PetesWeekly

Focus…

July 28th, 2011 | by | applied tech

Jul
28

Over breakfast the other day I watched a senior gent try his hand at skateboarding. (The Gateway Hotel overlooks a skateboard park.)

In the skateboarding world 20 is ‘senior’ but our hero had all the right kit. This included  a woollen cap that would easily keep my head warm during a Norwegian blizzard. Although we don’t normally walk around with our jeans hanging around our knees. It’s a tad too cold to expose the dangly bits.

Anyhow, what caught my interest was his focus. Over and over he kept trying a specific move. Now and then a 7 year old kid would arrive, do that specific move balancing a unicycle on his skateboard, include a triple salchow with double axel, and then amble off.

Our hero would watch intently, and then try again. This went on for a few hours. (It was a long breakfast with a sultry breeze blowing towards the sea, so watching was awfully relaxing.)

This got me to thinking about how many of us give up too quickly. I see this with folk wanting to ‘get on the Internet’. They invest a couple of hours and if they do not get the same level of skills that I have taken 15,000 hours to build, they give up.

If you want to succeed online, you don’t have to be the best. You don’t even have to be very good. You just have to be better than the mass of folk who are plain bad.

It does help to have some focus though. If you start with a specific problem you want to solve, it is much easier to get going. That’s because the problem defines the answers.

Choosing a credit card gateway, for instance, is tough because there are a few thousand choices. But if you know the answers to a few simple questions, you can quickly narrow the choice down to just a couple:

  • where do you live?
  • where do you want the money to end up?
  • what currency do you want to charge prospects?
  • what will the site sell?
  • how big is the average sale?
  • how many sales will you do each month?

Rather than trying to master each facet, each move, in the skateboarding portfolio, focus on just one at a time. Master it, and then practise the next, more complex, move. Just like getting started on the Internet.

My new hero got it right eventually, but left after head butting the fence as he ended up underneath his board while diverted by the young lady on rollerblades.

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Sell what you have now

July 22nd, 2011 | by | selling

Jul
22

Each time I return to SA I am stunned. It is so much better than the publicity leads one to expect.

The newspapers do a fine job of unravelling all the dirt in SA, and sharing it with the rest of us. And we, over a braai or twelve, have no shortage of doom stories. From the outside SA looks close to the Apocalypse. But tourists don’t care about our fears for the future (and we have always had them). They just want a good time, and SA offers tourists that in abundance.

I think that most folk in SA don’t realise quite how tough it is to make a living anywhere else.

I have been a marketer all my life. For me Marketing Rule #1: Sell what you have now.

SA scenery is, of course, wonderful. But not unique. You’d battle to compete with Norwegian fjords, Mauritian beaches, English castles, anywhere in Tasmania, or the road from Vancouver to Whistler – all of which are gorgeous.

But…

Right now, SA has superb, world class airports. Right now, the air connections are superb, cheap, and friendly. Right now, the roads – at least those that tourists like me use – are better than most in the world. Right now, all the accommodation establishments are superb value for money. Right now, where else on earth can you get an award winning 2006 Shiraz for less than £5?

(Hint: Nowhere that I have found, but right now Mooiberg farm stall on the R44 between Stellenbosch and Somerset West has a bunch of them, as well as a ton of great wines for less than £2.)

Right now, the restaurants are not just superb, but very cheap compared to any of the countries I have visited. And, wait for this, people actually serve you at restaurants. My Norwegian wife swoons.

My personal chef (as I have come to think of him) at the new Gateway Hotel in Umhlanga, for instance, crafts a chilli, bacon and cheese omelette with so much care you’d think his life was at stake. After that first ‘Durban mild’ version, my life was, but fortunately I managed to lose three kilograms by lunchtime.

We’ve since agreed that the best way to add chilli to an omelette is to grasp one slice firmly with a tweezer, wave it gently across the top of the pan above the simmering contents so that the fumes mingle, and whisper a Zen type prayer before putting it back in the bowl with its family. And that’s plenty hot for this Cape Town gent.

That’s the great stuff you sell if you want buyers. They’re not interested in why it works, or how it works, or what the experience next year will be. They don’t want to know that the waiter dropped some food in the kitchen or that the receptionist is building a R16 million home in Verulam on her R5213 per month salary.

They want to know if the R150,000 they are investing in a three week family break in November is going to be better value than anywhere else. (It will be if they come. It won’t if they don’t arrive because our fears for the future send them to Cyprus, Crete, Spain, Australia, Canada, or any one of 120 other not so nice destinations.)

Cape Town over the last 15 winter days was warm enough to be a heat wave in Oslo, and on each day the temp has been higher than Oslo which is in mid-summer.  Yet each person I spoke to warned of the looming storm because such fine weather could not last. When we hear tourists wax lyrical about the joys of the country we feel the need to balance their happiness with our own view of reality.

As I see it, tourism can bring immense amounts of money into SA. This is money that is already being spent elsewhere. It is simply a matter of guiding it here. And you won’t do that by selling the problems. No one cares when they are on holiday.

Sell the hope. And sell what you have now. Worry about next year when it comes. And if enough tourists come, next year will be a lot better than you expected.

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South Africas Hidden Treasure

July 22nd, 2011 | by | life, travel

Jul
22

After a few weeks in Cape Town I am a new man. I am also a guest in my home town, which is a very new perspective. Maybe that’s the price one pays for bringing a new girl along. (She’s four years old and awfully curious.)

I think that we forget what a treasure we have here:

  • World of Birds in Hout Bay, the biggest assemblage of birds in Africa, along with an eclectic mix of  creatures from snakes to wallabies.
  • Kirstenbosch
  • Monkey World in Somerset West
  • Table Mountain Cable Car
  • Chapmans Peak
  • Spier Estate and the Moyo Restaurant
  • Strand on a winter afternoon warm enough to paddle. Back home the best you can do on a warm winter afternoon is walk across the frozen fjord.
  • V&A Waterfront on any day.
  • Countless outstanding eateries where even the worst compare well with anything affordable in Europe.
  • And don’t get me started on the joys of the various wineries.

These are all world class experiences, yet most of us Cape residents take them for granted. We tell ourselves that they are for visitors. (These are folk who travel for 20 hours and invest a small fortune to get here. Yet we don’t appreciate these places enough to check them out this weekend.)

But here is the thing. As we get more connected to the world economy, and we ramp up our tourism resources, we too become roadkill when the world economy drops a few gears. Folk in Cape Town pretty much have the city to themselves this winter.

But, that’s not the real treasure in South Africa. The real treasure is the people who are open hearted enough to talk to you at the drop of a hat. Porters; parking attendants; concierges; the couple at the table alongside on their honeymoon who want to find out how to get to Cape Point; the old couple next door to them who not only know the way but share their honeymoon story which involves Stellenbosch, too much port and an aardvark. Before you know it you are friends with everyone.

This simply doesn’t happen in any other English speaking country I have visited. And the folk who don’t speak English can’t. I have visited 58 countries over the years, and have yet to find a group of folk who are as comfortable sharing as we South Africans.

Nei Boet, I hear you cry, as have most of the folk I have been braaing with lately. You’re just seeing the good stuff. There are undercurrents here almost as deep as the potholes in Gauteng.

Maybe. But therein lies the value of the Internet. It doesn’t matter where you actually live, you can build a life and a business online for a fraction of the cost and risk of a ‘real’ business.

I should know. I started doing it 11 years ago, and it supports me in the most expensive country on earth, where the summer temperature is the a few degrees lower than the temperature of the Cape in winter, with a lot more rain. (Another good reason to visit the coast in winter.)

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Driving on South African Roads

July 2nd, 2011 | by | life, travel

Jul
02

Kirstenbosch is quite superb. And deeply peaceful after the M3 raceway on a Saturday morning.

Living abroad has given me a much wider perspective on issues technological, and I am afraid this spills over into issues social. May I share a simple thought?

I have lived as a local in the UK, Norway and Australia. This offers an insight you cannot get as a tourist. In each of these countries you cannot choose the laws you want to obey. It’s a all-or-nothing package. And there is no leeway for personal interpretation.

For instance, if the sign on the road says 40 km/h it is not a guideline. Get caught doing 42 km/h and the fine will be stiffer than the British monarchy. That’s points off your licence, and a payment that will keep you off beer for a long time. 50 km/h is enough to book your place at the local chooky.

These past few days I have been sticking to the speed limit. It’s good practice for when I get back to Oslo. But, frankly, it is terrifying being overtaken at high speed on both the right and the left, often at the same time. (Illegal.) By folk not wearing seatbelts. (Also illegal.) While having urgent discussions on their mobile phones. (Illegal as well.)

Yet, not one of these folk even thinks that they are part of the problem: All this illegal stuff they’re happy to tell tourists goes down in SA.

Twice yesterday on the N1 to Bellville, impatient BMWs in the fast lane crossed my middle lane into the slow lane to overtake me and and Lewis Hamilton (idling along at 150 km/h in thefast lane). In both cases, they missed my rear bumper by a mere fraction. In Norway kids are regarded as quite important, so protecting mine is a bit of a priority for me.

Having a BMW Z4 (German for you-will-survive) hitting my rented Nissan Tiida (Japanese for drive-fokken-carefully) would be a very bad thing for my family.

These are the same folk who sit around a table decrying the way SA standards have fallen. And judging by the anecdotes I hear, may be the same people who have no ethical challenge with waving a few buffalo-flavoured notes at the cop who stops them.

The reason Norway and England and Australia work as well as they do is that zero tolerance applies to everyone. And for everything, not just for the folk driving the gravy train. The folk in economy class assume that every one else cares as much as they do.

I sat in an Oslo restaurant a while ago, unhappy with life, and my wife. I pulled out an old notebook I had filled in at the Knysna Heads 8 years ago. As I read, I realised that my feelings were the same as I had felt in Knysna. And before that in Sandton 25 years ago. In each case I blamed my partner for the pain. I was wrong to do that. The problem was me.

And it is the same in SA as it is in any other country. The problem is not ‘them’, no matter how tempting it is to think so, or who they may be. The problem is us.

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