Johannesburg — KABELO Mabalane made his worst investment a decade ago, blowing a million rands on his party habit. It was leisure spending at the height of the kwaito music boom, and today the fledgling entrepreneur regrets wasting every cent of it.

At 33, one of the three members of the influential TKZee group, he's been clean for seven years and proved it by running Comrades Marathons under the banners of Reebok shoes and Harmony Gold mines. It's taken even greater stamina for the former St Stithians pupil to get serious about business.

"I'd just begun to embrace the idea I could be an entrepreneur at 30," Mabalane says. "I was recovering from a struggle with drug addiction and I was coming to terms with the planning and discipline necessary for a business career.

"I had a credibility problem: you sow the whirlwind, you reap the harvest. I planted many bad seeds a decade ago and even today I still feel I'm under the microscope in business deals."

Today, his Johannesburg- based Faith Records company is countering the effects of depressed consumer spending in the entertainment market by expanding its portfolio into the business side of showbiz.

"High-profile entertainers have a wealth of opportunities on offer," he says.

"A fast-selling record album is promoted by media exposure through music videos, concerts, tours and product endorsements across the youth market. It was a nonstop joyride for us kids not long out of high school; only now do I appreciate how many opportunities I missed by not getting more involved."

TKZee led the music market when the kwaito craze boosted annual record sales to the R1bn mark. Having met as students at Randburg's St Stithians College, Tokollo, Kabelo and Zwai set the pace for pop music's transition from the townships to the suburbs. While most rivals adopted the image of inner-city chic -- flash cars, basketball clothing, hot chicks in skimpy outfits -- TKZee shot their Fiasco video Miami-style, with straw hats and clam diggers and babes in bikinis at the Lost City's beach.

Their international approach paid off in sales in the 100000s until the group members moved into solo projects in 2001. Until then their fastest-selling hit was a party anthem for the 1998 Soccer World Cup, Shibobo, recorded with young Bafana Bafana striker Benni McCarthy.

Reuniting this year with an album titled Coming Home, says Mabalane, is good timing ahead of next year's World Cup tournament here, for which TKZee's record company, Sony Music, is one of the global sponsors.

The marketing initiative, however, is driven entirely by the musicians.

"It's a collective strategy to benefit the group and our individual business plans," Mabalane explains. "To achieve this, we've signed up a management company with corporate experience to represent our interests as a group and as separate assets.

"Likewise, we've taken on a marketing and communications company to follow our own media strategy. It's a path we should have taken years ago."

The first result is a "very substantial" MTN deal, he says, through which one of the group's new songs, Viva la Pantsula, is used on the cellphone company's Ayoba (Cool) campaign on TV. Four of the album's tracks are available for download through the network -- a significant increase in distribution at a time when even the biggest retail outlets have cut back their summer orders for CDs.

His late father, Alpheus Mabalane, an insurance broker with Liberty Life, would be impressed that his son has -- at last -- accepted that growing a business requires structure, management and hard work.

"My dad disliked my choice of music as a career," Mabalane says. "He was upset that I didn't go to varsity after matric and offended that I was so free and easy about my business affairs in the years of my early success.

"He even refused to come to the launch of my first solo album as a protest. He had an Afrikaans phrase about riding my luck that I grew to hate -- 'konkelwerk' (bungling). Now I know what he meant."

One example he cites about his easygoing attitude towards business at the time is an incident that took place when he was on holiday in France.

"I'd taken time off with a girlfriend to go to St Tropez and Cannes," he says. "I needed to get away and was paying for the trip myself. The last thing I needed was to give it up for another recording session."

Mabalane received an urgent call in his hotel suite to join Africa's leading international star, Youssou N'Dour, in his studio in Senegal to record a duet for a new album.

"Looking back, that call was my big break," he reflects. "And I stalled. They had a ticket booked to fly me there and back to France, but I decided it wasn't convenient -- by the time I got back from west Africa I'd have had to leave straightaway for Johannesburg.

"It could have established me in Europe as a solo artist; I asked for 24 hours to consider the offer and of course they never called me back."

Mabalane made a profit on his first solo album, Exodus, in 2007 by cutting out the middlemen and doing a straight pressing and distribution deal, he says. "It's a short-term solution to get a small company up and running, and releasing a new TKZee album after an eight-year hiatus is the next step towards expanding my own operations."

Mabalane says he and his colleagues have been preparing songs for three years to be ready for the sales and concert bookings offered by the World Cup football tournament.

"I learned the tricks of the trade a decade ago at the highest level of the commercial side of our music industry," he says. "My mistake was to focus on the art while leaving the business side to the accountants. Now I have the balance for entrepreneurialism to succeed."

Mabalane expects the World Cup to benefit South African artists more in terms of global exposure than immediate profits. The real harvest that he is banking on will come in 2011. "The economy will turn and we will be ready for it," he says.

He and another top-selling singer, Danny K, have signed a deal with a local cellphone manufacturing company, AG Cellular, to add another revenue stream to their record sales.

"I could only do that by owning my own company and music content.

"Danny K and I put our content on to this brand of phones -- our songs and our music videos -- which brings us royalties and publishing income separate from our sales through traditional record shops."

Mabalane is determined to stick to his business plan no matter what glitzy ego trips are thrown into the mix.

For example, when he compered the telecast of the 2007 South African Music Awards, the good reviews he received brought several more TV offers. Instead, though, he is waiting for a co-production deal that can help sell his product rather than himself.

"Hosting the music awards showed me that I have more opportunities than I'd thought," he says. "It was a big step that finally put all my old demons to rest. I had offers to host more shows and even to act in soaps, but I turned them all down to stay on track as a businessman."

Music is a means to an end now, he says, and the money he once splurged on partying still haunts him. "Manpower and financing are essential to grow in any market today," he says. "A million rand in the bank would facilitate key deals."

Those deals are on the table, however, because Mabalane has invested heavily in building a strong team to take his plans forward.

"We are gunning for the big stuff," he says, "and that costs a lot more than peanuts.

"But I've survived the hard times and it's brought people into my business life who share my passion and drive towards making it. Ten years ago I would have wanted to achieve all my goals by 35; now that deadline is just two years away I realise the more I learn, the bigger my plans become. I have time on my side."