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Blue Chip Journal - June 2019 edition

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INSPIRATION Breaking bad

INSPIRATION Breaking bad Gerald Mamfunda battled poverty, bedbugs and bandits to found a thriving financial services company Originally from Zambia, after finishing my studies in sales and marketing at the local university, I was absorbed by Cadbury Schweppes as a sales rep. I quickly proved myself and after a year with the company I was promoted to a sales management position at the age of 22. My future was looking very bright until Coca-Cola bought out Cadbury Schweppes worldwide; I was retrenched and couldn’t find another job for almost a year. In a country where only one or two job adverts appeared in the national newspapers in a month, finding another job proved to be very difficult. At a young age, I had to make the audacious decision to become an “economic refugee” in another country. My gaze fell on South Africa despite all the negative information we used to see in the media about crime and discrimination. In late 1999 I packed my bag and jumped on the Intercape bus to Johannesburg. After almost 24 hours, I finally arrived at Park Station and walked to Berea, where I would stay with my friend’s sister while I looked for a job. I could not believe my eyes when I opened the newspaper to find three full pages of sales and marketing adverts. I quickly bought a R30 Telkom card and ran to the phone booth at Ellis Park to phone around for interviews. After phoning only five companies I managed to secure four interviews. It was like a dream. Immediately, however, I hit a stumbling block – despite impressing almost all the people who interviewed me, I did not have a work permit. After a month of seeking employment without success, my friend’s sister moved out of the flat while I was away attending interviews without troubling to notify me. When I came back home in the evening, I only found my bag of clothes in the flat and nothing else. That evening the landlord came to demand two months’ back rent; he ordered me to pay up or get out. I asked for more time and promised to pay what was owing. I continued looking for any job I could find but the little money I came with ran out. I remember going for an interview in Midrand with only enough money to go, not having R2.40 to get back home. After the interview I had to go to a local shopping centre and act as a car guard helping people to reverse so that some drivers could give me some coins to go back home. During this trying period I could only afford to eat bread and water every day, and slept on the floor with no bedding. Tired of sleeping on the floor I remember one day I saw a mattress which was thrown next to the dust bins at my flat which looked in fair condition. Since I had nothing I decided to take it to my place, not realising it had bed bugs that sucked my blood for almost a month and made me sick. One bad thing led to another. One day I was attacked by thugs with knives in central Joburg. They took my most important possession, my Nokia 3210 phone which had the number on my CV. A little while later I got another phone and was attacked in the Metrorail train by criminals with a pistol. I had to surrender my precious phone and wallet again. Fast forward a month later: I managed to get a job at American Health and Sport, now Planet Fitness. I remember walking almost 35km from Berea to Ruimsig on the West Rand and back. I quickly learned the skills and reached targets almost every month. I later moved to Health Connection and was eventually poached by Virgin Active, where I rose to the position of assistant sales manager until I decided to leave in 2006. After getting married I had discovered that the long hours and low pay prevalent in the health and fitness industry were not working for me. A friend of mine, Ben Nortman, who is a broker with Discovery, convinced me to join the financial services industry. However it looked easy to convince people with a gym contract to rejoin the gym through the wellness programme and have life cover, disability and severe Illness as a bonus. I was given a once-off counter-offer with better benefits and a promotion, but I had made up my mind to leave, even though the general manager told me how many people had failed in the financial services industry, which was saturated with over 60 000 brokers in the country. I stuck to my guns. Later on I discovered that I was not giving clients the right advice and decided to study financial planning at Stellenbosch University through PSG Konsult. After being declined a number of times, I was eventually granted the FSP licence in 2009 and accreditation by the Council for Medical 46 www.bluechipjournal.co.za

INSPIRATION Schemes in the same year. I was very excited, a state of mind which led to grave errors of judgement. Going against the advice of my mentors, Clive Le Meme and Theuns Botha of Discovery, I employed an enormous team of 17 brokers who gave me a lot of lapses, which together with skyrocketing overheads almost collapsed our organisation. However, by concentrating on the basics we managed to pay off what we owed to insurance companies in a few months. We decided to get rid of almost everyone and right now we have a total staff complement of seven employees, most of whom have been with the company since inception. We run the practice with my wife Thembi Mamfunda, in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg. Most of my broker friends have been very discouraged with the changes taking place in our industry and the fact that fewer than 10% of advisors in the industry are black just makes it worse. My encouragement to every advisor regardless of race is that there are still many opportunities and a lot of money to be made in our industry if you just work hard and follow legislation. To date we have many clients of all races and backgrounds who have trusted us to handle their risk as well as investments, with over R250-million in assets under management and growing. We have also diversified into other businesses: real estate, transport and farming. We are also proud of giving back to the community through our NGO Azusa Foundation, where we are currently looking after 11 less privileged children by providing all their requirements including education costs. This year we are looking forward to attending the graduation of a person we took from the streets who is finishing his LLB degree with UNISA. If I could make it against all odds, any other person can make it in this industry and help to reduce the unemployment rate by telling new graduates not to focus on basic salaries. A lot has been said about foreigners taking jobs from the locals, but I believe that there are exceptions like myself, in that for the past 20 years I have only worked on commission and no basic salary. Coming from another country and hearing a lot said about apartheid, I had prepared myself for it. Unfortunately the opposite has happened to me the most: I have suffered more discrimination from fellow black South Africans than from white people. At times even the police would question my wife as to why she married a foreigner, saying she should “be very careful”. Sometimes I would go to see a client and they would simply refuse to do business with me, but when my junior from the office goes who speaks their language they would be comfortable. At times some would even tell me that I would run away with their money. I always respect people’s opinions and move on to other people who have trusted us with their lives due to the exceptional service we give them. I believe that many other people can make it if they just focus on the positives and not the negatives. Every single day when I wake up, I just see opportunities and really wonder why people are always protesting for lack of jobs. In conclusion, I would like to encourage fellow advisors to take part in the one-year ASISA IFP practice programme sponsored by Allan Gray, Prudential, Coronation and Investec, as it has given me a different perspective about the financial services industry and has definitely added so much value to our practice. Gerald Mamfunda, Key Individual/ Financial Advisor, Azusa Financial Services www.bluechipjournal.co.za 47

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