CHIKI KURUKA REVEALS HOW MUCH MONEY SHE SPENT ON DANCE STUDIO

Popular dancer and fitness trainer Chiki Kuruka has talked about the challenges she faced while setting up her dance studio. 

Speaking in a recent interview, she stated that she had to quit her media job as it was not making her enough money to set up her studio. “Setting up a studio is really costly and to anyone who’s watching, media looks like you make more money than you actually do. It’s not making you money to set up a studio. Normally people who do things get side funding or side investment. Let’s stop pretending, you spend your money on your outfits and the things you’re wearing on the next day. It just didn’t make sense financially for me to go through that journey,” she said. 

Chiki also explained why she quit her radio job disclosing that she realised it was not the right space for her. “When I started radio, which I’ll never do again, I used to go home every single day really low. So I’d go home everyday feeling really low because for someone who’s very motivated by what they want to achive feeling as if you’re in a drastically wrong direction affects your psychological well-being,” added Chiki. 

After quitting her job, the fitness trainer embarked on starting the dance studio, highlighting some of the challenges she faced. “To open a studio you need about Sh6 million because the space that I found you have to pay for a certain amount of rent upfront and it was just a shell so that meant building showers from scratch, flooring, electric then you have to hire people, you have to hire instructors, then you have to market your space and that itself is incredibly expensive. I needed to find Sh6 million and I was aware of that before I did my case studies and I went into it,” she noted. 

To raise funds to set up the studio, Chiki first approached a bank for a loan but she was entitled to Sh1.5 million loan. “I went to the bank because I felt like its the first place to go, but it wasn’t. I went for a loan unfortunately the manner in which loans work is really counter productive for entrepreneurs. I was entitled to loan like Sh1.5 million if not Sh2 million and I would end up paying 4 million and it would put a lot of pressure on the business because I have to pay it back within two years and that means that the profit that I make ends up going back to pay for the loan, once I found that, loan was out of the option,” she said. 

She also considered getting funding but later changed her mind because of the narrative associated with it. “The second thing was getting funding, I’ve always struggled with funding because I feel like very often its about giving this sad face of Africa and then showing how you’ve made a solution and I’m really against that kind of messaging so that was out of the window,” said Chiki. 

Chiki then went for angel investors where she pitched her business to a number of investors and managed to raise Sh3 million, “So then I went to angel investors which means you’re pitching, I went on like a two three month pitching spree to everyone that I knew had money and my psychology was if I can give 5%  of the business and bringing as much money as possible then that would be really positive. I went through the pitching round and what I managed to get was Sh3 million, like I said I needed their millions of shillings. We agreed as a team we’re going to take the risk, we’re going to put in the hours and do it,” she stated.

She then sought the services from a contractor who started work after she had a few discussions with the mall hosting her studio. However, the fitness trainer expressed disappointment in her contractor as he failed to deliver on time as agreed. 

“I found a contractor negotiated them down to Sh1 million, my budget was Sh1.5 million so I already saved like half a million and spoke to them all not to stop until we open for the public and most malls are open for that, you really start paying when you start making money. Our agreement was a month, when we started getting to the end of the month it was very clear this thing was not going to be ready within a month.” said Chiki. 

Hours before the official opening of the studio, the contractor failed to do the floor and install mirrors as required. “Everything was done except for flooring and mirrors. 24 hours later we were supposed to open the studio, we had put the messaging out, the marketing and it was very clear that it was not going to happen because we had no floors and we had no mirrors,” she stated. 

Adding, “So what the dude said, ‘give us a week and we will have it done on time’, I said okay. A few days in the week and the progress was not really moving as expected, I had sent out communication that the soft launch was in a week and it was vital because that is where I invite my potential partners and I had already embarrassed myself by saying we’re moving it by a week.” 

After the extended time, the contractor failed to deliver again as the floors were poorly done. “48 hours before we were supposed to open I get to my studio, mirrors are up but the floor looked like someone had just thrown Ugali on it, I asked the guy and he has the audacity to look me in my face and say when we bought the tiles they were cut in different sizes but he has tried his best,” Chiki recalled. She got a new contractor who installed the floors correctly.