User talk:Thato SGi

My first salary was R180 as a bartender at Harlequins in Sun City @ the main hotel. My uniform was black pants and white shirts and this was in December 2000. I went on to carry on work for my dad at his driving school (Segaole Driving School in Rustenburg) and then became a taxi rank queue marshall in 2002. I did this whilst studying marketing in the University of Pretoria until 2004. And in 2004 I started selling cars for McCarthy Toyota; where Theo Fourie hired me to sell cars as a part-time salesman. I sold cars from 4pm-9pm from Monday to Friday and 8am-9pm on Weekends. I didn't even have time for ice-cream @ milky lane. The only time I saw movies was on a Sunday I got off every 8 weeks. I then left Toyota to join BMW in 2006. I worked at Leo Haese Centurion as their first black saleperson since 1972 but it became unfortunate as they knew not how to treat me. Soon thereafter I joined Trenstar; a logistics company which I failed at as I knew not much about logistics. I decided to carry on selling cars and joined VW Northcliff where I got retrenched following the LIFO policy when they went through their corporate financial difficulty.

At this point, I had been head-hunted by Melodie Cohen from Yfm who after 3 months of negotiations convinced me to join YFM. I went on to join Yfm where I handled the entertainment portfolio and direct client portfolio in 2007. It was a freaken great experience. However; Yfm suspended me for being "a rebel against management" in 2009. This came shortly after I had established my own company "Blackmarket Media" in 2008. We had originally started doing our own events, starting with what I would like to view as the "future-to-be-legendary experience; Sleeping is a Rumour" event; and Yfm saw it as conflict of interest... even though we did not do any events FOR Yfm. Following this, the CEO Kanthan Pillay managed to convince me to either stick at Yfm as a full-time employee or follow my own dream. I chose the latter. Kanthan Pillay together with Winston Goldin allowed me to leave YFM whilst still keeping the client base that I had built at YFM; and I must state "I will ever be greatful for that".

This was an advantageous start to my own business. With constant communication with Meshni Hutheram (who went to join SABC) and Marco Verlosa (who went to join Soweto TV; Urban Brew) and who had both been my managers before; I was then privileged with the reality to realise my dreams of starting my own media and marketing company.

I in-turn worked with many a beautiful brand, many a great idea, and many a beautiful soul and that is how I have consistently worked to be where I am today.

This is only the beginning of my story. I have had many an encounter, many a experience, many a reality and many moment of what life has to offer through all this. All I can hope for is that, someday, just someday, my small little story will afffect a change, an impact or even just a simple positive shift in someones life... And that 1 day we can all do what we can to make all that we can, a simple positive change in our lives and to the lives of those we may not even know.

I still truly believe; that the best worth you can place on your deeds is when you do something for someone that you truly expect nothing back from!

Stay true to you; Thato SGi Mr Segaole ka sebele