African Entrepreneurs Reveal The Toughest Situations They’ve Had To Deal With.
How we made it in Africa asked some of the continent’s most dynamic entrepreneurs to share the toughest situations they’ve found themselves in as business owners, and how they overcame these challenges.
1. Tumi Phake, founder and CEO, Zenzele Fitness Group
Zenzele Fitness Group is a South African gym management business which operates fully-equipped health clubs for, and in partnership with, various large companies and universities.
“The toughest situation was being able to source funding and meet my deadline with a client to be able to open on the specific date. I remember about a year ago, it was a very tough situation, because banks at the time had a very slow turnaround time because of my lack of track record and lack of proven concept. Sometimes it would take three to six months to source funding — just back and forth of wanting additional information. The client didn’t even know. From the client’s point of view, everything was perfect.
“How I mitigated it was I spoke to my suppliers who I was buying equipment from, and they trusted me — so they actually delivered the goods before I paid them because they trusted that I would be able to pay for the equipment. On the day the stuff was delivered, I think the money was just confirmed — I hadn’t physically paid my suppliers. But my suppliers went and installed the equipment. And normally people wouldn’t do that. I actually had no deposit, I had put zero deposit on the deal. But they still took the risk to install the stuff — this was R2m (US$138,000) worth of equipment. I think I paid them a week later.
“I think it is all about creating good relationships and people trusting you, because you will find yourself in situations like that where you can’t deliver things on time and people that trust you will back you up, they will support you because they know at the end of the day you’ll stick to your word. When you’re first starting up as a business, when people invest in the business, they also invest in the person.”
2. Raphael Afaedor, CEO, Supermart.ng
Supermart.ng is an online retailer that allows users to shop from supermarkets and retail outlets across Lagos, Nigeria.
“It’s difficult to talk about a particular group of experiences being the toughest because every week comes with incredibly tough challenges. Many a times, I wake up thinking this week is when it all ends — the week when I will be unable to make payroll or some other important thing breaks. But I learned that companies die when the entrepreneurs give up, not when the entrepreneurs are executing. So I wake up and forge on and somehow things sort themselves out.” Read more here https://bit.ly/2jZdT1M
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