Bad Entrepreneur

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

I attended the post World-Cup feedback session at the Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs) this evening with a forum presented by Gillian Saunders (from Grant Thornton), Michael Goldman (Gibs), Adrian Saville (Cannon Asset Managers) and Colleen Magner (Reos Partners).

In essence the speakers were giving us some feedback and assessments of the World Cup and its impact on South Africa. At the moment, there is a lack of hard data so a lot of the feedback is still anecdotal but I thought there were some interesting things out of the presentations:

• Foreign tourists spent about R8bn by Grant Thornton assessments
• Tour group Tourvest said it handled 83000 people and 88000 room nights as well 9790 vehicle movements
• Regarded by Fifa, international media and observers as “one of the most successful World Cups ever”

I thought that was really cool and there were some really encouraging comments which I think should be stuck in the back of your mind:

Gillian Saunders:

• There are a lot of opportunities for mega sports and business events to be hosted in South Africa and every time we successfully pull one of these off it encourages other companies to host events here
• Pointing to the recent successes with the IPL cricket, there are an increasing number of companies coming to South Africa and setting up a presence here
• Opportunities not just for sports events but things like medical conferences
• Grant Thornton are going to be hosting its annual corporate conference in South Africa

Adrian Saville

• “There was a clear winner in this – South Africa”
• “Demonstrated that Afro-Pessimism is misplaced”
• “We have permanently improved the infrastructure in South Africa”
• The recent Adcorp survey shows that there are a number of skilled people coming back to South Africa to look for work. This should be seen as a positive as it reverses our skills drain and brings skills back into our economy which means we score on the innovation front

Colleen Magner

Colleen brought out a press release  from trade union Cosatu. I want you to read it because it is a very important quote if you consider who is saying it, I think it is well said:

“But it has been an even bigger psychological triumph for the country. It has instilled an unprecedented feeling of national pride and self-esteem. It has led to an explosion of patriotism that extended to the entire continent. This patriotism has been rubbed off on the young South Africans now and for many generations to come. It has brought us together as a nation as never before, except possibly for one day on 27 April 1994.”

Well said.

But perhaps the most telling quote for me came from Colleen herself when she said:

“We have this window where we are the golden child of the world…”

Before I sign off for tonight I want to perhaps leave you with a thought. Just 6% of economic activity in South Africa, is generated by entrepreneurs. That is an absolutely miniscule part of the economy and yet every single day we have seen an increasing number of entrants for our SME competition and we see bloggers signing up on Bundublog to try and promote their businesses.

Let’s get out there and support them and make a material change to the South African economy.

Until next time.

Out!

A couple of people have asked me about the naming of our “Punk Your SME” competition and one person went so far as to take the time to tell me that my “concept was ill-conceived”.

The guy who dropped me the message tells me that “pimp” is cool but “punk” is not so cool…

Hey feedback is feedback and I will take what comes but here’s the thinking behind the name.

Words and phrases linked with the word “punk” in slang context include:

- Aggressive
- Unconventional
- Bizarre
- Shocking
- distinguished by extremes of dress and socially defiant behavior
- A young person, especially a member of a rebellious counterculture group
- A type of rock ‘n’ roll with loud, energetic music and often harsh lyrics criticizing traditional society and culture.

Which I thought summed up entrepreneurs quite nicely – considering that this blog has used unconventional businesses like strip clubs to prove its point from time to time I think that can be called “unconventional”.

I also started looking for some quotes which I thought linked the words Punk and Entrepreneur so nicely. Here are a couple of them:

“If you looked different, people tried to intimidate you all the time. It was the same kind of crap you had to put up with as a hippie, when people started growing long hair. Only now it was the guys with the long hair yelling at you. You think they would have learned something. I had this extreme parrot red hair and I got hassled so much I carried a sign that said ‘FUCK YOU ASSHOLE.’ I got so tired of yelling it, I would just hold up the sign.” [Bobby Startup, Philadelphia punk DJ, "Philadelphia Weekly," Oct. 10, 2001] 

How many entrepreneurs have been intimidated because they went against the grain and tried something a little different?

“Punk to me was a form of free speech. It was a moment when suddenly all kinds of strange voices that no reasonable person could ever have expected to hear in public were being heard all over the place.” – Greil Marcus (b. 1945), U.S. rock journalist. “Punk and History,” Discourses: Conversations in Postmodern Art and Culture (eds. Russell Ferguson, et. al. (1990).

“At its best New Wave/punk represents a fundamental and age-old Utopian dream: that if you give people the license to be as outrageous as they want in absolutely any fashion they can dream up, they’ll be creative about it, and do something good besides.” – Lester Bangs – punk

My response to the person who e-mailed me:
Hi there

Thanks for your e-mail with your feedback. Sorry I am only getting back to you at 10pm on a Saturday night. Things have been a little crazy since we announced the launch of the competition.

What with entrepreneurs getting their entries in, venture capitalists and sponsors pledging their support and money, a TV producer phoning me up and asking me if we want to turn the concept into a TV show, a government department and a multi-national telecomms firm asking if they can partner with us for two international conferences they are putting together…. yip things have been quite busy.

Remind me again what it is that you did on Friday? Oh that’s right you took the time to compose an e-mail to tell me how “ill conceived” my concept was.

Do me a favour and go and crawl back into your hole or I’ll come drop-kick you into it.

Lot of love
Management

There are no strippers in this post, although I did chat to a stripper today on the subject of marketing and will probably be the subject of a follow-up post in the not too distant future…

I saw a really nice campaign today which I think small business marketers should take note of.

You can find the competition details here on Chris’ iMod blog. In a nutshell people need to collect World Cup cups on certain blogs and  follow the Twitter feeds and Facebook page for Springleap for clues about where the various cups are.

Once you’ve found all 4 cups, you’ll need to follow a website link and predict who you think will win the World Cup by dropping an e-mail to the Springleap team. (Not sure if this is one step too much but let’s see how this competition plays out)

The blogs involved are Ideate, Fred Roed and iGeek.

What I thought was really innovative about this campaign though was the idea of using a group of bloggers to promote the competition. What a brilliant way for the bloggers to score by attracting traffic to their blogs (as people seek clues) and for Springleap to get their brand out there.

I hope both marketers and bloggers – both on Bundublog and in general – take note of how you can use blogs as part of a marketing strategy for relatively low-cost and for potentially powerful returns.

Would love feedback from the bloggers involved as to the how they benefited by being involved in this particular promotion.

What I thought was quite innovative about this particular campaign is the use of blogs which would typically be very low-cost advertising plans. All parties can score from a relationship of this nature.

I’ve just been on to the CNN website this evening and there is a fascinating contrast of South Africa and Canada. One is the scene of heartbreak and joy on the World Cup scene with the Germans thumping the England football side and the next headline down is how Toronto is locked down due to protests at the G20 and G8 summits.

What?! The civilised first world country is being crippled by anarchy while the savages of Africa are holding a hugely entertaining and (so far) incident free World Cup…. surely that is not right?

For sure the two events are not directly comparable but who remembers just a few months back when all the scare-mongerers were talking up terrorist threats, stab-proof vests, machete wielding gangs, crazy alcoholic English football thugs and even a friggin earthquake which was going to cripple the country?

Who remembers how much fun the media had quoting those two economists who said South Africa wouldn’t really see much in the way of benefits to the economy and would ultimately regret having the World Cup here?

• Do we regret the fact that the French football side spent R6m on their hotel bill? I’m pretty sure the Knysna economy is not regretting it.
• Do we regret the fact that South Africans finally learnt to start using public transport systems like the bus, train or Gautrain?

My point is that once again we have punched above our weight and proven to the world we can deliver world class services. When problems have come up – e.g. the security guard strike or the Bavaria girl issue - we had solutions on hand.

It just proves once again what a damn good country we have.

Anyway – now that I have done my partriotic chest beating thing I do have one observation from this world cup and I think that it might have a lesson for small business in it.

I’ve been watching the whole public transport thing with quite a lot of curiousity. International tourists have come here and they have had no idea that most of us white, middle-class South Africans didn’t even know we had a bus or train service until this world cup rolled around.

Or… maybe we knew it existed but it ”just wasn’t for us”…? Now we gleefully jump on trains, taxis and busses into Soweto to go and cheer on international sports stars.

How much does that sound like a problem that many small businesses face? Good product – I am just not totally sure how to use it so I’ll stick in the back of my mind but not make the decision to buy right now…

There’s a saying which goes something like “tell me and I’ll say I’ve learnt, show me and I will actually do it” … public transport is exactly the same concept. You can tell us as much as possible about the routes and the fares but until I actually get walked through the process I am not going to actually do something about it.

I dunno – maybe stick that in the back of your mind when you are trying to design marketing concepts or trying to roll out new offerings for your SME. 

In the interim I am off to bed to dream happy dreams of either Germany or Chile winning the World Cup!

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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 hate being one of those lame okes who blogs about bad customer service but being billed R123 to send a 24 page fax is something along the lines of extortion surely?

As I understand it the 3@1 store is supposed to be a small business support type offering?

On their website it says:

“Committed to Meeting the Communication Needs of Individuals and Businesses”

Anyway my bank said that they had not received a document from me and asked me to re-send. I was in the car at the time and thought I would go and knock it off my to-do list.

I popped into the 3@1 in Ferndale and asked them to fax it to the 086 number that they had given me. While the guy was sorting the fax machine out I popped into Spar and came back to pay – the cashier said it had cost me R123…

WTF?!

Where the hell did this fax get sent? The Arctic?

Apparently it is R8 for the first page and R5 something for the following pages. What a friggin rip off…

Humble piece of advice – rather don’t support the 3@1 business offering. They are not geared toward small business and they are certainly not pushing to support the sector or encourage return business.

So endeth this whinge….

A couple of times on this blog, I have mentioned Scott Cundill and his MajesticWay offering. I think he brings a lot of innovative thinking and energy to campaigns and when I read about the success that he has had with the guys from Captain Morgan / Brandhouse its heartening to see somebody doing so well.

Below is a copy of an e-mail that he sent to me earlier this week which I think highlights how effective a good referral campaign can be! Go check out his site and read some of the other success stories there:

Almost a Million Referrals in a Single Campaign!!!

In what must be, by far, the most successful viral campaign in South African history, Captain Morgan received 780,000 people in its database in less than two months.

Read the rest of this entry »

I get to read quite a lot of negative commentary about SA banks – specifically the big four (Nedbank, Absa, Standard and FNB) – and the way that they deal with small and micro enterprises (SMMEs).

The main comment that is made is that big banks “don’t understand” small business but this seems like a really generic comment and doesn’t help them improve what they are doing.

If I sum up the comments and try and take some of the emotion out of it these seem to be the main criticisms which are levelled against these institutions:

• They don’t lend to small businesses
• If they do offer to lend, they require high levels of collateral and don’t take risks with entreprreneurs
• It’s too expensive for small businesses to borrow from banks
• Banks hound entrepreneurs when they don’t make their repayment commitments

I am not going to try and influence this debate yet but I am going to make some observations and then maybe let the blogosphere and contributors to this blog give their input about what they expect a bank to do to better support small businesses.

• FNB has brought a number of innovative technology solutions including Instant Accounting and potentially PayPal
• Standard Bank is putting a lot of effort into initiatives in the franchising sector and small business networking
• Nedbank is supposed to be bringing a technology driven solution along to compete with PayPal (not totally sure how that is going to work)
• Absa has been throwing money at a couple of grassroots initiatives but don’t really seem to have a “small business identity”
• Sasfin is supposed to be “the bank for entrepreneurs” but you never really see them doing much visible in the sector

So my question to you is:

1. In your opinion which SA bank is doing the most to supoprt small business?
2. What are they doing well?
3. Which products have the most benefit to you as a small business?
4. What could they do to better improve their offering to you as an SME owner?

We’ll rustle up a bottle of something nice for the blogger with the best comments so go wild.

Remember – this is not a bank bashing exercise, this is an attempt to come up with constructive criticism to support the sector. Let me know.

There is no substitute for experience when putting together a quality small business and a good business mentor can help you avoid some of the basic mistakes that start-up entrepreneurs make.

We look back on some of the problems we encountered and in hindsight an experienced mentor could have helped us conserve our cash and build our brand more effectively.

The great thing about technology including Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms is that you now have some “access” to a lot of these big names. You don’t just have to sit back and buy their books when they roll them out once a year. This new “Meet the Giants” offering from Gibs is a perfect example of what people can access. Check it out if you get a chance.

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