Women rise above challenges to succeed as entrepreneurs
ONE of the biggest lessons a young Carol Senosi had to learn before she could run a successful business was to learn the language of finance.
But once she had done that, she found herself the owner of a booming company.
Now Senosi, 46, is one of the five finalists of Tsogo Sun’s Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, which aim to reward entrepreneurs who have displayed excellence and flair in the running of their business. The entrepreneurs are selected from Tsogo Sun’s national enterprise and supplier development programme.
Senosi started out as a freelance make-up artist at the SABC and she occasionally sold home-made juice. While these ventures made her some money, they were not enough to help her feed her children.
Her mother, a linen-room supervisor at Tsogo Sun, was given an opportunity in 1995 when cleaning services for the hospitality chain were outsourced. She opened her own cleaning-services company and called it Revmar Hotel Cleaning Services.
“After I realised that I wasn’t making enough to support my kids, I went to work with my mother in 2003. She taught me to do the job. I was a room attendant and she taught me to love it,” Senosi says.
Things went smoothly until 2006, when her mother decided to leave the company in Senosi’s hands. When she inherited the company, she found an operation buried in a financial mess.
“I had to learn everything from how to manage the staff to how to handle the company’s finances. It was not easy. But I had to learn,” Senosi says.
She tried her hardest to keep her mother’s legacy alive, especially after she died in 2010. It was only after she let Revmar Cleaning Services go that Lefa Cleaning Services was born. Today, Lefa is the dream operation she always thought her mother’s legacy was meant to be.
“I have a co-owner, Khanyisile Ndlovu and we employ 90 people. We are responsible for cleaning 440 rooms at Garden Court Sandton. So far, things have been going well,” she says.
Lucille Cremen, another finalist in the competition, faced a different set of challenges after leaving her corporate marketing job to start up a tour company, Cresco Tours, in 2008.
Cremen faced many challenges in the increasingly sensitive tourism market.
She had to deal with the fear of the Ebola virus, the global economic recession of 2009, and the change in legislation that required parents who travel with their children into the country to do so with an unabridged birth certificate.
Cremen, who runs her business with her life partner Ian, admits it has not been easy. “There were times when we lived on bread and peanut butter, because business was bad,” she says.
But the highlights of her job, such as meeting new people, always learning, and having zero routine, kept her going. “My philosophy in life is that I don’t want to live with any regrets.
“Tsogo Sun is offering an opportunity to help me take little steps that will help me get to my bigger picture,” she says.
The other three finalists are Zinzi Masina, owner of La Emme Guest House, Meisie Nkosi of Bella Bonni Guest House, both in Mpumalanga, and Nqobile Nkosi of NQ Jewellery Design in Gauteng.
The competition has an impressive prize package for the winner, which includes a cash prize of R30 000 from Tsogo Sun, a business bursary and a chance to do professional business image consulting.
The winner will be announced on October 20.