“I knocked on doors every single day, sometimes even waiting hours for a meeting”, says Mikul Shah, Managing Director at EatOut, on how he tirelessly built the successful lifestyle business he owns today. He was however very strategic in the way that he approached his potential clients who happened to be Restaurants. He knocked on many doors but with a clear list of respected brands. These were mostly the high end Restaurants. So if he went to a client and mentioned that such and such a restaurant was using his services already, then the client would be inspired to get on board with them. The sales became easier because he had an incredible referral base.

The strategy was to become big enough so that the smaller players had no space, and the big players wanted to join him. You see, in Kenya there are always the early adopters and then there are the ones who see what they are doing and then copy them to get in the same market. So he made a good reputation by having reputable clients on his side which sort of weakened the competition.

According to Mikul there was no magic formula to EatOut’s growth. Over the years they have simply seen opportunities and gone for them. Now that might contradict the popular advice given to business owners that you should focus on one thing until you become good at it but for them, diversification has worked out. Despite being a tech company, they still got into print and they still did events. These various avenues in a way worked to promote the various parts of their business. Like doing an event for Coca cola can act as marketing for their tech side with the restaurants.

Sometimes it all boils down to what works for your business. Some situations might be unique to your company’s capacity to take on new roles and your resilience to keep it going.

Mikul Shah was a guest at Un.thinkable roast (our monthly 10X Growth Leaders Meet-up) in June 2020. Click here to apply for membership in Un.thinkable.