You’ve achieved your career goal. Now what?
Entrepreneurial advice from the founder of imed Tech Group and 3DIMO Nneile Nkholise.
One Of the first things we
learn in school is to study hard to achieve a successful career. Professional goals are a big part of life for many of us, and there’s endless advice on how to achieve them. But what if you’ve already succeeded? Do you settle and stop or push onwards, creating new goals?
Nneile Nkholise’s work has earned her several awards, including Forbes 30 Under 30 and the Presidential Award for Science, Innovation and Technology at the South African Youth Awards in 2017. Here, she reveals how she reached her career milestones.
Glamour: What motivated you to start imed Tech and 3DIMO?
Nneile Nkholise: I started them as a way to address the problems I experience. I started imed Tech back in 2015 whilst I was still doing my Masters in the application of Additive Manufacturing for manufacturing facial prosthesis (for people who had damaged or missing facial features due to illnesses or accidents).
Whilst I was going through my research, I discovered a substantial underserved market of women who’d lost a breast or both post-mastectomy due to cancer. I wanted to use my knowledge to create a product that’d be affordable, high quality and easily accessible. That’s when I accidentally became a tech startup founder
(or entrepreneur, as I’m popularly known as).
I spent years not just building products but advocating for preventative healthcare. 3DIMO is my second startup, which took off in 2018. I wanted to address the lack of technological infiltration in the livestock sector, particularly in digital animal traceability and the digital supply chain, which has lead to poor transparency in the livestock trade.
G: Was starting a business always your intention?
NN: During my school years, I found myself fascinated by design and the art of changing the narrative of traditional products into those people would appreciate. I never intended to go down the business path, but in the early days of imed Tech, I was attracted to taking a product many people didn’t know about and telling a story about it so that society could start learning, not just about the product, but also about the peoplefor which the product is intended.
G: What’s the next step in your career?
NN: My biggest career goal is to see 3DIMO reach a point where it provides global traceability of animal movement across the value chain. We recently entered the US market, and, like any startup founder, my goal is to build a high-impact billiondollar company.
G: Looking at the career milestones you’ve achieved, have they met your expectations?
NN: I try not to have high expectations of myself or what I should be accomplishing because
I’ve learned that the region between expectation and reality could either be stress or happiness. When your expectations are way higher than your reality, then the region in between would be the stress region, and that’s where I see so many of my peers become trapped.
I’ve learnt to set my expectations in the middle, so I allow my reality to exceed my expectations.
I’ve discovered that region is happiness, and that’s how I can be happy with my journey.
G: Do you have any advice on how to move on once you’ve achieved a big career goal?
NN: Take a holiday. You’ll need it after achieving a big career goal because it feels like you’ve drained your energy and that there’s nothing more to do. So, I always ask people to enjoy the moment, have fun and celebrate wins as much as possible. Your future will take care of itself. I’ve often noticed many people are anxious about success. When they achieve something, they suddenly start questioning themselves. I experienced that same anxiety and would end up looking at something else to do without celebrating my moment, which affected my mental health because I always thought I could do more.
“Enjoy the moment, have fun and celebrate wins as much as possible. Your future will take care of itself ”