Before moving to Namibia, my husband, Bennie, was a corporate Chief People Officer, and I owned a public relations and communications business serving small and mid-sized companies. We both had extensive business leadership experience, but we had never actually built a company together.

We felt inspired to spend a season of our lives in Africa, and that eventually led us to relocate to Namibia. Our business visa gave us the opportunity to combine our professional backgrounds and build something together for the first time.

Interestingly, our business evolved organically around the needs of people who started reaching out to us. Because we were living in Namibia, we began hearing from people who were interested in exploring business opportunities on the African continent but didn’t know where to begin. We started helping them understand the market, develop business plans, identify potential Namibian investment partners, and experience the country firsthand through investment tours.

As we continued working with businesses, we also noticed another emerging need. Our clients were increasingly integrating artificial intelligence into their operations. Even here in Namibia, we were hearing founders talk about introducing tools like Claude into their companies. While we recognized the tremendous opportunity, we also saw significant risks when businesses allowed AI to perform work without sufficient human oversight.

That inspired us to develop Mashal AI, a coaching and leadership platform designed to help professionals build the judgment and practical skills needed to direct, evaluate, and manage AI effectively.

I think what makes us different is that we don’t approach consulting from a purely theoretical perspective. We’ve managed people, built businesses, invested our own money, experienced failures, and navigated unfamiliar markets ourselves. We understand both the opportunities and the consequences of business decisions. Our goal isn’t simply to give clients information. It’s to help them make wiser decisions and build something sustainable.

Our first customers actually came from some very authentic, but admittedly poor-quality, videos we shared about our relocation to Namibia. We weren’t producing sophisticated marketing campaigns. We were simply sharing our story, why we felt called to move to Africa, and what we were learning along the way.

People who connected with our experience started reaching out for consultations. Many of those conversations eventually turned into requests for business assistance. What’s interesting is that we didn’t start with a rigid list of services and then try to convince people to buy them. We listened to what people needed and built our offerings around those requests.

For example, we didn’t initially offer market research or business plan development. Those services emerged because clients asked us to help them evaluate opportunities and put their ideas into actionable plans.

I’m especially grateful for our earliest clients because they understood that, while we had extensive business experience, we were still learning the Namibian market. They trusted us to navigate that learning process with them. That trust meant a great deal to us, and it created an enormous sense of responsibility. We’ve always taken our clients’ investments in our services very seriously. We never want someone to feel they’ve wasted their money.

Today, most of our new business comes from the network we’ve built over time. We created a diaspora network to help members of the African diaspora connect with one another, share experiences, and build meaningful relationships. As people worked with us and experienced Namibia for themselves, they naturally began sharing their stories with others. Over time, that community became an organic referral network.

We’ve also developed strategic partnerships that extend our reach, including relationships with a Pan-African network and a German referral partner who connect us with clients seeking our services.

For Mashal AI, we’re taking a more direct approach to business development by reaching out to companies that could benefit from strengthening their teams’ AI leadership capabilities.

One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned is that relationships are incredibly valuable in business. Our earliest clients helped establish our credibility, and the community we’ve built has continued to create opportunities for us. We didn’t grow by trying to sell everyone something. We grew by building relationships, listening to what people needed, and earning their trust through the work we delivered.

One of the most consequential decisions we made was investing our own money into two local Namibian startup ventures. Both businesses had promising concepts, and we believed the local founders understood their markets well enough to execute successfully.

We knew startup investing carried risks, but we made an assumption that ultimately proved costly. We believed that because these entrepreneurs were already operating in Namibia, they would be better positioned to manage the businesses independently. We provided the capital and trusted them to handle execution.

Unfortunately, both ventures failed.

Looking back, our biggest mistake wasn’t necessarily choosing those business concepts. It was assuming that funding and local market familiarity were enough to ensure successful execution. We underestimated how much active management, accountability, financial oversight, and operational leadership those businesses needed.

With our backgrounds, we had the experience to provide that structure, but we chose to take a more passive role. That was a very expensive lesson.

It also fundamentally changed how we advise investors today.

We now emphasize that investing in an unfamiliar market requires more than identifying a promising opportunity and transferring capital. Someone must be responsible for monitoring performance, managing people, making difficult decisions, and protecting the investment.

For clients interested in starting businesses in Namibia, we encourage them to consider establishing a company and pursuing the appropriate immigration permissions so they can be physically present to manage and grow their operations. For those who prefer a passive investment, we encourage them to explore professionally managed investment vehicles with qualified local oversight and proper due diligence.

What makes this lesson particularly valuable is that we’re not simply repeating something we read in a business textbook. We’ve personally experienced the financial consequences of insufficient oversight.

It reinforced something we now teach in our AI leadership work as well: **delegation does not eliminate accountability.** Whether you’re delegating to a business partner, an employee, or artificial intelligence, someone still needs to lead, evaluate performance, and take responsibility for the outcome.

One of the biggest changes we’ve experienced is the increasing sophistication of the clients and investors approaching us.

When we started, many of the conversations were exploratory. People wanted to understand what living or doing business in Namibia might look like. As our reputation has grown, we’re increasingly working with investors who have more complex questions, larger ambitions, and higher expectations for the depth of analysis we provide.

These clients aren’t simply looking for introductions or general information about the market. They want to understand financial feasibility, regulatory considerations, operational risks, potential returns, and what it would realistically take to establish or expand a business.

That has pushed us to evolve our approach considerably.

We’ve become much more analytical in how we evaluate opportunities, and we’ve also recognized the importance of surrounding ourselves with specialists who bring expertise beyond our own.

Over the past few years, we’ve invested significant time in developing relationships with professionals across legal services, accounting, financial services, real estate, and property management. Those relationships allow us to connect clients with specialized expertise while helping them navigate the broader strategy.

Building that network has taken years of meetings, relationship development, and learning whom we can trust to deliver quality work at reasonable prices.

I think one of the most important things we’ve learned is that being a strong consultant doesn’t mean pretending to know everything. It means understanding the client’s goals, knowing which questions need to be answered, and bringing the right people and information together to support sound decisions.

Our role has evolved from helping people explore opportunities to helping them evaluate those opportunities with greater discipline and confidence.

My first piece of advice would be to make sure you’ve developed real expertise before positioning yourself as someone who can advise others on important business decisions.

Consulting is much more than having good ideas, being a strong communicator, or knowing how to market yourself. It requires analytical thinking, financial acumen, strategic judgment, and an understanding of what it actually takes to operate a business.

I see people enter consulting or coaching because they recognize an opportunity to monetize their knowledge, but they sometimes underestimate the depth of experience clients expect.

When someone is trusting you with decisions that affect their employees, their finances, or the future of their company, that’s an enormous responsibility.

You need to understand what it means to manage a budget, hire and fire employees, navigate difficult leadership situations, evaluate financial risks, and make decisions when there isn’t an obvious right answer.

And perhaps most importantly, you need to know how to ask the right questions. Often, the most valuable thing a consultant brings to a client isn’t an immediate answer. It’s the ability to identify something the client hasn’t considered, challenge an assumption, or recognize a risk before it becomes an expensive problem.

I would encourage aspiring consultants to spend meaningful time in positions where they’re actually responsible for business outcomes. Build something, manage people, oversee budgets, and learn what happens when decisions don’t work out as planned. Those experiences develop the judgment that makes your advice valuable.

As for what to ignore, I would ignore the pressure to look successful before you’ve developed the substance to support it. You don’t need an elaborate brand, a massive social media following, or a long list of services to become a respected consultant.

You need competence, integrity, and a genuine commitment to your clients’ success.

Investors and business owners are trusting you with something they’ve often spent years building. Your responsibility is to treat their resources, their ambitions, and their trust with the same seriousness you would your own.