A masterclass with Sibu Mabena, MD and founder of Duma Collective and now partner at M&N Brands

My coronary heart lurches ahead once I get an automatic response from Sibu Mabena’s e-mail. I’ve simply popped her a message to substantiate this interview and now right here’s an out-of-office reply. On go away. From in the present day until the tip of the month. Did I get the dates improper? 

Simply as I’m about to re-check the final correspondence I had along with her assistant, I get a ‘ding’ from Groups. Sibu Mabena is ready within the foyer. Trying as serene as a brand new daybreak and comfortably propped up towards a headboard. Wait, aren’t you on go away? I ask. Sure, she says and not using a trace of irony, however she’s right here projecting heat and enthusiasm throughout the display screen. I suggest suspending and he or she protests, exclaiming, “Two weeks is a very long time!” 

The final time she went on go away was a few 12 months in the past, however that was medical. So trip go away hasn’t been one thing she’s had the posh of taking, particularly within the enterprise she’s in: advertising, artistic communications and eventing, organising occasions equivalent to Cassper Nyovest’s Fill Up Sequence, Black Espresso’s Music Is King, Metro FM Music Awards and Residence Coming Africa.

Her staff has doubled in dimension since 2019, and issues actually ramped up for the corporate she based, Duma Collective. Within the first 12 months of lockdown her company began creating on-line occasions (assume Lockdown Home Celebration with Shimza and DJ Ph) and rising its influencer advertising and movie star model illustration base with the likes of Mihlali Ndamase, Jessica Nkosi, Kwesta, Bonko Khoza and Motshidisi Mohono. Now the 30-year-old has virtually grown her workforce occasions 5 after sealing a take care of one other company. 

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Sibu has been working since she was 15, making a repute and community for herself that would vouch for her when the tasks acquired larger and the stakes greater. “I began out as a freelancer, fairly early in my journey. I feel my first job, I used to be 15 years previous, educating youngsters methods to dance and babysitting throughout faculty holidays on the aftercare at college, and making a good sum of money for a child that age. And that then turned a networking alternative. I began working with individuals in eventing and freelancing for them, and assembly model managers and model custodians by means of the dancing.

“I feel I used to be 19 once I did my first gig with SAB Miller, the place we have been doing the Kendrick Lamar Three-Metropolis Tour. I used to be in my first 12 months of varsity and managing a staff of dancers, and it was simply being environment friendly, having the ability to put names on an Excel sheet, sizes of clothes, ID numbers in order that flights may very well be booked, having the ability to handle a finances, having the ability to put collectively a presentation on PowerPoint that sells the artistic. Studying all of these issues at that age was what sort of constructed the flexibility to have the ability to do it now at a critical stage.” 

From being a freelancer, she began feeling the necessity to formalise her hustle and arrange an company because the work grew and grew, in dimension and influence. So in 2016 she employed her first worker, an intern. “On the finish of 2019 I feel there have been possibly 12 of us. By the tip of 2020, there have been 25 of us, and on the finish of 2021, there have been 40. And in the present day is March and there are 44.”

Earlier this month her artistic communications company introduced a share change take care of M&N Manufacturers, an advert company community that homes promoting, communications, and media companies together with the Avatar Company Group. Sibu remains to be the MD of Duma Collective however has some shares in M&N Manufacturers and can also be companion of some divisions. Heavy is the pinnacle, and the crown retains getting heavier and heavier . . .

“What drives me is the 44 younger creatives that I sukela’d (approached) and mentioned, please come and assist me chase this dream. Each morning I get up and it’s like I’ve truly acquired 44 livelihoods on my shoulders. And now with this partnership, it’s was 180 livelihoods,” Sibu says in response to the query what retains her going and motivated. 

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“Vele on the onset I wished to have the ability to create a platform the place artistic younger individuals might do artistic work and receives a commission for it; do artistic, cool sh*t and receives a commission for it. And I’m the one which approached them, I’m the one which mentioned come do that with me. So I’ve a accountability to them to have the ability to see that by means of. They might’ve been medical doctors, lecturers or be creatives in different larger businesses however they selected to return and do that with me.

“In order that’s what retains me going, that’s what retains me motivated, and the truth that that is larger than us. This dream isn’t just concerning the people who find themselves on earth proper now. However in 100 years’ time there had higher be a Duma Collective for a younger black baby to have the ability to work at and inform their dad and mom, ‘Mina mangikhula, I wanna work at Duma Collective,’ and their dad and mom know precisely what that’s. Identical to, thina, after we have been rising up after we mentioned ‘I need to work at Microsoft or SABC or MultiChoice, our dad and mom knew what that was.”

Sibu additionally credit influencer advertising and social media administration for the accelerated progress of her firm, notably within the troublesome first two years of the Covid-19 lockdown which battered the leisure and leisure business.

“Impulsively persons are not out of their homes, hastily persons are not on the roads, persons are not at occasions, they aren’t capable of attend occasions, so the second display screen, which is your cellphone, turns into a really very important communication gadget. And, by means of that, social media actually, actually, actually blew up. In that point that’s after we additionally realised ukuthi discovering methods to alter the way in which we talk on an eventing platform, by means of basic PR or on TVCs and having the ability to adapt that and put right into a social media perspective could be what units us aside.

“So it was a factor of adapting to the change in a short time, and discovering specialists within the business to assist us. We collaborated with plenty of completely different individuals and businesses to be able to place ourselves because the go-to individuals for influencer advertising and social media administration. Our method of doing it was what led us to being, I feel, first to entrance and turning into front-line receivers of briefs.”

There’s that second for each enterprise proprietor when, in a time of surprising issue, they realise, “Truly, we’re going to be okay.” For Sibu that second was when Duma Collective extemporaneously went into TV manufacturing and needed to study the ropes and produce Lockdown Home Celebration in a matter of days.

“We took an occasion that ought to have occurred bodily and put it on the display screen. It was the primary time myself, Ph and Shimza entering into tv from a behind-the-scenes perspective, and the way in which we actually in seven days put collectively I feel it was 16 episodes of content material, and I feel it was six hours per episode,” she lists the element of each single factor they needed to grasp and stops in disbelief on the quick tempo of all of it.

“Yoh! It was simply plenty of studying very, in a short time. Errors made, sure. Classes learnt, sure. But in addition we dug deep into ourselves and located elements of ourselves we didn’t know existed. Shimza was hastily a undertaking supervisor; Ph is an govt producer, and so they’re swapping roles . . . so it was a really thrilling, difficult time that pressured us to both sink or swim. And thank God we swam!

So what does trip go away appear like for Sibu Mabena? “It seems like out of workplace; Outlook closed, WhatsApp, closed. All of it, closed! ” she says with a chuckle. Nicely-earned relaxation as she’s acquired a complete lot of legacy constructing she must maintain doing.