The One - be inspired

The One:

Derrick Maphoru

I am Derick Maphoru and I was born in the late 80’s in Tembisa, Jo’burg. I completed my matric in 2006 and went to Boston City Campus for further studies. I didn’t finish my studies (many good reasons) but I got jobs at a couple of companies which helped and groomed me. Now fast forward to 2018 and that is when I decided to start a business.

The name of my business is Lima and our services include Artist management, Events Coordination, Athlete management (mostly soccer players), models and Digital Marketing.

The inspiration for starting the company was my work for Off Limits Communications’ (one of the biggest marketing agencies in the country).

I really gained a lot of experience and knowledge and that gave me the edge in starting my own marketing agency.

Starting in 2018 means we are a very new company, but we have achieved so much. We have started a sports programme for kids (Limasportsprogramme) in our township, helped a few kids in signing or getting into to proper development structures and we have created employment for youth.

Our achievements are mainly becoming the change we wanted to see for kids and the community.

Working with big brands such as Nike, Converse and Bathu has enabled us to host our annual events called ‘Sneakers Exchange’, the ‘Lima league’ for netball, soccer, chess and other sporting activities

I know some may think it has been all roses to get where we are. It is not. We encounter challenges on a daily basis but we keep going. We sometimes deal with difficult clients who don’t pay on time and so on and that can crimp the business. However, we always past it and just keep putting in the work.

We get faced with deadlines and at times we will go days working around the clock to make sure we provide our clients with proper services. Running a business like this requires a lot of travel and lack of sleep which are some of the sacrifices that come with running a company.

My advice to all the young people of South Africa who also want to be entrepreneurs is that you need to start today, plan, research, put in the hours, put in the work and never let anyone tell you that you can’t do it. Lezy de Yong