Background

Vincent Maseko currently works as an IT Consultant for a Pretoria based company and occasionally does a bit of Internet Marketing.

Originally, he is from a small (semi rural) township in an area called Mayflower located at the province of the rising sun, which is Mpumalanga province for the uninitiated. Midrand, Gauteng is where his sleeping bed is and hence that is where he spends most of his nights.

As a young black person coming from a time where taking care of the whole (extended) family once you start working is considered (unconsciously so) religion, he couldn’t help but notice that his counterparts from the white community don’t really seem to experience such pressure (for a lack of a better word) once they start working, and he therefore, soon realized that it was mainly due to a better financial situation that their parents have created while they (the children) themselves show better knowledge of financial responsibility (I should assume the parents teach them these soft but very important skills).

It was through these experiences (and more) that Vincent built interest in financial matters and have since developed a keen interest on investments, long term or short. He is currently holding an Online Share Trading (OST) account with The Standard Bank of SA because the bank offers free investment training to its clients. He has attended a lot of Business seminars in the past presented by the JSE, The Standard Bank of SA, Momentum and Old Mutual just to name but a few. In these seminars he has learnt a lot about investments and financial literacy. Further, he believes the information needs to be shared with everybody especially the young since they are, to a large degree, the future of this country but not so clear about the financial opportunities that are out there.

Vincent believes that radio is one of the biggest and powerful platforms out there that can be used to change people’s lives and thus making a positive contribution to the betterment of their (financial) lives by giving them a complete lifestyle package (i.e. entertainment, information and education).

As South Africa is going through some of its interesting times yet (i.e. the recent political change as well as the up coming and the very first FIFA world cup in Africa for the year 2010), he wants (as Ashraf Garda would say) to be “an active participant rather than being a fence sitter”.

Training

In the year 2008, after two years of searching for a reputable training institution that would give him the necessary introduction into the Radio industry he quite literally stumbled across OnCue Communications and signed up with them immediately after a few days of performing some background checks on the institution (there are a lot of fly by night institutions of this nature, one cannot really fault the man).

The training covered, among other things, the following:

·        Radio Essentials (by Chris Jordan)

·        DJ Technique ( by Elana Afrika)

·        Voice Technique (for Adverts by John Gamble)

·        News (Compilation & Scripting by Eleni Giokos)

·        Sports Reporting (Compilation & Scripting by Ashraf Garda)

·        Interviews (Preparation & Conduct by Ashraf Garda)

·        Talk Radio (Preparation & Delivery by Aki Anastasiou)

·        Music Radio (by Alex Jay).

·        Etc.

Breakthrough

His breakthrough came early in the year 2009 when he met the Station Manager of Retail Radio SA Deshen Naidu who has assisted him and continues to shape his attitude towards his only most powerful God given tool, his voice.

Currently

Now he finds himself reading the news almost everyday and of course, all the other voice-over work that Retail Radio SA feels his voice will be well suited for.

On weekends he walks around a home improvement store in one of Jo’burg’s Northern Suburbs with a microphone familiarizing customers with new products and services, daily specials, store closing times, special offers and store layouts. They loosely call it in store-announcing.