PetesWeekly

A stitch in time…

June 30th, 2011 | by | sovereign individual, travel

Jun
30

I left SA 7 years before I left SA.

The first move was mental. I’d been to Australia for a few months and saw what was happening there web-wise. It seemed that any Aussie firm that wanted to invade the SA market (or any other market) could do it overnight, with no risk. From that moment I lived in SA, but worked in a virtual country.

That made the second move easy. By then all my income came from the Internet. This meant I could occupy a home almost anywhere.

It seems that I have become an armchair entrepreneur. Home is where my wife sleeps. Business is where my PC is.

As I prepped the seminar for next week I have spent a lot of time looking at how the web has changed since 1995. The slowest thing about the web is us. It is moving so fast that we are falling behind.

Back to reality. I am writing this at the V&A Waterfront, looking at Table Mountain, and thinking that SA is wasted on us South Africans. We spend so much time grumping that I am surprised there is any time left to enjoy the place.

SA food is amongst the best in the world, at silly prices. (Yes, I know it’s  going up. Just as it is in every other country. But in SA it is coming off a much smaller base.) Spur still serves as much good food as you can eat for less than R200 for a three person family. So does Wimpy. So does Balduccis, although raw fish is inexplicably more expensive than when cooked. And real people bring the food to your table, hot and fresh. (The food, that is.)

These are amongst the toughest things to get used to living in the UK or Europe.

I think that SA newspapers are doing the country a disservice. There does not seem to be enough balance. Bad news sells papers, not the rather boring fact that 50 million people had a pretty good day yesterday. And every yesterday. Although I see that the Cape Times is playing a late April Fool’s story about the SA Taxi Association starting a no frills airline. Finally they’re going to get those low flying taxis licensed?

Anyway, this is a short PetesWeekly because I have a webinar to present in two hours. (SA 3G is very good right now and the pay-as-you-go data rates are pretty good as well.)

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A stitch in time…

June 22nd, 2011 | by | applied tech

Jun
22

With all of these recent days off, I thought you might enjoy some words on saving time?

Firstly, I have been using voice recognition software for the past decade. The latest version, NaturallySpeaking 11.5, released this week, is truly awesome. It takes less than 5 min to get used to your accent. Then it actually listens to you, unlike most of your family. It writes text as fast as you can speak. (This article was written using it.)

You can download this to your machine this afternoon for about R756 (using Promo coupon code 15OFFDNS). This is an incredible  intro.

I have been using this software since 2003, and it gets much better each year. It’s not just the software. It’s also that PC hardware is doubling in speed every two years. This makes talking to my PC a lot more inspiring than talking to my children. At least the PC echoes back to me what I’m saying. The children have a glassy stare look as long as I am not talking about sweets. At this price for software that will last the next few years, the technology is also a lot cheaper than the kids!

I bought mine online using PayPal, although they take most cards, and then it was a quick  download.  Go here to check it out. (Or, if you wish, they can ship the box to you so that the Post Office can donate it to a worthy cause while the govt. asks for VAT.)

The only other thing that you’re going to need is a good microphone. Any new Logitech USB headset/mike will work just fine. And any SHURE USB mike will be a tiny bit better. The Logitechs range in price from about R200 Rand to about R1000. The SHURE mikes start at about R2000. (My excuse is that I use them for webinars, because they make my voice sound a lot better than the rest of me looks. It turns out that they are also great for voice recognition.)

Secondly, the fact that the Internet makes it easy to find suppliers makes it easy to forget that a lot off-line services are still in the dark ages. One of my least fun tasks has always been the logistics of live seminars.

Every conference venue has its own unique set of hoops for their prospects to stumble through. Setting up a tour spanning a few cities (venues, places to sleep, transport) used to take about a week, full time. The web lets you find venues, but that does not mean that they want your custom. Each one has unique payment needs. Each gives you a price tallied differently. A simple three city tour used to take about 20 hours to set up.

There are so many places to throw away money in this event management process.

And then I discovered Antidote Events, who just happen to be one of my clients. I called Carolynne a few weeks ago and asked her to sort out the set up. Since then I have spent less than an hour making a few decisions based on her research. Bliss. And she got better prices than I could have.

I cannot imagine anybody who can add as much value if you have to arrange any kind of event, function, launch, conference, or seminar. The value of the time saved makes the cost look like a pittance. And the equanimity saved cannot be counted.

In hindsight, it’s a good thing I’m saving all of this time.

Norwegian schools get busy just before the long summer holiday. They all want the parents to get involved in what they euphemistically call bonding. That’s the Norwegian term for having parties with other parents while you do team building stuff like paint the school buildings, move all of the desks to  new classrooms, and all sorts of other unpaid labour.

They have two words for this. The first is ‘sommerfest’, which is team building with food which you bring with. The other word is ‘dugnad’, pronounced ‘doognard’, which is the same thing without the food.

I think we are so quick to complain about stuff that we forget to mention when we get superb service or a great product. I’ve experienced both these past few weeks.

You might not have any events going down soon, but when you do, don’t forget that Antidote Events are experts who have forgotten stuff that we have yet to learn.

And under £70-00, the world’s best voice recognition software is about the price of a decent Secretary’s Day gift, let alone the secretary. Do yourself a favour: Investigate it.

All the best
Peter Carruthers

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Life, Chocolates, & Minestrone

June 20th, 2011 | by | marketing, sovereign individual

Jun
20

I have always believed that the easiest way to survive commerce, and have some fun en route, is to make sure that you are adding more value than you are costing. Mostly, that works. Now and then the cost of adding that value exceeds the income you are getting, but as long as you are adding enough value, it all seems to come right in the end, even if you have to share a few drinks with your local sheriff along the way

On the way there will always be a few fine folk who want to pay you far more than the value you think you are adding. That’s a lot of the fun. And there will always be a few folk who don’t want to pay you at all. That’s where much of the learning comes in.

While it’s tempting to think that the folk who get really rich are doing something sly, I think that they have just worked out how to add a lot more value to a lot more people with a lot less effort at a lot less cost. Of course, because they are so “lucky”, it makes sense to demand that they pay more tax than the rest of us. (I fear I might have been watching too much BBC and Labour.)

The Internet makes all of this so much easier. For instance, for the cost of just one live seminar tour (three events hosting about 250 people in total) the Web allows me to host 1000 people in 12 events each day for the next 20 years.

I will be in South Africa from next week, for six weeks, for a superb break and three live seminars. And a bunch of impromptu gatherings wherever a good bottle of red rears its head. PetesWeekly on Twitter makes that very easy to arrange. And if you want a little more formality, PetesWeekly on Facebook allows us to plan ahead – by at least a few hours.

Last week was quiet, what with SA on holiday, again. A good time to relook at what we are doing. We have just re-opened Marketing Motor which uses the same tools we do at Sales Motor to get your business onto the front page of Google, but instead of using our time, uses yours. One of our key reasons for doing this was to help those folk in business arenas without enough traffic to justify a full service (and the costs thereof).

When I started teaching the Crashproof ideas back in 1995 I always said that if I was able to share this knowledge gratis, I would. And webinars cost pretty close to nothing to host.

When I return to Norway, we will launch a gratis daily business training channel – a live Q&A webinar each day about issues of business, ownership, survival, and success. Of course, the recordings can be downloaded if you can’t make the live show. The first month will be a beta run to see if we can make it a better run.

I’m not sure that I’m the right person to do it, but since I have spent more than 27 years gainfully unemployed, dealing with the daily challenges we all face, it makes sense to share a little of that. As Forrest Gump’s mother said, life’s a box of chocolates. I doubt she was a sugar-challenged. I am, so life is better seen as a canteen of minestrone. And like all things edible, it is a lot more fun when shared.

We still have Early Bird seats at the live seminars next month. Use the codes: CPTEARLYBIRD, DBNEARLYBIRD, or JHBEARLYBIRD. Just click here if you’d like to join me on the night.

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Sales Practice.

June 2nd, 2011 | by | selling

Jun
02

Things change when you have a steady flow of enquiries. I can say this because I have spoken to 50 small firms over the past two months who have found such a steady flow.

Firstly, you get lots of practice. When you are confronted by a live person once each month, maybe, it’s very easy to panic. You are so worried about losing the sale that you lose it. When you have two leads  (or five) arriving each day, without fail, you know that you can mess today. And still, two new prospects will arrive on Monday, and Tuesday, …. So, you don’t take life so sternly. You have more fun.

And with that fun you improve your sales approach. You relax and begin to listen, rather than fighting to close each sale. You no longer care too much whether this one prospect doesn’t become a client because you know that the next one will.

Number two, you get lots of new ideas. This only applies to the owner of the firm, I’m afraid. In the superb book Rework, the fine team at 37 Signals point out something that I at first thought insane.

When one client suggests something, they say, ignore it. Don’t even write it down. One person suggesting something is an anomaly. But if you are the owner you will soon notice when a few people start suggesting much the same thing. And that happened with about 10% of our clients. They have enough new requests for something that they didn’t offer at first that they have rejigged their sales model. In all cases they have doubled the profits from each sale by adding something to the sale that their prospects suggested.

Thirdly, of course, you get lots of sales. A few weeks ago I mentioned Frank Betger`s maxim: “If only I can tell my story to enough people, no matter how bad I might be at it, I will make sales.” That’s what we have seen as well.

Many of us spend our days with our backs to our clients, focused on making stuff, pushing paper, and chasing banks. It’s so much easier to just avoid clients. No tough questions to answer, awful choices to make, or mistakes to say sorry for.

But, the owner is by far the best salesperson in a firm. She can decide quickly; her passion shines through; she `feels` the problems that clients face because she has a lot of skill in dealing with those problems. This is  why she is in this field.

Contrast this with a salesperson who is in this firm just because of the paycheque, and on June 1 will start selling used cars, , or frozen chickens because the pay is better.

Just so that we are clear on this matter, I have nothing against selling used cars, passports, or frozen chickens. Although I am little bothered by those that are three months past their sell by date, and returned to the factory for a solid chlorine rinse before being declared fit to eat again.

There is one last thing to think about. When a firm has a steady flow of prospects, that venture no longer relies on the owner as much as before. Each of those prospects is, at first, a stranger. And this means that a new owner can take over on June 1, and the prospects arriving after then won`t know that the old owner is taking a break in the south of France.

In other words, it’s much easier to sell a venture when the owner is not the only source of sales. This occurred to me as I was thinking about the number of my friends facing retirement. They`re not able to sell their stake because their firms are so reliant on their contacts, some of whom go back to van Riebeeck`s birthday.

Apart from word of mouth, and that word of mouth is almost always about the owner and never about the firm, their firms have no other way of finding sales. This means the owner can’t retire. This might not be an issue for you, but there are some jobs that have a 14 to 80 age restriction. Plumbing, for instance, is not the kind of day job one wants having already spent 60 years  dealing with other peoples` shyte.

The people that buy what you sell pay for your future. The more you have the merrier it is.

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No Really, Service Excellence?

June 2nd, 2011 | by | marketing

Jun
02

May I be direct?

Your service is not excellent. Your offer is not unique. You are much like the rest of us – struggling to make sense of commerce and fighting the same demons. (The past few months of testing service and sales response levels in SA have shown us at Sales Motor how awful almost all of us are.)

Maybe, after a few years of banging your head against the coal face, you will build some great habits that your clients will like enough to give you money for.

Even then, if you tell us how good you are, we will not believe you. The SA government uses the phrase “service excellence” 15,100 times on their websites. In their case it is more hope than real, like my relationship with Cindy Crawford. The phrase now means as much as “Ja nee.”

More than 28,100 SA sites talk about their “unique service”. That too no longer means much. “Eunuch service” would be more truthful.

I think it is time to stop talking so much about it and start doing it a little. Now, that is something people notice. And it is almost easy!

Over this past month some of my clients have made great sales. And a bunch have not. They differ in just one respect: All the clients who get the sales phone back within 30 minutes of a web enquiry.

When a person sends you a request via your website they don’t quite know what to expect next. Folk in SA have lost hope that much will happen. And, indeed, very little does.

In Norway, if you ask a plumber to visit on Monday at 10am, he will arrive between 9:59 and 10:01. In SA, if you ask five of them to visit on Tuesday at 10am, the only guy to arrive, at 1pm on Thursday, will get the job.

So, when a prospect gets a phone call back from a real person, within thirty minutes, there is a stunned silence, often followed by “Fok me, I have NEVER had such service before.” (Women will often say “Wow” instead of the more robust male response.) I know this because we’ve been testing it for the past 12 months.

At this point you do not have to talk about your service. You have just shown it off in all its shining glory. That memory will stick. Folk offering great service don’t have to mention it. The rest of us do.

This past week I helped a few of my clients work through their own sales processes to adjust to doing it this way. Their sales results improved overnight. (When so few folk in SA offer any service at all, it is not hard to stand out!)

We test our clients after a few weeks, to see if their follow-up is any good. At the same time we test the firms competing with them. And the really great news is that they are all so slow, and so bad, that it really is easy to be better.

A fast email is much more efficient, but not nearly as effective. The call starts a dialogue that your prospect needs so that they will trust you enough to give you money. In a world with so much technology we sellers forget that our clients want relationships.

May I suggest that it might be a good idea to be the first in your field to look at this issue, rather than the second?

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Sell more and visit foreign lands.

June 2nd, 2011 | by | marketing, selling

Jun
02

Once you have travelled around the world a little, as I have, you begin to notice the difference between your average South African and the normal folk that populate places like Australia, England, and Norway. You even begin to notice the very distinctive South African accent.

As long as I lived in South Africa, I had no idea how South African I sounded. The moment I walked through London the very first time, and heard a South African in the distance, I realised quite how loud we are, and quite how unique our dialect is.

It is even more so in Norway where one doesn’t often hear English being spoken in public. One is tempted to rush up, hug the poor fellow, and invite him around for a braai tonight at your igloo.

The single biggest difference between a South African and anybody else, at least in every country I have visited, is that the South African is a master at the art of offering unsolicited advice. This makes us pretty unique. In the rest of the world, most folk will respond if you ask for help. But they will keep their distance until then.

This does not happen when a South African is around, whether this is in South Africa, or anywhere else. You can be, for instance, in a supermarket, looking at the range of adult diapers on offer. Most of the locals will diplomatically leave you to your ponderings. Not so your basic South African.

“I see that you are looking at the adult nappies?” Is the opening gambit.
“Hmmm.” Is the usual, very embarrassed, response.
“May I suggest that you take the extra large, silicon-based, waterproof, ShyteNoMore, and take the big packet because it’s much cheaper? I have tried all of the others, and that’s the one that works best.”
“Hmmm.”
“The regular size simply doesn’t hold enough to make it worth the trip to empty it. Trust me, three bars of sugarfree chocolate and that’s my bundle!” Our South African hero helpfully offers.
“Hmmm.” The victim mumbles desperately hoping that a heart attack – whether his own or the South African’s – might end this agony.
“Hey Janet, “our hero calls across three aisles “I told you that I wasn’t the only one with this leakage problem. I just met another guy who also needs those extra large  ShyteNoMore  nappies that you keep laughing at!”
It is usually at this point that our deeply embarrassed victim shuffles away, possibly to the WC to cram a large wad of toilet paper into the back of his trousers while he walks to the nearest supermarket where South Africans are no longer welcome.

It doesn’t just happen to strangers. Befriend a South African, and you’re inviting a one-person-expert on everything into your life. Their knowledge knows no bounds, and they are always happy to offer guidance on issues like raising your children, your garden, your engine size, why Norway and Britain should not allow more immigrants in,… I could go on, but you get the point.

What’s even worse is when you find yourself doing it. Women typically don’t like us men because we offer answers and solutions long before they have finished explaining the problem. For them the joy lies in the explanation, and the subsequent discussion. They don’t want answers, they want dialogue.

Folk living in Norway and Britain don’t even want the dialogue.

Which brings me to the point of this email. The best sales advice I can offer: Shut up and listen for at least five minutes for each minute you speak. When you speak, don’t mention – ever – how great your service is. People will believe you as much as they believe Telkom’s current statement about their service: “You will enjoy uncompromising service excellence and an unparalleled range of affordable communications products and services.”

Your sales will rocket. Your prospects will respect you. And you will earn enough money to be able to pester strangers in any foreign land you care to visit.

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What we think we know

June 2nd, 2011 | by | entrepreneurial life, marketing

Jun
02

A few days ago someone asked whether we could help her find clients for her guest house. Well, what an invitation. That’s what we do, and if we don’t – for you – it costs nothing. (30 days, or it’s gratis!)

For instance, our best client happily admits to knowing nothing about marketing, and is quite happy with his lack. We sent him 76 enquiries last month at an average price of R7 each. Just one sale pays our bill to him a few times over. And Easter is supposed to be an awful month. These were leads from hospitals, restaurants,  and even the military in a few African nations. (OK, so that was an unashamed nudge, but I needed to boost my confidence for what follows.)

I began by explaining how we work.

“Nope, that won’t work with my business,” she exclaimed. Then she told me all about what guests want when they are looking to reserve a night. I explained that we’ve been looking at this sector for about a year, and spent a chunk of money researching. And then I mentioned that we’d had some success already in Plett.

“Nope, only people over sixty go to Plett,” she said, “and they don’t expect to pay instantly.”

We continued in this vein for a few minutes while I looked for a razor to end the misery that was my life.

I was destroyed of course, finding out that I know so little about marketing. It did not seem worthwhile mentioning that a bunch of the 60 year olds seemed intent on running the Knysna Half marathon in July. And I could not bring myself to talk about our successes for a B&B in Cape Town (5 enquiries per day) lest she tell me what was wrong with them as well, even though one had already stayed and paid.

It was a long morning until the optician called to tell me that my new specs were ready. I get new specs every 18 months or so. Diabetics have eye issues that you don’t want to know about. On top of that I had two cataract ops a few years ago. This means that light pours in, but not in a very focused format.

I have been using two sets of bifocals. One for reading and short distance, and one for driving, with the bifocal lens letting me see the dashboard. As you can imagine, I am a very inspiring driver. Often I inspire other road users to keep their distance.

A few years ago the optical crowd introduced a new type of lens, called a progressive lens. It combines three lenses into one – reading, short distance, and long distance. I was an early user. At least I was for a week or so. By the end of the first week I had fallen down a few stairwells, and even fallen off my chair in a bistro, while just sitting on it. Fortunately an old woman at the table behind managed to catch my breakfast egg in her lap.

By now I knew that progressives were a very bad idea. Indeed, you can focus much better, but you will fall down a lot more than you want to.

Last year they tried selling me a progressive set again. They’re expensive, so I wrote it off as a marketing ploy. After all, I was an expert on the subject of using these lenses to explore the floor close up. Which brings me back to the point of this article. What we think we know is more often wrong than not.

Last week I was forced to use a progressive set. And all I can say is WOW! The product has improved so much over the past few years (while I was not following its progress) that I feel like I have new eyes.

And as I sat at my desk much later that same day it hit me that I was no different than said business owner, thinking I was an expert in a field where I had less than perfect knowledge. Awfully sobering.

I’ll end, if I may, with some feedback from very old client. Old being about 75, rather than in the sense of being a client for a long time. He was referred to us after some awful experiences after an expert prepped his site for Google. (Number of enquiries dropped from a few per week to about none per year.)

He was as cynical as only old people can be. He’s only been on board for three weeks, but gets about 4 enquiries per day. (A good number since he sells high value property and last year he received just 1 web lead.)

“The response to date has been surprisingly good and has necessitated action to achieve a spread of agents across the country. I have not been so busy and re-invigorated for a very long time.”

I must ask him if he also uses progressive lenses.

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Disturbing Times

June 2nd, 2011 | by | uncategorized

Jun
02

Why is it that we each see life from so varied an angle? A fellow is walking along the pavement and stumbles. (This could the sidewalk beside the roadway, or the pavement of life, as it were.)

Some of us don’t even notice. Maybe we’re en route to a first date. Maybe we’re in a rush to get to work because we’re late. Or because we can’t wait to be there.

Some of us notice, and make a note to avoid that brick sticking out the next time we walk down this road.

Some of us take umbrage and our minds are filled with dark thoughts about the people who should be fixing this kind of thing. And if, for instance, the pavements are failing, then what will be next? These folk can progress a simple stumble to the apocalypse in a few seconds.

We each know a few folk like this. Nothing is ever good enough. And each bad thing that happens must be the fault of some person not doing his job.

I have a simple rule in my life. Shyte happens. For no reason we can fathom. And some folk get buried a little deeper than others. Mostly, like winter, shyte comes in seasons. Maybe that’s because we lose our sense of humour during these winter periods. But, like mumps, adult nappies, and the other joys of the human condition, it all passes.

Helen Keller had a tougher life than most of us. She was deaf, mute, and blind. One of the comments she made about this life thing has always stuck with me: “I rejoice to live in such a splendidly disturbing time.” What a glorious way to approach life.

My point is simply this. No matter how badly life is going right now, tomorrow will not be the same, and, we hope, better. No matter how well life is going right now, tomorrow will not be the same, and, we hope, better. But the key thing is that life is, in fact, going. The rest is just our perspective.

In a month or so I reach my 40th year as an injection wielding diabetic. If I had been diagnosed before 1921, I would have died within months. Each day since June 1971 has been a blessing, even though a during a few I have stepped into various depths of squishy stuff, and a few times I had a swim a few laps in it. But, that’s life. The mere fact we have it should be reward enough.

I raise this because when I tell folk I am coming back to SA for a six week tour, a few folk share with me how bad things are, how costly it has all become, and how the apocalypse is nigh.

I don’t know about that. I work with business owners from all over the world, and South Africa remains a joy compared to many countries. (And no, while I lived in Joburg, Durban and Cape Town I did not believe that either.) I do now.

Have an outstanding Easter break. I hope that you don’t spend too much of it worrying about the bills at the end of the month. You cannot change those by much. But you can change the way you think about the holiday.

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Travel Risks

June 2nd, 2011 | by | uncategorized

Jun
02

I have spent the past few weeks thinking about why guest houses and BnBs struggle to fill their beds. It is not just the sixteen other local offerings that compete although that does not help either.

Rather it is that most of us travellers really fear risk much, much more than we want bliss.

Our hero, a good looking dude who hails from Oslo, looks for a place to stay in Cape Town. After fighting through the hundreds of pages all purporting to offer him travel nirvana, he opts for the City Lodge at the harbour. Why?

He does it for the same reason that he goes to McDonalds rather than a fine steak house or pub with a name he does not know: Because he knows exactly what he will get. Hotels tend to be much more of a muchness, so he is not going to get surprised.

No doubt he will complain mightily because the last City Lodge he stayed at in Tel Aviv did not serve ham or bacon at breakfast. But if he eats a Big Mac and chips (much as Norwegians are not crazy about anything other than fish and potatoes, preferably boiled) he does not have to worry about throwing the better part of the cost of his return trip at some quaint South African dish involving worms and raw meat – no matter how much it moves him.

Most tourists don’t like surprises. The kind of surprises I refer to are when you arrive at your guest house to find that it is being rebuilt. (Although that happened to me at the Sandton Crowne Plaza a few times.) Or when there is no Web connection. (Which some of us need more than morning coffee, and maybe even morning oxygen.) Or when the owners are in the middle of a divorce and the tension is a tad unsettling. (But that’s for some other time.)

So, if surprises are bad, then consistency is good – no matter how low the standard is.

Most guesthouses cost a lot less than an hotel. And most of the time the owner is there to point you at the best stuff to see around the area. (Unlike most lesser hotels where the workers seem to be imported from the planet Mute because they barely speak, let alone any language I know.)

So, when I am in Cape Town I now stay at Jambo Guest House in Green Point – when Barry and Mina have space. It costs less than most hotels, except possibly the chain which combines the shower, toilet, and the basin into a cubicle the size of my trashcan, in a room where I can reach the window and the door from my bed, at the same time.

For much the same price, I get a glorious bed, a large romping space with wireless Internet, a fine bathroom with fluffy towels, a short walk to a superb steak with great Shiraz, a short walk to the V&A Waterfront, and a short walk into Cape Town. This makes it a great place for a business traveller.

Don’t get me started on the huge breakfast. Norwegians are not slim and trim because, as you might suspect, they are genetically blessed.  Rather it is the astounding price of food that keeps us all in a state of semi starvation. So SA meals are all much better, especially Jambo’s breakfast which makes a Norwegian smorgasbord look rather sad.

Barry also has a pub where that last hour before bed passes gently fueled by great SA Shiraz and planning early retirement, which in my case now means 69. But hey, if it means I can travel to South Africa at will, and that’s the whole of July this year, then it can’t be too bad.

But, and here is my point. I stayed up the road at the City Lodge for years before making the change, and only because I knew him well by then and had run out of excuses. Small establishments are not competing with each other. They are competing first with our desire to reduce risk. This human condition is  fascinating.

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Consumer Protection

June 2nd, 2011 | by | uncategorized

Jun
02

It is a sad mirror on one’s life if one has to spend a pretty good Monday reading the most recent tome from the SA government. I refer to the Consumer Protection Act or as I prefer to call it, the Fukushima A Mosquito Act.

The key concept aims at… “helping consumers—

  1. who are low-income persons or persons comprising low-income communities;
  2. who live in remote, isolated or low-density population areas or communities;
  3. who are minors, seniors or other similar consumers; or
  4. whose ability to read and comprehend any advertisement, agreement, mark, instruction, label, warning, notice or other visual representation is limited by reason of low literacy, vision impairment or limited fluency in the language in which the representation is produced, published or presented; “

But I think they got carried away. After working through 150 pages of protecting the consumer but removing ever more rights from the already corkscrewed small business owner, I have come to realise that government has no idea about SMME reality.

In fact, that’s not quite true. My legal friends (SMMEs all) are all planning Indian Ocean Christmasses from the consulting to be had to keep you and me in line. (After all, 12 years in Pollsmoor and/ or a fine equal to 10% of annual turnover, is a tad disconcerting.)

Even though I am in Norway, it seems that I am going to be forced to offer stuff that the DTI feels I have not offered since I started in 1984. Dreadful things like refunds if clients are not happy. And client service to explain the small print. And it even seems – and I do not want to shout this out too loud -  that I must deliver to them what they’re paying for.

In fact, you and I have been so bad at this that a new Consumer Commissioner needs urgent appointing, with a new BMW in line with her status, new offices, and a gaggle of civil servants. All this so that low income folk in rural areas not well serviced by Eskom, and without Internet access, can be assured that if they had the Web they could buy from me without any fear of loss.

Maybe I am a little vexed by a new EU ruling that has kiboshed my plans to bring my Mom out to Norway for a couple of weeks. Turns out that I have to submit my tax returns, bank statements and my wife to the local police chief for his approval before he will allow me to sign away my future to warrant that Mom will not overstay her welcome, die, or otherwise burden the state. This after she has to paid R3000 for medical cover for two weeks here. A new rule, it seems, to keep the tourist hordes out of Europe.

I am going to go out on a limb here, but I have a radical suggestion on how we can solve this turdy bloat of paper that we are drowning in. It is this: The day after the national elections we should send all the elected officials to an Indian Ocean hideaway, to stay at 5 Star resorts for their entire elected term. Not only will this cost much, much less than the damage they do when they pitch at the office, but they will have a fine time as well. So will the rest of us.

This is not just the SA crew, but the entire Euro bunch. What the heck, lets go for bust and send the worldwide crowd. Four years with no new regulation, and nobody giving our future to bonusclad  bankers. Could it go any more wrong, or cost any more, than if they stayed at home?

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