Thread by @KasiEnterprises

From Selling Candy and using his bedroom as his boardroom. Meet Zibusiso Mkhwanazi, the group CEO of M&N Brands who started his business for R2000 and now his business is worth R200 million.

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From a start-up capital of R2000 & a bedroom which doubled up as his office, Mkhwanazi is all too familiar with the struggles of start-ups and entrepreneurs in South Africa.

But now he epitomises how practical preparation can complement a formal education and go a long way towards one growing their own business empire.

Mkhwanazi is a former street hawker, who at some point during his entrepreneurial journey, did not possess any formal tertiary education. He only had informal training gained during his formative years selling sweets to his classmates.

“While still in primary school I learned how to make a single penny go a long way. I can say with certainty that this was when my entrepreneurial qualities were born. My mom used to buy me a packet of sweets to sell at school and for the first time I realised the value of money.

“As early as Grade 4 I made a bit of money buying and selling sweets to my classmates. I soon realised that I could maximise profits if I roped in some of my friends to do my bidding. It registered in me from a young age that the plan was not to work hard, but to work smart.

I asked my friends to sell sweets for me and I paid them in sweets. This made me more profit than when I was selling alone.”

His hands-on grooming by his mother during his formative years left a mark in his life. From a young age he developed a different relationship with money and how to generate it.

Fast-forward a few years later and Mkhwanazi recalled how at the age of 17 his mother sat him down and “was honest” that she would not be able to take him through university.

“My mom one day said, ‘son I probably won’t have enough money to take you to school’.

I had to pursue a love for commuters which I had at that time and I had to monetise it. My mom could provide R2 000 for me to pursue my dream for anything tech-related.”

During school holidays, with the informal training that he had attained while selling sweets to his classmates, he expanded his venture to street hawking at the corner of President and Small Streets in the Johannesburg inner city.

He also dabbled in fixing computers, which had started as a hobby and later helped in unlocking his new-found digital empire.

“I soon realised that just fixing computers would not get me to where I wanted to be in my business. This is when I branched off to website designing.”

Mkhwanazi founded a web design company called Csonke.com. He rounded up capable varsity students at the then Witwatersrand Technikon, which later changed to the University of Johannesburg. Together they used his rented apartment to design websites for big corporates.

“My first business Csonke.com capitalised on this fear of technology because I saw when I started in web development that IT people were doing websites and they didn’t look great at all.

They worked, but they didn’t look great and the problem was that marketers had a fear of doing technology themselves and I created a business around this.”

From these seemingly small-time endeavours, Mkhwanazi merged his small business Csonke.com with one of its biggest competitor at that time called KrazyBoys. “So we became, at the time, part of the top five biggest web development agencies. This was in 2006.”

During this entrepreneurial journey, Mkhwanazi met his business partner and co-founder Ngubane.

“Ngubane started as an employee at KrazyBoys. It was during that time together that I realised there is something in this guy and decided to involve him in my next venture,” he said.

This chance meeting gave birth to what is now South Africa’s largest black-owned and managed advertising agency Avatar. Mkhwanazi explained why the pair named the business Avatar Agency.

Mkhwanazi is also the founder of David’s League, a mentorship programme that balances issues of spirituality and business. It has seen more than 500 small businesses through its doors.

For more info:
Twitter: @Zibusiso @Avatar_ZA
Instagram: @zibusisom @avatar_agency
LinkedIn: Zibusiso Mkhwanazi
Facebook: @avataragency
Tel: [phone]
Web: avataragency.co.za