The author resigned from their job as a property consultant to focus on starting their own business consulting firm called Porte-folio Group and applying to business programs at IE University. This took a great risk but had positive outcomes, including getting their first contract with a law firm, co-founding a nanny training business called Eliza Domestic Solutions, pitching business ideas to banks, and applying to IE University's entrepreneurship program with an idea called "The Kraals".

1. Describe a situation in which you took a
great risk. What was the outcome?
I pass and I move, I help you, I look for you, I stop, I raise
my head, I look and, above all, I open up the pitch.
-Xavi Hernandez(Spanish footballer)

2. The Risk
11th October,2014: I resigned.
I quit my job as a property consultant at Home Afrika Limited to focus on:
1. Porte-folio Group (A business process engineering
firm I founded where we help start ups write Business
Plans and prepare financial models). This I believe is
my gift. I want to be the Xavi Hernandez for small
businesses that are looking to grow.
2. My application to IE and more so fine tune the idea I
intend to enter to the IE Venture Lab or Business
Creator program!

3. • November 4th 2014
• I was asked by a law firm in the city to help them do their
expansion plan.
• My first contract 
• I learnt a lot about the rigors of private clients and how to
keep deadlines and how to interpret their goals in their
language.
• I finished the job 28 days later. Sweet sweat. Pleasurable strain

4. Outcome 2: Eliza Domestic Solutions
• I picked up a conversation I had had earlier
in 2014 with a lady who runs a maids’
services bureau
• I proposed that we speak to Parapet Cleaning
Services-Kenya’s largest cleaning company-and
propose that we use their curriculum to
produce trained professional nannies.
• We sent the proposal to Parapet.

5. • Parapet called back!
• And we are now registering Eliza
Domestic Solutions: which will supply
Nairobi’s mums with professional
nannies. Parapet is helping do this.
• P.S The lady who owns the bureau is my
mum.

6. • I picked up another conversation with a friend who had a
rough idea. He wanted high school students to have a
debit card that limited their liquidity and thus denying
them the ability to spend pocket money in pubs or
brothels.
Parents would also monitor electronically
the spending habits of their sons.

7. • We worked out the business model.
• Proposed the model to Kenya Commercial Bank-Kenya’s
biggest bank by asset base.
• The managing director is currently looking into it and we are
in correspondence.

8. • I remembered yet another conversation I had with a friend called
Mike. He was looking for a way he’d sell off 50 plots of land he’d
been contracted to sell.
• I suggested we create an agri-product of the plots. Sell the plots of
land with erected greenhouses whose produce has been forward
contracted to waiting buyers or shall be sold in a commodity
exchange.
• In so doing offering the land buyer 2 possible incomes: seasonal
income from the produce and capital gains due to the land value
appreciating due to value addition. We named the product ‘The
Bustanis’ (Swahili for gardens)!

9. The Bustanis
• The land seller agreed to the new model. We are waiting for a
final decision from Amiran Kenya(Kenya’s leading green
house makers-who so far love the idea).

10. • In April 2014, Liz Fleming, an IE lecturer came to Kenya and
gave a presentation on IE’s MBA entrepreneurship module.
• She mentioned the Venture Lab incubator program.
• I purposed to apply to IE and enter an idea for the venture
lab program!
• I got an idea and named it ‘The Kraals’.
• I formed a local team under my firm Porte-folio to help me do
this.

11. • It’s a mortgage subsidy product that seeks to help home buyers
buy cheaper homes. Effectively reducing the cost of a mortgage
loan
• A development of apartments will have say 40 units of houses.
• Each mortgage buyer of a unit will receive a free cow in a dairy
scheme located in rural Kenya.

12. • The cow’s total monthly milk produce will be sold
to a dairy cooperative company.
• The earnings thereof per cow will instead of going
to the home owner, go directly to the bank
administrating his mortgage and will offset part of
his monthly mortgage repayment.

13. • I submit my application to IE on the 3rd
of December, 2014. I am hoping for a
favorable outcome. If I am to be Xavi
Hernandez of small businesses, then IE
is the club I’d love to train me.