The 24-year-old co-founder of Betty Consultant & Management Limited (BCML)

Betty Githua is not your ordinary CEO.

The 24-year-old co-founder of Betty Consultant & Management Limited (BCML) walks with an air of confidence, as if she’s defying gravity’s attempt to anchor her enthusiasm for life.

Her mission: to empower young people to create their own jobs in Kenya.

She wears her smile permanently, revealing a deep crater on her left cheek that doubles as a dimple. It’s easy to forget that behind her baby face is a woman filled with determination and incredible resolve.

“I’m not one of those entrepreneurs who grew up knowing that they wanted to be in business, for me it was actually more coincidental,” she explains, before turning her phone onto silent mode.

We’re at a Java Café on Kimathi Street in downtown Nairobi, seated in the corner of a balcony overlooking the busy street traffic below.

“I’ll take a milkshake,” she says with a smile to the waiter, who jots down the order before turning his attention to me.

“Classic lemonade please,” I say quickly before he can repeat the question.

The sun, which for the past few weeks has been playing hide and seek, is peeking behind the clouds, teasing us with occasional bursts of warmth.

Betty’s red dress hugs her body comfortably, exposing a petite physique that belies her enormous heart.

“I can’t believe I came looking like this,” she says laughing, while nervously shuffling her feet.

I look down and notice she’s wearing sandals. “What do you mean?” I ask, unable to notice anything wrong with her look.

“My feet are so…dusty,” she finally says blushing.

I look down again and can’t help but smile. Despite her ability to turn heads with her natural beauty, sense of style and confidence, Betty remains grounded and light hearted – never taking herself too seriously.

“I didn’t even notice,” I finally say with a smirk.

We’ve been friends for more than 10 years, thanks in large part to our families, who have been neighbors in Murang’a County since we were born.

Our humble beginnings and common interests have solidified our friendship, enabling us to grow individually without growing apart.

“I believe in relationships, because they take you further in life,” she says, her eyes wide in anticipation as her milkshake arrives.

“People are wealth and your network is pretty much your net worth. If you invest in the right kind of people, you can never go wrong. The people you associate with either make you or break you” she adds.

I nod in agreement, taking a sip of my lemonade.

Not just a businesswoman, she’s a business, woman

Watching Betty’s growth – from a young girl to a businesswoman – has been inspirational. Her life is a testament of her parent’s love, her brother’s admiration and her friend’s support.

“I love to hang out with people who can challenge me to be a better person,” she continues with a smile.

“Most of my friends are people who own their own businesses and are doing much better than me,” she reveals, pushing her milkshake to the side to avoid finishing it before we’ve ordered lunch.

A gentle breeze forces me to slap the table to keep her napkin from flying away and I sense a shift in her focus as I question her about her business.

The friendly, light hearted Betty transforms into the young, ambitious and articulate professional that has been asked to share her insights on national television numerous times.

“Basically what we do in a nutshell: book keeping, forensic accounting, taxation, payroll and company secretarial work. My firm revolves around delivering those five things to clients,” she says, beaming with pride.

Her path to becoming a small business owner who helps and builds jobs in Kenya has been filled with countless detours and speed bumps.

“Some leaders are born, others are trained. I’m one of those who had to be trained to lead,” she admits, nodding as though she’s convinced herself.

“The first place that you should look for a job is in your heart. Ask yourself, what is the one thing that you can do for free? What is one thing that you love so much that you’d be willing to sacrifice the money as you gain the skill and experience,” she advises.

For Betty, her career started during her third year as an economics major at Kenyatta University. She started working for an IT consultancy firm in Westlands in Nairobi, where she lasted for a year without receiving a salary. But in her view, the experience she gained at the firm was more valuable than the little compensation the company could barely afford to pay her.

“My boss at the time was looking to groom a protégé so that when he wasn’t present, the person would be able to represent the company in meetings,” she recalls.

“He’d take me along for all his meetings, forcing me to learn about software and IT. Going to meetings allowed me to grow comfortable in talking to the higher ups in companies,” she adds.

The position gave her the opportunity to learn what consultancy entailed and most importantly, how to deal with clients. Consulting also gave her a taste of what she desired most: variety.

“What I loved about the job was how dynamic it was. I mean, my routine was not the same. I’m not the kind of person to have a job – where Monday through Friday, you’re going to do similar work,” she explains.

“As a consultant, every experience was different. Every day had its own adventures. And that’s what I really wanted to do with my career,” she adds.

“Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” – Robert Frost

Eventually, Betty came to a fork in the road; continue working for the firm, earning no salary and having to work twice as hard in order to be knowledgeable about IT and tech, or branch out and start her own company that would leverage the accounting skills she’d already developed in school.

“I’d go to meetings, and yes I’d be there and present, but I’d me more like a fly on the wall because I wouldn’t be able to answer half the IT questions the clients were asking,” she explains.

Starting her own company proved to be the best decision she’d ever make.

“After quitting my job at the firm, I was jobless for two months,” she reveals, highlighting the tough work environment that makes finding a good job in Kenya as a recent graduate incredibly stressful.

“Then one day, I randomly got a call from a client who I’d met through my former employer. He called me and told me ‘Betty, I thought you were an accountant and you did consultancy and you do bookkeeping so why don’t you come and start doing that type of work for me?’”

That’s all Betty needed to hear. Her consulting career was born.

She started doing the book keeping for the restaurant he owned, ignoring the fact that she was only being paid a paltry Sh5,000 per month.

“I actually didn’t consider it as pay because it wasn’t something that could sustain me. It wasn’t even equivalent to pocket money for most people, especially if you’re a young woman,” she reveals shaking her head.

“But I thought this would be a great training ground because prior to that first client, I hadn’t really been able to practice my consulting skills alone and make mistakes that I could learn from and improve,” she explains.

That first consulting gig allowed her to take chances and make mistakes, forcing her out of her comfort zone and empowering her to trust her instincts when making important decisions.

It also introduced her to some of the challenges she’d face as a young businesswoman moving forward.

“I’ve gone to meet clients and they’ll look at me and say ‘you’re so young, where have you worked?’ So you have to work twice as hard, especially if you’re a woman,” she explains.

She narrows her eyes, as if trying to make out words in the distance.

“The first thing they question is my age and whether I know what I’m doing. Secondly, as a woman they second guess my aptitude to handle their finances because many clients erroneously believe men are more qualified to be accountants,” she adds, before reaching for the milkshake.

It’s a gift and a curse to be a young woman in the business world. Perceptions are hard to shake and identifying the motivation for being hired can be as frustrating as not being hired at all.

Betty had to learn this from experience; a teacher that first gives you the test before revealing the lesson.

“One of the reasons I left my first job was because of personal issues with my boss. It’s very hard to find someone to work with in Kenya. Not only in Kenya, but I believe everywhere,” she explains.

“It’s not easy to find somebody who you can connect with, who will buy into your vision and be able to head in the same direction together. After my experiences at my first job, I had promised myself that I would never do a partnership again,” she reveals.

Despite her promise, Betty eventually found herself working with two others on a job that would pay the three partners more than Sh1 million total.

“After we did the project together and we received the payment, one of the partners took all the money and didn’t give us a single coin. The guy took the money and disappeared out of the country,” she says unable to hide the annoyance in her voice.

“We were naïve to trust the other partner with our account numbers. We trusted him because we’d worked with him on at least 10 projects before, but never for that kind of payout,” she explains.

The other partner who she shared her misery with eventually became her co-founder at BCML, a story she struggles to tell without smiling in astonishment.

“During that period where my co-director Abubakar and I were still mourning about losing our money, he suggested that we start something together. And I couldn’t say no verbally, but in my mind I was thinking that there’s no way that I’m working with somebody else ever again,” she says chuckling.

“But he would really push it and he’d tell me that we should combine our clients and that we should work together. Out of politeness, I’d never say no and I’d just nod at his requests to partner thinking ‘yeaaaaa, dream on’” she adds shaking her head.

Then one day Abubakar called her and reiterated his intention to form a company.

According to Betty, he said “we keep talking and agreeing that we are going to open a partnership together, but we haven’t been able to do anything together. So here’s the deal. I’m going to go to the Sheria House where companies are registered in Kenya and I’m going to register a company.”

“I thought, ‘yea right, just don’t ask me for the money, because there’s no way I’m contributing to registering a company with anyone’”, she says laughing.

Betty underestimated Abubakar’s commitment and willingness to park his ego in order to allow his future partner to drive their shared dream.

“He went ahead and looked for a name, but what took me by storm and changed my mind about the idea of partnering with him was that he named the company after me,” she says, somehow still baffled.

“Like what kind of partner goes to look for a name for a company and puts the other person’s name? He could have picked a neutral name, but he went and put Betty in the company name,” she says smiling.

To Betty, his decision to name the company after her was mind blowing and a turning point in her development as a leader.

Abubakar’s explanation for naming the company Betty Consultant & Management Limited was based on respect.

He told her, “I may not know so much about you, but I know that you have experience, you have the papers, the qualifications, so out of respect for what you have achieved and having worked in a consultancy firm, I decided to name our company BCML.”

Betty was floored by his explanation, allowing her to finally open up and consider the possibility of forming a partnership.

“I thought that this is somebody who really must believe in me. Like he believed in me more than I believed in myself,” she reveals.

“I told myself, you know what, maybe if I could just give it a try. I mean you’d rather try and fail then not try at all,” she explains.

Betty decided to give BCML a shot, but she was hesitant to fully commit due to her past experiences.

“With one leg in and one leg out, I started working together with him. But during the first three months of our partnership, what Abubakar didn’t know was that I was still looking for a full time job, because in my mind I was still skeptical that I wouldn’t be burned by yet another untrustworthy partnership,” she reveals.

“But God has a way of making sure that you stay on the path you’re meant to travel on, because I never received one call back or email from any of the companies I applied to,” she adds laughing.

Following her graduation, she promised herself that she’d give the company 100% of her time and energy and in her own words, “that’s when my whole perspective about business changed. That’s when the clients poured in.”

Armed with a college degree, a CPA certification and a KRA certification qualifying her as a tax agent, Betty was ready to manifest the dreams that she’d meditated and prayed for.

The first step she took as a new business owner was protect herself and her company by implementing the right structures to ensure accountability and transparency.

“What we’ve done is organized our workflow into departments. We have four major departments. Bookkeeping, auditing, company secretarial work, taxation and payroll,” she explains.

“We split it up into two departments per person between me and Abubakar, with taxation and payroll belonging to the same department because they go hand in hand,” she adds.

Betty handles the bookkeeping and auditing work, while Abubakar is in charge of a client’s secretarial work and taxation. They both manage their own teams who assist them with the workload, enabling them to stick to well defined timelines.

“What we did from a really early stage was set the correct structures to manage our workload,” she explains.

“We began by opening two business accounts, where both of us are well aware of when funds go in and out. We agreed on how the remuneration would be done. How the expenses would be done. Even before we had the money, we had the structures right. So money didn’t create our structures, it only strengthened the structures we had already put in place. So when the money and clients came, we were not destabilized in any way,” she adds, her voice bouncing with excitement.

It’s clear that Betty is as passionate about her partnership as she is about the work they do for clients.

“Before the week starts, we communicate and tell each other what our teams are doing and at the end of each day, we brief each other on what challenges we faced as a team, how we managed to succeed, where we need help, etc,” she reveals.

“That unity and working together and having structures that don’t collide and are very specific job descriptions has helped us to maintain, not only our team, but also our clients,” she emphasizes.

According to Betty, the key to their successful partnership is due to their ability to recognize each other’s strengths and weaknesses. By doing so, they complement each other without overlapping their skills, saving time and resources, which ultimately allows them to serve more clients.

“Abu is the acquisition guy. For example, I’ll tell Abu that we need a lot more money to pay our bills, and within a week he’ll find a client who cater for that specific expense. He’s the entrepreneur and go-getter on the team,” she says warmly.

“I on the other hand, am the manager and the technical expert. So our strategy is twofold: he goes and gets the client and I make sure they get what they’re paying us for,” she explains.

In the past 10 months, the dynamic team has hit the ground running, securing more than 40 clients, with more than 20 of them hiring BCML on a monthly basis.

“It has not been easy and I wouldn’t even call myself successful, because I’m very far from where I want to be, but I’d say I’ve had a successful beginning,” she says humbly.

“Building a company takes a lot of hard work, perseverance and consistency. If you’re going into business to make money, then you’re in the wrong kind of business,” she adds.

In talking about motivation, her words become quick and sharp, slicing any semblance of silence with precision and purpose. No breath is wasted as sentences merge together and as the excitement in her tone grows, she no longer has to think before speaking; her stream of consciousness fills our conversation, decorating our interview with gems of knowledge and advice.

“We didn’t start our company solely to make money, rather we wanted to add value to our clients, because if you want to become a millionaire, it’s very easy. All you need to do is identify a problem people are facing and provide the solution,” she explains breathlessly, ignoring the fruits that I’ve offered to share as our dessert.

“Finances don’t come in as soon as you’d like them to come, but soon, if you’re consistent they’re going to come,” she continues.

It’s easy to see why she’s been so successful in such a short amount of time. Her passion for life is evident every time she opens her mouth to discuss her business.

On the subject of becoming an employer, Betty finally slows down, taking time to really consider the impact she has had on the four people she’s been able to employ so far.

“I believe you hire character and attitude, then you sharpen the skills. People say it’s hard to get a job, but now that I’m on the other side, it’s even harder to hire a good employee,” she reveals.

“I want someone who understands the process, someone who knows that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Someone who is patient and able to grow with us. Someone who can buy into our vision,” she adds.

Judging from her tone and level of seriousness, it’s clear that Betty is dedicated in leveraging entrepreneurship to help young people get jobs.

“We need to step up as young people and create employment. I want to motivate other young people to step out and also become employers,” she says without blinking.

“What we need to do is sharpen those skills we learned in school and start finding solutions to problems and adding value for other citizens. After you’ve found what you love to do, volunteer to work for free or little pay for even a year or two, but eventually after you’ve learned and mastered that skill, step out and start your own thing,” she explains.

Betty believes that the greatest advantage of starting a business when you’re young is that you’ll make your mistakes very early, and then you’ll be able to correct them early and avoid them for the rest of your life.

“I want to motivate young people to not only look to the government or white collar jobs for employment, but also to become entrepreneurs who are able to create jobs for others,” she reiterates.

Her passion is hard to ignore and has resulted in multiple television interviews with K24 and Ebru TV, allowing her to promote BCML while educating Kenyans on taxes, book keeping, auditing and company registration.

Her ability to connect with clients on a personal level is what she says sets BCML from the Big Four accounting firms in Kenya.

“Part of the reason I’d want people to choose our company over KPMG is the whole experience you get by working with us. We want our firm to be the place where clients are treated with utmost professionalism and your work is done excellently,” she explains.

“We want to make you feel like we’re part of your company’s success story. We are your partners and we are all in it together and we’ll do anything to make sure you’re financial structures are right,” she adds smiling.

“God is the best businessman the world has ever known”

With so much already on her plate, it’s easy to forget that Betty is a young, ambitious woman, leading a company in a male dominated profession. She credits her ability and success to her faith in God.

“Without God, there’s no Betty,” she says matter-of-factly.

There’s little doubt in her voice as she continues, “God is the one who’s made me be the person that I am and helped me develop the courage that I have.”

As a born again Christian, she has committed her life to Christ and is quick to give God the credit for everything she’s been able to accomplish.

“I believe in purpose. I believe that God has a purpose and a plan for each and every one of us. None of us was born by mistake. None of us was born to be poor or to suffer,” she explains.

“For BCML, God is the greatest shareholder,” she says laughing. “As soon as we get a client and before we even celebrate, we thank God. I’ve worked in board meetings and been on TV at my age thanks to God.”

In her opinion, God is the best businessman the world has ever known.

“Look at it from this perspective,” she says leaning forward, unable to quell her excitement.

“Jesus started a ministry 2,000 years ago, which is still the most successful ministry to this day. He ascended to heaven 2,000 years ago but his ministry is still alive and growing. There’s no business that has grown so much and for so long, not even the Microsoft’s or Apple’s of the world. Our business practices and values are inspired directly from the bible.”

2 responses to “The 24-year-old co-founder of Betty Consultant & Management Limited (BCML)”

1. I am proud of you Betty. You have come from far. Nothing can stop an idea whose time has come. Keep Shining brightly in Christ and for Christ. God bless you.

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2. I am moved by your story and I find myself being in your shoes since entrepreneurship is the way. My experience is just like yours and looking forward having the same story one day. Very passionate when it comes to TAX but the room to grow my skills is limited but believe me one time will be able to share a more successful story and even challange the big five. Time is coming

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