Just before the new millennium, Prof Ciarunji Chesaina’s career as an educator and African folklorist was interrupted. She was posted to South Africa as Kenya’s ambassador.
As any lastborn would, her son went with her. She worked there for three years and came back to Kenya. Her son stayed back and has been based down south since.
From the start, KC Rottok Chesaina, as he is known in his profession, encountered challenges. His Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education certificate was not recognised by any university in South Africa. He was given an option – to repeat a year of high school to be eligible. That was not an option for him.
“I went to do a marketing course in a college that had a British affiliation. They didn’t have a problem admitting me,” Mr Chesaina recalls of his start in the rainbow nation.
A lecturer told him he would struggle with marketing credentials. If he wanted to assimilate into the corporate sector in South Africa – which he did – he would be better suited to pursuing accounting.
“So I did accounting and never looked back,” he says.
With a professor and a writer for a mother, Mr Chesaina was always surrounded by books. That is where his love affair with writing started.
In Form One at Alliance High School, a composition he had written about finding love was shown to the Form Four class.
Mr Chesaina remembers the teacher’s words and the warm feeling he got, “She said, ‘Look, this is how Form Ones are writing and you guys are still struggling to put your words together!’”
His mother, from experience, discouraged her son from a career as a writer. Paying bills would not be easy, she said.
The writing bug had, however, bitten and while working as an audit partner, he started profiling Kenyan professionals in South Africa on a website he dubbed ProKey, later casting the net wider to African professionals plying their trade in South Africa with The Expatriate Magazine.
Mr Chesaina says South Africans were feeling left out in their own country, which led him to revamp the magazine and call it The African Professional, which was published for 34 quarters before Covid-19 hit.
“Unlike in Kenya where you were allowed to move around during the day, we could only leave the house to buy food,” Mr Chesaina says of the lockdown.
Holed up in the house with his wife, children and online meetings, he was itching to write but advertising had disappeared for his online magazine. That’s where he got the idea to write a book.
Mr Chesaina decided to write about chief financial officers (CFOs), the safe-keepers, since, “If you scratch the surface, there are magazines but no books on CFOs in South Africa.”
In his work as a chartered accountant, CFOs were individuals he interacted with daily and it was only natural that he tells their untold stories.
KC Rottok Chesaina pictured during an interview at his home in Runda, Nairobi on July 11, 2023. PHOTO | BILLY OGADA | NMG
Getting his subjects proved to be difficult. Despite the lockdown and not much activity, he was unknown at the time.
Mr Chesaina shares, “When we started, we were asked, ‘Who are you? Which book have you written? Are you trying something and want to try with me?’” He persevered.
He planned to go the route he had travelled previously with his magazines – self-publish. Five chapters into the book, however, Mr Chesaina realised he would need help.
A book was so much different from a magazine. He reached out to his networks and was put in touch with Jonathan Ball Publishers, a giant in the trade in South Africa.
Initially, Mr Chesaina envisaged a book with 10 CFOs stories in it but his publisher suggested he “think big, think broad and also push your level of writing”.
He ended up talking to more than 100 CFOs and picked 31 to put in the book. Asked why 31, an exact number, Mr Chesaina says he wanted to make it easy for his audience, one chapter a day for one month.
Masters of Money – Strategies for Success from the CFOs of South Africa’s Biggest Companies went up on shelves in South Africa in March 2022, to great acclaim.
With the success of his first book, Jonathan Ball Publishers asked him to write another book but this time about CEOs. It was easier to get his subjects the second time around.
Mr Chesaina built on the muscle and experience he gained with his first book, cut out the mistakes and with his wider networks got himself an hour with each of the subjects in his newest book – The CEO X Factor – Secrets for Success from South Africa’s Top Money Makers. Again with 31 CEOs.
With the power behind a publishing house like Jonathan Ball, he does not have to raise an arm to sell in southern Africa.
Masters of Money book authored by Rottok Chesaina in a photo taken on April 26, 2022. PHOTO | EVANS HABIL | NMG
“When I go back next week, I have a few speaking engagements, and these are paid engagements,” Mr Chesaina reveals on a trip to Nairobi.
He is in town to see his family as well as sell his latest book. On how long it takes to write a book, he says, “18 months for the first book and nine months to write the second.”
Is it possible to make money from the first book? I ask.
"Yes, it’s very possible. It all depends on the quality of the writing, the originality of the idea and aggressive marketing and distribution.”
His strategy for selling outside of his base is mainly social media.
“When I meet someone, I do a quick recording on my phone and ask them to post it on their page. People get to hear about the book,” he says of his sales strategy.
He has a video of Kisumu governor Anyang’ Nyong’o singing praises of The CEO X Factor.
There are talks with his publisher to put out a children’s version of The CEO X Factor – a pictorial version for younger dreamers.
When BDLife spoke to him on July 11 – it was an emotional day for the Chesaina family. It’s the first anniversary of the demise of Mr Chesaina’s brother. “Today is a tough day,” he reveals of the memory of the man who taught him how to drive, and how to be a man since they’d lost their father when Mr Chesaina was only 12.
In his brother’s honour, Mr Chesaina is writing a biography about him and it has been both a therapeutic and painful process.
In talking to relatives and friends as he puts the book together, he’s hearing sides of his brother he never knew existed.
“The interesting thing about writing the book has made me learn so much I didn’t know about him,” he says.
How does he find literature coming out of Kenya and Africa? Is he impressed by it?
"Very impressed, it’s a great time when anyone can write self-publish unlike my mother’s time where they had to beg publishers to look at their manuscripts," says Mr Chesaina who is also an acclaimed business speaker.
His command of the stage stretches back to his high school drama days as well as being a TV presenter in South Africa.
KC Rottok Chesaina pictured during an interview at his home in Runda, Nairobi on July 11, 2023. PHOTO | BILLY OGADA | NMG
Away from the office but closely related to it, Mr Chesaina lets his hair down by playing golf and visiting a new country every year. This year’s destination was Turkiye.
A peek inside his library shows over 100 books.
"I alternate between business and nonfiction books one month and a light fiction book the following month, preferably African literature," he says.
