PHOLA – Mbali Sambo, a 20-year-old lad from Hazyview is the proud owner of Phola Bricks.

This is a testament to the saying that age is nothing but a number. At his age, he had created job opportunities for 20 previously unemployed youth in the area.

His plans are to create even more job opportunities for the community of Phola.

Phola Bricks manufactures and sells three types of bricks, maxi bricks, stock bricks and block six-inch bricks.

The company also delivers to clients, free of charge, within the Nsikazi area and charges a reasonable fee to those who are 10 kilometres or more from Phola.

They operate Mondays to Fridays. Sambo shared his heart-warming story not only to market his business, but also to inspire every young entrepreneur to follow their dreams, no matter what.

“Through my story, I’d like to encourage young people to go out there and chase after the dreams, approach strangers, make conversations, tell them about your visions and listen carefully to theirs too. Acquire as much information as you can, even though you might think you won’t need it, you will in the long run. There has never been a great time to be a young entrepreneur in South Africa, I hope my story will inspire many,” he said.

Narrating his success story Sambo said he grew up always wanting to be his own boss. “I started taking action towards this goal in grade 10. I was only 16 years old. I did my research and plans to open my first business which was a car wash, the BoyzNmbakS Wash n Braai. I tried everything I knew at that time, but the business didn’t work out and it was disturbing me when it came to my academics and sports,” he said.

He received more business advice from his childhood friend, Mlungise Matsane who was a passionate and ambitious businessman at the age of 22.

He said his friend had a good business plan and needed an investor so they decided to be partners. Unfortunately for them they didn’t have enough money to execute their plan.

Their first attempts of getting new contractors who had been awarded tenders to build RDPs in Mariti to buy the material from them on credit couldn’t work as they were not a registered credit provider. Sambo said their downfall was not the end of the road for them, hence they tried other avenues.

“We then identified an opportunity in this market that we were tapping into. We saw through our research and calculations that the maxi bricks were the first priority in building houses, then we decided to focus on supplying maxi bricks to our clients,” he said.

Three years later Sambo decided to buy an existing brickyard. Unfortunately, his friend was not interested in the idea and he then went solo in researching and finding more information on who could sell him an existing brickyard until he met the former owner of Phola Bricks, a Mr Chan from China who was planning to retire and to return to his home country.

Chan charged the young entrepreneur a sum of R1 million. He only had R300 000 from selling bricks to new contractors. He topped it with an extra sum of R200 000 he received from his father’s policies.

“The payment plan was that I pay R500 000 in October to secure the sale and pay an extra R300 000 to make a deposit of R800 000 by December 20, 2018.

“Due to the fact that I didn’t have enough money to pay off the balance of R200 000, we worked out another payment plan that was beneficial for both of us. Chan agreed to let me take over and run his business, and from the profits I make, pay the remaining balance over a period of one month and 13 days. I made the final payment of the remaining R200 000 on February 13, 2019. This makes me a proud owner of the million rand’s worth business at my age,” he said.

Visit Phola Bricks at stand nr 606 Phola Trust, Nsikazi or call the manager on 084- 741-5201 or the office on 079-818-7788.

You can also drop them an email at Pholabricks@gmail.com.