Mentorship has played such an integral role in the success stories of myself and so many others. Absa Bank Uganda Managing Director Mumba Kalifungwa on July 15, 2021 appeared on #40DayMentor, a social media programme hosted by former New Vision MD Robert Kabushenga. Kikubolane.com brings you excerpts of the discussion in question and answer format.  

Question: As a young person starting out on a corporate career, how did you get mentoring? What lessons did u learn? Were there different mentors at each stage of your career? How did u apply each of the lessons u learnt?

Answer. First, different people helped shape my career at different stages, but my father has been a constant. He is a businessperson who has reinvented himself from formal employment, business, politics and now academics as the owner of a leading private university in Zambia.

Question: For most Ugandans in formal employment, there is a lot of months left at the end of the paycheck. So quite a few of them have side hustles to make ends meet. How does a supervisor/employer accommodate this and even facilitate career growth?

It is truly a balancing act in my view and it is about how you manage time. Company time is just that and personal time is just that. Depending on the business you are doing, you have to have the right delivery channel i.e. do you employ someone or outsource delivery?

How does one ensure appropriate controls at side hustle so as not to compromise the 9 to 5 and What are the preconditions for cross over?

You must be clear and deliberate about your responsibilities and obligations to each demand. Have a working structure that doesn’t compromise either e.g. outsource, employ an agent to run the errands.

If the job becomes a side hustle, then it’s obvious. You must make the right decision and leave to focus on what drives the higher return. It should be a risk Vs reward decision and to be a businessperson, you must be a risk taker. Knowing who you are helps you decide.

There aren’t any hard and fast rules, but I believe rationale and reason will drive you depending on the risk Vs reward discussion. Which option gives the quality of life you desire and are the two options mutually exclusive? Can the side hustle survive without your job?

For someone with a lot of skills and seemingly limitless connections, where do you draw the line of too many hustles? 

I believe in focus and not doing too many things at once. This ensures the desired results and impact. It is a risk and reward discussion where you maximise the benefits of the few options you’ve selected.

For a student studying an intensive course but who also has a lucrative business, at what point is it worth abandoning the course to focus on the business

Both are important and that decision is dependent on your circumstances. I would advise that you strike a balance and focus on completing your studies whilst you find a mode of delivery for your business e.g. outsourcing services for your delivery.

Rising up the career path- what’s the 2 key pieces of advice have you received that you think have shaped you all round and or you live by?

Discipline, Hard work and Humility are my personal values. These were shaped by my parents in my formative years and I still hold and apply them consistently in all that I do.

Let’s go back in time to when you were getting started in the corporate world. Assuming you had a promising side hustle/start-up, would you have chosen to go all in on career or the start-up?

In hindsight, I would have worked for a maximum of 5 years to gain an understanding of how formal businesses operate. With that experience, I would have gone back to run the family business, and it would be at a different level now.

Many employees get salary loans, invest in side hustles and end up losing their money due to poor supervision. How does one handle supervision while engaged on the job?

Key to effective supervision is understanding the end to end operations of your business, and putting in place a control mechanism that you can use after working hours to check how things are going.

Should an employee tell their boss about their side hustle?

I believe they should, because some companies require this for compliance purposes to manage issues of conflict of interest.

What advice would you give a person with a side hustle on how to balance that with their formal job. How would they know it is time to make a choice to focus on one or the other?

Like I said, it truly is a balancing act and how you manage time. In my view, the time to leave is when your business is able to generate more income than your salary pays and is able help you live a reasonably comfortable life that meets all your necessities.

What percentage of salaried income would you advise a corporate employee to invest in their side business?

It all depends on the business interest that you have. Once you are clear about the capital requirements of the business and the timelines, that will help you determine how much you should put aside as savings towards your goal.

For those people whose parents had the side hustle and is the retirement plan. We are at the point where we are looking at legacy. Should we prioritise the legacy or start our own thing if we see value in both?

In my view, it is a balance of ultimately what your goals are in life and how you intend to get there. A business decision is a risk and reward consideration. That should guide your decision making. Legacy will come after you have made the correct investment decision.