ICYMI: Virtual sessions motivate entrepreneurs

The Margaret Hirsch Women In Business virtual sessions continue to help motivate and inspire women in business from around the country.

The weekly sessions are hosted each Friday, with top speakers participating to give advice on how business owners can stay positive and focused during this unprecedented time.

Hirsch has been running her Women In Business networking sessions in all the areas in which Hirsch’s operates for the past 10 years in an effort to get business women interacting and helping each other to push their businesses forward.

The most recent session saw two speakers, Stacey Copas from Australia and Dikeledi Seleka, one of Margaret Hirsch’s Women In Business Achiever finalists, talk to the over 200 women who attended the virtual session, on building up resilience in an effort to cope with any eventuality that comes ones way.

Copas was left as a quadriplegic after an accident in 1990, and although she thought that her life was over at the time (she was 12) she made the decision eventually to ‘pull her self together’, and find the gift that her disability had sent her: To be able to motivate people in similar circumstances. Today she travels the world (virtually now) to give talks on resilience and self belief.

Copas said, “This pandemic has forced us all to stop and take note of what we’re doing. We should never take anything for granted and need to see value in the time this pandemic has given us to stretch ourselves and become more resilient.”

Seleka grew up in a small village in the then-Northern Province (now Limpopo) and attended a school with no library, or science lab. She said that her determination to become a success in life led her to Johannesburg, where she started working in a bank, but was persuaded by her boyfriend (now husband) to start her own business. The couple went on to found several businesses together and Seleka started her own Women’s Empowerment group – the Sisters Empowerment Circle.

Seleka said, “It’s not the big things that make us who we are, it’s the small things. Covid is a reminder to us all of what is important in life. It has given life a new meaning and above all, it has made us even more resilient.”
For more information on Hirsch’s virtual networking sessions, visit Margaret Hirsch’s Facebook page.