Building with Purpose: When Business Becomes a Calling | Nomndeni Sethole

In this powerful episode of Africa Rising Leadership Conversations, Nomazibulo Tshanga sits down with Nomndeni Sethole, Founder & CEO of Agenda Women, to explore what it truly means to build a business rooted in purpose.

This conversation goes beyond entrepreneurship — it unpacks the deeper calling behind leadership, the courage to create platforms that empower women, and the intentional journey of turning lived experiences into impact.

Nomndeni shares her journey of building Agenda Women, the challenges and defining moments that shaped her, and how she continues to lead with authenticity and conviction in spaces that demand transformation.

Together, we explore:

•  What it means to build a purpose-driven business 
•  Turning personal experiences into platforms for impact 
•  The role of women in shaping the future of leadership in Africa 
•  Leading with intention, authenticity, and courage 

This episode is for leaders, entrepreneurs, and change-makers who know that their work is not just about success — but about legacy, impact, and calling.

https://www.instagram.com/leaders_conversation

www.africarisingleadership.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

I was adored as a child and I was very smart and it was encouraged. You know, my intelligence was much more encouraged than my beauty. And I think that's so relevant in how I've navigated life because when I do my personal branding workshops, one of my first slides is a timeline with the intention to make sure that by the time I teach, that they see that I've been through hardships, that they see that I've had ten rands in my account and not known how to get to where I need to go, that they see that I've had a marriage that didn't work, that somehow they see that I see today when I hire people, how they are always waiting for someone to hold their hand and guide them through opportunity. When opportunity presents itself, it is. Everything is running. Everything was running and he was buried, I was at the front of decision making, but at the front of feeling quite a lot as well. The journey of life is not linear, and we all need to have a healthy relationship with challenges. Because I think we all have a responsibility to name God for ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Yes, and if Jaira is in the world.

SPEAKER_04 1:43

So when she said that, I started to ask myself, what would I name God? And for me, he has been a God of grace. He has been a God of grace, no mazibolo. In instances in my life, as I reflect back when I was not even anchored in my faith, I have never seen this level of provision.

SPEAKER_05 2:04

Africa Rise Today.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Hello, welcome to the Africa Rising Leadership Conversations. My name is Noma Zimullochanga. I am your host for today. And as you know, I am not sitting alone. I am with Unom Dani Setole. Nom Dani is the founder and CEO of Agenda Women. And you know, Nom Deni is a woman that um, you know, does a lot with women empowerment, um, giving back to women, and just being a you know, an audacious woman that dares to dream, that goes out there and um, you know, um impact other women. I've had the privilege um of of you know being invited into your um agenda women's summit at the time that you were doing them. Because I know that um last year you you called this year or last year you concluded and um because now you're going into new things that you want to do for yourself, just explore other opportunities, which is something that we are going to talk about. So today it's all about exploring your journey as a woman and the lived experiences that shaped who you are and how you started a gender woman and where do you hope to take um this beautiful platform and beautiful business that you've built over time. But before we get to that, Nom Deni, um firstly thank you for honoring the invite. I know it's such a you know, we we we get to be so busy with other things, and when someone gives off your time, it it it it shows a lot and tells a lot with who the person is. Um so I appreciate your time. Thank you. Um let's talk about Unomdeni, the girl before the agenda woman. Um, you know, um the girl from KZN, right? Um who is Nom Dani as a child and what shaped what are the early experiences that shaped Unomdeni?

SPEAKER_04 3:51

It's so interesting. When you say who is Nom Deni as a child, I immediately think about a conversation I just had about my son. He is exactly like me. So stubborn, so audacious, so unhindered by rules and the way that things are. And you know, often when you grow up in smaller communities, those kind of personality traits can be challenging to adults. But I'm so grateful to have my son almost mirror that back to me and to get a chance to almost empower him because I think it's so beautiful to have that curiosity about life. And I think as a child, that's exactly who I was. I was very curious about everything that was happening around me, but more so everything that was happening around the world. I grew up in a small town in New Castle Mat that day in section five. Section five. Um, although my family originally is from Mamelodi, my grandfather is from Mamelodi, my grandmother is from White City. And I grew up in an entrepreneurial home. I know it now as an adult, but growing up.

SPEAKER_00 4:51

Then you were like, what are they doing? And everyone is going to work.

SPEAKER_04 4:54

That they leave at 5 a.m. in the morning and they come back very, very late. But I really had no benchmark to how other homes were. My grandfather did quite well. It's ironic because he was in the retail business. And when I think about where life has taken me, you know, it's such a full circle moment. It's such a full circle moment. But um, I grew up in a very entrepreneurial home. Um, my grandparents were very strong figures. My grandfather built a 24-room house for us. There's so much I look back at now and I see just how such was.

SPEAKER_00 5:28

Wow, like back then.

SPEAKER_04 5:29

Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

Wow, it must take it must take something to do that in that era when we were.

SPEAKER_04 5:35

Highly politicized. And uh, it's actually the reason we ended up in Newcastle because his first business venture was when Pretoria. But because of the high tensity, the political tension was pretty high in Pretoria and Johannesburg through a friend. He ended up going to Newcastle because this friend said there's a small town, you can build your businesses peacefully there. So he had, you know, those strips of shops where it's a supermarket, a dry cleaner, a butchery, and he went on to have a wholesaler and a hotel in Matad Denny. It was owned by him and many other business ventures. So it was always around me, although I didn't really understand what it was. And when I look at my life now, it seems that somehow it must have influenced me.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

So, what are some of the values that influenced you as a child growing up? I mean, some of the early um, you know, maybe lived experiences from your parents, and some of the values that had they had instilled in you, just to to to to allow you to be the person that you are today.

SPEAKER_04 6:33

My grandmother was definitely the strongest voice for me when I was growing up. Um, I always say if I had to paint a picture of her, it was definitely the Winnie Mandela type of architect, archetype, right? Uh she was definitely part of the ANC Women's League. Um, and I don't know what membership rank she was in, but uh a very, very strong woman, a very anchored woman, um, a woman who knew who she was, but also a woman who carried very strong values. I see in my life today how that has influenced and shaped my own journey. My grandmother is was my true north. Everything I did was to please her, and I'm so grateful because I didn't get to be pulled in multiple directions. She really was my true north. What my friends were doing didn't matter to me. She was such a powerful presence in my life, and I look at who she was and who I am today, and I see so much influence from how she carried herself. She was a businesswoman herself, you know, she worked uh alongside my grandfather. But outside of that, she was a Christian woman. Um, my Christian values were definitely influenced by her quite strongly. Um I don't think we actually had an option, you know. If we were in the house, that is what was happening. You know. So um heavily influenced by the woman that she was, and um so grateful I I was planted in that home.

SPEAKER_00 7:59

So tell me, um, now you are growing up, right? What type of a child were you um growing up? And amongst how many siblings? And um, if I were to ask your siblings about you, what is it that they would say about you?

SPEAKER_04 8:13

So I actually, my mother had me very young, and my grandparents had uh had eight kids, right? So the 24-rooms house means everyone had their room, you know. So it was a big home. Although my mom and her siblings were not in the home a lot. My grandmother, my grandfather, and my two cousins were actually the ones that I grew up with. So they were kind of, I guess, my siblings, if I can call it that. I was the only girl. I realize now how much I was favored in a lot of instances. I still have memories of my grandfather because uh we were in a seventh-day Adventist uh church when I was very, very young, and we moved into a charismatic church when I was a teenager. But I remember on Saturdays there was no cooking at home. Yeah, and uh my grandfather would pick me up, and um, I think she was he was driving a Mercedes and it was a convertible. So I was always the kid in the middle of the seats, you know, going to get uh chicken licken because we were not gonna cook on Saturday. So my grandfather, I remember um her his adoring eyes when he looked at me. Even the last time I saw him, he said, Oh my gosh, you're so beautiful. I think I need to get lobola now. And everyone burst out laughing because of what a businessman he always was, you know, thinking about uh money. Money. But um I was adored as a child, and um I was um very smart and it was encouraged. You know, my intelligence was much more encouraged than my beauty, and I think that's so relevant in how I've navigated life because I've always leaned onto that. I've always said you can say anything about me, but you cannot say that I'm dumb.

SPEAKER_05 9:46

Definitely not.

SPEAKER_04 9:47

I did quite well. I did quite well at school, but all of it was because of the encouragement of my of my grandmother. Um, every time we would come back, she was expectant that I made the top three. So on the last day of school, you know, when we were younger, there was that line, you know, number one up until 20. And uh, she was always expecting that I would come back with a good report. So every time I got home, the celebrations had already started. And I think that vote of confidence does so much to self-believe for an individual that even before she saw the report, she was expecting that I would do well. So I was very encouraged. She also uh encouraged reading, which really opened up my world. You can imagine in a small town like that, your options are limited when it comes to inspiration. So books were a place where I saw a world bigger than the one that was in front of me.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Then you went on to study, right? What was that decision formed by in terms of the type of profession that you wanted to go into?

SPEAKER_04 10:43

You know, one of my um my deep respect for media comes from the influence that it had in me. I um was in a small town, of course, very limited in career options. It's either a doctor, a teacher, or a nurse, you know, or maybe a lawyer if you've ever met one. So for me, number one, books uh really created a bigger world. But what I would what I remember is that a lot of the books that I was reading, particularly autobiographies of successful people, were men. Right? It was uh never someone that kind of had the same lived experience as I did. So even when I watched television, I didn't identify with the celebrity archetype. So for me, when I watched particularly generations, and I know that there were a lot of young uh people at the time who were also influenced by Ezwini and the communication structure and that corporate um environment, I never quite understood what they were doing, but I knew that it was something I want to do. It was very in my soul interest in the office. Exactly. And I was also one of those people who never got up when it was adverts, right? So when we would go to the commercial break, I always wanted to see, you know, what the commercial break structure would look like. I remember that quite distinctly, but I never understood that to be marketing because there was no one who had studied marketing around me or who had a marketing job. Yeah. So I remember when I was applying to come to university in Johannesburg, um, because of the influence of the culture and society around me at the time, it was the subjects that were leaning towards science and maths that were revered, revered. And um, because I was a student that did well, it felt to me that that's the path that I should take. So I remember, I think I applied for biochemistry or something like that. But I after I'd applied, I came across a prospectus. It was for univers it was for Vert Vaters Run Technicon. It wasn't even University of Johannesburg at the time. And I remember paging through and seeing marketing management and reading through it. And uh as I read through it, it reminded me of what I had seen on uh television. It mentioned advertising, and I was always curious about advertising, and that's how I picked marketing as a subject that I ended up taking. But without any frame of reference, without any frame of reference, mentorship, any idea of what the day-to-day of a marketing job would look like, but purely driven by passion and some luck that I came across across that prospectus, and I had um the I guess the appetite to actually read through it.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

So you then came to Joberk, right, to study marketing. Now you are becoming this, you but you're becoming yourself, you're becoming this beautiful woman that is um trying to find identity in a space where there could be so many identities, right? Um and and at the same time trying to ground yourself in understanding why you're here. Yeah. So talk me through that journey. So, what were there some of the challenges that you had encountered? And then we'll go through um what are the growth moments or yes, moments of celebrations that you had embraced um as in that era as you are becoming this woman?

SPEAKER_04 13:54

Coming to Johannesburg uh to study, it wasn't my first time in Johannesburg. My father is from Johannesburg, so I would often come and visit, so I was quite familiar with the landscape. But of course, the first thing that was a huge challenge is that I matriculated when I was 16. So when I went to university, I was 17. Yeah. Completely would advise against that. One of the things I was very intentional about as I was raising my kids is that I want them to be mature enough for that environment. So extremely jarring, you know, to be in that environment as a 17-year-old girl, um, not fully understanding the responsibility, right, of um being with people who are not so much your peers, you know, coming from all kinds of backgrounds. But by God's grace, I was able to navigate on the basis of I was never a person who was easily excitable. And because my grandmother was still my true north, I remembered that I had a report that I needed to take back home. So I landed in Johannesburg uh quite comfortably navigating um university. Also fortunate that I picked a subject that I actually liked.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Because it doesn't often happen, hey?

SPEAKER_04 15:01

Absolutely, very, very lucky that I picked a subject that I loved. And towards the later years of my university, I met my now ex-husband. I was only 19 years old, and I think that chapter in itself started to really, those were the early stages I think of shaping the story of who I am today. And some of the insights that I then brought into agenda women, and insights that I also share when I mentor young women, but also insights that have also informed my coaching career. Just understanding particularly that for especially type A personality woman, there are wins and there are also losses. When I came to the decision of uh courting and getting married at the age that I did get married, I realized that I was still following the formula of what it looks like to be a good girl. But I didn't realize how unprepared I was for that chapter. But um, by God's grace, again, you know, we navigate uh all of those different seasons in our lives, we take the lessons and they make us the woman that we are today.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

What are some of the challenges that you had then encountered, right? As you are coming to being, right? Coming to being this woman and um courting at a at a young age, getting married at a young age, starting a family with high expectations, right? From the in-laws, from society in general. So, how did those um how did the challenges what are some of the challenges you'd experienced, and how did you then stay true to yourself?

SPEAKER_04 16:26

I have to say I had amazing in-laws. Um, when I think about um all those decisions, I am one of those people who looks back at my life and I say I have no regrets. Yeah. I realize, you know, when Steve Jobs says you connect the dots looking backwards, the dots have connected. I recognize when I came to Johannesburg, one of the unfortunate things that had started to happen in my family is loss. So I lost uh all the people that I was in the family home with. Um, my uncles dying six months after the other, and you can imagine how traumatic that was. These were people in the home with me. These were not people living in different in different houses. And I remember when I did meet my ex-husband, I had a big um gap and need for a place, family, grounding, you know? And he provided that. Absolutely. And he provided that, and his family absolutely provided that for me in those uh in that season of my life. Extremely difficult, the losses, and figuring out how to navigate that. And one of the ways that it impacted our family is that somehow everyone kind of spread out, and when I say everyone, I'm talking about less than five people who were left, you know. Uh, out of my grandmother's children, there's only two left, which is my mother and uh her big sister, and um, then there were the cousins that I grew up with, but um we all lost touch with each other uh for very for many, many years, and as we reflect on it, even to this day, we don't truly understand what happened, you know. My aunt was saying to me, Nom Daniel, why didn't you call me? And I said, I absolutely cannot even remember. You know, grief is dark, grief is painful, and grief can bury you in a way that you can't even recognize. So we went through that season, and as I uh navigated that, it was around the same time that I met my ex-husband, and I look back at it now and I realize that the pool was for the longing to create my own family, to create that safety and to be part of a family. And when I say that my in-laws were amazing, it's because they did provide that and they were absolutely incredible. However, we were not prepared for the structure of marriage, which has its own uh dynamics. We were not prepared. We were not prepared. So it's like you both have to be accountable to the institution, yeah. Absolutely. When I think about what marriage is as I understand it today, I purely see that we were not prepared. We got married for love. And I always butterfly, you know. Um, it's a good thing, but also love uh over time changes, and it's very important to have the guidance and the counselling that is necessary to prepare young people for the institution of marriage. Unfortunately for us, when we encountered challenges, we just didn't have the tools, you know, to navigate the challenges. And over time we found that we had grown apart and it was difficult to find our way back to each other. And because of that, then we did lose that marriage. But there were so many other dynamics within that period of our lives in in terms of how we were also changing. Uh, met my ex-husband when I was 19 and when we were separated, I was 31. Two completely different women. Definitely two completely different women. And navigating that growth with a partner was something that we just didn't have the grasping for. But um we were blessed with two incredible children, and uh to this day I'd like to believe that we are doing our best to raise them in the best way that we can. They are absolutely incredible.

SPEAKER_00 19:54

They are amazing. I've met your daughter, so they are amazing. They are um now you birthed what we call today as a gender woman. What sparked that? But before we get into that conversation, I want to remind you because I I have known of you, right? Um prior to even social media, right? It was at the time that you were a friend with with a famous DJ, and um you went into business together. You collaborated, and you started what we call what was called Fuse Academy at the time. Yes. And I remember this vividly because I had applied as one of the DJs. Yes, yes, I actually had applied as one of the DJs, but I never followed it up. I I do I don't know why. But my application was there, it went through. I spoke to someone at your office. Um, I just never followed it up. Yes, yes, for some reason. I like I don't know now. If you're it was the time. It was the time, you know how it is. You know, I was I was new in Joburg, I was exploring myself, learning myself as well, yeah, and trying to see where do I fit within the bigger context or construct of of Johannesburg coming from the Eastern Cape. So I was like, hmm, this this seems interesting. I love music. I mean, what more can I use? And so let me and my husband loves music, so let me just you know apply and and um so I applied, spoke to someone in the office. So before agenda woman, talk to me about that era.

SPEAKER_04 21:14

What a story, what a story. When we started that business, I was 25. Um, after I finished uh varsity, I had my first child. I had Utando when I was 21, I had Ulwanze when I was 24, got married when I was 24. Um, when I was 25, um, I started Fuse Academy. And uh I started Fuse Academy because I had worked at multi-choice for about a year, worked at Discovery Health for another year, and quickly realized that corporate was not for me. Yes, it was absolutely not for me. What made you realize that? I chose those two organizations to work for because they were founder led. And it was able to do it. So you always had this entrepreneurial spirit. Have the guidance to drive it in the right direction. I remember when I chose where I want to work and I was reading up on the multi-choice story, I said that's where I want to contribute. And when I read up on the Discovery story, I said that's where I have always been obsessed with Adrian Gore. I think he is such a powerful leader, a powerful South African entrepreneurial story. And when I went into both these organizations, I had no idea of the corporate structure. For me, I thought it was going to be what it's been like to build a business. I'm going to uh contribute to business decisions, you know, at a high level. I had no idea there was junior management and then there was middle management. Absolutely no idea. Remember, I grew up in a home that was entrepreneurial. No one at my house was employed. I'd never seen people actually wake up and go to work. Everyone was working for the businesses that my my grandfather owned. So, shock of my life when I went to corporate and I said, I have to do the same thing every single day. Absolutely got bored very, very quickly. It's an actual fact when I left my second job, I had just had my son, and uh I thought, you know what, it's now or never. Yeah. And around the same time, um my then business partner.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

You are like I mean, taking those risks, especially with a young child. I mean you like um when you've got children, you feel like actually corporate is a safe space. Because I earn a salary, it's safe, it's a safety net, it's guaranteed, right? As long as you do your job, it's guaranteed. But I mean, a young son, a young child, they tell you going out.

SPEAKER_04 23:46

When they say ignorance is bliss, that is exactly what I was going through. Uh, I think when you're young, particularly for anyone who's watching this who's in their 20s, that's the time for you to explore. Yeah, that's the time for you to figure out very quickly who you are, where you're strong, which environments work for you. I don't think it's the time to sit too long in spaces where you're uncomfortable. I think that's the time when you should take the risks and explore exactly what kind of environments work for you. And I'm so glad that I was ignorant enough to make that decision. I knew that I did not belong to where I was. I had no idea that entrepreneurship was going to be my space. But when we started building that business, I quickly realized how easily operational decisions came for me. Yeah, it was very easy for me to understand how to structure operationally, to understand what the pipeline needed to look like, to understand what the hierarchy needed to look like, to understand what documentation needed to be in place. So you're setting up systems and processes. It was very easy for me. And um I'm so grateful for that opportunity because out of everything, that's what that's one of the key things that I learned, that that was an area where I was strong. So when we started Fuse Academy, we were absolutely elated, right?

SPEAKER_00 25:03

I can imagine.

SPEAKER_04 25:03

We had taken this idea and made it into a thing, and people were responding. People were applying. We had numbers, yeah. We had numbers, the media wanted to interview us. We didn't even know what a press release was, we didn't know what PR was, but everyone wanted to hear about this incredible idea. And um that experience, I think, really uh propelled me into the Johannesburg entertainment and business space. I then, after I think about a year, I always say we were so happy and so broke because we had not figured out how to make it a financially viable organization. We didn't even know that it took almost five years for most businesses to get there. Also, we were bootstrapping. We had no idea that we could get investment money or we could get a loan. In actual fact, even if we knew, we might have not gone that direction because it was going to be a risk. So we went ahead and we uh started the business. It was exciting. Again, we were not making the kind of money that we thought we were going to make. And I remember my then business partner saying to me, Um, you're so good at creating systems, I think you should help Osquito. And um I think that question and that inquiry changed so much about my trajectory. I then messaged him because I had met him already. We would always go to YFM to promote the school. So he would always see me. But something had happened, and I was not even conscious of how aware I was of my brand at the time. Because I remember sitting and thinking, uh, my business partner is a celebrity. What is my place? What is my story? How do I um anchor my position within this ecosystem? And because there were so many celebrities around me, I thought, okay, I don't want to be a celebrity, but I'm obsessed with business, so let me anchor myself as a business person. And what that meant is because I was also not an experienced business person, what are the low-hanging fruits? Let me show up as a business person. I remember looking at pictures of Michelle Obama at the time and thinking that's what I want to emulate. I was always in hills around celebrities and entertainers.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

Wow, that was very intentional, I'm Danny.

SPEAKER_04 27:19

I always was wearing dresses like I was going to the office. A proper anchoring that when someone saw me amongst the celebrity. Over and above that, every time we went into an interview, I overprepared. And I always had my laptop with me. The laptop was an easy accessory to say I'm the person that you can ask questions about this business. And by the time I pursued an opportunity with Oskido, that was already ingrained in his head. That I was a person who was going to show up in a particular way. I was not going to be the person that comes late. There was a positioning in his mind that I had already taken. And um he said yes. I started working with him. He offered me very, very little money. You must remember I had already had a corporate job. So when he offered to pay me 3,000 rands to work with him, I said yes, because what was clear to me was that I was definitely not going to corporate. So I was going to take this 3,000 rands and figure out how to make it work. After I started working with him, I think a week into working with him, he gave me access to his emails, and I remember seeing an opportunity for an endorsement deal with Network BBDO in Cape Town. It was for a brand called Three Ships. I looked into the emails. Wow. And I remember he was pleasantly surprised but also shocked. But also by the grace of God, I had he had placed me to work with someone who was so generous. Because he immediately said to me, Listen, everything we make, I'll give you 10%. So he never paid me 3,000 rands. Of course. The first amount he paid me was 30,000 rands.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

Wow, wow. So you actually doubled what we're even getting in corporate price.

SPEAKER_04 29:08

Absolutely, 10 times more than what he had offered me initially. Because I took initiative. I see today when I hire people how they are always waiting for someone to hold their hand and guide them through opportunity. When opportunity presents itself, it is your responsibility to do with it what you can do with it. And it's always been my posture that whenever I have an opportunity, I will go into it expecting to outshine whatever the expectation is of me.

SPEAKER_00 29:40

And you do that like diligently. And you do that gracefully. I think that's the most important thing. Because sometimes it can come up as an ego, you know, egotistic. But with you, there's an element of grace and grounding as you are navigating and showing up as yourself, right? And outshining. But you you just do it graciously. Thank you. Thank you. Now you birth a gender woman. So now you want to deal with women. What made you go into that stream? I mean, women are very complex, and sometimes we don't know what we want. Um, or when we know what we want, and then we want to track back and do other things. How did you navigate that space of building a gender woman and what sparked the idea?

SPEAKER_04 30:19

You know, um, when I do my personal branding workshops, um, one of my first slides is a timeline. And I remember working on the timeline um with the intention to make sure that by the time I teach, people don't think I'm teaching from theory. That they see all the different seasons I've been through, that they see that I've been through hardships, that they see that I've had ten rands in my account and not known how to get to where I need to go, that they see that I've had um a marriage that didn't work, that somehow they see that I am as imperfect as they are, but I've taken everything that has happened for me and made it really work for who I want to become. And as I reflected on the timeline, I saw, you know, the traces of uh God's hand in how he's directed me to where I am today. I always say when Fuse Academy, which was my first business, focusing on women, and my second business, which is Eddie's Communications, which was a creative agency that helped uh brands with communication strategy, if those two businesses had a baby, it would be a gender woman. I had no idea that God was planting a seed in me when we decided to make Fuse Academy a female-focused DJing school. I remember when we did that, one of the areas where I got the most joy was in the workshops we would host on weekends. And those workshops were skill development workshops for young girls. And to have the opportunity to sit and mentor and guide them always energized me. But for me, it was a thing that I did. Yeah, I had no idea absolutely no idea that it was going to be part of my destiny. Around 2016, I was five years into running my communications agency, doing quite well. Uh, one of my clients was Unilever, working with probably the top 50 brands in South Africa. I um I always say, some people call it the Jesus years, you know, 31, 33. There's something that happens psychologically uh to all of us when we when we enter that season of our lives, and it happened to me as well. Where you start to really think about everything you've done and what is ahead of you, it just happens. It's not because you're self-aware, it's not because you're sitting and thinking about it. By the psychological shift that actually takes place in your brain, you start to think quite deeply about who you are and um who you want to be in the world. So if anyone is in those years, I don't want them to panic. It happens to all of us. And when that happened for me, one of the things that became very clear is that I wanted to be impactful. And when I looked at my business at the time, I was doing well financially, but I didn't feel like I was as impactful as I potentially could be. So I stopped that business and I had a bit of a sabbatical, and in that sabbatical, I started sharing a lot on my social media. It wasn't something that I had done in the past because I was always just busy running your business. I was the person also behind the brands, whether it was celebrity brands or corporate brands. So it was the first time I started to share a bit of what I was thinking and um of my experiences as well. And I saw an influx of women, particularly it was women, who were giving me feedback, asking for more, sharing their stories, DMing me. I didn't think much of it, but I remember I had a campaign I'd done and I called it 30 Days of Awakening. And when I finished, I could fill the gap again, you know, that space of longing for connection. So I thought, you know what? I wanna sit with 20 young girls and um I will just share. I didn't have a structure. I just want to share, I just want us to share experience. Just wanted to share experiences. And when I shared that call to action on the 1st of March 2016, I ended up with a hundred emails that day. And uh then I kicked into my business brain and I said this can be a thing. Yeah. So I gave it a name. My agency at the time was called Edit Communications. I called it Edit's Talks, and I wanted to focus on. I remember that Edit Talks, yes. I wanted to focus on conversations around the creative agency in Africa because that was the space that I was in at the time. So I hosted the first one. There were a hundred people and there was one guy. And I still didn't take it as a hint that my primary focus was gonna be woman. Yeah. Because I was thinking in a very commercial way at the time. As much as I wanted to be impactful, I still attributed success to commercial viability.

unknown 35:02

Sorry.

SPEAKER_04 35:03

So when I thought about Edity Talks, I didn't think woman. I just wanted connection. It was a very difficult time in my life. 2016-2017 has to be one of the two of the most difficult years of my life. Um it was the time when I had left my marital home. I stayed with my aunt for about a year. I wasn't sure what was next for me. Um and Editor Talks was a place where I could get out of that space and that darkness and connect with people. So, in a way, those conversations saved me. I then went to a coach through the advice of um a mentor of mine at the time. And after an hour and a half of speaking to this particular coach, he said to me, Why aren't you doing something around women? And I said, Why? I'm not a pink girl, I don't do branches. Who does that? They just sit and drink champagne, nothing to do with me. I'm smart, I should be advising precedents, I should be a CEO of some organization that just doesn't fit with how I see myself. But because at the time I was in such a dark space and there was nothing really tangible that I was doing, I thought to myself, why not? Let me pick some of this. Maybe maybe I should explore this. I went back home. I remember browsing my Instagram at the time, and by some coincidence, and I'll call it a coincidence, but of course it's not, I had put up a WCW at the time those were popular. And I had done hashtag agendawoman for the WCW. And I remember seeing that and thinking, this could be the name for this thing if I decide to do something around women. So I decided I would turn Edit Talks into Agenda Woman and I would focus on women. This was 2017 going into 2018. I went into 2018 as a gender woman. I knew that I wanted to do events because I was still seeking connection. But the more I saw people come towards the platform, I started to think, what could this thing be? Because of course I had to pay my bills, I still needed to figure out how do I support myself, and that's when I started to think about the commercial viability of a gender woman. But the initial need, the initial pain point that I was addressing was connection for myself and connection for other women who wanted to be in a room with like-minded women. And also just healing yourself through the process. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 37:31

Absolutely. And it's been an amazing journey that I've watched over the past, I think, six, seven years. Um, and now you are pivoting to other things. Tell me about your pivot and what led to that.

SPEAKER_04 37:44

So, as much as I was seeking connection as I was building a gender woman, I was partly in my emotional brain, but also in my logical brain. So I was always thinking about what are the possibilities for this thing if I build it well. And because I'm absolutely obsessed with business, but not only that, I'm obsessed with building brands. Not only personal brands, but commercial brands as well. And it's been an honor to be able to work with some of the commercial brands I've been able to work with, and of course the celebrity brands as well, and all the work that I do today to build personal brands as well in my coaching. So whilst I was building um all these events, at the back of my head, I knew that if I build a strong brand, it can become anything. It can become anything. And I always said that. I always said, I'm not building events, I'm building a brand. So all my decisions were not around particularly just the event, they were about the brand. What does it feel like? How does it make people feel? What are the emotional needs that it addresses? Who's the target audience? Who is going to be drawn to it? Who's going to want to trade with this brand? What are they going to be buying into? Those were all the questions I was answering as I was building a gender woman. And um we did the events, whilst we were doing the events, we were building the community online. 2020 was the best year for us. It was actually the year that we registered as a business because building that community, particularly in 2020, allowed us to build an organization that had access to about 20,000 people at the time in a space of a year where traditionally it would have taken us a long time if people were not drawn to the digital space in 2020. So it was absolutely an amazing opportunity for us. As I was building, we started getting attention from brands as well. In 2021, it was the first event where we had um commercial partners, Verve Clico, which is also just another amazing story. How I ended up working with that brand. Uh, there were our partners, San Lamendav. And when I got that money, I reinvested it back into the business because I wanted to create a proof point. I wanted to have proof of concept around what this could look like. I always knew that we were not a mess brand. I always knew that we were building a brand that was accessible luxury, which meant even when we pivot to products, people would be positioning us there already. So in the end of 2023, we had a lot of uh partnerships with brands. But as a business person, I started thinking if 80% of our revenue is coming from partnerships, that's a dangerous space for us to be in. It's not sustainable. Not sustainable. There will be other brands that will come into the market that money will shift. So I started thinking about how do we build a pipeline that we own, a direct-to-consumer channel that allowed us to create revenue that we were going to be able to trade and get to control. When I thought about going into the commercial space, I knew that I was not ready to manufacture products. And I didn't want to jump into that. I didn't want to figure it out, I had no appetite for it. So when I looked at the fundamental values of what a gender woman stood for, I then came up with this idea of creating a space where female-founded brands could trade. I knew that a lot of them were doing well digitally, so I knew I was not going to create an online store. But I knew that a lot of them wanted to test the markets in physical spaces. And because of the power of our brand, I was able to go to Mall of Africa and pitch the idea. And let me tell you, one of the things I do well is sell. When I went to Mall of Africa to pitch the idea, the timing was right. They were building the soup concept. So there's a space that they were building where we could test the opportunity. But beyond that, they loved the concept so much they wanted to give us the space for free. After they had uh spoken to the owners, they came back and said, we'll give you 50% of a discount. But that was the beginning of another revenue funnel, a growth funnel for a gender woman that showed us the possibilities when we curate collaboratively, but where there is trust in the center. And I think that's what good brands are able to accomplish. They are able to build trust with all stakeholders. And because we had spent the years doing that quite well, we were able to pull some very strong female-founded brands into that space and really start to build another commercial vessel for our gender woman, which has done remarkably well, and it's going to be our key, key offering in the market going forward. So we are rebranding to some degree. It's not a big rebrand, but uh we were a media and lifestyle business before, and now we're going to be retail first, and we're going to be a empowerment and lifestyle brand with a primary offering in the retail space across the continent.

SPEAKER_00 42:57

Wow, I love that. Those dreams are big. I mean, but I mean, you've always been a big girl, a big dreamer. Like nothing is impossible for you. Absolutely. And I always say our the world is our oyster, right? Um as long as you've got the capacity, you've got the experience, the expertise, and you are able to collaborate and pull in all the pieces in order for you to create something tangible. I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud of the work. Let's talk about obedience. I mean, none of this trajectory would have been possible without you saying, I am available for the work. Because sometimes you are presented with opportunities, but we are not available for the work, for whatever the reason could be, emotionally available or psychologically available, right? Um so what was what was the as you reflect now and look back, right? And I and I've I've heard you talking about um spirituality and prayer, etc. But what has been the pivotal moments for you in looking and reflecting and thinking about obedience?

SPEAKER_04 43:55

You know, often when I pray, one of the things I I am so grateful to God for his grace. I actually had a conversation with a friend and she said something that stuck with me. And she said, you know, I think we all have a responsibility to name God for ourselves.

SPEAKER_01 44:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:14

So when someone said he is Jehovah Chara, it's because they had seen provision.

SPEAKER_01 44:18

Yes, and the chara is in the children.

SPEAKER_04 44:20

Chara was an experience of God for them. When someone said he's Jehovah Rafa, they had seen healing. So when she said that, I started to ask myself, what would I name God? And for me, he has been a God of grace. He has been a God of grace, no mazibolo. In instances in my life, as I reflect back when I was not even anchored in my faith, I see his hand over everything.

SPEAKER_00 44:43

Yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_04 44:44

And the difference has never left you. He has never left me. The difference is I think now that I am strongly anchored in my faith. I move with so much more ease. You do. I move with so much more ease than I did in the past. When I reflect on how God has guided me when I was not in my faith, it was through tough experiences. I look at everything that has happened and nothing has been easy. And I truly believe it could have been easy if I was listening. It could have been easy if I was listening. But I also see how those experiences have shaped the work that I do today. So in the early years, I became a Christian as a teenager. In my 20s, I was not even anywhere close to carrying myself in anything that was Christian. But when I was 39, something pivotal happened in my life. He is number two, 13 years younger than me. And that loss significantly impacted me because it was absolutely traumatic and tragic. And because also I was the oldest in my family, in terms of capacity to make sure that everything is running. Everything was running and he was buried. After that loss, I um definitely saw myself moving back to my faith. And I don't think it was the loss that made me inquire. I think it was the timing of the loss and coming into my 40s, which is another significant number in our faith. And um coming into my 40s, I went fully back into my faith. My identity is fully anchored in being a Christian woman. My values are anchored in the Christian faith. Um the manner in which I move, uh, the manner in which I exist, I breathe, I live, my being is anchored in my faith and in God. I purely depend on the guidance of the Holy Spirit in everything that I do. And what a peaceful season I'm in. And it shows. I know also a lot of people have been asking me, oh, you're not so present on social media. And it's because the rhythm of my life has completely changed.

SPEAKER_00 47:23

It changed completely. It changes.

SPEAKER_04 47:26

The rhythm of my life has completely changed. And through uh the instruction, a lot of times of the Holy Spirit, I have found um clarity in what I need to be doing, where I need to be present, um, where I need to be speaking, what I need to be saying, but also where God wants me to serve. Um I've never seen this level of provision. In all the years where I've depended on my own power, my intellect, my ability to do things, I have never seen this level of provision. So obedience is an important part of my life. It directs my life quite strongly. I hear from the Holy Spirit quite strongly, and I think that anchoring in um continued intimacy with God allows me to move with so much grace and clarity. There is no reason for me to be everywhere doing everything. I am very clear about where I should be, what I should be doing, and when I should be doing it.

SPEAKER_00 48:33

I don't want, I don't know whether to say welcome home or what. But thank you so much for sharing your story. I think it's such a beautiful story. And it's a story of evolution as well, right? Absolutely. Um and it's a story of trial and error, and it's a story of being bold and audacious, and it's a story of never giving up. And not never giving up on the things of the world, but never giving up on yourself, right? Absolutely. And um, it's such a privilege that I speak to someone who has um you know anchored themselves in Christ, right? This is exactly what I what that's that's my bread and butter, that's exactly what I live on, that's my anchor. Um, and it's such a privilege to walk with people in that journey. Absolutely so that because they understand you under you would understand how I move now, and I understand how you move because I know exactly who's leading you, absolutely and what's what what deposits are happening in you all the time. Absolutely. So, thank you so much for a beautiful conversation. We've come to the end of the conversation. I hope our viewers are um, you know, um uh are having a you know a lot of aha moments and a lot of reflective questions around journey as an entrepreneur, a journey as a leader, a journey as a woman that has gone through everything but has sustained herself and has allowed God to sustain you. Um so what's next for Unomdeni and the business?

SPEAKER_04 49:46

I am absolutely excited about the season that I'm in coming into 2026. I of course inquired of the Lord what my word would be, and it was immediately consecration. Oh, consecr- Oh it was immediately consecration.

SPEAKER_00 50:01

And right time, 2026. Consecrate, lower your spirit, humble yourself so that God can rise in you. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_04 50:10

Love it. It was immediately consecration. This is the year where I move out of guidance, I move out of instruction, I am anchored, I am grounded, I am settled, which is actually the prophetic word for my church. I am excited to see God's hand because I've moved at the power of my own might for all these days. And you know how that feels. And I know how it feels, I know the toil of it. I am excited to be settled, I'm excited to be rested, I'm excited to be lifted, I'm excited to be used, I'm excited to serve, I'm excited to continue to do particularly the work that I'm doing in speaking. And um in the people that I coach, I've seen the hand of God mightily in that space when it comes to the woman that I've encountered. I think about them often. I've been my kitchen cooking and just thinking about a lady that I met and the joy I feel in creating serving safe space and also serving, serving them, serving them, listening, and um being able to guide, having had all this experience and being able to share it with not only peers, but even people I consider mentors in my own journey. Just being able to sit in that place, direct their path, influence, and um be able to just um continue to encourage and inspire people to help them recognize that the journey of life is not linear. And we all need to have a healthy relationship with challenges because there is no life without challenges. And the minute you shift the way that you see the challenge ahead of you, the more you become empowered to actually take control of your life and direct it in the manner that you would have it go.

SPEAKER_00 52:05

I love that. I love that. So beautiful, so wholesome, so fulfilling. Um, thank you so much. We wish you everything of the best in nature. I have no idea that it's gonna flourish more than you've you can ever imagine or think of. Um, you know, I see multiplication in so many ways. I see um, you know, just the gratitude of God and the hand of God in your life may never leave you. Even if sometimes you sway, but may it never may he follow you where you go. Thank you. Um orders your steps and guides you in every decision that you make. Thank you. And um, I wish you blessed consecration or consecrated here. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's a beautiful conversation. Thank you. Thank you, guys. Thank you. That was so beautiful.

SPEAKER_04 52:49

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That was lovely. That was so beautiful.

SPEAKER_05 52:54

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 53:00

Thank you for listening and thank you for tuning in. So we are available on the podcast, Apple Podcasts, or any other streaming podcast. Please do comment, subscribe on both the podcast as well as our YouTube channel, which is Africa Rising Leadership. Until we see you again next time. Thank you.