Sherene Anandham had worked her way up in the corporate world from shop assistant to group financial manager when the blatant structural unfairness still facing female executives in South Africa’s corporate sector finally became intolerable.
At the end of 2019, she made a decision to resign from her corporate position without any preparation of what lies ahead. Her decision came from experiencing overwhelming constraints between work, family and her commitment to ad-hoc clients she attended to after hours. She knew that her valuable knowledge, skills and experience will support her decision to drive her entrepreneurial passion.
Today Sherene runs a consultancy, Empower You SA, aimed at training and supporting emerging entrepreneurs, and The Good Accountant, an accounting practice, from her own premises in Randburg recently bought with the help of commercial property finance from Business Partners Limited.
Apart from her deep financial and management skills, Sherene’s ability to support small growing businesses was enriched by her own start-up experience.
Like so many entrepreneurs, Sherene’s business formed out of her side-hustle: a handful of clients whose books she kept over weekends while she climbed the corporate ladder. It was the constant requests from businesses for her to take on their books that gave her the confidence that she could build a successful accounting practice if she focused on it full-time.
At first her confidence was deeply shaken by a massive unexpected blow; she had resigned no less than three months before the countries first Covid-19 lockdown.
“I thought, ‘oh my goodness, what have I done?’,” says Sherene. But she soon realised that her fledgling accounting practice faced a major opportunity. As thousands of businesses were scrambling to access emergency relief funds and the unemployment insurance to survive the lockdowns, demand for her services surged.
The crisis exposed the huge lack of knowledge among small businesses, particularly around basic business systems, compliance and strategic planning during tough times. Sherene recognised the need for a service that went beyond mere bookkeeping and accounting. What was needed was a holistic offering that included business training and advisory support.
The insight let to the creation of Empower You SA, a consultancy dedicated to mentoring and training emerging entrepreneurs. The training courses are structured into modules that cover key areas such as operations management, financial management, marketing and wealth creation.
Another thing that the Covid-19 crisis taught her was that such training and consultations work very well online, and today most of Empower You SA’s courses are done remotely with business owners signing up from as far as Limpopo.
“One of the core lesson that we aim to convey in our training is how to identify opportunity in the midst of crisis,” says Sherene, who also co-authored a spiritual business book called Kingdom Entrepreneurs.
Empower You SA and The Good Accountant grew steadily as the training courses became a pipeline of business owners who signed up as regular accounting clients.
As her team expanded, Sherene began exploring opportunities to invest in business premises. She identified a commercial property in Randburg that offered an ideal combination of office space and training facilities.
With demand quickly outstripping the capacity of her growing enterprise, Sherene turned to Business Partners Limited, who provided her with a 100% financing package to support her vision.
Looking ahead, Sherene aims to forge strategic partnerships with major institutions, including banks and government development agencies, to empower as many entrepreneurs as possible. Her mission is to teach others how to transform adversity into wealth, just as she has done.
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