Zenith considers the MBA as a key reason he can run a multi-million dollar business.

Zenith is from Johannesburg, South Africa and has recently graduated from the Distance Learning MBA course at Bradford. He considers the MBA as a key reason that he can run a multi-million dollar business.

This is his story.

How I got here
The MBA changed my life. Before the MBA I was an employee for a small company. I then ventured into entrepreneurship and I think I did well, I had a couple of investments.

Suddenly, because of the volatile nature of my investments, I lost a lot of money, but as I started my MBA I became CEO of Aput Minerals. I managed to achieve a lot within the space of 18 months and haven't looked back since.

I chose Bradford because of the recommendations I got from my previous institution and their triple-crown accreditation, which I couldn't find anywhere else.

Mining for gold
The return on investment for my MBA has been profitable.

In terms of the maths and science institution that I also run, I could easily say that we are worth 10 to 20 million RSA (£430,000-£860,000).

In terms of the mining business I run, I would say the turnover is about 400 million US dollars, of which I can almost guarantee you in a space of three to four years time I would have tripled that.

Thanks to my MBA I fully understand everything about the operation of my business. For example, we now own our trucks instead of leasing them out, and also get them at cheaper rates.

We could've gone bankrupt
The skills from my MBA saved us close to three million US dollars a month.

The people from the finance and IT department in my previous company now report to me.

They are the masters of telling you what you want to hear, but the moment you scrutinise and go deeper and challenge them on their operations, they tell you the truth behind everything. From that point on, you are in a position to mitigate and advise them on how to better a particular system or process.

I was able to dissect the procurement system because I have a better understanding of how it all works. I just averaged everything that we were procuring and saved the business a lot of money.

All that money I saved was down to the MBA, because without it I don't think I would have got to understand the importance of a rendering asset.

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