By Ronard Kachaje

You can turn your hobbies and passions into money. This is the common phrase that I have heard and read several times from motivation speakers and personal development books respectively. Many people tend to have different opinions regarding this statement as a result of different world perceptions and experiences. While others say it is easier said than done, I personally believe it is doable. This was my line of thinking as I was co-founding Success Magazine.

As someone who has strong interests in youth affairs, I co-founded Success Magazine together with Louis Kamphete in March this year with the aim of empowering my fellow youths. I had no idea how to monetise our initiatives since it was born out of passion. After successfully being admitted to the Jamlab Accelerator Programme I have learned a lot and now we have turned our passion into a business.

In the past three months, we have learned how macro and micro economic activities affect our publication business. We have learned how political, economic, social, technology, legal, and environmental (PESTLE) factors affect our business. This has helped us to register our business with both the registrar general and the archive office in Zomba.

We have also learned about market intelligence, business model, revenue stream, and developing funding proposals. Since it’s more of a practical learning approach, we have put all of that into action. We now have a very solid business model that helps our magazine to be sustainable and at the same time stick to our objectives which are to educate, motivate, inspire, connect, and entertain the youth.

In addition, we have enjoyed the space of interacting with many like-minded individuals (other programme participants) who are doing great things in southern Africa. Because of the programme’s approach to encouraging interactions, we are now able to analyse other companies’ organograms and business models. This is helping us to learn outside the programme how successful organisations operate.

In summary, through the help of Jamlab, we have learned and turned our idea into a business.

*Ronard Kachaje is the co-founder of Success Magazine

The JamLab Accelerator is a six-month hothouse programme for journalism and media innovators. It is based at Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct in the heart of Johannesburg.

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