Bad Entrepreneur

When it comes to picking staff for a small business, I am absolutely useless but they are such a critical part of the mix that at some point you have to turn your mind to the subject.

I had a long chat with Tracy Pepper from Girlsport this week and she re-inforced for me that enthusiasm trumps pretty much everything else when she is recruiting. Sure a bit of technical knowledge is important (in her case soccer coaching), but people respond better to enthusiastic co-workers rather than unenthusiastic robots.

I thought maybe as a starting point for this discussion I would make some observations about mistakes I have made when recruiting and we take it from there:

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I am always astounded by some of the ways that people make money. One of my colleagues recently brought me a news article about a husband and wife team who were making money selling a form of insurance to people who believed that Christ was coming back to earth to collect all the good souls. In return the non-believers would be left behind … as would the pets of the believers (don’t ask me!) and they’d obviously need somebody to look after them.

Why a believer would leave their adorable Fluffy with the heathens that are left behind, I’m also not totally sure but anyway these guys seem to have put together a business of sorts selling this insurance.

Anyway that is a bit of an aside, the main reason I wanted to blog today was on the subject of information and analytics.

The information that is out there for people is amazing.

If you run a website you can find out:

• Who is is visiting your website – often right down to the company IP address. A couple of times I’ve used this as astarting point to find open a sales discussion with a business. I see who is visiting the site and then approach them foradvertising or even just drop them a mail to find out what kind of content they like or are looking for
• What keywords did they use to get there? Chances are that if people are looking for a “lesser spotted, reticulated valve” then maybe this is what you need to keep in stock and highlight to potential visitors.

Analytics makes for interesting reading
We are quite lucky in that we can call on the analytics from various industry specific websites and our recently launched financial services product aggregator.

We know what brands people are clicking on, we know what type of product people are interested in and from that we can make some interesting deductions about the state of the SA consumer which we wouldn’t necessarily pick up from the mainstream media or “economist comment”.

So I guess my question for today is whether you as the entrepreneur are using the information that customers are giving you by their surfing habits to make informed decisions around the health of your business?

I have to say that I was a little surprised that my column on Fin24.com this morning did not generate a bit more debate in amongst the comments section.

Anyway for those who don’t have the inclination, the gist of the column was about how technology had been a fantastic leveller of the playing fields, specifically when it came to financial tools to empower small businesses.

The problem with technology is that alot of entrepreneurs with that mystic thing called “budget” assume that SME’s can make investments while there are those out there who are scratching their heads and wondering how the next salary bill is going to be paid. If you don’t have money you often don’t look at investing in technology which might make you more competitive.

I thought it might be a bit of fun to create a post and try and list some of the
(South African) tools that are available for entrepreneurs. I’ve tried to limit them to South African companies so that we can support local businesses.

Feel free to post / add to them in the comments below:

Free blogging platforms

A lot of tech-savvy entrepreneurs take for granted that they will have a “web presence”. But for many smaller businesses this is something they have no clue about. Free blogging platforms such as Bundublog.com, Blat, iBlog and 24.com are all ideal places to get yourself some kind of presence at no cost in an existing community.

Website and marketing tools

Blog aggregators such as Afrigator, Myscoop, Amatomu are all great ways to build traffic to your site. They’re free, mahala, cost you zilch and used correctly they can help build awareness of your company or brand.

Can’t afford a professional designer but have a few bucks to spend on some webdesign tools? What about things like Yola and WooThemes?

Want to market your company but can only afford to pay for marketing which results in sales or leads? What about using things like TrafficSynergy or OfferForge to promote your business?

Don’t forget Sean Rileys AD:Dynamo business which is a very affordable marketing solution (heck we can afford to use it!).  Nice way to advertise your business on web, TV or mobile.

Looking for a clever piece of communication, networking and database tool for SMEs to manage their contacts? Have you tried Scott Cundills MajesticWay?

They’re not local technology but if you are loooking to zero in on building contacts or a local  professional network – have you tried Twitter,  Facebook, LinkedIn?

Financial

Book-keeping packages, credit assessments, basic financial management tools – these cost a small fortune and often need some skills to use them properly.

One of the funkiest things I discovered yesterday was Instant Accounting from FNB. I’m going for a demo on this tech next week but I have to say that this has to be one of the most innovative packages I’ve heard about in a while.

Other local suppliers and tech which jump out at me include Netcash, MaristIT and iTrust.

I’m sure there are plenty of others with some really neat solutions so please post ‘em below. Don’t make it an out and out plug for your business but I think it could turn into a really fantastic post and something which could empower up and coming South Africa entrepreneurs.

Did you realise that 7% of 2010 has been and gone? January has gone before you blinked an eye.

On top of that Daniel Munslow has just said that I should take into account time lost over the World Cup and the traditional South African shut-down for December and its an even bigger chunk of time lost!

Suffice to say it has made me very aware of time and resources.

I was just looking back on some of the plans and budgets that I drew up at the start of the year and it struck me how quickly time moved before work was turned into equiries which were turned into money in the bank.

I know I’m not the only one who made grandiose plans in January – there are plenty of people who have mentioned on Twitter that they had big aspirations for the year and it just served as a reminder to me that time is such a critical part of a start-up businesses make-up.

Every day, minute, hour, month or week that passes where you are not selling your brand and monetising your offering is a day closer to the point where you close your doors.

There is a girl who recently asked for some advice around starting her small service business. She had a lot of time for things like marketing stuff and “brand building” but had no real urgency around getting the invoicing out for the little business she had got and offering attractive terms to get that cash in her bank.

I’ve had to try and emphasise to her that all the fun things count for absolutely zilch if there is not money in the bank.

Every single hour in every day for an SME counts – especially if you are trying to bootstrap the business.

I know it sounds pedantic but how often as a business owner do you corner your staff and ask them whether they’ve delivered on what they were supposed to? How often do you check up exactly what it is that they have done in the last hour?

In a big business people can hide behind a machine that is rolling over on its own momentum, but you don’t get the same luxury in a small business.

I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to publish this rant, but after seeing that “Ricky Gervais quits ‘pointless’ Twitter” is considered news for the Mail & Guardian I’m going to go hell for leather.

Yesterday one of South Africa’s more high profile social bloggers posted a rant slamming Sandwich Baron for failing to deliver her sandwich on time. “I’ve tweeted three times, DM’ed them and called them once” she writes on her blog. FFS (!) you don’t Tweet somebody after they’ve failed to deliver – you unleash absolute hellfire and brimstone on the first hapless person who picks up the phone and you repeat process until you get somebody senior enough to make your problem go away.

Since the start of the year I’ve come across six “social media experts / gurus” between the ages of 21 and 24 who have given me the story about how they could revolutionise a business using their knowledge of technology. For crying in a bucket you don’t look like you would be comfortable talking to a real living, breathing woman and yet you want to tell me about SOCIAL media?!

I’m sure there are many other social media experts in South Africa with the right credentials but I know of only one person who I would trust to run a “social media” campaign and that’s Melissa Attree.

Melissa has worked in an agency with real people, real clients and seen PR / marketing / media relations / communications from various different angles.  In your early 20’s you have not done that so go and get yourself a little experience and some contacts and a portfolio and then take it from there.

Don’t get me wrong – Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare,blogging etc – they’re all great tools and many have the capacity to be very handy business tools. They’re a big part of my business. But unless you are out there meeting real people and constantly talking to the industry in which you operate, how are you possibly going to understand what the major problems are?

I was reading a post the other day from one of these young guys and he was berating the way that companies “expect” employees to work from 9-5 when technology empowers them to be far more productive in that time. My response was that I’m in the process of looking for somebody for our business to fulfil a sales and marketing type role. I can tell you now that I’m probably not going to rush to give that person a PC with access to the internet… and I run an internet publishing business.

I would far rather that person be out meeting industry people with a higher profile and talking about some of the things we are doing and letting THEM build the social media hype around it.

If you are not comfortable with people, then force yourself to go out and interact with them. If necessary go extreme and go to a strip club and let the dancers hit on you all night and when you can finally walk away having had a conversation with them without emptying your wallet then you know you’re probably equipped to start talking about social media.

Said it before and I will say it again – one of the biggest mistakes I made when I started out in my small business is that I tried to conduct my business from behind a computer screen. I convinced myself I was “networking” or “building our profile”. The single biggest project we ever got came because my wife and her assistant bought tickets to go to listen to some speaker at a health conference. Over the tea and biscuits they were having at the interval she got chatting to one of the organisers and 24 hours later she was asked to put together a proposal that would prove to keep us in business for six months.

Makes you think doesn’t it….

… so endeth this rant.

The title for this blog was specifically written because I know it will irritate a few people including my friend Mandy de Waal with whom I have a running battle on the subject.

As a quick disclaimer upfront – I don’t have any particularly strong feelings on Lolly Jackson as a person. I have never met him so I have no context. I do know that he is more successful than me and he has done more than a lot of other business owners, so please don’t let this post become about Jackson as a person – we’re talking business here.

For those of you who follow the newspapers / sites you will know that Jackson is having a rather high profile spat after one of his clients “fell in love” with a stripper and Jackson is now demanding compensation from the guy for tarnishing the image of Teasers.

Jackson argues that as it is wives / people already have a negative image of strip clubs on the whole and now they are reading stories about strippers luring married men away – it sends the wrong message.

I agree with Jackson 100% – he runs a business, his product has a certain level of expectation and he must defend that tooth and nail.

If he lets it slip even once then it is very difficult to regain the high ground and argue that the product / expectation will be any better the next time.

So why is it that other entrepreneurs allow their brands or businesses to be

A) Manipulated by clients

B) Manipulated by staff

C) So badly defined that they actually don’t know what they are offering?

I am loathe to include Lolly Jackson and Johan Rupert (Senior) in the same blog post, but having chatted to a couple of people who followed Ruperts progress into the luxury goods market, they have always emphasised the same thing – Rupert protected his quality brands ferociously.

Some examples which were related to me included how cross he got when people weren’t consistent in their branding, colours, product targeting etc. for goods. If they got it wrong, it showed how little focus they had on getting the product right and keeping it right.

It is very easy to be enthusiastic about your “brand” or your “corporate image” when you first start out, but as things settle down into the hard slog suddenly you let things slip.

One of the toughest things for a small business is to identify what you are good at, what gets you the customers and what retains you the customers.

In conclusion  – while I am pretty sure that there are a few people who don’t want to take business lessons from Lolly Jackson – there’s a lesson in there  and it is worth noting.