Tanya is a bright, bubbly energetic woman with a real knack for business. At the moment she runs Fishing Fever at the Dulcet Centre, it sharing a building with her other business, N.3. Fire.
Tanya started off, of all places, in catering, spending a year at Fern Hill hotel. From there she moved onto a series of different adventures – guest houses, running a KFC, working as a paralegal in a debt collection company. On returning to Howick in 2009 she took up the fishing tackle shop her father had set up, while at the same time visiting clients who need their fire extinguishers regularly checked. It’s an important role as if a building doesn’t have the relevant fire protection equipment, insurance won’t pay out. As a result of this Tanya and Nicky Gray of Cook Fuller (short-term insurance) have a symbiotic relationship, each helping out the other.
There’s no doubt that Tanya likes the people interaction part of her work – she’s just a people person. It can however be trying when some (elderly) men don’t want to talk to a woman about fishing, and try to go directly to her father. While a deep sea fisherman himself, his normal reply to this is ‘Ask her’. And indeed, it’s from her customer feedback that Tanya manages to learn so fast.
Married last year, Tanya’s husband is also a high energy type of person, leaving home each morning at five-twenty and only getting back at six or seven at night. But both seem to handle the demands of their jobs well, and as Tanya says, if an opportunity opens in Joburg, they’ll take it.
And, as you can imagine, even if this means that she doesn’t need to work, she will, setting up an event management company. This is something she’s already had some practice at, her putting together all the arrangements for her own wedding at a cost of less than R10 000!
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