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As part of our continuing series on #WomenFixing Uganda, she sat down with Muhereza Kyamutetera, the Executive Editor, CEO East Africa Magazine for a conversation on all things about making a difference in our community.
You are a woman who wears so many hats. One can’t help but be fascinated with the many leadership roles and responsibilities on your shoulders over and above the daily hustles of survival. What inspires you to carry so much?
Well, there are two sources of inspiration and that is my mother and a sense of gratitude. My mother is your typical African mother⏤ a jack of all trades; a power-woman. Resilient.
She was the first girl in her village to go to school and just when we thought she was done, at an advanced age of 50, she went back to school to get a degree because she says in her younger days she didn’t get enough time to fulfil her dream of a degree. In her life, she has run various businesses. When she was employed in a bank, she used to have many businesses, and among them, she used to sell clothes on Market Street downtown. She would travel to Kenya by night, buy clothes the whole day and travel back the next night. All that hustle was to make ends meet and support my father to support our family to grow.
Today at 77, my mother is still running a business and still contributing positively to the community, still adding value to people. She was the brain behind a foundation to educate children in Kabale- a Family Foundation called the Tiba Education Foundation. So, it is her resilience and the tenacity with which she pursued her dreams that inspires me.
From that inspiration, I have come to learn and appreciate that in whatever way you are, God has already given you so much and with that, that you have, you can help other people. So in everything I do, I come with a sense that God has equipped me to be able to do what I need to do and I try to do it to the best of my abilities. I’m always cautious that there is a greater call to help others. The path I have chosen is a path to help other people rise into leadership; so that they too, can make a difference in the areas of their influence. That way, I can make a bigger difference, even in areas and lives that I can’t physically reach or see.
One of the areas I have actively seen you play is Business Network International (BNI). For the uninitiated, what is BNI and how did you come across it?
How did you come across BNI and how did you decide to join?
BNI is a global organisation, that is over 39 years old this year. It was started by a business owner who was looking for business support and looking for support for his community. There were six people initially meeting at a coffee shop.
We are the world’s leading business referral organisation supporting 300,000 member businesses in over 79 countries worldwide. In 2023, BNI Members generated USD20.01 billion in revenue via more than 14 million referrals. BNI has evolved into a proven system to help business owners gain support in growing their businesses and building meaningful relationships.
I first heard about BNI from a client in Nairobi, Kenya. They told me it was a network of business owners who help each other grow in business. Given the very many negative stories around network marketing, immediately after I heard the word network, I was put off.
The fact that this client was from Nairobi, meant that for me to be able to experience this thing called BNI, I would have to fly to Nairobi first. That further discouraged me.
On further engagement, he told me, “Diana, BNI is you. You are already BNI because you have already been connecting me to so many businesses in Kampala⏤ every time I have a request or a connection, you always come through for me. So you are my BNI in Kampala because that is what we do in BNI for each other”.
That got me thinking a lot. I then decided that if there’s a way of getting value or seeing value, from the way people help others make connections, let me take this opportunity and see it. But it would take another seven months, before I finally flew down to Nairobi, Kenya. I attended a BNI meeting in Kenya called BNI Legends and in that meeting, I heard people talking about supporting each other to grow business and how they created referral opportunities for their members to close businesses. What fascinated me was that people would come back to the meetings to testify and express gratitude for the closed opportunities.
I think the turning point for me was when a certain computer hardware seller, testified about closing a Kenyan Shillings 15 million deal. I remember turning to my neighbour and asking how much commission the person who gave him the referral got. My neighbour told me that “in BNI, we don’t give commission”.
“It’s all about the”givers gain”, ” he said, and that was my second hook. So my first hook was “You are BNI” and my second book in BNI was “We don’t give each other commissions for helping each other grow business. But we believe in givers gain”.
And that is the golden rule. If you help others get what they want, in turn, others will help you get what you want. And we all know it, but seeing it in action amongst business owners, in a community, which is not traditionally known for being givers was the game changer.
That was in December 2013 when I went to Nairobi. When I came back, I committed to starting BNI in Uganda. Our very first meeting was on July 24th 2014 and it attracted over 60 business owners. I told them about this opportunity to be part of our community that helps people grow their businesses. But in the next meeting, only four people came back. One was a computer hardware seller- Elite Computers, who is still in BNI. The others were a dentist, a cleaner and a graphics designer. So from those four, today, we have over 330 plus members, and over UGX120 billion in business passed.
Other than these key numbers⏤ the 330+ members and the UGX120 billion worth of business passed, what would you say are some of the key highlights and achievements that BNI has registered in Uganda?
In 2023, BNI hosted the BNI East Africa Conference. This East Africa Conference had businesses from Kenya, Tanzania, as well as Ghana, the Middle East, India and Taiwan. Why this is a significant highlight, it is because it brought alive to many members of BNI, that this indeed is a global organisation that creates global pathways for business.
It also emphasised that we are in business to succeed, because there were so many testimonies shared to help others succeed. Every business is looking for a supportive environment and realising that this environment is not just within Kampala alone, but is all over the world, was an eye-opener for me. It also created visibility for BNI Uganda because people began to say, can I be a part? Can I come and be there? So I think the successful hosting of this conference was a significant milestone because people began to understand and appreciate BNI for the global world of opportunities that it is.
The other significant highlight is that we have so many business stories of transformation. One of them is Cambridge Health, a business which grew through BNI and now has over six centres, physical media spaces, and over 80 staff. It has grown exponentially.
Surviving COVID for us was significant because it was a proof of concept. When everybody in the economy stopped doing business. We were still doing business with each other. When people’s clients went out of business, we were supporting our suppliers to continue to do business. Because we already had our community, COVID-19 I believe strengthened it because it brought home the fact that not only do we support each other in good times, but also especially in the hard times. During COVID-19 we also saw people’s businesses pivot but those of our members were able to pivot quickly because they already had a community. I know someone who was doing ticketing but quickly switched to deliveries and that business has grown and today she has two businesses. People were able to share and get ideas on how to support, grow and or pivot their businesses.
Many members testify that without the supportive BNI community, they would not have lived through Covid-19.
I am sure there is someone out there thinking why join BNI? What do I miss if I don’t join BNI?
If you join BNI, you find a supportive community of business professionals. Members of BNI range from professional services⏤ legal, accounting etc ⏤ to trades such as retail, and wholesale as well as services such as deliveries, food etc; name it. We have a whole range of business sizes from startups to significant brands and industry leaders across several sectors such as the Victoria Schools, Seroma High School in education to Elite Computers in technology. This demonstrates that there’s a space for every business owner who’s looking for a supportive environment in which to grow.
Secondly, the BNI community provides a learning space. Business owners need to keep learning because one, the world is changing radically, but there are also many businesses affected by trends. A lot of information is available to members through the BNI business learning platforms, and the physical training that we do regularly and this equips them to be able to grow their businesses and leverage the support and experience of other businesses to grow.
The third reason anyone and everyone should join BNI business, is, often, business owners cite loneliness as one of the key challenges of running a business. If you’re a solo business owner, many times you’re making decisions alone, but also, you are doing life alone. Not many people can understand your challenges when it comes to dealing with, for example, taxes, challenges with imports and exports etc. But in this community, you can find like-minded business owners going through similar challenges, and achieving similar success. Members have built meaningful relationships that transcend business and go into supporting each other to not only survive but thrive as well.
One of the biggest testimonies I will give is that we lost a member in 2022⏤ Mr. Joseph Kanaaba. He used to run a hardware shop. When he died, the BNI community of his chapter, the Sunrise Chapter, was able to support his spouse with the business challenges that emerged until the business got back on its feet again and started to grow. To date, the spouse is still a member of BNI and the business is still thriving.
We have heard that BNI Uganda is organising a business Expo in May, this year. Please share more details on this business event and how can one participate.
Yes. To celebrate our 9th anniversary as well as other significant milestones and create more impact, we, between the 31st of May and the 1st of June 2024, are organising the inaugural, BNI Uganda Expo, 2024 under the theme, “Connecting Businesses, Creating Opportunities”.
As the theme suggests, we want to showcase the over 300 businesses that are in BNI Uganda. Over and above our members, we also expect to have another 200+ exhibitors from over 10 countries. Our core objective is to create an environment that will promote global and local business networking, encourage innovation, and collaboration and unlock opportunities for business leaders.
BNI member businesses represent a cross-section of businesses across our economy. We hope that business owners can come and learn from the success of other businesses within BNI. We also hope that entrepreneurs and people starting their entrepreneurial journey can come and learn from our members how they too can start and pursue growth opportunities.
We have education spaces on entrepreneurship which the business community can learn from. We will also be having government engagement because SMEs engaging with key government Ministries and agencies that support businesses such as URSB, URA, NSSF etc is critical for their success. We want to bring on board different players across the government economy so that businesses can familiarise themselves with compliance requirements, but also how they can be part of the government ecosystem.
We will also have PPDA to help businesses understand how they can do business with the Government of Uganda. Every business must understand the regulatory space so they can comply all the way. When businesses understand the ecosystem in which they operate, they can make decisions to guide and grow their businesses.
The opportunities available to business owners are many, but not many people know about them. For example, those in the business of supplying goods will be able to get to meet new and perhaps better suppliers.
But there are also opportunities for non-BNI members to come and learn from as well as pursue business opportunities existing in the BNI ecosystem and vice versa. That is why we have also opened up the expo to the public at a very minimal cost.
We will also have an international component where we have businesses from India, Asia and the Middle East coming to exhibit and showcase as well. They will also be looking for potential partners/suppliers and partnership opportunities to open up the Middle East and Africa to businesses. It’s an opportunity also for businesses to explore how they can tap into the markets in the Middle East and Asia as well as for those businesses to tap into Africa.
We expect more than 2500 B2B and B2C clients across the board.
To book a stall for the BNI Expo 2024, please follow this link: https://ntuma.app/pay/4114be69-b148-4b40-9740-4b8d99b7849a
So, how does one join BNI to partake in these opportunities?
I would encourage them to at least first attend a session of BNI at any chapter of their choice⏤ either online or physically. We have online chapters or in-person chapters and those will then expose them to what BNI is really about.
When you attend your first meeting, you get to see BNI in motion and get to ask all the questions.
At BNI, we are more interested in the mindset. We don’t want a person who is narrow-minded and has a scarcity mentality, because what we share are our networks and collective experiences. Members also have access to a learning platform where you also get access to a global community, at the touch of your hand.
We’ve had so many testimonies of members reaching out to members in China, Dubai, and Kenya and finding solutions to their businesses and being received. This year alone, we have opportunities for members to go and exhibit in Dubai, at the BNI UAE Conference. We have opportunities for members to go to the Philippines and far Asia and meet over 1000 businesses across the Far East. We have members to opportunity for members to go to Honolulu in Hawaii to meet the BNI global community of members from BNI. And we again have an East Africa conference in Kenya. All these are unlocked by your BNI membership and your participation in BNI.
Imagine the possibilities when you have the entire 330+ of our Uganda business owners helping you market your business in the spaces that they are in; opening up their network to you and helping you grow. Imagine.
The other thing you have as a member of BNI is you have exclusivity in your group. So if you’re a member of one group and you’re a baker, it’s only one because that group was allowed, so that helps create a sense of security for many businesses; they feel safe.
What is the BNI footprint in Uganda? Can one join if they are outside Kampala?
We have 8 chapters, all of them in Kampala. We are opening up into Entebbe and we are looking for opportunities to partner with businesses to create this opportunity. We’re looking for partnership opportunities for business owners in Gulu, Mbarara, Jinja, Mukono and Masaka as well.