Believe in yourself is the last words that remain with me, following my conversation with entrepreneur Rebone Seolwana.

It was a warm Saturday morning when I met with Rebone, a very busy person and hard to pin down. We meet at 6:30am in the morning, to share a run in Solidarity with Hope With Every Step #HopeWithEveryStep movement. Two runners run 600km from Johannesburg to Durban, to raise money to feed children.

Our morning run, is to support their run and an opportunity for me to have this conversation with Rebone.

Tell us a little bit about yourself, who is Rebone?

I grew up in Limpopo, in a small village in Mokopane. Later in life, I moved to Johannesburg when I was 19years old to pursue my dreams. I think, I have always been an Entrepreneur. When I was at College, I used to buy earrings from China Town and sell them in the residence. I even had a gig, where I would collect old textbooks from final year students. Sell them to first years, making enough money to buy myself a TV in College.

Tell us about your Business Journey?

I first registered my business in 2014 when I quit my job, but it has been a long and winding road. A road with uncertainties, speed bumps, traffic circles and potholes. I actually started with a driving school business, which did not fare so well. Later I registered a production business where I would try to make low budget short films. I operated the production company for a while, even had offices in Parktown. However it also failed, and took the lot of my savings with it.

Things went south quickly, I was sad and fell in to a deep depression. The times were tough for me, a young lady without employment or any sources of income.

My faith was tested, and this is when I started to cultivate my relationship with God. Fastforward, I now operate a Communications Company called Neema Communications Group. My passion is in the content creation space, strategic project planning and IT infrastructure development.

Ultimately what we want to build is a fully functioning ICT hub. This hub would be fully furnished with all the latest in 4IR technology to help entrepreneurs in under-developed communities.

What was the driver in your Entrepreneurship Journey?

The fear of poverty? *laughs a little*. Everytime I think of giving up, I am worried about poverty. Poverty traumatises me to the core.

What are you passionate about in life?

I am passionate about economic development, that is why even every business proposal I cope up with is aligned with economic development.

What is your biggest challenge in business?

I struggle with finding people to form a solid working team with. As a small business, I cannot afford to hire highly experienced professionals. I end up working with recent graduates and struggle to work with them in driving our vision forward.

Most of the your people do not have patience and passion, they are not like us. I wish young people would learn some patience. They need to realise, big deals and opportunities take time.

How did you fund your start-up?

What funding, joooh … I used to spend so much time preparing proposals for funding. I then stopped trying to look for investors, and just started to just work on my business.

We are so quick to look for investors, when we do not even know the value of our business is. As entrepreneurs we don’t measure, or valuate our businesses. We do guess work to determine the value and accept or let investors value it for us.

What assistance have you received from the Government?

Jooh … an example the NYDA. I applied for relief funding when it was first announced in May. Yesterday, I got a response telling me they have received my application. I do not even know if it was approved or not. A 3-4 month response time is what we are dealing with when it comes to Government.

To answer you question, No.

Believe in yourself – advice for young Entrepreneurs?

You really need to believe in yourself and your ideas. If you do not believe in yourself, you are more likely to fail. Do not wait for validation from other people for your dream. The world is going to test you, just believe that your idea comes from God.

What would you do differently with all the knowledge you have accumulated?

I would start with working with my inner self, growing my spiritual self first. I was not connected to God in the beginning. What I would start with is a more intimate relationship with God.

If you received R1mil what would you spend it on?

I would spend some of it on the land we are currently working on to develop for our business. I would then get better working equipment and save the rest for rainy days.

Remember to believe in yourself

Twitter handle: @Rebones

Linked in: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebone-seolwana-72601425/