 Welcome, welcome back to Why In The Morning? If it's Tuesday, it's entrepreneurship Tuesday, the hashtag to use is hashtag, Why In The Morning? My name is Michelle Ashira. And as usual, when you see this particular session, it, we're about to dive into an interesting conversation each and every day, yeah? Every day you see, you know, this particular segment on an EO of interviews. It's always interesting. And today we have also an equally interesting conversation coming your way. Looking at healthy financial lifestyle, OK? No one has, I don't want to, I would want to believe everyone has it all together. We're still trying to figure it out here, about here and there. When it comes to matters pertaining to savings, investment, and how we budget our finances as well. And it's on that particular note that I am joined with NFEC, Certified Financial Education Instructor, known as Shailam Boga. Thank you very much. I'm excited to be here. Oh, fantastic. You look really fabulous. You're saying, you know, you were representing our brand, Blue. Thank you so much. This particular moment to not put it to brand ambassador. OK, kubali nisawa. I'm kubali right away. So Shailam, for someone who is meeting you for the first time, introduce yourself. Tell us who you are and what you do. Sure, my name is Shailam Boga. I'm the founder of Financial Wellness Center, as well as a Certified Financial Education Instructor from the United States of America. I'm born and raised in Kenya. And I love to see people winning with their money. And that is one of the reasons I am an advocate of financial education around the world. Because people, you know, money is a tool that can help or hurt you. And unfortunately, most of us have been hurt by money because we did not know how to handle it. Yes. So why was Shailam born and brought up? Shailam has been born and brought up in Nakuro. And that's big, actually. Yeah, I grew up in Nakuro, as well as some part of my life I spent in Nairobi. So I've grown up in both cities. How's life in Nakuro? Life was amazing. Nakuro now is a city, but by then it wasn't a city yet. But I would say it was a very foundational point for me, because I got to learn quite a number of basics things, especially when it comes to finances and business, while in Nakuro. Then when I came to Nairobi, it was like being exposed now to a larger and diverse kind of community. Yeah. OK. Can you say that you learned more about when it comes to finances, that you learned a couple of things when growing up? Where was the influence from? Like was it from your parents? Maybe your relatives, take us to that. Yeah, we used to have fast food joint in Nakuro that my mom was running. And most of the time I would be the one in charge over the weekends when I'm not going to school. So I started acquiring business skills from that point. Now by the time I came to Nairobi, I was able to start my own business, although not a fast food joint. But through the skills that I acquired while growing up in her business, they've been playing an instrumental role in me learning more about business, aside from the school factor. Yes. Growing up, were you more of a child who would spend or save it or more of a saver when it comes to finances? Where did you tend to learn most? I was actually an investor and a spender. I'll give a short story. When I was about eight to nine years, I happened to have done a gig where I was given some money. And the first investment I did was from my mom's farm. She used to also rare poultry. So I bought a chicken and then that chicken I had to look after it until it grew and hatched eggs and laid eggs. Then the eggs hatched. Then I sold the chicks. So basically, if you look at that, that is an investor. I multiplied the money I got. Then I started like spending the rest and I continued with that cycle for quite some time, which made me to be a young rich kid somehow. Cause now I would keep on doing the same thing over and over again and that would give me some coins to buy candy here and there. Right. What is the passion of just spreading financial awareness and literacy come from? The passion came from the community I grew in. I saw quite a number of people, they would struggle a lot because of money. For example, you could find people having a very nice conversation, but when you introduce money, in a way they just start frowning. They act like, okay, this is not a comfortable topic to speak. At the same time, I used to see quite a number of families when they wanted to talk about money, kids would be asked to go outside. So that led me to have the desire, what is it about money that people, some people get angry when it's mentioned and what is it about money that makes other people excited? And that is how I started chatting the path to learning about finances and spreading the word to the rest of the world. Talk to me about Financial Wellness Center. Yeah, Financial Wellness Center started in 2019 and this is my purpose because it started as a move to impact and transform lives of especially young people. Now, the reason I started Financial Wellness Center is because I noticed that we have a lot of people spread globally who are youths, but they are not able to reach a financial consultant. Maybe they are not able to walk into a bank or a financial institution or they cannot simply afford the fees. So I decided to start to set up that organization to be able to reach out to people virtually, especially when they need anything to do with financial consultancy or education. Now, if you may have checked our Facebook page and YouTube and Instagram and LinkedIn. You can share now. They can check it out as we continue the conversation as well. Thank you. You can check out our Facebook page which is Financial Wellness Center and our YouTube channel, Financial Wellness with Sheila Mboga as well as Instagram and LinkedIn Financial Wellness Center where we constantly post content that has to do with how you can handle your money, how you can multiply money, how you can deal with debt as well as being able to interact with the audience. If someone asks a question, maybe this person could not afford to pay a financial consultant. So they might ask us a question and will provide expert advice on the same. Now, by doing that, we are able to reach to so many people because almost half of the population is on Facebook. So with Financial Wellness Center giving out information using digital channel is something that has made us to be more focused on impacting more lives. Fantastic. You mentioned something very important when it comes to, you might have young people who are probably entrepreneurs who can easily access finances and different financial institutions, banks and lending creditors as well. From that particular angle and perspective, is that inclusive when it comes to entrepreneurship? Academy, how do you handle it? If any young person wants to start a business and they come to you and they say that I am struggling when it comes to finances. Even if it's a startup that is already running, so how do you handle that? Yeah, it's a good thing you mentioned about our Entrepreneurs Academy. Yeah, here we always, we focus on entrepreneurs alone because we take them through segments. The first one is changing their mindset. It's not just enough to start a business. You need to know why you're starting this business. How is your mindset towards money in business? Because if your mindset is not transformed, you will find yourself falling in the trap of mixing business money and personal finances. So we start by transforming your mindset through activities and some sessions. Then we go into teaching you the basic business models. You know, it's not just about selling that shoe. It's not about selling that cloth. You need to understand who are you selling to? Who is your market? You need to understand where can I get my stock so that I can have a competitive price in the market? What can I do to my customers so that they can tell someone else to come to my shop or they can stick with me for longer period of time because we are in a very competitive world. How can I use digital channels to go where my customers are? Because you can find, you have a physical shop, but your customers are online. So you need to know where to go so that they can see your products. Now, after that, we also take you now through things like bookkeeping because as an entrepreneur, you need to know how to understand the profit and loss accounts. You need to understand how you taking the debt for your business. How should you negotiate even with your credit to give you a better interest based on your business? Then after that, now we take you through a session of what I call service excellence. You need to serve with excellence. You just don't serve. You need to serve with excellence so that you can capture a customer, retain her, and make her to be your referral contact. Yeah, because at the end of the day, customers, they say customer is king and customer service is everything. Absolutely, and a satisfied customer is a working advertisement. If I come here and I'm satisfied with your services, I'm going to tell my whole family. Imagine if I have a... Yeah, if I have a family of seven members, those are seven people who've known about your business. We cannot guarantee that the seven will buy from you, but from the seven, and they will also tell another person and you'll find yourself getting customers just because you served one person properly. Fantastic. Earlier on in this particular conversation, we've mentioned something quite very, very important when it comes to changing an entrepreneur, changing their mindset and just getting into business on the right footing. It's not just about making profits, but why is that in that particular business? What are the key areas that you look into in the Entrepreneurship Academy that enables that particular change to happen? Yeah, the first thing, we have to look at your childhood. Have you ever been in business or you just started a business because it's trending? Then we find out, okay, maybe you had an idea of what a business is. Now, have you ever started and failed a business because a person who's never started a business and someone who's failed, those are two different people. One of them might be positive about business and the other one might be I'm scared I might fail again. We also have to check your risk capability. Are you someone who is a risk taker or someone who is risk averse? Now, the business you're launching, what level of risk is associated with it so that we can know, are you able to handle it? We don't want you to start a business and then when things are going downward, we hear that you've fallen sick or you've committed suicide. So we start analyzing that. Then after we've analyzed that, now we start inputting what some basic entrepreneurial mindsets that you need to have. As an entrepreneur, not every day you'll be successful. There are days you have to empower yourself, you have to be positive by your own while 99 other people are against what you are standing for. So that helps you to have a strong muscles mind-wise such that by the time you're stepping into business, you know that even if 99 people will not agree with me at this time, I'm going to believe in myself. And you cannot believe in yourself if you have a negative mindset towards the thing you are propagating. That's very true. And do you work with your clients who have this particular journey? If yes, who are the people that are working? Are there people who, because I feel like when it comes to just changing mindset, it's not like a one-day thing, it's not magical. It's something that takes time. And from that particular angle, do you have people who work with your clients hand-to-hand and who is eligible to be part of Entrepreneurship Academy? So yeah, I'll start with the first, but we do work with our clients for at least six months because it takes 21 days to change your habits. I just forgot to mention, part of changing your mindset is not changing your habits, your business habits. Now, we work with you for at least six months. We, once you join our academy, we assign a mentor to you who is going to hold your hand and help you navigate through the business environment. And this mentor will constantly be checking your business to see the progress and advise you on certain strategies that can help you stay on course. Now, as you mentioned, it's not a one-day event. It's something that is continuous. But after six months, the person is now able to at least stand on their own and they can choose to keep us for the rest of their company existence or they can choose to take a break and try to just go in the business world alone. All right. Let's look at different species of business. Employment, like if you get an increase in the salary, that's the level of increase when it comes to expenditure. Talk to us about the importance of just savings and budgeting as well. Yeah, you mentioned something very important, lifestyle inflation. You know, a lot of people tend to fall into this trap. But the thing I always say, you need to learn to be fraggled. When you are fraggled, you just get what you need. You don't have to have excesses. For example, maybe you just got a salary increase, you already have a car and you are already living a comfortable life. It would be wise if that increment, you could invest it to multiply it for at least two years, then you can acquire the things that you have been desiring. But what happens with most people is, oh, okay, my salary has increased. It's the time now to have at least four cars, four more cars or three more cars. It's my time to now start addressing designers. My status has changed. Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's the time you have to, you know, you're the one throwing parties every night. But it looks good, but it will not be good in the long term. So if you multiply that increment, you can still have those things, but at a very comfortable kind of situation, because if you multiply that money, it's going to give you more returns and you're going to at least continue having an opportunity to spend without having to worry. What if my job ends today? Will I still be driving this car? What if I get demoted? Because we saw like during COVID, some companies had to downgrade some of their employees and reduce their packages. Would your lifestyles still remain the same? So it's very important not to be affected by lifestyle inflation, but rather find out ways you can multiply your money so that you can comfortably have a sustainable lifestyle. Yes. I haven't been able to say this, that they need themselves now once. Because there's a very thin line on that, especially if we want what we want. Yeah. We'll just break the boundaries, things in the aspect of discipline. Yeah. As you mentioned, there's a very thin line between a need and a want. Now, I will say for a want, ask yourself, do I still need this thing three months down the line? Can I, if I don't have it now, will I die? That is a want. For example, you can say, okay, if I don't buy this dress today, will I die? The answer is definitely no. Can I wait to have it in a later stage? Absolutely, yes. So that is a want. It's not something that if you don't have it today, we are going to say, okay, she died because she could not get it. Come to a need. A need is something you cannot live without it. For example, let's say a healthcare system. Maybe you are sick. I cannot start buying you clothes when you are sick. You need medication. You need proper healthcare. For example, housing. We cannot say, okay, I don't need to live in a house. I'll be staying outside. That's so risky for you. You need to live somewhere. We cannot say, okay, I'll stay hungry for six months. You have to eat for you to be able to live. So a need is something you cannot live without. You have to have it. And a want is something you can live without it or you can find a way to supplement it and still your life will keep on moving on. All right. How do you build up discipline? Financial discipline as well? There are various ways of building up financial discipline, but the starting point is by learning to have a budget. Then, you know, with a budget, it will give you, it will give you finances. It's like a roadmap. It guides your finances and allows you to control your money. Now after you have a budget with you, now the next thing for you to do is to now introduce systems that can allow you to be disciplined because you all know about saving, you all know about expenses, you all know that. But what happens? Why am I not able to stick to my budget? Then now you have to introduce systems. For example, if you're not able to save, you should now introduce an automation system such that instead of you getting 1,000 in your account from your salary or business, get 800 with 200 having been automatically deducted to your savings. Now that way, if you do that for six months, you can be disciplined in saving. Now, when again, you have to have an accountability partner. I was about to ask that, if actually having someone who can just be accountable to it, it will actually help you just build up muscle when it comes to discipline. Trust me, money is an emotional tool. And I always give this example to show that money is emotional. Whenever you have money, for example, 1,000, out of the blues, you find that your expenses at that time are more than 1,000. Where did they come from? But when you have like 500, you're also able to have expenses for 500. So that tells you that there's an emotional aspect of money that affects all of us. Now, this is where you need to have an accountability partner because this accountability partner is someone that you have shared with your financial goals. You've told them that maybe I need to buy a house in five years' time and this is how my income is and this is what I'm planning to do every month. Now, when you get your income every month, this person will be asking how much have you contributed towards your going? And this person will make you come back to your senses every time you want to your law. He or she will always be reminding you. And there's power in someone reminding you. I don't know if you've ever tried to spend money and then usually it used to happen with our parents. They're like, ah-ha, have you done this and this with that money first? And they're like, okay, I needed to get this just first. But that aspect, yes, they remind you about your priorities and this has a way of making you stick to that and gain that discipline. From our clients, you've seen when they have an accountability partner, they are able to change their financial habits faster and they are able to improve their discipline with money faster than someone who is a standalone kind of person. Yes. Okay, take us through how to go about building and maintaining an emergency fund. Thank you so much for asking that question. I'll first start by defining what an emergency fund is. Now, an emergency fund is an amount of money that you set aside that can cater for your three to six months worth of expenses. And if you are able to do up to one year worth of expenses, the better. Now, an emergency fund is something that you can build using various ways. The first way is by putting it in your budget such that every month you're putting aside a certain amount of money from the income you're getting. Another way, because you find that there are some people who their budgets can be so tight, they don't have an extra disposable income, then in such an instance, we recommend that you now find another way of making extra money. This could be through a side business. This could be through monetizing your gifts. And sometimes it could be you decluttering your house and selling some of the things you're not using so that you can just have that lump sum of money stashed somewhere. Now, having the lump sum of money is one thing and having it where it is stored is another thing. You need to put this emergency fund in a tool where you can easily access. Remember the word is emergency. What does emergency mean? If you have an emergency right now, I want to tell you wait three months for you to get the money. It's something that you need instantly. Now, in such an instance, you need to put this money in a place where you can easily access latest up to 48 hours because there are certain emergencies you cannot take longer before you can attend to them. So ensure you put them in a place where you can easily access it. And it's not a must you earn a high interest because most of the tools that will give you a high interest, they need you to keep the money for a longer period of time. You can even look for something that can even give you 2% interest. The goal is to have the money in a place where you can easily access it. An example of an emergency, maybe you just woke up and then you go to a shower and you find like your shower head is not working and you need to go to work or to school. Does it mean you'll stop going to work or school? No, you need to fix that. And that is where you need to quickly get into your emergency, find, fix that and then move on with life. So I highly recommend that whenever you put your money, please ensure you keep it somewhere you can easily access whenever need be. What a couple of financial lessons that you have gotten to, you know, I'd like to say, let me, let me reframe that question. What a couple of financial mistakes that you've gotten to see people just outlooks, outlook at them and you see them constantly from also your clients and they just cut across. The first financial mistake is living beyond your means. You know, there's a difference between being, living within your means, living beyond your means and being stingy to yourself. Now, when you are living beyond your means, it means whatever you are earning from whichever source is less than what you're spending or is less than what your lifestyle needs you to spend. Now, living below your means means that whatever you are earning, you are living way, way below it. Maybe you could be earning 10,000 and they're living within 1,000 that is living below your means, which is not recommended. And then being stingy to yourself is like you're scared, oh, my money is gonna end, I'm not going to spend it. And then we have this other aspect of being fraggled. This is where you're living comfortably. You are doing things that you can comfortably afford. You don't have to stress yourself. Zero peer pressure, exactly. So that is one of the mistakes that I've seen people living beyond their means because they want to impress people, maybe on social media, they want to impress their family members and give them a fake image of themselves. Yet on the side, they are suffering. Then another mistake is people taking debt for consumption. You have touched and have so many people. I think it's a situation where it's growing as well, especially with the mobile banking and just being able to access loans through different mobile apps and it's so easy to just access it. Talk to us about that. Yeah, the first thing I would want to bring it to clarity is taking debt is not bad because sometimes you could be having a business or you could be needing capital and you cannot afford it. But you know, this money, if you pump it into a certain channel, you're able to repay it. Now we have a good and a bad debt. A good debt is a debt that helps you to multiply money. Sometimes you can be working somewhere and you find an investment that has a good return but you cannot raise that principal amount required. Then in that instance, you can take a debt which will help you multiply that money and be able to repay the money. Most of the big businesses we see around there run by debt. So debt is not a bad thing. However, it becomes bad when you take it for consumption and there is no channel that is pumping money towards you. So it's like just draining water one way. There is no income, it's just outlet, outlet. When you take a debt to, for example, consume, maybe buy food or something, you are not gaining another money from that activity. Now it becomes a bad debt because chances are high you may not be able to repay it because there's no other source of money coming in that can allow you to outlet the money. Now debt is very psychological I would say because it can become an addiction. I have had clients who were addicted to debt that someone they can't stay if they don't have a full user, they feel like there's something wrong with them because it's a habit that the person has built over time. They feel like I need to have this debt. And the worst part is they are having it for consumption. Now they forget that debt is not free money. Debt is money that you have to pay with interest. So you find this person, they are taking debt for consumption and the interest keeps growing. So by the time this person comes to realize that oh I made a mistake, the interest has grown and the principal debt amount has also grown and the person is not able to repay it on time. What does that lead to? Leads to stress, leads to people being angry and of course leads to a spillover effect where you find someone being angry with their family members or their friends. Not necessarily because they've done something to them but it's because they are stressed out due to debt. Yes. And I'd like to ask you a little bit about the interest in the good debt so the bad debt is the consumption. As we close, how can people reach out to you on social media if they want to keep this conversation going? Yes. They can reach out to us on Facebook that is Financial Wellness Center. They can also write us an email on info at financialwellnesscenter.co.ke. They can as well check out our Instagram handle and Twitter as well as LinkedIn, Financial Wellness Center. And most of all, I would encourage them to check out our YouTube channel which is Financial Wellness with Sheila Mboga where I have tackled quite a number of topics relating to personal finance as well as business finance. Time to be with us. We appreciate you. So guys that is Sheila Mboga who is a financial education instructor. If you're looking at healthy financial lifestyles. So we'll be right back make sure you stay tuned right here on one of the morning.