She came all the way for gold.
Akona Gwele, from a rural village named Qumbu in the sleepy innards of the Eastern Cape, a province in South Africa, arrived in Johannesburg, the city of gold, seeking opportunities she would have never found in her hometown.
Qumbu, formerly Transkei, is literally no man’s land. Young people, especially women, migrate to the cities looking for professional prospects other than nursing and teaching.
“I decided to come to Gauteng [South African province] because as the name says, it is known for being a place of gold; hence, I wanted to be closer to that gold. It promised more job opportunities and access to better education,” says Gwele.
The girl who, growing up, would fetch pails of water from the river for her household chores, went on to study electrical engineering at the Vaal University of Technology; and is today the owner of Westrand Safety, a supplier of personal protective equipment (PPE) gear to companies in South Africa.
She even imparts her signature, introducing color and style for the protective gear she designs for women in the male-dominated industries of construction, mining and engineering.
“More people are now asking for comfortable styles that will not look like work gear and we are open to creating this and making sure we set trends,” she says.
She founded the company in 2015 and is a finalist in the Eskom Business Investment Competition, which provides a platform for South African owners of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to become part of a community of like-minded entrepreneurs as they look to build their businesses.
She is also a finalist for the South African Breweries Foundation awards via Fetola, a development agency focusing on igniting a culture of entrepreneurship in South Africa with an impetus on women, youth, people with disabilities and those in rural areas.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2018/02/13/traditional-and-thriving/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Traditional And Thriving</a>
Her clientele is mostly companies that have workers on the field, and in such industries as construction, education, engineering, mining as well as municipalities. Some of her clients include Anglo American, Sun Time Square, City Power, FET colleges, to name a few.
Gwele started Westrand in her bedroom with a laptop and her own savings. Prior to that, she was a salaried employee struggling to eke out a living.
After working in the engineering field for five years, Gwele could not see herself progressing in the male-dominated sector. The ‘glass ceiling’ compelled the mother of one to quit her job as an engineering technician and join a packaging company as a marketing executive but that didn’t last long, as here too, the entrepreneur in her was wanting to break out. She resigned yet again and that’s when she founded Westrand.
Her exposure to unsafe working conditions in different industries within the engineering field is what inspired it.
“I had visited many engineering plants and heard about all the fatalities and incidents that happen to staff and most of them are due to not wearing protective gear for the right exposure,” she says.
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Her seven-year experience in the corporate world trying to establish herself as a businesswoman prepared and strengthened her for her own venture.
This small-towner is now looking to establish a state-of-the-art factory manufacturing PPE safety wear and hoping to own one that also provides school uniforms for children in the Eastern Cape.
She will create job opportunities for her people, so hopefully one day they don’t ever have to leave Qumbu looking for them elsewhere. &#8211; Written by Nomsa Legodi

Keeping Them Safe And Stylish

It’s a business that people hardly knew existed 20 years ago. It is also not for the faint hearted. Some call it the business of death, but it is broader than that. Murders, suicides, and decompositions are just some of the scenes that Eileen de Jager and her sister, Roelien Schutte, attend to most days.
Their business, Crime Scene Clean Up, started 17 years ago, when Eileen and Roelien saw a need to start a business that would save people from the trauma of having to clean up crime scenes of their loved ones or friends.
“We discovered this idea after we saw one of our neighbors had to clean her daughter’s suicide scene. We decided we needed to do something to change this,” says Eileen.
When the sisters started out they used to travel to scenes around the country with a minibus equipped with everything, including a kitchen sink.
“The only thing we were short of was a shower,” Eileen chuckles.
Today, the business employs about 32 people and has nine branches across South Africa. The Blood Sisters, as they are popularly known, started the business with only practical experience. In a challenging and demanding field like this, the sisters felt a need to further their skills by studying. Roelien and Eileen’s husband, Francois, who is the CEO of Crime Scene Clean Up, went for waste management courses, while Eileen studied environmental health.
Studying further was important to grow the business.
“Having the knowledge and professional skills to do the job enabled us to understand this work better,” says Francois.
<div id="attachment_35413" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35413" class=" wp-image-35413" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/forensic-cleaners-879-e1519719102499-300x200.jpg" alt="Crime Scene Clean Up Eileen and Francois de Jager" width="500" height="333" />Eileen and Francois de Jager (Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla)</div>
They are the last to arrive at a crime scene. Eileen says they do their job so thoroughly it can be difficult for law enforcement officials to extract evidence afterwards.
Crime scenes vary in nature – some are more suited to a woman and others a man.
“Women are usually labeled as cleaners in a household, hence I never found it difficult to adapt, but sometimes there’s an emotional attachment that we sometimes leave behind,” says Eileen.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2017/09/27/nailed-by-imposters/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Nailed By Imposters</a>
Before becoming entrepreneurs, Francois, Eileen and Roelien had nine-to-five jobs. Francois was a motor mechanic, while Eileen was a foreign exchange trader. Despite the blood and gore, Eileen says crime scene cleaning can be easier.
“What I am doing now is less stressful than what I used to do when I was in the corporate space,” says Eileen.
An ordinary day of work can border on the bizarre for these entrepreneurs. One day, Francois called Eileen while she was at a scene, wearing her mask and bloody gloves in the middle of a cleaning operation, to ask what she wanted to eat for supper.
“Can you imagine how ridiculous this is,” the couple say simultaneously, as they share a chuckle.
This profession is no laughing matter though. According to Eileen, cleaning a crime scene without professional help may lead to respiratory problems and post-traumatic stress.
“You must be compassionate and this field must be something that you want to do,” Eileen warns.
There is also bureaucracy to deal with. After fighting for years for their business to be recognized by the law in South Africa, the three say they still have to fight every year for their renewals.
“Like any other business in the country, there are fake ones that register for the same business and mess it up, making more problems for us with the government,” says Francois.
Eileen, Roelien and Francois aren’t just in this business to make millions, they’re also working hard to bring tranquility to a troubled period in someone’s life.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2017/09/05/high-price-addiction/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The High Price Of Addiction</a>
<h2>This Woman Could Save Your Life</h2>
It’s a sunny August morning in Midrand, 30 kilometers north of Johannesburg. In a calm, yet busy, environment sits a crew responsible for despatching the emergency services that could save your life.
Nokonwaba Mgcoyi, a 35-year-old mother of two, has been working for the 10111 center – a 24-hour crime reporting call center – for more than 10 years. Today, she takes us through how the center operates.
The Gauteng regional centre, where Mgcoyi works, is South Africa’s largest. It caters for the 12 million people that live in the Gauteng province.
It’s a faceless profession, which some have seen as non-functional for decades. Though it is not listed under essential services, it is crucial for the public.
“10111 has become part of my life as I spend 80% of my time serving the public through the center,” says Mgcoyi.
Women are sometimes perceived to be vulnerable and incapable of handling pressure, but Mgcoyi seems to be calm and confident while on duty.
Mgcoyi deals with trauma on a daily basis, including domestic violence, accidents, murders, robberies and gang violence. The call center’s agents, like Mgcoyi, deal with up to 200 phone calls a weeknight and as many as 10,000 on a weekend night.
Although the public constantly complains about the effectiveness of the 10111 center, Mgcoyi says they work very hard in a challenging job.
“For us it takes up to 10 minutes to take a call and despatch a van. What happens after that is up to the police,” she says.
“10111 has two divisions, the call center that answers the calls, and the despatching department that despatches the vans according to the location of the emergency.”
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2017/02/01/criminal-world-dog-eat-dog/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Criminal World Of Dog Eat Dog</a>
A lack of resources can make a difficult job even tougher.
“A shortage of vans in police stations is one of the major problems that we face,” she says.
Hard decisions also have to be taken. Mgcoyi has to prioritize emergencies according to their importance.
“We categorize the emergencies from alpha complaints, which are known as priority number one, down to the least threatening situations. This helps in ensuring that high priority crimes are given preference.”
In South Africa, where a high crime rate is the norm, and the roads are perilously dangerous, the service that people like Mgcoyi offer is vital.

The Profit That Comes From Gore And Grime

For centuries women have outgrown the roles which they were previously bottled in, but they seem to be struggling to conquer the entrepreneurial sphere.
The numbers don’t add up. Why are there fewer female entrepreneurs and what’s hindering them?
If you look at the FORBES list of billionaires you’ll notice there are fewer women than men on the list and even fewer of those women are self-made billionaires (56 globally in 2017) – a considerable number have inherited their wealth.
Madam C. J. Walker is someone I hold in high esteem. She is regarded as the first female self-made millionaire in America and the world&#8217;s most successful female entrepreneur of her time. She did this despite being an African-American in the late 1800s, into the early 1900s, in a racially segregated country at the time.
On our continent, we have Folorunsho Alakija from Nigeria who has made billions from a clothing business and then venturing to oil.
There is a vast difference between what an entrepreneur is passionate about and what is commercially viable. It could be for this reason you find many women gravitating to sectors such as fashion, training, consulting, cosmetics, and their fascination with social entrepreneurship.
Passion is key and there is nothing wrong with those sectors, but we need to start graduating to the next level of pragmatism and what’s possible for all humankind.
It can&#8217;t be a trend that ladies married to successful entrepreneurs usually go into philanthropy.
I’m deeply concerned about what is transpiring, for I believe women are equally or more competent than men. Women need to shatter the perception that they blossom in smaller companies whereas men tend to run bigger companies.
However, women are successful despite facing many challenges that their male counterparts don’t. Women have to balance both family life and building a business. They are also less likely to get funding.
As equal rights were granted to all, women were able to integrate into fields they would have not necessarily occupied before. However, many still feel that one could be more effective running your own business if you didn’t have to deal with kids.
With regards to women struggling to find funding, Donna Kelley, lead author of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2012 Women&#8217;s Report, states that, “Women are less likely to receive venture capital funding. The fact that those making the investment decisions are primarily men can be an influencing factor.”
Much of the reasons associated with the lack of representation of women is due to the roles assigned to gender is primarily biological. Women are seen as caring and house-based individuals whereas men are seen as decision-making and dominant individuals. This perpetuates itself in numerous business sectors.
It is even more of a challenge when you’re coming in as a female having to give direction to males that may not appreciate it.
In the business world, women are often not taken seriously or, even worse, merely reduced to a potential sex partner. Many meetings are converted to flirting sessions – and if the lady does not cooperate, she stands a chance to lose the deal. This results in women developing mistrust, and working even harder to avoid being seen as ‘sleeping their way to the top’.
Instead of hindering women in business, let them excel and dominate sectors where they are often underrepresented and yet overachieve. &#8211; Written by Paul Mashegoane

Women Need The Freedom To Achieve Greatness

When multi-award winning US star, Drake, sang “started from the bottom now we’re here”, he must have had General Thembinkosi Mthembu in mind. He is the definition of starting from the bottom.
As we meet, he holds an Africa shaped trophy in hand. Just moments before, he gave a moving speech to a room full of Africa’s business leaders, receiving loud claps and adoration. He has just been named Industrialist of the Year at the the All Africa Business Leaders Awards (AABLA).
It is a long way from Umlazi, a township in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), the province on the east coast of South Africa, where he was born. Growing up, life was tough. His father was an underpaid truck driver and his mother sold everything she could to supplement the income. It ushered in his first experience as an entrepreneur.
“I remember when I was going to school my mother would give me a packet of biscuits to sell during break time. I had no choice because my mother would say if you don’t sell there will be no money to buy your school uniform,” he says.
On weekends, he would sell fruit at the local railway station. Tough times at home meant after graduating high school, he went straight to work as a packer in a production line at Nampak Tissue where his father worked.
One day, while working the nightshift carrying heavy boxes of tissue, Mthembu broke down.
“The boxes of toilet rolls were very heavy. One of the managers found me crying. He asked me why, I then said to him for ‘how long am I going to do this?’ He said to me ‘if you want to stop doing this type of work, you need to go to university, then have office work’.”
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/entreprenuers/2018/01/31/60-year-old-industrialist/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The 60-Year-Old Industrialist </a>
It is advice he took seriously. Although there was no money to go to university, it changed his life.
He noticed that he was always home at 3PM when working the dayshift. He says he wondered what he was doing with his time from then until bedtime at about 9PM.
It ushered in out-of-the-box thinking.
He noticed the clinic next to his home had no food truck.
“I started doing research to know what people would like to eat when visiting the clinic. I went there Monday to Friday asking questions and compiling a list. From there, I had a business plan written by hand,” says Mthembu.
The next week, on his way to work, he went to a bank to apply for a loan to buy a caravan. It worked. Business boomed and he had an employee to help while he was working at Nampak Tissue.
When time came for him to evolve, he bought a pickup truck, installed seats and used it as a taxi. In just two years, he had saved enough to buy a minibus which he operated as a taxi.
He didn’t stop there. In 1995, while still working at Nampak, Mthembu bought a petrol station.
“I would count money in the morning before going to work, take stock from the tanks [and] if I have to place orders I will order the supervisor to phone Shell to deliver petrol and diesel. I remember it was very difficult because I never had an account with Shell. Every time I needed stock I had to pay cash before they delivered,” he says.
At the time, his dedication had earned him a promotion to plant manager at the Durban Nampak plant. But it didn’t last. The plant was running at a loss. Everybody was retrenched and Mthembu was asked to move and manage the Pretoria plant.
“I could not see myself living in Gauteng. I was born in KZN and I don’t believe if you want to succeed you must move to Gauteng because you can progress anywhere as long you work towards your goals.”
It meant he was also retrenched along with about 70 other employees.
“After two weeks, Nampak came back to me and said ‘what about you buying these machines, converting the same product and selling back to them?’”
It was a good opportunity but a hard decision to make.
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Mthembu knew the business had been running at a loss of R6 million ($465,000) per year. He also knew that he understood the operations side of the business, which could yield better profits. Before making a decision, he got help from a finance person to make sense of the opportunity.
It took them two months of punching the numbers before he signed on the dotted line. It was the moment, 12 years ago, Mthembu Tissue Converting was born.
After 24 years, he was now an owner and not an employee. It wasn’t easy.
“I tried to recruit people I worked with from Nampak. Most people did not want to join me. They were saying working for a black person will mean they will not get paid. Eventually though I managed to get 36 people,” he says.
It wasn’t the end of the battle. Suppliers Nampak had used for years also didn’t want to work with Mthembu.
“They did not want to do anything with me when I took over the business. They said to me I must make upfront payments before they deliver raw materials, which was so difficult. I was worried that the business might collapse and how I would pay staff in that event.”
Mthembu says he had to be very strict. For three years he worked with no salary.
The worst period came in 2006 when the products they sent to Nampak in Cape Town failed the compliance test. He lost R280,000 ($21,700) as the tissues had to be sold as rejects.
“This was the worst period. To correct this, I had to implement [a standards] system in the plant to prevent it from happening again… The biggest lesson in my entire journey was to be focused and have systems in the business that work well and to always follow business goals.”
In 12 years, Mthembu Tissue Converting, once the Durban Nampak branch, has grown from employing 37 people to 104 people, from making 400 tons of tissue to 750 tons, and operating at a loss of $465,000 to turning over $18.6 million.
Mthembu, like Drake, sure knows how to start from the bottom.

From Packer To CEO

It has been a year since FORBES AFRICA lost one of its staunchest supporters and readers, Colonel Satya Pal Wahi. He was an ardent admirer of our magazine and the great stories of African entrepreneurship in it.
In India’s industrial and business world, Col. Wahi was a legend himself, having had a highly-decorated career in the armed forces and then, as a corporate titan.
Through him, stories of Africa reached the pristine parks and walking trails of Gurugram (formerly Gurgaon), about 32kms from India’s capital New Delhi, home to some of the biggest Fortune 500 companies.
In his later years, on his morning walks in the park, he carried copies of FORBES AFRICA. There was always an erudite audience looking forward to impromptu conversations with the genteel, illustrious Col. Wahi.
Thus, the doyens of business in Africa, 8,000kms away, invariably became a part of Gurugram’s misty mornings.
Col. Wahi visited South Africa many times, and also the offices of FORBES AFRICA, when he regaled staff with rapturous stories of his own leadership journey. His lessons and legacy are being carried forward by his son, Rakesh, who was also in the Indian Army and is co-founder of FORBES AFRICA. His grandson, Sid, is the Executive Director of the magazine.
Col. Wahi, born in Khushab, a small village near Lahore in what is now Pakistan, went on to do his engineering at the prestigious Banaras Hindu University in India and thereafter attended the Indian Military Academy. He worked with some of India’s greatest political leaders such as Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi.
He says in his book, Leading From The Front: From Army To Corporate World: “I have never bowed down to anyone and have learned to stand on my own legs and fight my own battles.”
The book vividly illustrates him as a man with an insatiable hunger for knowledge and information; his attitude to rebel against injustice remained with him throughout his working life.
The Indian Army gave him a strong foundation for leadership. On retiring from the army, he served many corporate enterprises, including Bokaro Steel Plant, Bharat Heavy Electricals and Cement Corporation of India.
A leading light in India’s energy sector, he was inducted into the Oil and Natural Gas Commission (ONGC) in June 1981 as chairman of the public sector behemoth. He was a firm believer that an organization or individual, which does not grow, stagnates and finally decays.
His decade-long stint at ONGC coincided with the development of Bombay High offshore oilfields and he is credited with contributions in raising India’s oil output from 9 million tons to 32 million tons per annum. He brought about several paradigm shifts, modernizing office facilities and setting up training centers for ONGC.
His contribution in India’s various public sector undertakings is unparalleled. Of the array of awards he has won is one of India’s most shining medals: the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian honor, which he received in 1988. He is the recipient of the Giants International Award and Indian Geophysical Union’s Silver Jubilee Award. He was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award Petrotech in 2007. To recognize his contribution to the energy sector, he was conferred the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013. He was also a recipient of the degree of Doctor of Science (honoris causa) from three Indian universities.
Col Wahi passed away on 13 February last year, at the age of 88, leaving an aching void and an empty park bench southwest of Delhi.

Remembering A Corporate Legend

Opulent. There is no other word to describe Thandi Dombo.
The red carpet to her lounge, L’Opulence, in the heart of Sandton, Africa’s richest square mile, is fit for a queen. Like its inspiration, Dubai, the city of gold known for its bling and bravado, her lounge is gilt-edged and framed in rich navy overtones.
“I was in Dubai when the idea to build L’Opulence came about. I said ‘this is what you call opulence’. It was over the top, full of glitz, glamor and it was in your face. I came back home and built a place inspired by that. People come here for an experience. It’s a destination where you put an effort to dress up and go out to eat,” says Dombo.
In just two years, L’Opulence has as its clients South Africa’s affluent. That’s not all.
Just two days before our meeting, Dombo launched Purple Orchid, a company supplying event planners luxury décor.
“There was music, dance, good food and great décor pieces that I will definitely be getting for my wedding. They are all things that are new. Things I haven’t seen at events yet,” says bride-to-be Nicole Nkala who attended the launch.
She may not be an author, but Dombo says she has a book of ideas. She says the biggest lesson in her life is that preparation meets opportunity.
“If you’re not prepared and doing the work, opportunities are going to miss you,” she says.
She has been preparing for this from the age of 10, working for her parents. At 15, she swapped the comfort of family business for the ruthless world of retail.
“I went and looked for a job at CNA [a South African store] because work ethic was important to me. I needed to find my own job and not be a boss’s daughter at work because you get special treatment,” she says.
It meant three years of hard labor and lessons.
After high school, she left to study hospitality before finding work with the Carnival Cruise Line based in Florida, United States. She then went on to become the Restaurant Manager of Champagne French Bakery in Irvine, California. Her final stint overseas was as Executive Housekeeper for Norwegian Cruise Lines in Hawaii.
“I came in as a manager at 21 years old,” she says. It wasn’t easy.
At her first job, on a cruise ship, she had a boss she says was scary. One day, she made a mistake that could have cost her her job.
“The way the cruise ship operates is that the guests would leave their luggage outside. We’d come in at night with the crew and we’d need to take all the luggage down for embarkation and then it goes into the containers to get shipped. I forgot to schedule two floors which is about 500 rooms,” she recalls.
It was a serious mistake. She called her mom, back in South Africa, howling into the phone.
“I said ‘please get me a ticket, I am going back home. I can’t do this’. My mom said ‘take the good and the bad of it, he’s teaching you’.”
Armed with her mother’s words of wisdom, she convinced her team members to help her pack the rest of the guests’ bags before the boss realized something was wrong. It worked.
“As scary as that moment was and as he was, he taught me tough standards. He is my favorite boss of all times. I knew I went off as a sponge absorbing everything so that good or bad, it’s great,” says Dombo.
When the time was right, she came back home to South Africa, to become an entrepreneur. The years working and learning meant she had an eye for opportunities to make money.
First, she acquired shares in her family’s Engen garage. Then when she needed food to eat, in the East Rand, and got nothing on par with her expectations, her experience in hospitality came in handy. It took her 10 days to convert a container into a kitchen. There, she sold food like pap and stew, salads, rice, cakes and muffins. It tripled her revenue.
“It was great money and I loved it but I knew I could do more. While keeping an eye on more opportunities, I continued with the Engen garage, we revamped it and the revenue spiked.”
In 2008, she expanded. She founded MAD Functions, which operates in South Africa and Zimbabwe and employs 80. In addition to L’Opulence, Purple Orchid and others, MAD Functions owns and rents out units inside prestigious estates like Baronetcy Estate Private Villas in Cape Town and Pezula Golf Estate in Knysna.
In the world of social media and instant gratification on Instagram, with such successful businesses, it would be easy to show off. But, according to Dombo, authenticity is key.
“Always remain grounded and true to yourself… I’ve realized the importance and need to stay true to what my brand is and what I am trying to convey,” she says.
Because her colleagues in the cruise ship all those years ago helped her keep her job, in all her businesses, Dombo stresses the importance of teamwork.
“That’s the only way a company can grow. There’s no ‘I’ in a team. From the minute the hostesses greet you, the scalers at the back and the barman in front, nobody can function without the other, including myself. Thandi cannot do everything. So if you get yourself an amazing team and treat them with respect, they will show up for you.”
Clearly, hard work, respect and unabashed opulence are paying off for Dombo.

‘I Didn’t Want To Be The Boss’ Daughter’

It was a holiday that inspired a brand-new career for anthropologist Motselisi Motsieloa Silindane.
While vacationing in the Nigerian capital Lagos, she was looking for clothes that would be the right fit for her and was enthralled by the beautiful colors and textures of fabric she saw and felt in the markets she visited.
They were random moments, but life-changing ones that inspired her to turn fashion entrepreneur and open an image consulting company, SwaaV, selling bespoke menswear.
On a Thursday afternoon at Silindane’s home in Buccleuch, in Johannesburg, South Africa, when we visit, she is in a small room that she uses as her office. It has a mirror, a built-in wardrobe and a suit ready for a customer. On her table are innumerable pins, a measuring tape and pictures of her daughter and late mother. This small space contains all her creative energy.
“I have long arms; whenever I bought clothes they usually didn’t fit and this didn’t give me the confidence to step up to the world. My host in Nigeria said I could have a garment made for me; up until that time I did not perceive I could have clothes made for me. I had the dress made,” says 39-year-old Silindane.
And it was a perfect fit.
“I felt amazing,” she says.
It was a feeling she wanted to share. When she came back from the trip, she trained as a color and image consultant while selling fabric.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2017/12/06/scars-took-far/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Scars That Took Her Far</a>
Before that, Silindane worked as a social and market researcher specializing in HIV/Aids in children.
“My passion and enjoyment keeps me going every single day; when I left anthropology, I no longer felt happy, research takes very long for things to actualize.
“When I work with men, I measure them, let them choose fabrics, and advise them on what their colors are, in this process I get to see the beginning, the end and results and the feeling of accomplishing something,” says Silindane.
In her days as a researcher, she noticed the lack of programs packaged to empower boys. It has always been ‘take a girl child to work’.
“Are we now creating an imbalanced society because that young boy is going to grow up to marry this girl who can articulate her opinions and feelings but this boy has never been given the chance?
“I realized that even though I am working with men there is no way of knowing or changing how they have grown to perceive the world. Through SwaaV, I wanted to share that awesome feeling I had when I was in Lagos, because when you look good, you feel confident, you are more pleasant to be around,” says Silindane.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2017/12/04/from-mille-to-a-million/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: From Mille To A Million</a>
Silindile works by herself and outsources material. She extricates a well-fitted navy suit with a personalized message ‘Shine’. She says her clients like these messages.
“I chose to work with men because if there’s one person who is happy in the world then the whole world is transformed.”
Her suits can cost from R10,000 ($754) to R45,000 ($3,392). Her first order was for R50,000 ($3,768), but Silindane won’t forget it in a hurry.
“My first order was from a gentleman who had just landed from Cape Town; we met at a restaurant in Sandton for two hours, I shared my vision with him, and he asked me to make suits for him,” she says.
“The jackets were all wrong, they were not well-fitting, and the measurements were off. I got my second and third order from him; I also got referrals from him because I fixed it and made sure it was perfect.”
2011 was a tough year for her; her biggest cheerleader, her mother, died and her bank account was empty.
“I was undercharging; I lost more than R250,000 ($18,000); and at the same time, I had to make a payment of R20,000 ($1,505). I had the exact amount in my account, so I was left with nothing. That moment in my life was just too hard. I stayed in bed, in the dark, and I’d only wake up to go to the bathroom,” she recalls.
Thankfully, those days are behind her. Silindane has launched an online store and sock range, has also dressed Richard Branson, and on her Facebook page, followers call her the ‘first lady of suits’. Clearly, she has made the cut. &#8211; Written by Yonela Mgwali

Making The Cut – From An Empty Bank Account To Dressing Richard Branson

Like thousands other school graduates in the platinum rich North West province in South Africa, Lucky Moabi had no other prospects but to join the procession of the unskilled labor on the road to the mines.
Moabi matriculated at Nkobong High School in Kraalhoek village, North West, and sought employment at the Swartklip mine, just a few kilometers from his home. Within two years at the mine, he was promoted from general worker to maintenance planner – a job he wasn’t qualified for.
“It’s not about the qualifications as such but it’s about the character that you have, what you’re giving to the company. You have to take ownership, even if you’re a cleaner… and do whatever you do with pride. Those efforts can never go unnoticed and you’ll be moved from one step to another,” he says.
In 2009, Moabi’s hunger for more saw him studying strategic supply chain management at the University of South Africa (Unisa). He burned the candle at both ends as he supplemented his mine salary with a small business selling computers.
In 2012, after completing his course at Unisa, Moabi took another short business course. At the age of 34, he quit his job to start the company, Moabi Lwazi.
“I told my boss that I’m resigning and I’m going into business. I didn’t have a registered company, I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew I was going into business. How? I didn’t care,” says Moabi.
He started providing and repairing pneumatic and hydraulic cylinders for the mines and other government parastatals, such as Eskom and Transnet.
To grow his company, Moabi approached Dragons’ Den, a reality television show where contestants pitch their business ideas to secure investment from venture capitalists. Moabi offered 40% of his company in exchange for R500,000 ($35,000).
Getting that investment was a cinch compared to what he met when he went back to the mines looking for business.
Just like any other entrepreneur, Moabi came across many lows but his lowest was when he was out of business for two years, despite investing R850,000 ($60,000) from his life savings into machinery. The mines told him they were not going to support him unless he had that machinery.
“Two years passed and not even a single order was placed from them,” says Moabi.
That part of the journey caused sleepless nights for him. Although he came from the mining environment, Moabi struggled to open doors at the mines.
Moabi believes in learning until you stop breathing. Those hardships are what drives him and led to him changing the way he operates. Today, he is in the process of setting up operations in Botswana.
He is also passionate about helping others. He’s involved in the Innovative Minds program, which get successful members of the community to mentor high school children.
Despite being run by someone without a background in business, Moabi Lwazi has been alive for five years. This is the definition of persistence and consistency.
Moabi also recently started a record label, RAMM. There is no business reason behind this, he says, just his love and passion for music.
Moabi’s motto ‘nobody is born an entrepreneur’ is evident from his own journey. Money and qualifications shouldn’t be hindrances to success; having ideas that work is what makes an entrepreneur prosperous. &#8211; Written by Nomsa Legodi

The Fortunate Lucky

I am inordinately held up in Manhattan’s unpredictable traffic even as Bisila Bokoko waits endlessly for me at the Les Ambassades patisserie in Harlem. She has promised to show me around the African-American neighborhood with its vibrant alfresco cafes, arty hotspots and cultural hubs.
She is about to finish her third cappuccino and a plate of Senegalese rice when I show up, hoping she hasn’t left. But despite the two-hour wait, she’s a picture of calm.
We soon walk the streets to Apollo Theater, the legendary Harlem performance hall, ending our May evening jaunt at Red Rooster, the restaurant run by Ethiopian celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson, another famous African export. The place is packed for a week night and there are many regulars by the stylish smoke-filled bar who wave to Bokoko.
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All along, we have been chatting about Africa, a continent she visits more than three times a year. Her kohl-lined eyes light up every time she mentions her umbilical cord connection to the land of her dreams.
Bokoko is many things at the same time – businesswoman, motivation speaker and TV personality – but she is also a wine entrepreneur, and very much like the boutique wines she sells – “wines with an African accent made in Spain”.
Born in the port city of Valencia in Spain to parents from Equatorial Guinea, Bokoko lives in New York – in a penthouse apartment in Manhattan – but straddles continents, sometimes doing as many as six flights a week. She calls herself “a cultural hybrid”.
“I live out of a suitcase, but you really live within yourself. The suitcase is irrelevant, I am happy and home wherever I am,” says Bokoko. The secret, she says, is devoting the first four hours of the day to her body, mind and soul.
“I am at the gym at five every morning. I pray, meditate, exercise and organize my day. It’s always about efficiency and focus.”
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Work often takes her to Valencia. Her wine business has been profitable and she recently invested in a 19th century building, “like a castle”, in Spain for her winery. Currently, she sells 12 different categories of wine and 40,000 bottles a year in Spain, China, Latin America and some parts of West Africa.
Besides her eponymous wines, she is also founder of the Bisila Bokoko African Literacy Project, bringing books and libraries to children in Ghana, Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe. She is soon opening a library in Senegal, and South Africa is also on the cards for 2018.
“Most of the African stories are being lost. I was born in Spain by accident – my parents were there only because of the political situation in Equatorial Guinea. That is why I am so passionate about the libraries project. I was always experiencing Africa through books. Before I went to Africa with my body, I traveled with my mind. That’s why I want to gift that to the children there,” says the 43-year-old and mother of two.
The first time Bokoko stepped foot in Africa, was when she visited Ghana, the day she turned 35, as “a birthday gift” to herself. Her tryst with Africa was about to begin. It became her mission to change the image of Africa abroad.
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She had moved to New York from Spain at the age of 24, whilst doing an internship for the government of Valencia in international trade. She went on to complete an MA in International Relations in New York, while at the same time helping companies in Valencia do business in the US.
As the Executive Director of the Spain-US Chamber Of Commerce for seven years, she worked closely with leading Spanish brands such as ZARA and Mango.
Bokoko’s lawyer-father still lives in Equatorial Guinea. Her greatest blessing, she says, are her brothers. One of them is an ex-banker living in Panama; she also has a brother who runs his own consultancy firm in China.
Bokoko travels the world for speaking engagements and also owns Bisila Bokoko Embassy Services International, a boutique consultancy firm in New York.
“My biggest fear was to be an entrepreneur. I was in a comfort zone, with a paycheck and an institution to fall back on. But now, I work for Bisila Bokoko, I am my own boss,” she says.

‘A Cultural Hybrid’

<a href="https://www.printulu.co.za/"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-34109" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/printulu-logo-300x88.png" alt="" width="300" height="88" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/printulu-logo-300x88.png 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/printulu-logo.png 350w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></a>
In this electronic world, many say print is dead. But Alexander Knieps, the founder of online printing company, Printulu, echoing the words of famous author Mark Twain, says reports of this death are greatly exaggerated.
“If you look at how this industry is developing, I don’t think we are moving into a paperless industry, at least not in the next 50 years. Afterwards, I don’t know. It is all about what channel is out there and whether it is affordable,” says Knieps.
We meet Knieps at an industrial park in Modderfontein, east of Johannesburg. This is where business cards, posters, postcards, and flyers are printed for thousands of companies, media houses and coffee shops across South Africa. In a matter of minutes, a pile of paper flows from the printer.
On this spring day, the sun shines brightly and the sky is clear. The tranquillity is shaken by the loud rattle of paper being printed.
“In our age of technology, when you are studying, nobody thinks, ‘ooh, let me go into paper’. I think it is a very rare thing,” says Knieps.
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Knieps, who is born and bred in Germany, founded Johannesburg-based Printulu last year. The name is a combination of the words print and Zulu (a South African language). He studied business at EBS Business School in Germany and got his master’s degree at ESADE Business School in Barcelona, Spain.
Starting the business has been far from plain sailing.
“The first couple of months, we were completely bootstrapped. You get your first clients, you show some nice traction, and then, in the beginning of the year, we raised some funds, which were a couple of million rands, which are enough to last for the next two years,” he says.
Investors are hard to find.
“South Africa is not the easiest place to raise money. There also isn’t much money in the market because of the current economic climate. [When] it comes to online printing, people just look at the industry itself; they don’t think how you could invest deeper. There aren’t many investors and it takes a while to close deals [compared to] anywhere else in the world,” he says.
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Knieps says the future for paper printing is mass production.
“We are batching up all these smaller orders and print them in bulk and that is how you can disrupt the market. Hence, you see a shift from offline to online in the industry,” he says.
He calls on other entrepreneurs to get with the times.
“The industry is very inefficient in a way that there is a lot of competitive pressure. There are thousands of printers in Gauteng who are operating with an archaic business model.  You have inefficiency on the one side and macroeconomic pressure on the other. That is why a lot of printers are closing down even though we are growing strongly at the moment. If you see those components, it actually makes people a lot more price sensitive and that actually helps the business to scale,” he says.
Print dead? Not in the world of Knieps.

Print Money?

It’s a Sunday morning at home, in Dobsonville, Soweto; the day after my little sister’s 10th birthday party. The mechanic, who’d come to replace my car&#8217;s brake pads, could tell, by the empty beer cans in the boot and the stench of cigarette smoke, the size of the party my friends and I pursued after the little ones left. I knew at that moment that I had to go to the carwash to cleanse body, car, and soul.
A carwash is that place at the side of the road, not only for cleansing, but also eating, drinking and socializing. There are thousands in Africa and most Sundays they are packed.
I was not alone. My neighbor had a similar hangover. He looked like he had slept in the car when he rolled up his garage door. It turned out, he had.
“Sho magents” (hi gentlemen) are his first words when he sees us busy with the car. We answered back in laughter talking about the previous night and discussing the schedule for the day. All roads led to the carwash, the most important job after breakfast – after filling the cooler-box with beer in case there was a long queue of cars.
The first person we see is the owner, Thethani – meaning talk in isiXhosa. He is nicknamed Titanic because it almost sounds the same. He named the carwash after himself. Around five cars are waiting.
“Botle bo” (that beauty) is the greeting from Titanic as we drive in, it&#8217;s his business slogan. He is loud and bubbly and customers enjoy his company – one of the reasons they come.
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On this sunny Sunday, we are lucky, there is no queue. We park and take a bench in the shade before buying tripe for breakfast. We meet an old man, sitting alone, looking like he’s in his 60s; his face looks unfriendly, but respectable. To break the ice, we ask if he didn’t mind us lighting a cigarette.
It opens a can of worms. The man tells us about his life, including smoking cannabis, spending a few years in jail and having affairs with younger women. He tells us how he handles being a family man, being the head of the household and marrying off his children. The carwash, at that moment, feels like a classroom, while cars and taxis are hooting as they drive past on the busy road with loud music playing.
We are seated with folded arms listening to the teacher and asking questions, trying to understand his life and learn from it.
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The man with the stories sees his car is clean. We stand up, taking turns to shake his hand. We are now friends with the old man and talking about meeting up next Sunday for another wash and maybe a story. The employees whistle to move our car as well.
Our cooler-box is emptying fast. It is time to leave and the next stop is the barbershop, just a short drive on the long road; we have to look good for Monday to mask the weekend revelry. All for $17 on a Sunday.
The haircut done, the cooler-box empty, the car clean and the stomach full, it is the end of the weekend and time to head home. A lovely Sunday indeed.

The Joys Of An African Carwash

It’s a chilly Friday morning at at Lynnwood Bridge Shopping center in Pretoria, South Africa’s capital – ideal weather to talk to Dale Mazon, the entrepreneur who makes his money selling hot cups of coffee.
We are at TriBeCa Standard, one of Mazon’s 125 coffee shops in South Africa that make around $75 million a year.
The shop is buzzing and the waiters, in beige chinos, checkered shirts and navy cardigans, are kept on their toes. As we walk towards Mazon, he has a smile on his face. But it’s a smile that didn’t come easily; it was earned through blood, sweat and sleepless nights.
“I used to sleep in the shop. I had no waiter. I couldn’t afford to hire a waiter. So, I just kept doing it on my own and I kept my own tips,” chuckles Mazon, as he recalls how he started TriBeCa with his Co-Founder Martin Fitzgerald.
Mazon, from Seattle, in the United States, moved to South Africa after completing his studies at a hotel school in Switzerland.
“The coffee was shockingly bad,” is what he thought of the first cup he tasted in South Africa. That unbearable coffee triggered his dream to open his own coffee shop.
“I went in full force. I was 24 at the time. I decided that I was going to come into South Africa and make it an adventure. When I moved here I only had $300, so I had nothing. I started very simple. A friend of mine I worked with at hotel school borrowed $50,000 from his brother and that is how we started the business and everything was built from there,” says Mazon.
Though his journey has not been easy, he has managed his coffee shop business for 21 years and, since 2000, has helped retail giant Woolworths run their coffee shops.
The sustainability manager for TriBeCa, Matthew Carter, says they currently roast 120 tons of Arabica coffee a month. The bulk of their coffee comes from Tanzania, Ethiopia and Indonesia.
“We struggle a little bit with trying to get coffee out of the country on time. With Ethiopia, for instance, they had some political crises,” says Carter.
The industry in South Africa has boomed since the coffee drinkers shifted their tastes from instant to more authentic coffee.
“A lot of people are switching on to what we would call real coffee. They are also more interested in the story of the coffee and it has no longer just become a beverage,” he says.
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He adds that there is an increased consumption in gourmet coffee, non-espresso drinks such as cold brew, and brews from single-cup machines.
“Single capsules, such as Nespresso, are taking the lead because almost everyone has a little espresso machine at home,” says Carter.
It seems Mazon got into the right business at the right time.

Brewing A Coffee Empire

It was her work in the dull, dour hospital corridors, day and night, and a particular distaste for the scrubs she had to wear every day, that made Felicia Tshite come up with a way to inject a pop of color into the theater of life and death.
Tshite, a medical doctor, also incidentally a Top 25 finalist of the Mrs South Africa pageant taking place in Johannesburg in October, took her passion for fashion to the operation theater with her own line of apparel for doctors named the Dream Doctor Collection.
The idea was born in 2014, when she visited a fabric shop for the first time, and loved the touch and feel of fabric.
“It was like I had this drip of love in me and I just couldn’t stop,” recounts Tshite.
But she had to keep her enthusiasm on hold as her studies consumed most of her time.
“When you are studying to specialize, there is no time for anything else. It’s just books, books and more books. So finding time to share that attention with my collection, let alone family, was not easy but I knew I had to.”
A wife and mother of two, Tshite was determined to succeed as an entrepreneur and was not ready to let anyone dissuade her. Her husband supported her.
“I have been married to that man for 18 years, and through those years, our love has grown from passion to compassion. With that has come constant support for one another and right now he is supporting me every step of the way,” says Tshite.
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Tshite has been a doctor for over a decade, but always nurtured aspirations that went beyond medicine.
“It was my big dreams and not having just one goal that gave me an idea of what to call the collection,” says Tshite.
With her bulky medical books on one side and a sketch book on the other, she studied and drew at the same time.
“I remember saying to God ‘you can’t be flashing me with all this love for this collection and then have me fail my exams’, so I knew that no matter what, I had to pass so I could have a platform to advertise my collection on.”
Tshite couldn’t tell anyone of her plans so she kept it under wraps. Only her family knew.
By the time people got an inkling of her collection, she had a complete fashion line ready to show, pamphlets and business cards ready to be distributed, as well as a website.
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Like any business, starting the collection was not easy. All she had was one tailor, one sewing machine and a garage that doubled as a studio.
“I had to step away from working for the government as a doctor because they wouldn’t allow me to sell my collection to them and work for them. I needed to expand on the collection and grow personally so I took the risk and started from the bottom,” says Tshite.
Starting from scratch meant Tshite learned through challenges how the sector worked.
“I started off selling to my own colleagues who would see me [wearing] the collection. Now I am able to sell to more individuals, from students in the healthcare sector, to nurses and doctors in the private and public sector. We now sell about 1,500 pairs of scrubs annually.”
But is it hygienic wearing scrubs not made by the hospital or of a specific material?
“People think scrubs have to be sterilized but that is not the case; they have to be clean. What has to be sterilized are; the surgeon’s arms before they enter the theater room; then the gown, latex gloves and the linen pack used to dress the patient’s bed.
“There is no regulated material used, the reason hospitals use 100% cotton is because they wash all the scrubs and other linen using one temperature on the machines,” says Tshite.
Tshite has been able to expand her range. Starting off with just one collection put together in her garage, today, she offers platinum, gold, silver and bronze ranges in various price points. Having worked in the health sector, she knows her target market well.
It may seem that Tshite has exchanged her stethoscope for a measuring tape, but she hasn’t. She practises as an aesthetics doctor twice a week. Be it medicine, fashion or an upcoming beauty pageant, she seems to have her work cut out for her. &#8211; Written by Keketso Majoe

Fashion In The Operation Theater?

Besides family, South African restaurateur Yente Pienaar shares something else in common with world tennis legend Roger Federer.
And that is the word ‘serve’, which she does well in her restaurant, far from the flashy center courts of Wimbledon.
A second cousin to Federer, 29-year-old Pienaar owns and runs the Meet on Milner restaurant on Milner Street in the heart of Waterkloof in South Africa’s capital Pretoria.
On any given day, the place is teeming with locals and diplomats – few know she is related to tennis’ numero uno.
“I wouldn’t say people come here because of who I am related to. Like only some people know we are second cousins. I have only seen [Roger Federer] twice. He has never been here but my aunt and uncle [his parents] have a couple of times,” says Pienaar.
Multi-faceted, as a young student, she won entrepreneur of the year at her high school, the Saint Mary’s Diocesan School for Girls, Pretoria. Today, she has the drive and savvy to compete with any man in the restaurant business.
Meet on Milner is a sophisticated meeting place covered floor-to-ceiling with art, bringing to life the quiet, sleepy street and neighborhood it is located in.
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Born and raised in Kwaggafontein, in South Africa’s Mpumalanga province, Pienaar combined her love for cooking, fashion and photography to start her restaurant at the age of 25.
“My mom hated cooking. In the evenings, we would have a choice between toasties or avo on toast. So I got really fed up, and would trade my McDonald’s for cucumber sandwiches. Then I just started making my own food and then later started my own herb garden,” says Pienaar.
This love for cooking continued into her high school years. Pienaar was never one to settle for the ordinary, she would always use her skills to make life better and brighter.
“Even though I went to a nice boarding school, the food could get boring, so I always [enhanced] my food by buying stuff from Pick n Pay. I would always have extra stuff so people would come to me and say, ‘please, like spice up my dish’.”
With an upbringing that advocated imagination and a go-getter’s attitude, Pienaar had dreams and the zeal to fulfill them.
“I always knew when I was small that I wanted to be the editor of Vogue and I wanted to have a restaurant. Those were the two things on my list. So I have got a restaurant now, and it’s been four years,” says Pienaar.
Next on her list is to be an editor, and she is determined.
“I went to TUKS where I studied visual communications. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do but I knew I wanted to go into the arts field. Then I did my honors in drama and film, and that’s another thing I really like and I would like to make a film one day. Creative art directing is what I like.”
The same passion Federer has for the racket, she has for the ladle.
Her restaurant is an amalgamation of two outlets that were earlier a tea room and a 75-year-old pharmacy.
“When I was working at a guest house, I would always drive by the tea room and think this was just a great location.
“I came here with my mother and told her there was such potential. Then I spoke to my parents and told them that I don’t know how this all works, could they help me with a loan, and then they said they would see,” says Pienaar.
It took Pienaar two visits before she could strike a deal with the owners of the tea room. At first, the price was too high and Pienaar left with no deal but she was not ready to give up.
As she traveled back and forth to work daily, she could see the shop was getting emptier attracting fewer customers. It was then Pienaar went to put her offer on the table again.
After being persistent, the owners of the tea room finally gave in to her offer and she began the renovation process.
With the help of her parents, she started her restaurant.
“They are like my bank, my interest-free bank,” she says.
However, Pienaar was not done. After opening up Meet on Milner, she asked the owner of the chemist next door to sell her his store if he ever retired.
“I thought he would retire in maybe two or three years but he came back to me about five months later and told me he is ready to retire. I was shocked and I sure wasn’t ready financially but I knew I wanted the space, and so did many other people, so I bought it.”
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Meet on Milner attracts the residents of Waterkloof and diplomats from the embassies nearby.
“The food and the service are just different from other restaurants. Your meal always looks different from the last one you had which makes it taste like a new experience every time,” says Beau van Zyl, one of the regulars here.
“I love how the staff takes time to know us, even Yente. And as you can see they even have linen table cloths which you just don’t see anymore,” adds Claudia Dalebout, another regular customer.
Pienaar now plans on incorporating more theme events at the restaurant, such as ‘singles mingle’, as she met her boyfriend here. And then some.
“I love Johannesburg and I would love to expand into Johannesburg. Maybe the next year or so, I could have a ‘Meet on…’ on any street,” adds Pienaar on her future plans.
“I guess the next challenge for me is to become the editor of Vogue. I think Africa needs a Vogue, don’t you?” she says, with a smile.
More hits than misses, Pienaar seems to be making all the right moves.  &#8211; Written by Keketso Majoe

The Link Between Federer And Food

My friend Adewale, fondly called ‘Dewale Alapere (meaning ‘Dewale the basket weaver), grew up on a farm in southwest Nigeria. He was raised by parents who could only afford to live in a mud house and sleep on bamboo beds. It was only when he left for the University of Ilorin that he had an opportunity to watch television.
He and his family were classified as poor while he was growing up, but ‘Dewale has a passion that circumstances could not deprive him of. While his siblings were eager to receive Christmas clothes and looked forward to the luxury of once-a-year rice and chicken, he would insist that his portion of the fund be diverted to purchase his schoolbooks. As a young boy, his main desire was to improve.
Today, ‘Dewale is a highly placed leader and excellent manager of resources in one of the top foreign banks in Nigeria. His dedication to personal improvement has impacted his community, family and the organizations he worked at. I have been told that ‘Dewale would often meet his business target latest by the third quarter.
The last time I visited him, and checked his personal library, it was impressed upon me that personal transformation is impossible without private responsibility and the desire to improve one’s knowledge. This is the reason why notable people, in any economy, are usually people of “notes and table”. They sit, study, strategize and execute. ‘My friend has moved beyond ‘Dewale Alapere, whose job was to weave baskets, to a PhD holder who works with a top performing Nigerian bank.
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The story of my friend can be compared to an average start-up in many parts of Africa. Seeing a start-up grow into a profitable business is often like seeing someone walk on water. Africans are incurable optimists, but are not quick to embrace mental development. We desire big breakthroughs while not being willing to cultivate our minds. In reality, the journey from rags to riches, grass to grace, is an internal one.
Similarly, the law of progress says “first within and then without”. All progress remains at a state of rest until a mental force is applied. Emphasis has to be on mental work; it is this that gives value to physical work.
In any organization where individuals do not improve mentally, its cutting-edge potential will be blunt. With this in mind, it is important for African entrepreneurs to invest in personal improvement.
A business’ slow growth and a country’s underdevelopment is the result of society’s neglect of the principle of progress. The principle of progress gives creative power and leverage for everybody, irrespective of location, race or gender.
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An entrepreneur needs to consciously work on a variety of things things, such as professional skills, soft skills, business image, personal image, market share, marketing strategy and business processes. It is good to set goals in these areas.
Irrespective of the level of success, it is important to have an attitude that celebrates the present while creating a better experience for tomorrow. When others see the best local brand, you should see the best international brand.
There can be no progress for an entrepreneur whose knowledge base is struggling to catch up with the present business sphere. It is smart to research, develop ideas, and work on projects.
Research shows that smart entrepreneurs are committed to daily improvement for many years. If you study for five more minutes each day, you’ll amass an additional 1825 study minutes in a year. Every tiny effort can catapult you towards success.
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Every human’s brain has the same potential. The most successful people have stretched their minds to achieve what others feel impossible. They are the billionaires we celebrate.
My personal belief is that if they can achieve it, then you and I can. We can all walk on water. &#8211; Written by Victor Mamora

Tag: Entrepreneur

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