WeeklySA_Adminadvice:Best tips are from women entrepreneurs
By Isaac Moledi
Starting your own business venture can be quite daunting, especially when the economy is topsy-turvy, and things seem uncertain. But don’t be afraid to aim high, says Ralf Fletcher, the CEO of Topco Media, the organization that organized this year’s Standard Bank Top Women Virtual Summit.
“One of the topics that will be covered at this year’s Standard Bank virtual summit is the powerful strategies that helped the speakers to build truly their successful businesses from scratch,” says Fletcher. He provides five business success tips that he says are from leading women entrepreneurs who will be addressing the over 8000 confirmed delegates at the upcoming virtual summit:
• Don’t borrow – sell your skills, says Margaret Hirsch, co-founder and executive director of Hirsch’s Home Stores in South Africa. She encourages entrepreneurs to steer clear of accumulating debt in the beginning if at all possible. “My advice to entrepreneurs is to never borrow a cent. Sell your skills in the beginning, to get yourself money. What we did at Hirsch’s is that we started small and ploughed every cent back into the business for many years.”
• Keep learning and developing yourself. Hirsch also advocates for learning and developing oneself as an entrepreneur on an ongoing basis. She revealed in an interview with Good Things Guy, that she used the lockdown period in 2020 to finish her MBA at the age of 70.
• Find your target demographic where they are: In an interview with Grand Challenges Canada, Eva Mwai, regional director for the East Africa North Star Alliance in Kenya, explained how their organisation makes their services accessible and provide quality healthcare to mobile workers and the communities they interact with. “We deliver our public health services through converted sea containers, which are strategically located along transport corridors. Of course, there you find so many people who move, including sex workers. And that is our concern. Sex workers in Africa are highly stigmatised and discriminated upon. So what we do is to hit the nail on the head by going where they are if they cannot come where we are,” says Mwai who is a passionate advocate for the health rights of children and women and has received several national and international recognitions for her role in social transformation, advocacy, and promotion of sexual and reproductive health rights of women.
• Share your resources for the greater good: According to Sodfa Daaji, founder and executive director of the African Legal Think Tank on Women’s Rights, one of the key issues was that data needs to be shared between female entrepreneurs in order to empower one another. “Women-led research efforts are so important in order for women to gain access to all the information and data they need. This way, simplified clusters of data can reach women (especially those facing increased marginalisation) who lack access to educational resources,” says Daaji,
• Pursue the things you want – don’t wait for it to come to you: Jenine Zachar, head of Enterprise and Direct Banking for Standard Bank Group, shared her view on why women make great leaders. She stated that women in leadership positions are taking great strides by pursuing the things they want in their jobs in careers, instead of waiting for it to come to them. “The key is confidence in all your resources and abilities, not just those presented on paper. The big challenge is to keep our perspectives top of mind in conversations at the corporate level, and also among family and friends, so the mindset shift can happen. Be resilient that change will come.” “The first intake of 24 learners will complete a NQF Level 2 CTFL manufacturing learnership (sewing) in October 2021,” says O’Conner, adding that an additional 24 learners are also currently on the programme and will complete their learnership in 2022. The company says it hopes to enrol a third group of learners as soon as arrangements have been completed. O’Conner said TFG’s Prestige Clothing, Bidvest and Berzacks have partnered in providing a modern working environment for its learners. Additional support has been provided by TFG community social investment.
Besides offering learnership to the deaf learners, TFG also offers internships to post graduate students who are eager to join the robust and ever changing, working world of retail. Practical work experience and exposure to the field of choice is offered to those newly graduated students thinking of pursuing a career with TFG, the company said.
Listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) Limited since 1941, the group has a successful track record when it comes to delivering desirable returns for investors and O’Çonner says they aim to continue to achieve this through a strategic focus on customer experience.
“We started off as a family owned business and have kept the best parts of that culture alive,” TFG CEO Anthony Thunstrom said.
