Zinhle Khanyile: A Taking Care of Business Success Story | Resell Programme (Durban)
So much more than buying and selling
Before I started at Taking Care of Business (TCB), I was trying to make money by buying used clothes from friends and family to sell. One day I met a lady who was selling very nice clothing and I asked her where she got them from and she told me about TCB. I applied and was accepted!
I’ve been with TCB for two years and just finished the progamme. It has been an amazing journey. It wasn’t easy but it was worth it. When I started here I just wanted to sell, I didn’t’ know anything about business. I thought I was coming to TCB to buy clothes and go out and sell. Only to find out that at TCB there was so much more in store for me. I learnt a lot in terms of how to run a business and what it takes to be a business woman.
Financial freedom feels amazing
The most important thing that I learnt was managing my finances because that was my weakness before. Previously I would sell just trying to put food on the table, but when I came to TCB they had classes on life skills, training on how to manage your business and how to save. I’d never saved in my life and I’ve been working for the past 15 years!
I’d been in good positions before, earning good money but I never had any savings. Only here at TCB did I learn about savings. They instilled in our minds that we have to save, save, save! And amazingly to me, we were encouraged to not only have one savings account but three: one for business, one for personal and one for emergencies. That was my biggest achievement. Through all my years of working I’ve never been struggling to pay my children’s school fees. Last year I paid up both my children’s school fees debt. My two daughters are in high school now. This year I even managed to pay a deposit and 10% towards the school fees already!
A future full of possibility
Life is not easy but you need to have a vision and an idea of why you are here. Having a goal is important. If you don’t have one you won’t have anything to drive you and no direction to where you are going or what you are working towards.
When I started buying from TCB I was shocked, for the first three months I did really well. I saw an opportunity that I needed a permanent space to sell my stock and now I have my own shop. At first, I was sceptical, I thought, “Am I going to be able to pay the rent for this space?”. But amazingly, I made the rent in one week and the rest was mostly my profit. I also sell at many different flea markets and car boot sales.
I have two different shops but one of them is not permanent. I also have my husband as my support system because he is the one who oversees everything while I am out looking for stock from other suppliers. I still get stock from TCB, I try and come almost every day to get new stock. When I started creating my vision for my shop, I sat down and thought “what can I do differently?”. I thought about how in the area that my shop is based there is a lot of student residences. I knew this would be a good target market to focus on. This target audience wants new clothes every day when they go to campus. So, every day I try and look for new and different stock.
Before TCB, I was a person that wanted to do everything on my own because I wanted things my own way. In class they told us “you can’t do it all by yourself, you need to get assistants”. Once I went through all the classes, it was clear in my mind that I needed to have someone to assist me so that I could manage the business and be focused. I needed to manage stock, attend classes, look after my children and have a personal life too, so I couldn’t do everything on my own. Now I employ two ladies that assist me permanently. They help me manage my shops and it is great that I get to help other women make an income and be independent.
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Taking Care of Business (TCB) is a nonprofit social enterprise. We are empowering unemployed South Africans and their families to escape the cycle of poverty through small business opportunities, mostly within the circular economy.
