JOHANNESBURG - Young entrepreneur Vusi Nxumalo is steadily climbing the ladder of success.
Nxumalo founded Flashmob Events & Brand Engineering 14 years ago while living and working in London, one of the world’s financial capitals.
Today the 36-year-old is the company’s executive director and is responsible for servicing its international clients.
Nxumalo describes Flashmob Events & Brand Engineering as a provider of services that include events and activations, media monitoring, branding, guest management, theatre and video production, and technical and staging.
He says he worked as a dancer and as a TV presenter at ITV Studios during his time in London.
When he returned home in 2008 he was determined to dent the unemployment scourge, currently sitting at 26.7 percent, by creating job opportunities at his company.
In 2015 he hooked up with entrepreneur Dennis Ngwila and began planning, plotting and strategising means through which to approach clients.
Nxumalo says a year later business started coming in.
“I then realised there are more people out there who are trying to get into our shoes but are making the wrong decisions.
“We thought we should go out there and mentor them on what it means to be in business, the qualities you need to bring to the table in order to survive and get your business up and running,” he says, adding that this signalled the start of their enterprise development programme in 2017.
“The corporate space is very difficult to tap into because it is monopolised.
“We ask ourselves, if we are struggling at the moment, how much more so are people that are coming into this space but didn’t have the same mentorship opportunities we had,” says Nxumalo.
The enterprise development programme, he explains, screens those eligible, because Flashmob has already had people approaching it to make a quick buck.
“We have had people approaching us. We always try to steer away from such people.
“That’s why we always screen them to try and understand who we are dealing with and what’s happening in their headspace,” Nxumalo says.
He has just returned from his office in London.
The company’s offices in Johannesburg are at Paulshof in Bryanston.
“The reason we’re keeping our London office running is because we have South African clients who have offices in London.
“It also helps us in our trends analysis to check what’s happening in the global space and bring it to South Africa, and vice versa,” says the well-travelled Nxumalo, a former cabin crew member with Virgin Atlantic while in London.
On former Zimbabwean Robert Mugabe’s assertion that “Britain is a very cold, uninhabitable country with small houses”, Nxumalo says: “For me it is simply a small country where big dreams are made. And one can become anything they put their heart and mind to if they are consistent and work hard.”
He says his company also has business connections in the US, China, Australia and most parts of Europe.
“Most of the work that we get we always share with other companies by outsourcing and empowering them.”
The Johannesburg-born Nxumalo says he is doing what he loves.
“Being your own boss is not as easy as it seems.
“You put in a lot of hours, there are late nights and early mornings and you sometimes miss out on great family moments.
“Quite importantly, you have so much on your shoulders because you have to worry about tax, office rent and where the salaries are going to come from,” he asserts.
To keep his head cool, Nxumalo says he travels as this exposes him to new experiences.
He has been to the Americas, the Middle East, Far East, Europe and most parts of Africa.