Ghana&#8217;s waste management mogul, Joseph Siaw Agyapong has built one of the most innovative enterprises in the country providing employment for over 250,000 employees in Ghana.
Everything was going well until an accounting error led to the worst day in his business life.
Watch the full interview with Forbes Africa&#8217;s Peace Hyde
<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2017/08/01/dirty-job-made-poor-man-filthy-rich/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: A Dirty Job That Made A Poor Man Filthy Rich</a>

My Worst Day with Ghana’s Waste Management Mogul

Atedo Peterside is one of the most respected bankers in Nigeria.
At 33 he built a billion dollar business and became founder of Stanbic IBTC Bank Plc.
But it has not all been smooth sailing.
Just at the apex of his success, his organisation was hit with a scandal that threatened to not only upend his impeccable reputation but that of the bank he had spent his whole life building.
Catch this exciting episode in an all new season of My Worst Day with Peace Hyde.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2014/06/01/why-entrepreneurs-fail/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Why Entrepreneurs Fail</a>
Watch the full video below. 
<iframe loading="lazy" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4SMPpdTyMXM" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>

W0A3605

My Worst Day With Atedo Peterside, Founder Of Stanbic IBTC

Don’t be fooled by his infectious smile and designer clothes; beneath his tough exterior is a layered story of depression and despair.
On a rainy autumn morning in Johannesburg in March, we meet Adrian Furstenburg in the small affluent suburb of Parkhurst.
Ironically, he is dressed in black – a symbol of grief – to recount the day when his design studio, including stock and equipment worth R70,000 ($5,800), burned and was razed to the ground.
“The damage was so painfully clear in the bright, winter morning light,” says Furstenburg.
To get to this story, it is important to start from the beginning.
Furstenburg was only four years old when he first said he wanted to become a fashion designer.
“I was at my granny’s house and we were watching a fashion show on television, and as we were watching, that is when I decided that this was what I wanted to do with my life,” says Furstenburg.
However, his father, a farmer, had, other plans – he wanted him to pursue law.
Somehow, Furstenburg found a way to persuade his father to allow him to enter a career not so distant from the fashion industry.
“It was the early 2000s and it was pretty cool to study graphic designing, so he said ‘that’s okay, I will pay for you to study graphic designing’,” he says.
In his last year at college, he specialized in textile design, which led to him crafting a career as a handbag designer.
“I think that is one of the wisest decisions that I have ever made, there are definitely no regrets,” says Furstenburg today.
As part of a college assignment, he was required to do a practical project.
“I weaved this beautiful piece of fabric and then I actually made a handbag. This project is where my passion for handbags started,” he says.
After he graduated, he started freelancing as a designer and stylist, set on his journey of one day being a fashion mogul selling swanky handbags.
But his worst day was lurking around the corner, ready to throw him into a state of melancholy.
It was June 6, 2012.
“The day isn’t etched into my memory. I recall it from a much deeper, more visceral part than that,” he says.
He and his business partner at the time, Nkululeko Msibi, of 2souls clothing, had recently set up a small studio just off Gandhi Square in central Johannesburg, where they produced every kind of clothing and accessory to keep their bank balances and ambitions afloat.
“We landed one of our biggest projects producing costumes for a major dance production. We spent hours planning, designing, sourcing, selecting, sewing, stitching. Their budget was strict and the schedule was even tighter with virtually no room for error,” says Furstenburg.
But a disaster that would discredit him and Msibi was about to blaze through their studio.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2017/03/01/can-burn-face-cant-burn-voice/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: They Can Burn My Face, But They Can’t Burn My Voice</a>
Furstenburg was picking up materials from a supplier before heading to the studio that Wednesday morning when he received a frantic phone call from Msibi.
“Fire was really the only word I got from the conversation,” says Furstenburg.
He describes how surreal everything felt in the bright, winter morning light when he arrived at the studio.
“The thick smell of smoke hung throughout the building. Inside the studio, sooty black licks ran up the walls where the fire had devoured our machines, stock and the rails of costumes for the production,” says Furstenburg.
This was just three days before they had to deliver the costumes to their client. They were also not business savvy-enough at the time to have insurance.
“We sat sobbing on the ashy floor. The nausea swam in my stomach as the reality of the situation gained momentum in my head.”
“I called the client, trembling. The shouting started on the telephone and didn’t stop until they left our charcoal pile with a few pieces that had escaped the flames while stored in another studio,” Furstenburg recounts.
They were livid – understandably so.
“They were so outraged, because I was dealing with their dream as well. It was a costume production. They had a look of utter hatred and disgust on their faces,” he says.
They lost the clients.
“I spent two weeks in a blur of fear and guilt… Almost no one trusted us with their work and the landlord suspected that we were to blame for negligence,” says Furstenburg.
He went home, depressed for weeks, not knowing what his next move would be.
<blockquote>“I don’t have children but my business is my child. I have fought very hard for it. Seeing it die was the worst day of my life. I took about two weeks where I didn’t know if I was going to be able to do this anymore,” he says.</blockquote>
Fortunately, it was soon established that the fire was caused by old wiring. They salvaged what they could and Furstenburg decided to change his focus from production to styling &#8211; that is how he slowly managed to recover from what was his worst day.
He started from scratch, working on freelance projects making very little money.
“It was far from ideal and barely sustainable but somehow my resolve strengthened not to allow this incident to raze me permanently,” says Furstenburg.
The passion for designing handbags ignited within, in 2013, he equipped himself with business training at the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship.
When he completed the three-month training, the center placed an order with him for 70 small, original-design messenger bags to be given as gifts to guests at an event held during one of FORBES AFRICA cover stars Richard Branson’s visit to South Africa.
“It could be said that someone else spotted what I had to offer before I had known exactly, and acting perhaps more in response to a veiled instruction than personal confidence at the time, I started making bags,” he says.
“Amusingly, whatever I might have lacked in self-belief was effectively offset by a desire to wow anyone and everyone and so I almost simultaneously entered the Independent Handbag Designer Awards of that year [in New York],” says Furstenburg.
It took four years of applications before he was accepted in 2016 into the All About the Logo by Guess Handbags category. He was the first South African applicant accepted – and the first to win. This opened doors for him locally and internationally.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/entreprenuers/2018/05/07/from-football-to-fashion/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: From Football To Fashion</a>
Furstenburg is currently working on a procurement deal with an international airline. If successful, it will be the golden game changer that takes his business to the goal of netting an annual profit of $1 million by 2019.
Six years after his worst day, Furstenburg is not without challenges. But he is continuously taking it one step at a time, ensuring that the fire he has for designing world-class handbags never burns out.
“I must admit that I get a little breathless reflecting on the trajectory that the business has followed in the last 15 months, not least because of the risks we’ve survived and the gratitude I feel to those who’ve guided and supported me,” he says.
<div id="attachment_36258" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-36258" class="size-medium wp-image-36258" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Adrian-087-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Adrian-087-200x300.jpg 200w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Adrian-087-300x450.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Adrian-087-600x900.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Adrian-087-768x1151.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Adrian-087-683x1024.jpg 683w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Adrian-087.jpg 1366w" sizes="(max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px" />Adrian Furstenburg. Photo by Motlabana Monnakgotla.</div>

Adrian-033

Burned But Not Broken; The Tale Of Fiery fashion

On the day FORBES AFRICA meets Gavin Mkhabela, the sun is shining as bright as he had hoped his future in business would be when he resigned from the banking sector. He thought he would be the person that would clean every working space across Africa, but little did he know that it would be his bank account that would be cleaned out.
At a business park in Midrand, 30kms north of Johannesburg, Mkhabela is energetic and full of life, unlike six years ago when he was broke and depressed.
“All I did was to wake up, eat and sleep again,” he says.
It started in the basement of his work place, where he had spent four hours in his car contemplating his hasty resignation.
“I like to believe that I am a very creative person and the corporate industry tends to be stagnant at times. There are certain ideas which you may not implement because they are just not ready for them. My lifestyle was also inflated but not in accordance with my income at the time,” he says.
Soon after his resignation in 2011, Mkhabela received his pension payout which he used to start his cleaning company GavCare.
“I was excited; it was my first business. I used my provident fund to start the business,” he says.
Mkhabela  used his credit cards to finance the new business.
“My fiancé and I bought everything new. We even bought a new carpet machine that was being phased out. We were just spending,” he says.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2017/08/28/slaves-debt-oh-owe/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Slaves To Debt: Oh, What We Owe!</a>
Things started well for the young entrepreneur after he received contracts with corporate giants, such as Standard Bank and Nampak, and a few local law firms.
In 2012, he sold 40% of his business. Then, in 2013, he was chosen for a business mentorship program in Germany, which was in partnership with the government’s National Youth Development Agency (NYDA).
“When I came back from the month-long mentorship program in Germany, everyone was celebrating me. They would say ‘you have made it in life’,” he says.
But his worst days were lurking around the corner.
“Out of excitement, I called my business partner to tell her that my mentor had decided to inject R2 million ($169,000) into our business, and he would donate equipment for our business.”
Soon after, his elation turned to despair.
On a cold Friday morning his business partner pulled out.
“We were at our detergent store in Tembisa when she proposed that she would like to pull out of the business… I still ran everything via my credit card and had overdrafts,” he says.
To make matters worse, GavCare was in a cash flow crisis.
“Our company’s financial controls were a mess, there was money coming into the business but more money went out. We also had more people working for us than we actually needed. Our operational costs far outweighed our income,” says Mkhabela.
He was also living beyond his means.
“My biggest mistake was to continue living a lifestyle that I lived when I was working in the corporate world. Most of my provident fund payout went to buying the company’s equipment and keeping the business afloat. I started skipping my monthly repayments, but even worse started avoiding calls from creditors,” he says.
“I got a lot of judgements under my name and was eventually blacklisted by creditors. We took business loans and I extended my credit facilities on my personal capacity in an effort to keep the business going for two years. I also went to loan sharks, an even more [costly] mistake that almost put my life at risk. It was all in an effort to survive and help my financial situation every month the loan amounts from the loan sharks will increase as I couldn’t settle them.”
He then fell into depression.
“One by one, I kept losing things and getting more in the red. I got depressed&#8230; My relationship with my fiancé also started to suffer, because I had no financial contribution to the relationship. You know when the man loses the ability and the power to provide, you drive your woman away,” he says.
Mkhabela then got the dreaded call.
“All I did for months was to sleep, wake, eat and sleep again. Then the repossessor called me,” he says. “They took my [VW Golf] GTI, my furniture and every other thing I had worked so hard for. Luckily my house was paid up,” he says.
“It was at that point that I realized that I needed to get up and do something,” he says.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2017/12/08/south-african-billionaires-fortune-plunges-2-billion-day-amid-accounting-scandal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: South African Billionaire&#8217;s Fortune Plunges More Than $2 Billion In A Day Amid Accounting Scandal</a>
Even though he was down, he was not out of ideas.
“I bounced back in 2014, when I decided to become a financial advisor so that I could save others from being in the same situation as me,” he says.
Mkhabela says he now has over a thousand clients. In 2016, he published his book, Financial Planning 4 What? The book addresses the problems experienced by many regarding personal finance.
“I wrote the book on financial planning and started developing an interest in educating people about financial management from a personal and business finance point of view. It stems from my whole experience because all that was needed was proper financial controls and proper planning,” says Mkhabela.
Looking back, he wishes he did things differently with his business and his business partner.
“I did a lot of introspection in the manner in which I ran things, because I studied a business course,” says Mkhabela.
Mkhabela’s worst day was a lesson that can’t be taught in lecture halls. It is also a lesson he’ll never forget.

Tag: My Worst Day

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA

My Worst Day with Ghana’s Waste Management Mogul

My Worst Day With Atedo Peterside, Founder Of Stanbic IBTC

Burned But Not Broken; The Tale Of Fiery fashion

‘I Started Avoiding Calls From Creditors’