What pulled you into tech, or what are you learning right now?

Faith, this is so relatable. I also got into tech just to stop paying someone to do my online orders and stock records, that push to save money is a real teacher. This month I'm trying to learn Google Sheets so I can track my sales on my own. What's the one number you check most when you open your shop?

Faith, I love this. You're already thinking like a data person just by noticing the connection between your shop and M-Pesa. That's more than half the battle. For me, it was trying to figure out why my small poultry farm's feed costs kept rising, tracking things by hand got old fast, so I started learning basic Excel and Google Sheets. This month I'm finally trying Python just to automate some of that tracking. For you, maybe just listing out the one thing that annoys you most about your shop right now is a perfect starting point, no coding needed yet.

Thats such a real entry point Faith, and honestly the best kind. Most of us who build tech started with a problem we were trying to solve, not because we loved computers. I got into payments because I was tired of reconciling M-Pesa statements manually, that frustration pushed me to learn. For this month, maybe just try recording your daily M-Pesa and shop sales in a simple spreadsheet, once you see the pattern, youll know exactly what to automate next.

Faith, your story is exactly why I got into tech too. I grew up on a farm in Kitale, and I got tired of walking to the market only to find prices had changed or my produce was sitting too long. Learning to code felt impossible at first, but I just started with simple spreadsheets tracking harvest and sales, same as you are doing with your shop. That one annoying thing you deal with every week, that is your best teacher.

Faith, that's an awesome story. For me, it was actually getting locked out of my family's laptop back in high school because of a virus. I was so annoyed I spent a weekend learning how to reset it and clean it up without paying anyone. That curiosity just stuck. Right now I'm trying to learn more about how to spot fake M-Pesa messages, because a few people in my neighborhood got scammed last month.

Faith, I love this. That’s exactly how I fell into data, not because I liked spreadsheets, but because I was tired of manually counting stock for a friend’s shop in Kisumu. One Excel table led to another, and now I teach people how to build dashboards from their M-Pesa statements. What’s the one number you wish you could see at a glance every week?

Faith, that's such a grounded entry point. Since you already connected your shop to M-Pesa, the next small step could be exploring a free tool like Google Sheets to log your daily transactions, it'll reveal patterns without needing to code a thing. What's the one part of that connection that still feels unclear to you?