Asisthuthuke T/A ThuthukaSA
What does your company do?
ThuthukaSA is an authorised financial services provider and we are also a mortgage originator. We also offer financial coaching services (which can be accessed here --> https://www.thuthuka-sa.co.za/product-category/financial-coaching/) to individuals and Financial Wellness Talks and Workshops to companies, churches, women’s groups and stokvels. We assist individuals and stokvels to save and invest money and most of our customers save for school and university fees. For medium term and long terms investments, we normally invest using offshore tax free investments. We encourage our customers to have emergency funds so they don’t use debt in case of a crisis. Our coaching services mainly focus on assisting our customers to get out of debt, without going under debt review. In assisting customers to get out of debt, we also ensure that they do not go back into a high debt situation by making them sign a commitment letter to start saving and investing money as soon as they are out of debt. We also offer life cover, retirement annuities, pension preservation, retirement planning and Will drafting services. We offer retrenchment advice and guidance to employees who are facing retrenchment. Churches often invite us to conduct workshops for couples who are preparing for marriage to cover areas such as different types of marital regimes, the importance of budgeting especially for their wedding day and also monthly once they are married, how to avoid money related stress and conflict, etc …
What is your biggest success?
My second book “From Debt to Riches: Steps to Financial Success” reaching SA Best Seller status for selling over 30 000 copies. Founding ThuthukaSA, an authorised Financial Services Provider (FSP) in 2018, surviving COVID-19 although we lost many customers, we suffered huge investment withdrawals and had to reduce our staff members to just one employee in 2020 & 2021 and getting to a point where we now have close to 400 customers who invest with us with assets under management of over R22 million. Being awarded an Emerald Award by Sanlam. I joined the Graca Machel Trust Women Creating Wealth program in 2024 and I received an award for business excellence. ThuthukaSA’s revenue and customers are growing to a point where we are now in a position to hire more financial advisors to service the growing number of customers. Our biggest success is helping people to get out of debt and to get them to start saving and investing money.
What has been your biggest hurdle?
Only making R10 per copy in royalties from my book so even though the sales are above 30 000 copies, ThuthukaSA has not made much in revenue from the book. The root cause is that I entered into a publishing contract without legal advice and the terms are not favourable and it is difficult for me to use another publisher. In essence, limited knowledge of publishing and the laws that govern publishing contracts has meant that I cannot gain much from all the sales of the book which have been over R3 mil. Further to that, I cannot write another book and appoint a publisher of my choice so in essence, my book writing talent is dead because I am not prepared to write another book and only make R10 a copy in royalties. For me to overturn the publishing contract, I need money to hire a lawyer to challenge the terms of the contract. I have therefore postponed writing another book until I have enough funds to overturn the publishing contract.
