Dr. Maxwel Okoth, the CEO and founder of Ruai family hospital and RFH healthcare ltd’s goal has always been to provide quality, affordable and accessible healthcare to all Kenyans. The journey to where he is now was not an easy one but as they say behind every cloud there’s a silver lining. It started off with a dark cloud when Dr. Okoth got into a road accident. Luckily he didn’t suffer any injuries but his car was a written off.

“You’re seeing your life going and you’re still holding on the steering wheel. One tire after the other burst. No one got injured, the car was a right off.”  

Dr. Maxwel Okoth

Having a near death experience may have been what he needed to push himself even harder. When the car insurance finally came, he decided to spend the money on medical equipment for his dream hospital and these were totally new in the region. With Ksh.600,000, he was so bold to go for medical equipment that was selling going for 4 million. He negotiated and came to an agreement with suppliers where he would pay monthly cheques of 232,000/- per month.

Dr. Okoth’s strategy was to focus on doing 5 ultra sounds per day, 3 surgeries in a month and thus he could make it work. He was looking at the best case scenario and not preparing for the worst. A mentality of optimism that most if not all people starting a business have. Within the first month however, he realized, he couldn’t make it work so he went to standard charted bank and got another loan of  Ksh.300,000 in order to pay the loan he had for the equipment. Only thing now he’s got more debt.

“Things started to get thick. Second month I couldn’t pay. The cheques bounced. It was literally very hard!” 

Dr. Maxwel Okoth

So he decided to pay close attention to how his business run. He realized, due to his lack of prudent supervision, he was losing quite an amount of money through his employees. Most were charging and not remitting the funds. However, after making some changes such as bringing in new people and letting others go, working his business finances and sorting for more time from his debtors, after sometime he was able to make enough to pay back both loans.

Dr. Maxwel Okoth, Founder of Ruai family hospital and RFH ltd, was a guest at Founders Drink-up in August 2018. To get access to the full podcast, please email dream@wearefounders.co.ke.