Rapidly Rising Through the Ranks: From Pump Attendant to Young Dealer
Find out how Stephen Kamau and Irène Kinuya went from pumping fuel to managing Total service stations in Kenya thanks to our Young Dealers program.
Total
00:09 STEPHEN: My name is Stephen Kamau, I’m 42 years old, I’m married to one wife and we have a little baby, a baby girl. I manage this station as a full time dealer. I was born in the Western Province of our country, a place called Kitare. My parents could not afford to pay my college fees. I started doing manual jobs in farms but along the way, I joined Total as a customer attendant.
I became the dealer on 1st of January 2014 after working for the company as a young dealer since 2009. The people who are picked (by Total) to be young dealers, they are people who have shown potential, diligent people but they have no capital. They have the know-how of how to do the oil business at the station level, but they have no capital. So this program gives them a chance that you cannot get anywhere else to get that capital and prove themselves, make their own money – as they also market the company and make the station do better, but they are also in return making their own money to become financial dealers at the end.
01:46 Irene has been my friend for quite some time and I was very happy when she was picked to be one of the young dealers. She is making good progress and I believe soon she will also become a financial dealer like me.
02:07 IRENE: My goal is, I’m trying to capture more customers for the station and to reduce my expenses, so that I’m able to make money for Total Kenya to consider me as a financial dealer.
02:28 STEPHEN: Today is on a Sunday, a day that I usually play football because football is my hobby. After six days of a week working hard, I come here on Sunday and relax. For you to win, you have to have a team, with each and every member of the team playing his part so that at the end of the day the team wins.
That also happens at my work place where I have a team. Right now I have a team of 25, of which every one of the members of the team must play his little part for the whole team to succeed.
When I was given this station to operate it as a young dealer, I thought to myself that the station must (il faut supprimer “to” ici) succeed and I must also succeed. And I’m very happy that I’ve attained my goal.
