PetesWeekly

Who wants to be an Entrepreneur

August 25th, 2011 | by | sovereign individual

Aug
25

We function under a lot of illusions. For instance, we think that everyone is also normal, all the time. That’s not quite true.

There you are, driving along the freeway quite happily when you slide into the fast lane to overtake my mother in your lane. Next thing, the fellow behind you in your new lane  starts yelling, hooting, flashing, and brandishing his club of choice. Worse, he is not going to let you get away with an apology. He wants to tell you, in detail, and at high volume about his dreadful day before he hurts you.

I’ve often wondered how many such wild people are diabetics in the throes of hypoglycaemia. (Hint: A good time to avoid diabetics, even if they don’t have weapons.) Maybe if we all carried chocolate around to offer these crazed angrymen at times like these fewer bad things would happen?

In the past few months I have bumped into a few Norwegians working in banks. They’re working half days because some really bad thing happened a while back and they are unfit to work full days.

In SA, of course, if they’re employed by large firms or the government, we give them time off. If they’re  self-employed like me they climb back on the treadmill each morning because they have no other options. Medical certificates don’t carry much weight with creditors.

Some years ago I was asked to invest an afternoon with a bunch of Ph.Ds at Wits University. I was intimidated. My role, I thought, was to teach them how to set up their own businesses. What better qualification to have on your business card than Ph.D? Heck, you could be selling life assurance and people would buy whether they needed it or not. Them is very imposing letters.

Would you believe that not a single one of them wanted to start his (or a few her) own business. Not one! They all wanted jobs with big titles and salaries commensurate with their degrees. No amount of cajoling could persuade them that the world was at their feet.

I now understand why. When their brains implode they will have a pension, or a medical aid and enough time to recover. Unlike you and me. Although, and I must be frank here, I doubt my brain is in any danger from too many IQs taking up residence.

I can safely say this after a few days of reading Norwegian. When I started it took me three hours to reach page 15 of the New Hardy Boys title that I cannot write here  because it offends too many spam engines, translated into Norwegian from American by Astrid Martinussen Almaas. (The book is targeted at twelve-year-olds.) That might seem a reasonable pace, but the book starts at page 5! The first few pages are the copyright notices.

In this case Google Translate is my tutor. If I do not understand a word or phrase, I simply type it in for an English rendition. As it turns out, it took me three hours to type in each word in the first 10 pages of reading. And typing when you have a few extra letters (å, ø, & æ) can be quite exciting. Google even yelled at me a few times. As did the old folk at the next table as I massacred their language.

Bottom line, almost everyone I know would rather take a solid day job with a fixed, albeit boring, salary. That’s because almost everyone I know who is getting close to 60 has a pension fund that is worth a little more than a few million dollars. Zimbabwean dollars, that is.

No wonder my mother keeps reminding me to get a real job.

Which reminds me, I have a UK distributor looking for SA products to represent in the FMCG field in England. And I have a Norwegian importer looking for specialised beadwork from Africa, but with a Norwegian twist. (At least, until they read this weeks mutter and start looking for a real job.) If you are interested, please email me.

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Opinions and Prejudices

August 17th, 2011 | by | applied tech

Aug
17

As I dictate this into Windows, using Dragon’s latest voice recognition software, it occurs to me that we each hold many prejudices which we prefer to call enlightened opinions.

For instance, this nonsense about whether Apple is better than Windows or vice versa. The problem is that we aren’t comparing Apples with apples. So to speak. Right now the operating systems (OS) are very alike. Both are very easy to use.

But that’s not the whole story. An OS needs some hardware: a computer, of course; a screen; a keyboard; a mouse; and in my case a microphone. It is those components that can really define our experience of any operating system.

For instance, there is much more to microphones than one might think. Your basic USB headset is pretty darn good, and the top end ones more so. But most of the effort goes the earphones, not the microphone. This means that you can go deaf within seconds when savouring Locomotive Breath at full bass. And at full volume.

USB mics have a much higher background noise level which you only notice when you test the signal. (Nothing to do with the OS.) A bottom of the range mic from Shure or AKG, as used on stage or in studio, is so much better than almost any USB mic. These audio mics cost a little more, granted, like Apple, I guess, but the result is very inspiring.

Keyboards are mostly at the bottom of the pile when we think about new kit. And they all seem to have bread magnets built in. But a good keyboard is close to heaven. (Almost all keyboards work with all OSes.)

Don’t get me started on mouses. The optical ones have been around for years, so there is no excuse to still use one with a moving rubber ball encrusted with hair, desk mites, and crumbs from the last Christmas lunch. I used to have to lug around a box of baby wipes back in my tech support days when I was forced to play with other peoples dirty keyboards and hairy balls.

In other words, don’t focus on the operating system. Focus on the entire package. I might prefer Apple hardware, and  I do find it very inspiring. But given the chance to invest in a brand new, very thin, ultra fast, Sony unit which costs just as much, I’d struggle to say no.

Ask not what the system can do for you, but rather what you need the system to do for you. For instance, almost all the people I know use MS Office. It’s the most costly typewriter ever built. And their biggest challenge with changing  to a new OS is whether that OS has a typewriter that works as well. (It does, whether it’s Windows, Apple, or Linux.)

I guess it all comes down to money. Apple hardware costs more while the OS is cheaper. This inflames Windows folk who think that Apple is gouging the masses. (Windows hardware is often cheaper but the OS is not.) These are the same people who dismiss Linux because it’s too cheap. Some of us are just having a grumpy time.

It seems to me that if each of us was a cyber Olympian, then the tiny variances might make the difference between gold and silver. But, I suspect that most of us are still a long way from the bronze. That means that you can buy what you want, proudly. Except Linux because it is free. They all work just fine.

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Secret to Success?

August 11th, 2011 | by | entrepreneurial life, selling

Aug
11

The secret to business success — to any success — is simple. Just get started.

Don’t worry about getting it right the first time. You won’t. The only question is how bad that first effort will be. Mine are always awful.

I’d like to believe that I’m a reasonably competent human being. I don’t have to be “the best” before I can add value to the lives of other people, or have fun. Nor do I have to be perfect. When I started, like you, I was pretty inadequate. My mother assures me that I did, at least once, soil my diapers. And on occasion, although I don’t believe this, I was apparently naughty. Yet I, somehow, as all of us do, turned out vaguely useful.

Every day somebody who has never sent an e-mail newsletter will ask me all sorts of complex questions so that their first attempt can be “perfect”. Why should it be?

My first mass email attempt was awful. Roger Bannister’s first attempt to run a mile, which would have been the first time he ran around a track at the age of seven, was probably pretty awful as well.

But if you just get started — no matter how dreadful your first attempt — you learn so much from those first stumbling efforts that your next try is 200% better. And by the third effort you start looking like a seasoned professional.

Contrast this with trying to get it perfect the very first time. You never get to look like a seasoned professional because you never get out of the starting gate!

We confuse our humble resources as individuals (and very small businesses) with those of Telkom who can afford to spend huge amounts of money to achieve a look that we all know is a complete lie. I would much rather have a more humble presentation that is much closer to the truth of who I am.

On the one hand technology is a wonderful blessing. On the other hand, it complicates life immeasurably by giving us far more options than we need. My car radio, for instance, has so many buttons that I no longer press any. Not even the button which switches it on. I long for the days when I didn’t have to make any decisions. Two knobs, one on each side of the radio, one for tuning, and the other for volume. And Mick Jagger yelling “Paint it Black”. Bliss.

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Selling a Woman

August 10th, 2011 | by | selling

Aug
10

Before I offend you, let me explain. I use the word “selling” here in an American context. When they say “selling a client” they mean “making a sale to the client”. That headline sure is tempting, though, isn’t it?

This is a personal story with a business context.

The last time I found myself without a partner (and I sure hope that it is the last time) it seemed a good idea think carefully about what I wanted in such a person in future. I am a little shy to admit that I built a mind map (what your kids will call a spider man) detailing this perfect woman. At least, for me.

I spent some time thinking about what had gone right and wrong in each of my relationships, and made a lot of notes. Most of these were about me in fact. It turned out that the product on sale needed a lot of work.

But, by and by, I built a mental image of my ideal partner. I started with basics. For instance, I would prefer a woman. Then I thought through the detail. She would most likely be between 35 and 45. She would probably have young children. She would have a very gentle manner. She’d enjoy seeing new places. She’d laugh a lot. And so on.

This is what I had spent most of the previous two decades doing, but then it had been about building images of my perfect clients. I had had a lot more success finding them than finding the right marriage partner.

And then I went back to writing CrashProof your Business – which has since become South Africa’s best-selling book on surviving business closure. And, it turns out, South Africa’s only book on the subject.

As I thought about each attribute (her age, for instance) I could imagine many of the challenges she would be facing. At my age I was more interested in how she was handling those challenges than how she looked.

As I sat answering emails in my favourite bistro a few weeks later a showstopping woman walked in to chat to the owner. I had no idea who she was. But, she ticked a lot of the boxes on my list and a few that I hadn’t yet thought of. She was, in other words, a great prospect.

Because I had spent a lot of time thinking about her before I even knew her, I had a head start. Rather than rush up and use some corny line (“Can I help you?” would be the commercial equivalent), I did a little research.

Actually, I walked up to Sonja (the owner of Taste, the fine coffee shoppe where this happened) and asked her for the name of my future wife. Then I found out where she worked. It turned out she owned a business as well, and that gave us a lot of common ground. And then I sent some flowers with a note.

Of course, you know the end of the story. I sold a woman, as the Americans might say. Or, more properly, I sold me to a woman.

The key to the story is this: Your product doesn’t much matter until after the first sale (or date). Until then, it is all about the prospect. Get that right, and you get your foot in the door, as it were. In my case, the shared coffee at Fego. Only much later did she share with me that when she arrived she almost turned back because all she saw was a hunched old man in front of a PC.

Yet I find that most of us devote all of our time to the product. As a person that would be the focus on your body, or your degrees, or your car. And then we hope someone will notice. (If we build it, they will come, we think.)

I think it is much easier to build a picture of the folk that will fit you, and then approach them rather than wasting a life waiting for others to find you. They won’t. They’re too busy. You must take that first step. It helps a lot to have thought about what you’re stepping into.

PS I use Freemind for most of my mind maps nowadays. It runs on Windows, Apple, and Linux.

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Shyte is great fertiliser

August 4th, 2011 | by | sovereign individual

Aug
04

On May 31, 1992 the worst professional event of my adulthood changed my life. My first venture closed while I lived in Somerset West. I was crushed, desolate, and felt I had no future. But the backpedalling turned out to be for the better, although it did not seem that way at the time. It pricked me into a new venture, doing something that I now feel I was made for, and forcing me to meet thousands of inspiring South Africans doing amazing things.

On November 30, 2008 the second worst event of my adulthood changed my life again. My SA passport was stolen at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town. SA Home Affairs replaced it within two weeks. The equivalent UK department took more than 6 months to not replace the stamp inside it which allowed me to stay there. This forced me to find some new ways to pay the bills. (You can’t travel while they hold your only travel document.) And this launched me into a new approach to sharing ideas, doing a bunch of things that enhance what I was made for, and forcing me to keep talking to thousands of South Africans, this time from Norway. What a privilege.

As I write this from my SA Office, AKA Cafe Latte-Tude at the Gateway Centre, with Andrea Bocelli making fine Italian noises in my headphones, I wonder how much better life can get. Tomorrow I will broadcast a webinar from here to a bunch of clients over 3G because this specific table gets 10MB download speeds and 2MB upload.

Since 1992 my life has been devoted to identifying and sharing ideas, new ways to look at entrepreneurship and business, not because you need to hear it, but because I have to do it. It remains the huge fun to find a new option, something that others have not yet seen. And then to see lights go on when I share it with is a profound rush.

When I started this portable lifestyle back in 2000, I was often the only person at any cafe with an open PC in front of me. Now you trip over cables before you can find an empty table. It is all rather inspiring.

South Africa has no social support system worth mentioning, but this inspires massive entrepreneurial effort. The bottom line is: Work or starve. This makes us resourceful, very hard working, motivated and very motivating.

The lessons? Keep my passport safely attached to my person when travelling. Focus on adding enough value to enough people that I don’t have to worry about the money because it looks after itself. And remember that no matter how deep the shyte I am floundering in, I am being fertilised.

And to think that you can do all of this from SA: Seventh heaven.

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