Richard Maponya, a teacher by profession, started working in the 1950s, at a clothing company seeking an educated black person to sell garments to miners and rural people.
During that period, Richard proved an adept buyer of material that would appeal to black people. This made his white manager take a liking to him, however due to the political dynamics of the time, he was told he could not become a general manager.
Luckily for Maponya, the manager gave him soiled clothing and cloth samples, which he then sold in his spare time. This allowed him to build capital.
With the new capital at hand, Maponya didn’t splurge it on booze, girls and clothes like most of his peers would. Rather, he saved the money, hoping to one day to venture into business.
Maponya used a ‘pay-while-you-wear’ scheme to sell his clothes, this was unusual and attracted a lot of buyers. His manager retired in 1956, this ended his supply of his second-hand clothing and prompted him to resign.
With the money he had saved, Maponya started engaging himself in business. He tried opening Soweto’s first retail clothing store but he was denied a license.
He didn’t give up though, he tried to find other loopholes around the system. He was given a license to sell foodstuffs, which provided him with the right foundation to start building the Maponya empire.
Importance Of Starting Small
Too many times people are so obsessed with “GO BIG OR GO HOME” that they forget the finer details of success.
They tend to forget that if you wanna do something or build a habit for the long term, you need to take the opposite approach, which is starting small.
Starting big takes a lot of time and energy. And when the resistance is a bit higher, chances of calling it quits are high too.
Richard Maponya started small and today he’s Richard Maponya, if you wanna make a habit stick, make sure you start small. The secret is to make the action easy to work through in order to lower the resistance.
