Nairobi Woman Shares Inspiring Rise From Cooking Chips On Streets To Owning An Export Business

• Catherine Wambui has been at the top and bottom when it comes to business, but her entrepreneurial spirit keeps her going
• After starting as a biology teacher before venturing into the murky world of business, she spent years gathering valuable lessons
• She has since become a master at what she does and has built a reputable brand called Kate Vlogs, which exports products from Kenya to other countries

Catherine Wambui worked as a biology teacher for nine years before calling it quits to focus on business.

Speaking to TUKO TV’s Inspire Kenya, the single mother of one took a trip down memory lane to her struggles with employment.

Kate started on rough patch

Given that she had given birth just four months after graduation, Kate started life on a rough patch.

"I got a teaching job in Kerugora where I earned KSh 12,000, but it was little because I had a house manager, shopping, and other bills to pay," she started.

She transferred to a public school where her passion for teaching grew, as did her remuneration, as there were more remedial classes.

Her comfort zone was rocked when the Teachers Service Commission announced that no teacher would be allowed in class without a TSC number.

Kate's decision that changed her life

One day during the holidays, Kate sat in her house alone, thought through her life, and figured she was tired of the teaching cycle.

"I went home, sold everything in the house except our clothes and my son's bike, then headed back home to find a new bearing," she recalled.

During her research, Kate had the option of going to Saudi Arabia as a domestic worker or teaching in Somaliland.

While living in City Cotton slums in Buruburu, she started doing odd jobs, including cooking chips and chapati for sale on the streets.

Lowest moment as single mother

However, things did not go as expected, so she closed the business and sought a new job opportunity as a hairdresser in Tassia in 2018.

"When I brought my son to live in my new house, he refused to go to the washroom because they were messy. That was a breaking moment for me," she continued.

In January 2019, she left the hairdressing job and moved to another school in Limuru despite not having a TSC number.

Kate says she broke down and cried when her employer released her after receiving a new TSC-registered teacher.

How she got into errands business

When the pandemic came in 2020, she went to Gikomba and sold all the official clothes and shoes she had used during her teaching days.

While in Gikomba, she stumbled on Kamukunji and used the money she had generated from the sale to restock.

After a while, she gathered her money and started a salon, looking to leverage her hairdressing skills to earn extra cash.

"Every client would come with different beauty requirements that made me see them as business opportunities; that was how Kate Vlogs was born," she narrated.

Lost her business, started afresh

With time, she started using her challenges to see them as lessons, and she began teaching others on YouTube, which earned her more money.

Just when she had stabilised, someone came into her life and offered to invest in her business, but she ended up losing everything after a disagreement and went back to zero.

"I found myself in debt and survived by borrowing loans from different mobile applications. I would borrow from one to repay the other, out of which I got funds for business," she continued.

With time, she built her reputation and earned a large following on YouTube that trusts her to run errands for clients in Kenya and abroad.

Her guiding principle has been to compete with herself and not anyone else because she doesn’t know where the rest get their money.

From caregiver to tech CEO

In an unrelated story, June Katei Reeves held onto the dream of starting a software testing company for 17 years, but fear held her back.

As part of the process, she started from humble beginnings by offering care for bedridden patients to raise her university fees.

In October 2023, she threw caution to the wind and plunged into the business world, a decision she does not regret.

Proofreading by Otukho Jackson, a multimedia journalist and copy editor at TUKO.co.ke

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Collage of Kate Vlogs during her interview with TUKO TV's Insire Kenya.

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