Bad Entrepreneur

Get cash for your opinion – has anybody tried this out?:

Geez I am becoming a real whinger ….

This morning I received a phone call from “Keegan” representing a company called “Autocare” which I googled – you can find them at www.autocare.co.za

Anyway I have much sympathy for call-centre people because I have had to do the odd cold-calling and I am truly useless at it. But Keegan may have usurped even my pathetic skills - he didn’t wait for my answers – he simply carried on reading from the script trying to sell me something “that wasn’t a contract” but involved “a regular monthly payment”.

I couldn’t work out exactly what he was selling but it sounded like some car repair offering which I would pay for each month.

Eventually I said I was not interested but was curious to know where he got my cell number from. He said it was from a “legally acquired list”. When I asked where they “legally acquired” it from he said he did not have that information on hand.

“Oh ok – well have a nice day then Keegan and enjoy the soccer”

“Wait – Mr Ashton would it be possible for you to please give me the names and cellphone numbers of 5 people you think would be interested in this service?”

“Uh no”

You contrast that to the post we did below about Scott’s referral campaign for Brandhouse and you just see where people go so wrong in their marketing. It must have cost Autocare a fair whack of money to pull in a callcentre to do this campaign and based on this telephone call they have gone backwards for the money they have invested.

Yet ironically both companies are trying to get to the same point.

Dunno – didn’t leave a very good taste in my mouth.

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I’ve been reading some quite interesting blog posts – including this one on the Business Insider – about the US and its so-called “Generation Y”.

The article asks the question about whether or not this generation of Americans is the brokest in history. More interesting to me though is the comment section. People talk about how young Americans are “enriched” because they can tweet and blog and update their Facebook statuses all day long, but aren’t really prepared to put in an honest full days work… and they definately can’t be told when they have done something wrong!

I don’t think America is a direct proxy for the rest of the world but it does have some bearing on the attitudes that young adults in other countries do follow simply because that is where a lot of the media content is generated.

This to me was a very interesting line in the comments though:

Anyone born in the 1990’s hails from the most spoiled generation full of entitlement we have ever seen.
Most never learned to save
Never learned to do a chore
Never learned to do anything but stare at the computer, PlayStation and watch tv all day

I hate to say it, but that is not far off what I am starting to see in my kids and that gave me pause for thought.

Having said that I noticed something on my drive home today which I thought was quite interesting. For those who don’t know we have had a muncipal strike over the the last two weeks where things like garbage collection has not done as unions slug it out with useless muncipalities for semi decent pay.

Driving past the access gate of one of the trendier young gated suburbs, two weeks worth of rubbish was piled up outside the gate from the 15 to 20 houses inside this gated community. Are you really telling me that 30 to 40 adults with access to a variety of different tools, cannot work out how to get their garbage from point A to the rubbish dump after two weeks of it sitting outside their property?

In hindsight I should have found one of my mates who has a 4X4 but can’t get a job (the Generation of Excess remember!) and hired a trailer. Charged each house R200 and taken their rubbish to the dump. I could probably made a handy R4000 – R8000 for us to split.

Are we as a society really becoming that useless that we sit back watching a mountain of rubbish piling up and our only answer is to bemoan the fact that the “lazy” municipal workers are on strike? Or even worse blog about it or start hashtag “petitions” on Twitter?

When you ask South African’s what saying symbolises us as a culture I can bet that a fair number will jump out and say: “A boer maak ‘n plan” (”A farmer makes a plan” for our international readers).

Are we kidding ourselves that we are really that innovative if we can’t even dispose of our rubbish? Makes you think a bit….

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There was an article on the memeburn.com site by Sue Rutherford which caught my eye. It was entitled: “10 easy ways to fail as an entrepreneur”

According to the article these are 10 of the easiest ways to fail as an entrepreneur:

1. Poor market research
2. Inadequate planning
3. Lack of experience
4. Insufficient capital

At this point I’m a little puzzled – I have read to point four and the word “sales” has not yet appeared in the article.

Fortunately point 5 came along and it mentioned the “s” word.

5. Over projecting sales volumes…

… ok but that’s a given for pretty much any start-up I’ve seen. Points 6 – 10 you can read on the Memeburn article – Sue doesn’t mention the word “sales” again in the article.

Sales is EVERYTHING for the start-up
The real beaut for me in the article was number 10: “Fear of failure”.

Even better was something in the comments section which said: “Fear of Success, many entrepreneurs don’t take the decisions that would bring them success because they’re afraid of not being able to cope with increased demand”…

… SAY WHAT?!

With all due respect an entrepreneur does not fail because he or she is scared of failing – or for that matter scared of being too successful.

They fail because there is no enough money in the bank at the end of each month!

There are very few “new” ideas out there, so most entrepreneurs are doing something which has been done before in one format or another. The challenge for them is to make their brand stand out and get customer buy-in.
Irrespective of whether you start a publishing business, an engineering firm, a social media consultancy or a pizza parlour the idea has been proven to work in quite a few markets. Will it work in the one you are trying to target? Who knows … how

well can you sell the concept?

Sales is too much of an afterthought for many entrepreneurs. It’s too easy to pencil in a line item which says: “Sales rep” in the budget and then treat it as an afterthought.

My humble conclusion – the number 1 reason why entrepreneurs fail – they don’t sell enough.

Nothing complicated about that…. if you are busy now looking at your business plan and looking at this 10 reason list trying to work out whether you are going to sink or swim then I would suggest looking at point 11 which says: “How the $$@Fck am I going to sell my product or service to a client?!”

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As far as South African entrepreneurs go, I like Seth Rotherham – the brains behind the 2oceansvibe brand.

Love him or hate him, he is the classic definition of an entrepreneur – he disrupts markets, he sees opportunities where others see challenges and he just gets the concepts of branding and sales.

On top of that he would appear to graft bloody long and hard to “live the holiday”.

For that reason I was very keen to check his 2Oceansvibe radio offering which he rolled out this morning, supported by the team from local music act Goldfish.

We’ve also been kicking around the idea of some kind of internet radio offering through Bundublog.com so I was curious to see how the format would work.

As far as content, show length, music quality (which was friggin awesome) – the show was really good and I listened from start to finish.

On the music front their was the Beattles, Amy Winehouse, Jack Parow, Goldfish etc – it was a really nice laid back mix.

Based on this mornings show, I can pretty much guarantee that I’ll be back to check it out again.

For a little piece of trivia I can officially say I was the first tweeter (twit?!) to have my question read out on the 2oceansvibe radio show. It was pretty cool and interactive listener experience.

In terms of content relevance – if you are a Cape Town resident and you regularly check out the 2oceansvibe blog, then this was a perfect extension to the concept and the show felt very local and relevant.

Is it sustainable? Who knows … it takes a helluva lot of energy and creative juice for one person to keep it going.

But that’s not the point. Seth has tried something a little different, he’s taken the blogger concept forward and these kind of things have the potential to provide another real shake-up for the media community. While everybody is jumping up and down debating the pros and cons of the broadband price cuts, here is somebody who is actually putting the technology to work.

10 points Seth, well done.

On a day when there has been quite a lot of negativity following the fun and games on E-TV last night and the bizarre rantings from JuJu I have something a little positive for South Africans.

I have just left a function hosted by local TV station CNBC Africa and had a few minutes to chat to Rakesh Wahi one of the co-founders of the station and global entrepreneur.

As an investor based in the Middle East and traveling to places like Russia, Nigeria and the US, the question I put to him this evening was what the international perspective on South Africa was.

Apart from the usual positive lines that people roll out about South Africa as an investment destination he said the country must rise above the noise we see from politicians at the moment. He compared us to India and pointed out that during their democratic process they went through exactly the same thing:

• One dominant party
• A bunch of politicians who enriched those around them
• A sort-of self-implosion from the major political party, followed by lots of little parties vigorously and vocally calling eachother out on all democratic issues

Maybe I am just a sucker for soft and fluffy but India is becoming one of the most highly regarded and highly educated economies in the world. If we can draw even a slight comparison to them then I think we should take it!

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With all the focus on the various technology platforms which have been rolled out in the last few weeks I’m keen to do a bit of market research on South African entrepreneurs and consumers.

If any of our blog readers have any thoughts on the questions below I’d be keen to hear what they have to say.

1. Did you switch accounts to First National Bank to take advantage of the PayPal product being launched here?

2.   Do you presently make use of any of the following technologies as a business owner or consumer? PayPal, M-Pesa, MiMoney, Instant Money, Mowaly or MoneyBookers?

3. Are you planning to make use of any of these technologies / gear your business up to accommodate for these technologies in the coming months?

4. In the South African context specifically, do you buy into the concept of a largely cashless society in the next five to ten years? (Assuming you and your main target market are a middle class, educated society with access to an internet enabled cellphone).

5. Are you planning to buy an iPad when it arrives in South Africa?

I can’t promise you any prizes for the best comments or something but will definately see what we can rustle up!

This statement is probably going to rattle a few cages but here goes:

“In my humble opinion – for all this money and energy being chucked at technology start-ups, the reality is that the pay off is miniscule on pretty much every front and maybe we should be focusing the collective energy on other sectors.”

The South African “geek” community (for lack of a better word) is relatively tight knit. There is quite a lot of back-patting and gratuitous self promotion that goes on amongst the bloggers / social media gurus / venture capitalists etc. But on the whole it is a healthy combination of innovation and support for a generation of entrepreneurs and innovators.

Amongst this crowd, there is lots of excitement today that Matthew Buckland has launched his memeburn.com site. No disrespect to Matthew but, truth be told I can’t tell you what the difference is between this and what Duncan was doing with TechCentral.

The reality is that there is more money sloshing around this sector than common sense in a lot of cases and for all the talk of “the big global idea” these are seriously few and far between.

It’s great to see some kind of angel funding network being established on the back of the Crowd Fund success, but suddenly it’s “hip” for IT entrepreneurs to start tossing money toward start-ups… why the hell can’t it all be chucked to Eve and her crowd to drive instead of drips and drabs being sprinkled around?

The fact that the technology sector has gotten some legs and is raising its profile is fantastic. It is exactly the kind of innovation community South Africa needs to be establishing… only I don’t think that the tech sector is necessarily where it should be being established.

Rather I’d argue that we would be better off to focus the money, skills and knowledge on sectors like manufacturing, food, agriculture, electronics and education which are potentially far higher impact sectors for South Africa and Africa as a whole.

Maybe I’m wrong – anybody disagree that tech is not a high impact entrepreneur sector for Africa?

Because it is Monday and we all need to start off the week in the right frame of mind, I am going to start with a quote that a friend has just e-mailed me:

“Life is short, so treaure and love those that make you happy and smile, banish those things that make you sad and angry and live every day as if it was your last, since you never know when it is your time to go.”

I have a couple of observations from this weekend which I thought I would toss out to the blogosphere and see what others are  saying.

Bread price
Until Saturday I had never bought bread from a local bakery. Sure I’ve had Fournos for breakfast or lunch but never really been one to do the bakery thing. If I need bread I run into Pick ‘n Pay or Spar and I fork out about R10.50 for a loaf of bread or two each each day depending on how many of the three kids are at home that particular day.

Purely by chance I ran into a small local bakery and a loaf of bread was R6.50… err that’s a pretty big price saving. The next day I ran into the Woolworths attached to the Engen garage and was about to buy my normal brand of Tiger Brands manufactured bread (R10.50) and I found Woolworths no name bread for R7.95 – still a sizeable difference.

It doesn’t look like the Competition Commission fines are making any real meaningful impact on the retail price of bread, but maybe you need to shop around and support some of the small business or non-traditional brands and vote with your wallet!

Nigerians and Indians
I won’t lie, I racial profile my e-mail inbox. When it involves Indian, Chinese or Nigerian businesess looking to “strike up a business venture”, I tend to hit the delete button pretty quickly.

This is kind of ironic or “dof”, considering that each week I am writing about how Nigeria, India and China are the most promising growth regions across the globe.

Yeah of course a lot of them are still 419 scams and half the time I can’t work out what their broken English is trying to say but maybe I am being a bit short-sighted.

A couple of things happened this weekend which got me thinking. I was on Afrigator on Saturday and at one point the top bloggers were from Egypt (which incidentally has been identified by Stratfor as a continental superpower within the next 10 years) and Nigeria.

Shortly after that I had reasonable business enquiries – “reasonable” being that they appeared to be legitimate companies – from both Nigeria and India.

Maybe that was a wake-up call to myself that you can no longer just talk about these countries as growth opportunities for tech and business investments – you need to live it.

I was on Loy’s StartupsNigeria site last night and I realised what a cracking offering he has. We focus a lot of attention on opportunities in South Africa but don’t spend much time looking at what these guys are doing. The venture cap guys whinge that the SA market is too small and need a “global” audience but how much time do they spend looking at Africa? It is easy to say you are designing something to be sold into the US markets but how much effort do you put into selling something into African markets?

Beyond tech
Lastly I have become a bit frustrated with non-tech entrepreneurs who don’t make use of tech for their businesses. I know a lot of people who quite happily use Facebook as a social networking (non business) tool, but don’t make any effort to use it for business networking.

Yes Twitter and blogging might be a little “geeky” but then you can’t turn around to me and say that you can’t afford advertising and marketing for your small business.

I’ve seen some really cracking local businesses out there including sports, social responsibility, engineering, e-learning and administration but the brains behind them are using very little in the way of technology to promote their brands.

Guys – technology makes you flexible to market, administer and ramp up your business much quicker than traditional business tools. Use it to your advantage!

Credit where credit is due – In putting together her Crowdfunding initiative,  Eve Dmochowska has probably come up with one of the most innovative small business concepts of 2010.

WIn a nutshell the way it works is that angel investors can make investments into a centralised fund, starting at a minimum of R1000.  The money is pooled together and will then be invested in start-ups who need R50000 – R100000 to be invested in start-ups who need some dosh to put together proto-types.

I came across the site purely by chance yesterday and saw that 34 people had pledged about R40k. I checked again this afternoon and that number had jumped to 84 people pledging R240k… absolutely brilliant. (PS yes Rival has made a pledge.)

Anyway the website explains it in more detail but I thought I would chuck in my 10c in terms of why I believe this initiative is so important.

• South Africa does not have a culture of Angel investor networks – this is a very important step in the right direction
• At any given time there are 20 – 25 young entrepreneur teams and ideas being given a chance to be part of the start-up environment
• It sounds grandiose but concepts like these change the South African venture capital and funding landscape PERMANENTLY.  Banks, venture capitalists and incubators have come in for a lot of flak for their failure to back small businesses and start-ups but over the last two years they have been scrambling to put together SME offerings… just when the real innovators have found a better way to access the market.

For me the most interesting part of all of this has been the great response to “social lending”.

A few years back I shot down a business called AngelMoola which was maybe before its time in providing facilities to promote social lending to people seeking small short-term loans. Fast forward three years and Kiva and now Crowdfunding has picked up a very real supporter base.

People like this just give me a super good feeling about South Africa, they make the world go round. Well done to everybody involved in supporting this initiative – you guys rock!