Promoting female entrepreneurship is a priority for all of us. The African women entrepreneurs play a vital driving force for sustainable economic growth and widespread prosperity that benefits everyone.
Despite the obstacles that stand in their way, women play a full role in regional integration, economic growth, social development, prosperity and sustainability. Female africans have enabled the continent to house the largest number of women entrepreneurs in the world.
Let’s continue on the theme of African female entrepreneurship with a very enlightening interview that we had with “Salmine Sassi”, a woman who is greatly involved in this topic.
Salmine is an entrepreneur, a business consultant and a gender-equality advocate. She is the co-founder of “She Starts Africa“, a not-for-profit organization that’s mission is to advance women through building their capacities in business, digital, and soft skills.
She is also a consultant in entrepreneurship, business transformation, and business development. She works with entrepreneurs and SMEs to help them make their ideas a reality and grow their businesses in the digital world.
Her ambition is to grow the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Tunisia, create a change and an impact her society. She believes that life is a learning journey, so she is determined on making everyday counts, through making the slightest act of kindness, spreading positive energy and helping whenever she can.
Tell us a little bit about “She Starts Africa”. The team, the mission, vision etc…
“She Starts Africa” is a social enterprise, its mission is to advance women through building their capacities in entrepreneurship, what we do is that we deliver training, we provide a safe space, a community and mentoring for women aspiring entrepreneurs.
We have three main programs. One is an initiation to entrepreneurship, one is an acceleration of a start up in the idea stage that are led by women, and the other one is to build women’s capacities in order to integrate them in the labor market.
Our vision is to see a world where there is as many female leaders as male ones, we want to see women climbing to leadership positions and eventually succeeding, we want to see a united Africa and that’s why “She Starts Africa” believe in the power of this continent, we believe of young Africans that can make a change and create their destiny rather than having their destiny written for them.
“She Starts Africa”, because Africa is a “woman”, the power is in this continent and the power is in women’s hands.”
How did you get your idea or concept to start “She Starts Africa”? (Emphasize on what made you start your business, key driving forces).
“My idea of “She Starts Africa” came from a personal experience actually. I am going to tell you the story of the most inspiring person to me and who inspired me to be the person I am today which is my mum.
My mum was raised in a poor neighborhood, her dad dropped her out of school, her marriage with my dad was arranged, she never knew him before and she married him at an early age, at the age of 20, I guess.
And then when she was in her second year of high school, she had to work in a sewing factory, she had to go through all of this but also go through the pain of raising two kids who have unfortunately a genetic disease that is really rare, with approximately existing only 80 cases worldwide.
Due to all of the pain and the trauma and the adversities she faced in her life, she needed to be strong, for her kids, to give us a better life basically, so she decided to continue studying and learning everything within her capacity, from French, English, Italian to sewing.
She worked extra hours, and step by step she was growing and evolving from being a factory manager in a year, to being a director in two years and then she became an entrepreneur, she started her own textile factory, closing the first one and partnering with my brother to open another one, and now she’s on her fourth business, which is a textile business platform.
And she is still hustling, at the age of 55, she is still working, waking up at 5 am, sleeping at 11 pm, taking care of the family, taking care of work, of her employees, managing around 45 female workers, and that power, that strength, and most importantly the amount of passion she had inside of her that kept her moving forward.
It’s all about passion, ethics and ambition, that’s what my mum has taught me, do something you are passionate about, and never do anything without ethics. Values and ethics are the most important things, and then be ambitious, have big goals, have big dreams, and I can assure you, you can reach them. Which is something that is, unfortunately, still not existing as much in Tunisia, in our community and in all the developing countries.
So my story started with being inspired by my mum, it also started by having to deal with the genetic anomaly, having to manage that at a very young age is also a privilege, instead of being considered as pain, it is rather a privilege for me because it taught me to be strong, it taught me to love myself, it taught me to appreciate what I have, it taught me to be grateful for the things and the people around me and that I don’t take anything for granted.
Finally, when I was going to the incubator for social entrepreneurs in the United States, I had to struggle for 3 months to provide sponsoring so I can go and experience the opportunity as they only gave me 75% expense waiver of the scholarship so I had to cover the rest of the expenses by myself and I went through hell to get the money needed.
I heard people saying “you are just a girl and why don’t you simply get the money from your parents and why don’t you focus on your education instead”, I struggled with a lot of diminishing comments especially if they see you for your gender, for your skin color and for your social status. So no matter where you go, there will always be that kind of contempt in Tunisia.
But I eventually made it, thanks the people who, on the other hand, chose to believe in me and helped me go to the U.S, go through my incubation year, and helped me become an entrepreneur and a consultant.
So, I am really grateful for the whole experience, even the painful one, because it made me learn to be a good sales person, for example. That summer especially, I got the opportunity to strengthen my sales skills and become a skillful sales person.”
How do you market your business, and which tactics have been most successful?
“Let’s focus first on the fact that you don’t market your business, well, you do market it on some level but what’s more important is that you need to know what your people, your customers, your beneficiaries want, if you don’t know that, there is nothing for you to market, meaning that you’ll market a product no one wants.
You need to be able to spend time understanding your customers, your end consumer, his persona, his buying behavior, his desires and preferences, his pain points, his fears and struggles etc.…, if you do that, that’s when you can market your business.
I personally knew that, understood what my customers need, my aspiring female entrepreneurs, they don’t have a safe space, they feel judged, they feel helpless and demotivated, they didn’t get a boost or a push to go forward with their aspirations.
And that’s exactly what I told them, that’s the message I gave them, “She Stars Africa” is a safe space, only for women, where you’ll be mentored and trained to become a successful entrepreneur and leader.”
What did you learn out of this experience? More like what were some of the biggest lessons that has impacted you along the way?
Honestly, there are a lot of lessons that impacted me along the way. The entrepreneurial experience has taught me that the world is filled with people who will bring you down, and those people are the most unexpected ones.
Here’s what I want to say, don’t judge a book by its cover, the most famous people with the most followers that seem like they are inspiring were the ones that brought me personally down, so basically, don’t follow the trends, don’t follow what’s out there and what people are doing or who’s the most famous incubator / accelerator or mentor or an investor who has the most reach and the most likes etc.
No, go for the ones who are low-key and keeping a low profile, simply doing their jobs with integrity. Go for the ones who are working with dedication and perseverance and who are not putting all their energies on looking good on social media but rather putting real effort and producing real results in real life.
Go for the people who are like you, this is what I learnt. I learnt not to go with the flow, be you, be true to yourself, be true to your vision, be true to what you want to do, and especially be true to your ethics and values, because that’s what you’re going to have forever, if you lose that, you lose yourself, not the money, not the fame nor the likes will do you any good at the end of the day.”
What would you say are the top three skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur?
“For me, the top three skills to be a successful entrepreneur are first, to be a good leader and by saying a good leader I mean not being a boss, not being someone who’s going to micro-manage or simply to manage people. No, a leader is someone who is empathetic and who can lead people towards a vision, who can make them believe in it and work together to achieve it.
The second top skill, I would say, being a good sales person, being able to sell your product, your team, yourself is really important, I mean, having sales capacities and skills are primordial for the success of your work.
And finally, the third and final top skill, honestly, is for an entrepreneur to be a generalist, to have a basic knowledge in all fields and to understand everything within his/her company, he/she needs to understand his/her product, how it works, understand its market and how to scale it…”
To what do you attribute the success of “She Stars Africa”? What was the single most important decision you made that contributed to this success?
“I attribute the success of “She Stars Africa” to the decision I made to find a co-founder who is “Safa Triki”. She took “She Stars Africa” from the concept of doing workshops and mentorship from one place to another, to creating an entity that is existing, growing, having a solid team and moving forward.
Honestly, it is the best decision that I took, “Safa Triki” is the attribute of this success, literally.
But other than that, is to give the benefit of the doubt to everyone and let them change, it’s a very good success contribution, as well, let them understand that there are factors that may have influenced their behavior that probably weren’t completely aware of. When you give people the benefit of the doubt, you end up learning a lot about yourself while making their life a little easier.”
If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?
“My one piece of advice to someone just starting out, I would say, just start, launch your work and don’t follow the fakeness of trends, don’t follow the mediocre posts of social media, the people who are babbling and saying useless things, focus on your work, on your start up, look for and follow the people who are true to themselves and who are truly working and producing fruitful results, follow their leads to create better outcomes.”
What are the future plans of “She Starts Africa”?
“The future plans of “She Starts Africa” is to both reach sustainability and reach other markets in Africa, these are the two main objectives we are focusing on to accomplish in the near future hopefully.”
Reference: https://www.facebook.com/SheStartsAfrica/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/salminesassi/?originalSubdomain=tn
