into the Kenyan or any other education system because the fundamentals they learn are universal.
Parting words
Women are very focused. They know what they want and are good at execution. Their only undoing is that they listen to too many people.
So Mercy dares women to believe in their dreams, cut out the negative voices, get into business and do it.
Your way forward
1. Connect with Little Flock Kindergarten
If you’re in Thimbigua or along Kiambu Road, visit the school and have a look at what they do. You can also email them or connect with them on Facebook and Instagram. Remember to Like and share their pages with your contacts. Finally, you can get in touch with Mercy by phone on 0702-893000. Feel free to call and let her know what you learnt from this interview.
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(Image Credit: Mercy Ndegwa)
