Fire up the bakery

“Nothing can drown a passion. Not even a well-paying job,” is how Phillys Martin sums up her journey to entrepreneurship. And she should know, considering that she fought her passion for many years.

Phillys baked her first cake on a charcoal jiko with a sufuria covered with hot sand in her mother’s kitchen when she was just 10 years old. She also did very well in the Sciences so she dreamt of a life as a pharmacist who baked for leisure. As fate would have it, her family couldn’t afford the fees for her to train in pharmacy. That dream was shelved.

“Soon after, I married my childhood sweetheart Martin and took on a job managing a chain of wholesale shops that he owned in the city,” she says.

This was in 2002. The shops stocked food stuff and cereals, and they moved fast. For the first four years, Phillys was happy doing this job as it earned her a tidy sum, and being in charge had her protecting her family’s fortune. Still, there was something missing. “The money was good, the business was growing but deep inside, I felt unfulfilled,” she says.

DIFFICULT CHOICE

Phillys began baking in the evenings first for her family then for friends at a fee. She would watch baking videos online to augment her skills. By 2010, she knew that she wanted to spend all her days baking. By this time, she had saved several hundred thousands from her side hustle so she knew that finances weren’t going to be a big hurdle.

Her husband, however, was reluctant to give her post to someone else. Friends also couldn’t understand why she wanted to stop working at a thriving business.

They advised her to continue baking on the side. But passion was burning intensely and she couldn’t be stopped.

In the second quarter of that year, she decided to shift all her focus to baking. While she had been baking for years, a look around the market showed that cake baking was now also about the art as much as it was about the baking. She needed to polish her cake art skills. “I enrolled for a six-month course and upon graduation, set up a shop along Limuru Road. Then everything went quiet,” she says.

She had imagined that business would boom as soon as she opened her doors, but it didn’t. For a few weeks, she baked a variety of cakes and distributed them for free to churches around her area of business. Her strategy worked because soon, she was getting orders from impressed clients.

WORK-LIFE BALANCE

As expected, she plunged all her energy into her renewed passion. When she was not baking, she would be looking to learn something new about her trade. While her business flourished, things at home were different. She started with hiring two house-helps to help look after her three children.

“The children were getting taken care of but I barely saw them. I decided to hire extra hands at the bakery instead,” she says.

This worked because in addition to spending more time with her family, this enabled her to delegate the baking so that she could concentrate on the art. Two years in, she realised that her art skills were still lacking and she flew to Dubai to take another decoration course. When she got back, she realised that there was only one shop in Nairobi that stocked all these new additives and ingredients that she had learnt about. She started importing the variety of decorative ingredients and elements for use at her bakery but in a few months, she was now importing for sale to other bakers.

GIVING BACK

This January, she opened the doors of her baking school where she hopes to pass on the skills she has acquired over the years. The group of students that however tugs at her heart strings is the women from the less fortunate backgrounds who she teaches to bake for a minimal fee.

“All some of them need to get steady on their feet is a little lifeline,” she explains.

Four years after making that bold step, Phillys now employs a permanent staff of seven. Her business now gives her a steady flow of income. The best part for her, however, is that she gets to use what she loves to bond with her kids. “We all bake together. My seven year old daughter is learning. She loves it.”

Her husband, who allowed her to fly even when he felt unsure about her decision, is now her biggest supporter.

HOW SHE DID IT:

Her business is seasonal. She had to learn to budget and spread her earnings to keep the business afloat during the rough months.

Even with a booming business, she continued learning to perfect her art.

She looked for other gaps in the trade and invested in them.