How a banker turned her husband’s love for popcorn into a business

Like many entrepreneurs, Phillipa Wavamunno did not always realise that she wanted to start a business until her husband’s love for popcorn started to frustrate her.

Two years ago, Pillipa and her husband were both residents of Bukoto and because Phillipa was working in town, her husband, a popcorn addict, used to frequently ask her to get him some on her way back home.

Delivering popcorns to the husband would however turn into a challenge for Phillipa.

She said: “My main hurdle was that the closest supermarket, Nakumatt Bukoto had no popcorn machine so I had to drive all the way to Ntinda and then back. This was frustrating.”

It was due to this frustration that Phillipa was later forced to approach the supermarket management and asked if she could set up a popcorn stand on their premises, something they accepted with no hesitation.

“A few weeks later into my new side venture, I was asked by management to set up more stands in their other branches. I managed to increase my cash flow from an idea that was birthed from my husband’s love for popcorn,” Phillipa told Nile Post.

Phillipa, who doubles as a co-founder of Ascenify Uganda, a startup that offers online personal financial management skills, says that she was only able to pull this off because she had good personal finance literacy skills that gave her the capital to start.

She said: “When it comes to starting a side income stream, you can base it off what your talent, passion or what you studied. You can start with zero and offer a service depending on what you are good at. The only way to keep business growing is through good personal financial literacy management.”

Does everyone need good personal financial literacy management through?

Phillipa’s co-founder at Ascentify, called Linda Were said that yes, personal financial literacy is a life skill that everybody should have regardless of age, sex or level of education.

“It is very unfortunate that this is not accorded the necessary attention thus leaving most people grappling and practicing trial and error on something as critical as money matters,” Linda said.

Personal Financial Management in the new normal

57% of Ugandans were unable to sustain their lifestyles one day into the lockdown. After 15 days into the lockdown the number rose to 81%.

The statistics are based on research done by the Financial Sector Deepening Uganda (FSDU) together with the Ministry of Finance and published in the New Vision in May 2020.

This year has hit us with a lot of unexpected surprises that have affected us in almost all spheres of our lives but more so financially.

The outbreak of COVID-19 and the effects of the pandemic on the economy has made people nervous about their finances. Studies show those fears are heightened right now, but anxiety about managing finances isn’t a new feeling for many people.

How do you maneuver in these times? If you don’t have money to manage a few months of no income inflow, how will you manage to plan for retirement? How do you manage your finances in this new financial era?

Visualize a table with one stand (table A) and another with 5 stands (table B) holding it up. The stands represent your streams of income and the table top represents you. If each of the tables lose one stand, only table B would be left standing.

This is the same notion with our finances; when we depend on one stream of income maybe it’s a job or business and the stream collapses we are left with no foothold. If we stem our streams of income especially in unprecedented times like what we are currently experiencing, we guarantee ourselves financial stability as a result of the different cash flow avenues.