“I Work Hard” From a Van Sales Girl To Creating More Than 240 Jobs

She is a common name in Kenya having started her own beauty empire dubbed Ashleys Kenya. But did you know successful entrepreneur Terry Mungai was once a van sales girl selling bakery products, a secretary or an insurance agent?

Nonetheless, how did Ashleys Kenya come to be?

“There was one or two professional hair dressing outlets in Nairobi but their staff did not take their jobs very professionally,” she once told The Star adding that as a marketer she saw an opportunity and run with it.

“I sensed a niche that needed to be tapped where I would make the executive man and woman enjoy their visits to the salon and barber shop,” she is quoted in the past interview.

But it’s in her recent interview with BBC where she reveals how hard it was to get the capital to start her own business.

“When we were starting out, if you were a woman and you went to the bank for a loan, they wanted to know who you were married to and whether you had permission to be in business…….But now all that has changed. You are considered an entrepreneur,” she says.

Today, she basks in the glory of her own success while running a chain of high-end salon and beauty shops, a training institute and a license for the Miss World Kenya and has organised the beauty pageant for over a decade

“Just seeing lives that have been transformed because I have had the fortune of bigger blessings, gives me a lot of joy,”

But her journey has not been a smooth sailing. In a past interview with How We Made it in Africa, the successful entrepreneur talks of the workforce struggles she has had to endure in the past.

When she opened Ashleys Hair and Beauty Academy she reveals how a lot of people did not consider beauty training as a career and how every now and then she would have to watch other salons poach her staff.

“What hurt me the most is that I was investing in training my people and other salons would be waiting ready to poach them.

She adds that, “This frustrated me for two years then I realised people respected the training I was giving.

And that’s how an idea was born. She reveals that, “It occurred to me that if I trained people for a fee I would gladly let them go (after training) to create room for other students. We have now trained more than 7,000 people.

“When they join us, we invite the students to talk to us about their backgrounds and by the time they leave the college, we ask them to talk about the people they have become since. Some have told stories of how they have changed from people of loose morals, outright thieves and alcohol abusers to upright citizens, thanks to the prayer meetings,” she once told The Star

“It is now a career of choice. People come in to get a diploma in cosmetology because they have a passion for beauty, not because they do not have other career options.”

To sum it up she tells How We Made It In Africa, “I am a risk taker and more importantly my faith in God propels me. I work hard and I give it my best. I don’t believe in failure.”

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