Thamani Group Turns 8 Today!

Thamani Group turns 8 today! Whew, What an adventure!??

Last week I was speaking to Monnapula Jacob Maijane , Thamani’s 2nd Hire 8 years ago, I told him “Pule, you can’t ever leave Thamani, or else I will have to close everything down” he laughed and said there is no place he would rather be for the rest of his life.? Pule is now 1 of 8 directors in our group of companies. He then asked me what are the things I have learnt over the years, I took some time and decided to pencil them.??

The Nuggets of Wisdom Picked up Along the Way?

Foolish Persistence??

You need to have foolish persistence when starting your own business, I say foolish because often it doesn’t make sense to stay the course. Twelve?months into the start-up, Tebogo Sehume and I were making R11 500 pm. We had 3 retainer clients; one?paying us R8000, another R2000, and the other?R1500. This was the?sum total of our?first year’s effort at building a business, R11 500 pm. We had a rent expense of R4500, before lights and water, for a room in Parktown, and an employee we were paying R3500.??

We didn’t have any of the luxuries we had while?still in corporate; the medical aid, cell phone contracts etc. In fact, I recall the number of times my airtime ran out mid a business development call. I would even be tempted to send the prospect a ‘please call me’.???

But Tebz and I had a few things working in our favour, we had us,?we had foolish persistence. We believed things had to work out and trusted that if we?kept beating the?wall, it would eventually have to fall, even if it was 10 years later.?

Great things take time??

If you had told me that we would be employing 130+ people today I would have asked, ‘Which tree are you smoking?’. Humans completely over estimate what can be achieved in a year and underestimate what can be done in a decade. A majority of us want to get to the century by making big wins, but that’s rarely well executed. I’ve learnt the power of being happy with a single run, and the counterintuitive truth is, you get to the century quicker than the one shooting for big gains. The fastest way to get somewhere is often the slowest way. So, hurry up and wait!???

9/10 years of growth?

We have been fortunate to grow every single year we have been in business, often doubling each year. We have had 9 financial year ends, and are in our 10th one this year. Our plan is to have 10/10 years of growth. The year we stop growing we all going to sulk for days, we are all super passionate about growth. Growth means we get to do more good, hire people and change lives and?most importantly, impact the country.??

When I consider what has made us grow each year a few things come to mind. All (8) directors in the group are genuinely the nicest people you will ever meet, always happy to help, humble and extremely hard working. No one will outwork Team Thamani! Being a nice human and working hard goes hand in hand. People do business with people they like, and?the most undervalued resource in starting a business is the ability to show up, always show up.??

7200 salaries??

In all our years of operation,?we have paid salaries 96 times, punctually. At our average employee count over the years, this means we have paid 7200 salaries in total. The 7200 salaries have facilitated vehicle purchases, home purchases, furthering of studies, first time on plane moments, and a lot more for our staff and the lives we impact. When we get asked what we are most proud of, this is it. It is such a special thing to be able to create sustainable jobs in our country. We try at all times to be a people first organisation something we don’t always get right, but we chase it daily. I generally find that if your staff is motivated and happy, they bring their best to work.??

The crazy story ?(This is US, a 8 year mini series )?

So here goes, 2014 Tebz and I quit our jobs and start Thamani Consulting, an Accounting, Tax and Bookkeeping business. We did this for 2 years until 2016 when @Dylan Hyslop joined the band of crazy people to start Tuta-Me an ed tech business that we dubbed ‘The Uber for Tutors.’ We ended up selling this business?to the listed PSG group later in 2019. In the same year (2016), Thuto Thane Motsie joined the band of crazy people and Thamani advisory was born; a human capital, and internal audit business. So, in 2016 we have 3 businesses running, Thamani Consulting, Tuta-Me, and Thamani Advisory. In 2017, Dylan Hyslop and I keep getting requests from people to build apps, systems and ERP’s, so we start Silicon Maboneng; a Software development house. Three?years in, we running Thamani Consulting, Tuta-Me, Silicon Maboneng, and Thamani Advisory. Thereafter, at the beginning of 2018, @Nathan Maduna joins the band of crazies. He thinks we could start an assurance business, something we have avoided since leaving Deloitte, but Nathan was persistent. So 2018, we running Thamani Advisory, Thamani Consulting, Thamani Assurance, Silicon Maboneng, and Tuta-me. Then, in 2019,?we decide to buy a bakery, Fabled Food, which supplies a lot of restaurants and prominent coffee shops in Gauteng, event planner and so forth, but what do we know about food? Absolutely nothing, but we like the business. So 2019, we running 6 businesses, and we have an opportunity to sell Tuta-Me, which?we could take. In 2020, Lock down happens, and we’re all stuck at home. I learn to build websites in lockdown, from a course I paid for on UDEMY and built a website called,?www.mydough.co.za?, which is now an ESD incubator with a difference. At that stage it was just a website, after the team saw the website, they thought, ‘Hey! You’re on to something.’ Today, MyDough employs a team of 10 and growing staff. Our platform, the MyDough Academy, now has over 1000 businesses using the platform. In 2021, we started a call centre, now employing 16 full time people. In 2022, we now taking on the challenge of building a tech-based business. We have 2 new directors who have joined the business; @Thabelo Raphala and Peter Serite. We won’t stop!???

Looking back 8 years later: After year 1 of making R11 500 pm, all signs pointed to us?stopping and going back to employment, but we didn’t. We had foolish persistence, and we are still foolish, and?still hungry. ?

I wrote Brian Joffe an email in 2021, telling him of my deep admiration of the business that is Bidvest. I told him that I admired how he built it and I wanted to be South Africa’s Black Brian Joffe. I expressed a desire?to meet him. He never replied, maybe he will one day,?all I know is that we are so excited about the future of this country despite all the challenges. There is yet so much potential here. If you don’t believe me, give a young hungry person a chance in your business and you will see.??

Thank you to all my business partners for their relentless effort at building; our clients for their support and belief in us; to our 1st three?clients who supported us with that R11 500, I recognise today how that R11 500 is worth more than R1 billion; thank you to our friends and family for being our biggest cheer leaders; and to our biggest stakeholders our staff, none of the things we do is?possible without you, thank you. ??

Lastly, we are not trees, we are never rooted anywhere.?If you are not happy where you are, you can always change your mind, change your circumstance, you can move. ?

Always stay humble, but more importantly, stay hungry and stay foolish!??

Abedster, ?

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