Farah Fortune is the guru of public relation with many high-end companies and personalities putting their faith and trust on her abilities to build and at the same time protect their brands. She is the founder and CEO of African Star Communications a company she started after years of working in corporate but felt it was time to venture out and do something where she could be her own boss.
“I was going on thirty and I was looking and I knew that I needed to do something in my life and it definitely needs to be something where I’m the boss. So literally when African star started I walked into work one day and I logged into my Gmail and I see my company registration set there and I literally packed all my things and it was literally 9 o’clock in the morning and I packed up my things, I wrote my resignation letter and said to the boss I’m done”.
Like every entrepreneur that has never gone to business school or done any form of business training, Fortune threw herself into the deep end not fully aware of the circumstances that come with owning and running your own business.
“Because with every entrepreneur who doesn’t have business training which I didn’t have, you think you work for yourself will literally make money which is not the case… I didn’t know it will take so long and I didn’t know it was going to be so hard and I was going to be so broke for so long but it eventually worked out and I think that's the thing most entrepreneurs don’t tell you about of how hard the journey really is.”
With the leap of faith, she had taken, Fortune continued pushing her entrepreneurial hustle. Through her determination, African Star Communications managed to acquire AIG insurance as a client within three weeks of running her business. AIG insurance was African Star Communications (ASC) first client and through the work that they did with this ASC could now showcase their capabilities.
“They were looking for a PR company just to do a small charity day for them. It was during the Vodacom challenge when they brought in Manchester United and at that time AIG was the sponsor and they wanted to do the charity with them and they had a football school here in Johannesburg and we did work for them.”
Even though ASC and Fortune showed their capability to handle such a huge account at an early stage of business, the industry which is male-dominated tried to restrict her from fully flourishing to greater heights. She tried infiltrating the Nigerian market but the industry was guided by the males operating in it and women had to prove themselves in order to compete and be respected by these male counterparts.
Fortune states that during this whole process she lost a lot of work because she refused to go on dates with male counterparts. Through this action, she gave herself and her brand good standing and respect from many Nigerian businessmen.
“It took me a bit of time to infiltrate in there but it was really about making sure that the men I had to work with really respected me. So I lost a lot of work because I did not want to go out on a date or I didn’t want to do this or I didn’t want to do that and yes I think I could have been a lot further had I gone that path. But it is not what I wanted, I wanted to be respected and to walk into a boardroom and be respected even if they didn’t like me.”
She further adds that even with the respect gathered in that market you still need to remember that you are a woman when trading or hoping to trade in it.
Fortune is known for her feistiness and strong self-awareness and these are the characteristics that pull clients towards her and her business. But through strong self-awareness, many have had difficulty separating her from the business. Even Fortune herself says this has been a difficult task.
“Having to separate the Farah Fortune brand and the ASC brand has been the hardest PR exercise I’ve ever had done and I have been doing it for ten years. I needed to know how to that more than I realized four years ago because no one was saying African Start Communications but rather Farah fortunes pr company/agency”.
She says she the had to make a conscious decision to separate the two brands by no longer doing interviews outside the brand “because I want to be portrait only as a businesswoman and I made the mistake of having other interviews that are related but outside of my business. And I realized that I was becoming a socialite and that's not what I wanted to be and that's not what I wanted people to see me as”.
And because of this misconception, she had to also make sure the “girls” are involved with interviews to make people understand that they are an agency and she doesn’t do the work alone.
“I don’t even have the password to our social media because I do not have the time to those other things. I’ve been here as the owner of this business and I run everything but I don’t necessarily do everything and I need people to understand that and its taken me a few years and in the last, maybe two years/three years its become better.” But even with this much effort people still call ASC, Farah Fortunes or agency.
Vital Stats
Business name: African Star Communications
Employees – 4
Start up – R1000
Number of years in business: 10 years