Sport Pesa CEO Ronald Karauri oozes class and success wherever he goes, but what many young people do not know is that he has had his fair share of failure.
Karauri is an Alumni of Mangu Boys.
Speaking about his success journey he admits that he had to work as a pilot and battled insomnia in the process.
“People think I just woke up in SportPesa and made a lot of money, but they don’t realize is that I’m an A student from Mang’u, I became a pilot and flew planes for 10 years.
I had some businesses which failed but everything has its time. When you have your business, put all your focus into it and you will succeed. It has to be something that you know.
Sport Pesa boss Ronald Karauri with his wife Ruth
Don’t venture into something you don’t know. Sometimes as Kenyans what we do is follow the crowd.
You hear this has money- let me start my own company. If you have something that you really know how to do, you can invest in it?.
Put all your time and I have no doubt that you will succeed but it’s not easy especially entrepreneurship.
It is a really hard road and a big risk to take. People should be aware that it’s never easy, it takes time and even for us.
As I told you, we are still building and trying to get regulation right. With entrepreneurship, you need to be ready to take the risk and have long sleepless nights.”
Many young people think that failure is not an option and they must succeed in everything they do, but Karauri begs to differ.
Having started as a pilot 10 years ago (I bet you didn’t know he was one) he had massive responsibilities that came with his job and most part of it he was stressed out because of the things that came with being a leader.
“For most of my life, even when I went into flying, the challenges were not as big as I thought.
My biggest challenge came when I was the CEO of the pilots association- you can see what is happening at Kenya Airways right now.
I could not control any of those challenges and I was very stressed, but it was a big learning point for me because moving forward you know how to deal with it.
It gave me insomnia but if I had had those failures before, it would have helped me shape how to face those challenges and balance everything so that you are not so stressed.”Karuri stated.
