Nonjabulo Sikhakhane launched a financial literacy start-up the same year she completed her MBA – right after the height of the pandemic. As a black woman with an innovative business idea, it hasn’t been easy to establish herself as an entrepreneur, but she’s learned some valuable lessons along the way and is spreading the gospel of better money management and start-up savvy.
As a young black woman trying to make it with her own start-up, Nonjabulo Sikhakhane, 33, admits that people often question her when she talks business. “I usually encounter two kinds of stereotyping,” she says.
“Firstly, on account of being a woman and then, also because I am black. I feel as if I have to prove myself constantly.”
But having an MBA next to her name has given her the confidence to put herself and her ideas out into the world, while proving to the sceptics that she has the knowledge to back it up. The credibility it gives her has been a huge help to her company, Mboma Financial Services, allowing her to share her passion for financial literacy widely.
She may come across as confident and erudite today, but Nonjabulo acknowledges she was wary about starting her own business – she’s well aware that most small businesses in South Africa are doomed to fail.
According to some estimates, 70-80% of small businesses in the country fail within the first five years, with cash-flow and revenue problems being the main reasons.
Mboma Financial Services has been running for almost two years now and is going from strength to strength.
Nonjabulo employs three contract workers and has an expanding client base.
Looking back on her entrepreneurial road so far, a few things stand out for her as key lessons:
1. Test your business idea – rigorously
Nonjabulo became aware of how desperate the need for financial literacy is in South Africa during her first job in customer service and later in her sales role at Absa Bank.
“People think only uneducated people struggle with managing their money, but I saw many educated people like young doctors and other professionals crippled by poor financial choices.”
She knew that by the time people started earning money and accumulating debt, there was a lot of financial unlearning they had to do and that teaching financial literacy in high schools could help inculcate the basics early on – the need for contingencies like savings, emergency funds and retirement funds, for example.
With South Africans increasingly turning to credit to deal with soaring food prices and consumer inflation –some estimates that as much as one-third of the population is caught in a spiral of debt – the issue of financial literacy is never more pertinent.
Nonjabulo saw the problem and a potential business solution. She was struck by the fact that financial literacy was not taught in school curricula and envisioned a programme that addressed basic financial well-being.
To translate this into a successful start-up, however, she realised she had to hone her own business expertise. Nonjabulo enrolled for a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) at Milpark Business School, using her time to not only gather skills but to stress-test her business idea with lecturers.
Her MBA lecturers offered advice that proved invaluable – like direction on how to get accreditation for her programme.
2. Be careful with your spending
Being raised by a single mother made Nonjabulo conscious about her spending habits, teaching her the importance of managing her money wisely from an early age.
She used to keep the money given to her for the tuck shop, saving it for important events at school like educational trips or fund-raisers.
Later, when she started working and earning, she was proactive about the ordinary, day-to-day expenses that so many people overlook, making it a habit to bring lunch to work, for instance. “People would ask why I did that. I’d tell them that if you spend R50 a day on lunch, that comes to R250 a week and R12 000 a year. Do you really want to be wasting money like that?”
She approaches her business with the same cautious mindset, employing contract workers instead of permanent staff members. And although schools have responded to her financial literacy programme with overwhelming positivity, she is careful about growing too quickly – she would rather ensure that she is able to deliver a quality programme to the clients she already has, keeping product integrity and maintaining the best quality of teaching and programme structure to keep her business sustainable in the long term.
3. Network, network, network
“It was important for me to get my name out there,” says Nonjabulo, explaining that, when she started, nobody knew her in the education and entrepreneurial space.
She had worked for a bank, had good qualifications and a reputation in a professional sphere – but that was not enough.
“I had to get out of my cocoon and become more active on social media,” she recalls.
She started making videos about financial planning and devised marketing strategies.
“One of the challenges of being a small business is that there is no money for big campaigns.”
Nevertheless, she learned to utilise the free platforms available, like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
She is also involved in community work and with charities and on entrepreneurship programmes and business courses, which, she says, helps to organically build relationships and grow her network. Whenever she can, Nonjabulo signs up for programmes and attends industry events.
When she eventually quit her job following the pandemic and told her family and friends she was starting her own business, many were sceptical.
It felt like an especially precarious climate to forgo a monthly salary. Nonjabulo used her pension fund as seed money, and fortunately, after only one year, she was able to start paying herself a salary.
She is excited about the future and the feedback she has received for her programme – from teachers and from the learners themselves, who realise that the value of money and managing it well is more than fuel for fantasies of flashy cars and big houses: it means safety, it means securing a future, it means freedom.
Planning for the future is something Nonjabulo remains ever-passionate about.
Even as success comes, she is still careful with her money. Most days, she still brings her own lunch to work. “You must practise what you preach!” she said.
BUSINESS REPORT