Blue Chip Journal - June 2019 edition

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
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