1. How Do I know which Business to Start up? Ask yourself these questions: -Where is your passion? - What giant/s are you fighting currently? - What are you good at and/or what do you like doing/hobby? -what are you currently strugging with that you cant seem to find the right service providers/suppliers in and around your community: Years ago I used to drive about 5kms to get a laundry service just for ironing. there was none available in my area over the weekends and during the week they worked odd hours which were totally inconvenient for my busy work schedule. The 5km closest laundry was the best available option at the time though they were not providing me with perfect and best service, they could not provide same-day service, did not do sorting of clothes,their ironing was not perfect especially on cotton,shirts and they were very terrible on children's clothes,often burning the imprints on them provided more headaches for me than relief. So whilst looking around and searching for a better service provider I came accross the news that the local laundry which I could not use was up for sale. I made the call and in less than a week, I was the proud and excited owner of The Queen's Laundry,which grew up to be very popular for service and setting the trends. I bought the Business for R15000 & that was 2001, turning R1000 on a quiet day... - I love good food, I am popular for my special dishes be it English/Italian or my own mixed-up recipes, but I love Afrikan dishes more. The white township I bought a home in did not have ulusu,umleqwa,idombolo,umnqambulo and other cuisines I love , which is how the Emantandeni Cultural Village concept was conceived wayback in 2004. I partnered with my younger sister-cousin who was running a funeral parlour then, and we quickly did everything by the book,registering the concept with CIPC,to Business Planning, applying for funding, hunting for a site around the plots in and around the EastRand. Everything was going well though not fast as promised until to our amazement and disbelief we saw on national television our concept being unveiled in the East Rand township without us, whilst the prospective funder had begun playing a hide and seek. We learnt from that experience never to trust funders with your concept especially if it is fresh,rather rope them in during the expansion stage. It took another three to four years for me to actually fulfill that dream and by then my sister-cousin had gone to be with our ancestors,so I opened a traditional food shop and still kept the name we both agreed on in her honour. Its a dream that is yet to be realised but will be bigger and better before this year ends. 2. When/What is the right time to start a Business?There is never a right time infact in my experience when I feel pressured I have been very productive,creative and I get results, as opposed to when Im in the comfort zone. There are things I have planned to do in life for a very long time but still have not done to this day because there is nothing that's pressuring me. A book I started scribbling as early as 2003/4 is still just that,a scribble to this day,I even doubt it will ever be properly arranged and finished, yet between 2017-2018 I have penned Four books and have also had time to arrange a page and turn it into a book. I wrote and completed my first book -This Is MyStory in two days non-stop and it took me another two weeks or so to re-arrange the chapters and edit. I was hurting and I had to leave a chapter of my life behind to embrace the new creation I have become,so cutting that umbilical cord was not easy but it had to happen, that was the needed pressure. So the academic theory of Planning and Strategic Planning does not always work even in a corporate environment,deals and opportunities are lost through the cumbersome processes & consultation & research & feasibility study , you know all those big english terms dont necessarily work in the same order not in entrepreneurship /Hussling ... the reverse order becomes the best 3. How do I know when it is time? In life "timing is everything" adage is mostly rhetoric. I have never seen a perfect moment in the Business and Corporate world,yet I have seen MORE lost opportunities because of reliance to this rhetoric, difference is that with corporates lost opportunities are not talked about but their impact show years after the incident/occurrence. In entrepreneurship/hussler environment there is no luxury of waiting for perfect timing,you snooze you lose. So if you have an idea/urge to create or improve whats already existing do it immediately,do not delay,implement right away using whatever you have at your disposal and perfect it as you go along ,the rest will follow. This means dont waste for the "Business Plan, Feasibility Study or Market Research" etc, knowing that its not your specialty, get on with the implementation process, and let these other academic concepts be part of implementation or improvement process. A very important point, do not be bothered about the nice to have things that do not add value to realisation of your vision e.g. a website or an email address in a business environment say traditional food,whose target market is located locally and do not have either the tech knowhow nor the infrastructure to access the website/email, is simply a waste, frills/nice to have that should not even feature on the list. 4. How Do I start?Unless you are copying/imitating somebody'vision,how you start implementing your own idea/vision should not be following a certain documented formula, rather it should be a template on its own. Start with what you have ,and when looking at what you have do NOT under-estimate the biggest Asset you have viz. THE VISION itself, its very important and its central to everything that you do from this point. List everything that you are going to need to produce your final product WITHOUT mentioning money cause if you start with money chances are you will not start at all. lets make a simple example. if you are going to make fat cakes, make a list of the ingredients = Flour, Yeast,Salt, Milk , Oil, Heat; Next What do you have already amongst the 6, start ticking, if you have ingredients that do not have a tick, this is when you consider buying (hiring if its a service)them, and only at this point the money, but just enough money to get the ingredient you need,comes in on the list 5. When is the right time to grow/expand/diversify my business? WILL DEAL WITH THIS POINT LATER WHEN WE HAVE DEALT WITH THE BASICS 6. I have an idea, and a vision but I do not have Start-up Capital what do I do? Go to point 4, and if what you have money-wise is not enough for you to be able to afford paying for the ingredient you need consider a range of options: depending on what product or service you need the following could work out better: (a) Consider partnering with the service provider whose specialty service you require to come to your final product, partnering does not necessarily have to be a 50/50, you could offer partnering share equivalent to the contribution of the service/product to your final product/service. Invite other friends/colleagues/acquintances/community members or even your prospective customers to partner with,investing in your business for a percentage share or pre-orders at discounted prices,just for you to be able to break-even> make enough money to buy ingredients for this and the next batch (b) Stokvel borrowing, if you are a member of Stokvel or knows some1 who is a member of one and that person is willing to vuch for you to get a loan from the Stokvel (c) Community funding= Crowd Funding, crowd fund for your concept,but do not give out all the details about your vision lest some people steal it cause there still are sharks out there, if you do not know how to crowd fund rather talk to a person that is experienced in this field/a Fundraiser that would be willing to do the service for you on a contigency basis, if the latter is the case be willing to accept the rate/percentage that the Fundraiser would charge, do not come with your own dictated rate/percentage, remember beggars cant be choosers and in this instance you are a beggar so you do not get to dictate terms. 7. I have applied for Funding but keep getting regrets from Funding institutions,where do I get Funding?.....Will tackle in later sessions in detail*** 8. Go it alone or Partnering? For an entrepreneur going it alone is not an option, you should always look for a person that has the same passion as you. An entrepreneur is a creative person who gets bored with monotonous and routine work,its a person who thrives on challenges,like to try new things and the ways of doing things naturally. An entrepreneur cannot be confined into a box,so if you are an entrepreneur genuinely you should rope in a partner or partners from the onset even if you go big, that will afford you the opportunity to build the foundation for your concept and allow you to move on to growing your concept in other avenues whilst having comfort that what you started is in good hands. (a) Is partnering good/bad for the growth and success of my Business? This should not even be the question we are asking as Indigenous Afrika people who have been brought up by the communities where our ubuNtu values are instilled in us from breast feeding, but for the sake of what the world we live in has become we are going to address it: We know from life experience that greed does not breed success, and jealousy does not build a Nation let alone a family. In an entrepreneur environment partners afford you the opportunity to have time to relax, re-energise and reflect on what you have built. When you are in partnership you afford your business/concept the opportunity to achieve in half the time what would have taken you double the time to achieve plus the bonus is that you get to eliminate the burden of fighting for the same market/customers if you are in the same/closed community (b) How Do I choose partners? There are no guarantees that you will always get the right partners either from family/friends circles we can only suggest what qualities you should look for, the rest is trial and error which you learn from : - Network: Do not be a lone ranger, talk to people, talk about your concept ( not necessarily in detail) observe people's response and enthusiasm to your concept and from there you would be able to identify who you can approach/invite to partner with - When/If you go out on an open invite,do not force nor beg people to partner with, if they cannot see the vision its their loss,move on and do not let naysayers talk you off, actually the more resistance you get from whatever circles should be your reason to push forward. -Do not select partners on the basis of their purse/mouth/popularity look at the heart*****...and I shall leave this here and pause for more questions cause this is very very critical an area which anyone needs to learn from past mistakes of others so you do not repeat them otherwise getting up from the kind of experiences most of us have been through requires a lot more than a strong person/money SESSION 2 c) How Do I know which partners to choose that I can trust to push & pursue for the realisation of the Business vision even in my abscence? - You may have just lost a job ( for whatever reason), focus on the skills& experience you have gained/polished from your it,and put them to use for your own venture this time not to make someone else rich. It may also be worthwhile for a group of people who have been retrenched to partner immediately and form a similar venture to that of the employer who has just retrenched them. Use the retrenchment packages as start-up capital for basic necessities. Use a garage or backroom as a working/production plant,you dont have to go look out for cosy expensive offices,use what you have at your disposal but most importantly do not wait nor allow for a gap start functioning from day1,keeping the same or even improved work ethic, waking up and dressing appropriately and going to to work on time the only difference being that now you are changing work premises - (d) what should I expect from my Business partners? Experience has taught me that most of the time we expect or rather make an assumption that everybody is on the same wave length when it comes to commitment to realising the vision of the venture,but sadly this expectation is far from the truth/reality. My advice here is that all expectations from every partner-member should be clearly stated,articulated and documented from day1 irrespective of how much percentage share each member has or invests in the organisation. This is a very important aspect which we mostly take light and is central to the success of the venture/hussle. There is no point going into partnership with friends because you like them,or family members because you want to "keep it within the family" ,or even acquintances because they have capital to inject,if none of these are not going to commit physically and/or otherwise in the building of the venture,hence its important to define expectations and responsibilities upfront. 9. Where do I get customers for my business? - how about starting from your own household,then move to your neighbour and the entire street doing door to door sales/awareness? we do it when we are lobbying for political parties why not do it when lobbying for the success of your hussle? - Use the evening time to send notices and announcements via email or whatsapp to your phone contacts - you may open a whatsapp group to communicate with your contacts and address their questions at once, but categorise/segment your contacts according to location>it could be section/zones/sub-urban ,this categorisation would come in handy when you have to take and deliver orders and as your hussle grows you may even want to allocate soecific days for specific areas in the similar way as local council schedule the collection of gabbage, simplify the process 10. I have a business idea,I have identified a market for it but,I dont have the skills to operate it, what do I do? Having an idea/Vision is the first and most important Step,do not under-estimate it,but equally important is making that Vision a reality. You do not have to be a jack of all trades to make the vision come to reality. The mistake that Sole entrepreneurs make is to think that one has to be a CEO,COO,Operations,HR and Financial Director simultaneously. Your focus point should be on seeing the vision coming together and bring in people that have expert professional service knowledge in areas you are not equiped to handle. Be prepared to pay fairly and well for the services you have in-sourced though,always remembering that those people are also in a hussle as much as you are,and greed does not breed success instead it is the very same greed that has caused the regression of SMME to a large extent,hence most of entrepreneurs who had started long ago are still emerging 10 or 20 years later. Gathering Resources is not only about Financial and material resources,a very large aspect of it includes Human Resources,hence at advanced Business administration level the term used is Human Capital. It is not necessary that you start at Board level like a well funded Corporate Business would do. Start at the level where you can afford to insource people be it on an employee or consultative basis which ever you can readily afford without exploiting them and start building and growing your concept/hussle from there... ******Re-Invent Yourself*****Invest In Your Ideas*********Grow Your Business********Make It Work*******
