We dont need anymore chicken farmers! We need entrepreneurs

I recently felt quite upset at the Black Business Chamber and their organisers who wanted to help grassroots small businesses. Instead they helped some very basic businesses that i feel are disingenous to young people in this country as far as innovation and entrepreneurship are concerned and set us up for mediocrity.

My response:

In Response to the article about the Black Business Chambers awards I was severely disappointed. Why? If South Africa is going to promote chicken farmers and uninspiring small businesses as the way forward then there is no hope for small business in this country. The talent does exist in South Africa to promote more innovative businesses but schools and universities don't understand how to train young people to find new ideas that will inspire fresh approaches and innovation. I can recall one entrepreneur who took all the chicken skins that were discarded by retailers and turn them into a crunchy new snack and another entrepreneur who looked at the methods of township chicken sellers struggling toy take the feathers off chicken and designing a whole new methodology to remove the feathers. What the Black Business Chamber has done in promoting small business is scandalous and a total waste of time and resources. Its time we started teaching kids in this country the skills to be innovative and creative and to find the many business opportunities that are available to them.

One of their responses:

I hope you are well. Thank you for sharing your views on the Black Business Chamber and it's recent Grassroots business competition.

I understand your frustration. At the same time, I also do understand what the Black Business Chamber is trying to achieve through the competition.

Below are some of the reasons I do support the competition, namely:

1. There are socio-economic reasons why such type of businesses should be supported to initiate growth.

2. Most of the grassroots businesses cannot access existing business support/ resources because of many known reasons.

I think the Black Business Chamber achieved their goal through the competition. The goal is to support the grassroots businesses in CT. Here are two of recent examples to support my thinking:

1. The owner of the chicken business is now working on setting up a farm to supply restaurants and hotels in WC and EC. I am writing this email now sitting at Marcos African place, just eat the chicken the company want to farm (runway/ village chicken). There is a huge market for the runway chicken.

2. Didiza Productions used to do small TV scripts "here" and "there." But now, the company is now negotiating a contract with the Department of Defence to facilitate and manage the hiring of military equipment and installations by the Film Industry in RSA. This proposal is now supported by the Minister of Trade and Industry (see Minister trip to Hollywood news), Wesgro, WC and KZN Film Commissions, the Military Veteran, and more. I am accompany the owner of the company to attend another meeting with Wesgro tomorrow.

The above are some of the reasons I think, with no doubt, that without this approach, the above businesses could have not seen the light to growth but remain "grassroots" despite potential.

I don't think every business must be based on a new idea only but it can also be working on a basic idea and do it very well.

My experience tells me that the Black Business Chamber must continue with the competition to support the "grassroots" businesses to initiate growth. It is for this reason the Black Business Chamber is relevant to these type of businesses.

To sum up, I think different organizations will always find own ways to promote the culture of entrepreneurship. 

My response: 

I asked the students at RAA who are trained to come up with awesome fresh innovative ideas what they thought. They were as disgusted as me and felt that this kind of competition downgrades young people in this country. They beleive like me that with skills training and decent ideas generation that all young people can become entrepreneurs instead of small survivalist businesses.

The examples given above of small business "making it" are dubious at most in my opinion as i have been around for a very long time and heard these kind of delusional examples many times over.

In conclusion i am advocating for young people in this country to reach their full potential wether educated or not, wether rich or poor, to be skilled in the art of entrepreneurship and to use their full range of creative spirit as a young person instead of becoming small scale chicken farmers ( no offence to chicken farmers)

What is an MVP?

I recently had the good fortune to work with Socionext a Dutch based Amsterdam organisation working with a whole bunch of university students on the Wits campus. What i loved about their model was the MVP or Minimum viable product. The MVP model is exactly the way innovation and entrepreneurship should be managed as it is quick, simple, intensive and full of surprises.

5 Golden Rules of MVP’s

Eric Ries

1. The goal is to begin the process of learning.
   
2. Aim your MVP at early adopters. They don’t care about per-
   fect solutions. They care about being first users....
   
3. Any additional learning you do beyond what is required to
   start learning is a waste.
   
4. Be prepared for your MVP to bring bad news (and essential
   feedback).
   
5. No matter what happens, don’t give up hope. Keep on testing,
   learning and growing. 
   
   
   So the students on the course had to first find a great idea using my newspaper technique and then do a MVP ( all in 5 days)
   
   
   I dont think we thought it possible but working 9-5 for 5 days showed it is possible. A lesson in itself.
   
   
   Great ideas like Train Surfing ( Literally standing on top of a train and surfing as a commercial enterprise), The sale of alternative milk (Like Yak milk), and even a self branding program for students.
   
   
   The students made it, delivered the MVP and even sold it...all in 5 days!
   
   
   Steve Blank talking about the MVP (2 minute video): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joNKkWPafZs
   
   
   I am going to take the MVP model and inculcate it into my Ideas Generation technique and limit the MVP to 2 weeks. Im very excited by this model and believe it will create the volume needed from idea to reality.
   
   
   “Your job as a founder is to quickly validate whether the model is correct by seeing if customers behave as your model pre-
   dicts. Most of the time the darn customers don’t behave as you predicted.” Steve Blank 
   
   
   
   

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Could drunken students cooking become a business?

The UCT entrepreneurship Society are an awesome bunch. I recently took them through a process of seeing the leaves and they had to come up with great ideas and implement them. 4 awesome ideas were chosen.

1. Drunken students learning how to cook.

The students wanted to great easy to use printed recipes as students are generally poor cooks and guide students to purchasing clever at local retailers. A great big thanks to Shoprite managers who were the only one's to say go-for-it! What the students didn't realise was their promotional video is the actual business. This is one of the quirks of a start-up. Often the "real" business is the "mistake" or the unintentional part of the business. The video is quirky and funny and something students can relate to. Now every recipe can be placed on facebook and students will watch other students cooking with all the natural characters and impromptu students stuff that is impossible to script.

Check out the link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSX1Ac-D9j8

2. University tours

Universities have so many great stories, so many nooks and crannies and so many characters. This idea is so cool as students could easily run and manage it and then expand it to other universities. 

3. Replicart

The winner on the night takes full scale replica art ( Think a full scale Jackson Pollock), and creates galleries so people can see what the art is really like. In a place like South Africa it would be nigh impossible for many kids and even adults to ever see a Jackson Pollock or the lilies painted by Matisse. Now they can experience it first hand. When they tested this idea they blew everyone away and with thousands of schools this idea is a winner.

4. Baby growers with crazy sayings

Imagine your baby with a baby grower saying, " watch your daughters" for a very cool little boy. The sayings are endless and funny and quirky and they sold out within a few minutes. A winner in my book as this could be a global trend very easily.

The UCT entrepreneurship society has been awesome to work with and i am sure if they pursue these ideas all of them will be successful.

Are you an Honest Broker (HB)? or a Greedy Mother F....R

1. Do you connect people with other people at parties like clockwork? 

—2. Do you sit at coffee shops all day chatting away to people? 

—3. Does your wife say you love to chat when all she wants to do is leave? 

—4. Do your kids get annoyed when you have long conversations with people while they want to go and play?

—5. Does your brain automatically think about dollar signs when you see a potential opportunity?

—6. Are you interested in other people’s businesses? 

—7. Do you try and cut yourself in a deal even if its not your own?

—8. When you think of the word broker do you think Mother Theresa? 

—9. When you die will they put on your tombstone “He helped other people” ? 

—10. Have you a story where you connected one person to another and something great happened in business because of you? 

—To be nominated OR to become an HB you should have scored:

   8 (YES)

  2 (NO)

Or somewhere close to that!

connect@marketplacesouthafrica.org

The dark side of innovation

Being a person who believes in the ying and the yang, the light and the dark, I suppose there had to be a dark side to innovation, the side that no one explores or debates, the uncomfortable side, the scary side. At a talk on low income solutions to marketing a case study was done on SAB and Kenya. SAB realized that their beers were too expensive for that market. Their strategy! To develop Cassava a cash crop into a low income beer using some awesome technology. With all the resources they have they succeeded in the technology. A case in point.  And produced a low income beer. The sales of the beer are phenomenol in that market, but SAB really want the market buying more of this beer, slowly increasing the price to make their premium beers appetizing to the market in price. Genius or just plain devious. At the talk it was explained that the farmers could make much more money selling the cassava now ( a cash crop) BUT one has to balance out the social ills of all the alcohol consumed in the market and the total cost to the country in the long run. A dark cloud came over the room as the case study unfolded. When the presenter mentioned that for the first time in his life the CEO of SAB felt they had done something good in their lives I felt the room contract in disgust. The reality is excess alcohol use is one of the biggest scourges of the low income community....something they struggle with on a daily basis, and beer makes up the majority of that , and SAB is the biggest role player. Social ills such as violence in all forms, car accidents, shack fires and the list can go on and on are exacerbated by excess alcohol use. Not to mention that poor households spend income they cannot afford on alcohol that should be used for education and food, sometimes leaving families hungry! This is not anecdotal. (See one of my earlier blogs on How excess alcohol use is actually the main cause of shack fires) and backed up by many other research reports. Like i said i am not a teetotaller and do love my tipple but balancing the forces of good and bad when it comes to innovation should not be an issue. Innovation in this context helps the farmer but destroys a community or even a country. So innovation in this context favours the bad ( even though there is some good). Innovation should always favour the good of society BUT i understand their might always be a dark side. The final question should be how SAB can change their entire business model using innovation to become a force for good! Is this impossible?It is in my opinion. They have the resources, the brand, the technology, so they could actually change the world....for good....or they could keep on destroying it interspersing themselves with feel good innovations that will never counter their own dark side. All SAB needs is the will!

Technology and issues close to our heart

Ever gone to a restaurant with a group of friends or a few couples and now the bill comes. Let's calculate quickly or just make a quick division to split the bill. The reality is if we are going to split a bill then surely we should do it correctly. It is quite an irritation as it is quite difficult to make a calculation right there. Also what if I wanted that extra special expensive cigar and no one else did.or more wine. I think that all restaurants should have a special app for split bills. I recently heard the idea and thought how practical, that's something I would use. Like all apps I am not a fan as most don't make any money but this is one that if fitted to all restaurants ( and restaurants would buy it) then it may work.
At the same workshop I also heard another idea that is very personal to me. Magnificent hard working sportsmen and women who sweat blood and tears to make it on the world stage but receive no sponsorship from companies or government. Damn it irritates me because I know how hard these guys work. There should be an organization that connects sponsors with minor sports not just the big money sports. Perhaps starting with crowd funding and later with connecting money to actual sporting codes who don't have any financial support. I think this is something I need to do as my young son is a top karate fighter and if we travel overseas to compete it will cost me a fortune. This must be done on a web platform. Another good example of technology that could makea big difference
I suppose the lesson here is innovation is sometimes best handled when very personal and tackles issues that are very close to our hearts.

People give money to People not businesses or causes

i recently started The Fundraising Academy. The objective was clear. Train people to raise money for their businesses or projects. As a profession in South Africa it is quite clear that there are thousands of people trying to do positive social projects ( or non profits)....in fact 100,000 of them and they all need to raise money, and there are thousands of entrepreneurs who need money for their business start-ups. The issue of capital raising is an interesting one but i dont think it has changed much over time. Most money is given by people to other people rather than the value of the new idea. What this means and what i teach at the academy is someone will first invest in you and not your cause or business. They first need to "like you" or trust you or beleive in You! This is a difficult proposition for most young entrepreneurs as they promote their brilliant ideas. They need to be promoting who they are and they need to start by building genuine relationships with possible people who can fund their brilliance in ideas. When i listen to a pitch most people sell ideas and causes. They dont understand that a potential investor needs to understand who they are first. In an age of technology, building genuine relationships has become much harder for young people. I mean a young couple can be dating online, thousands of miles away from each other, talk on the phone daily ( sorry i mean on facebook or Skype), for years and never actually meet face to face. What skills are these young people learning? What happens when they eventually do meet and move in together? A disaster. The same applies to raising capital for your business. You need to meet people. Build genuine relationships with them. Let them get to know you and then they might just bet on you. Let me emphasise genuine again and again, as most people who seek money from other people are often not genuine. If someone doesnt give you money its not personal. But that relationship needs to be. When i hear young people pitch new innovations they fail to build this connection between people. The idea is rarely strong enough. The other option to raise capital is to go to a bank ( good luck), go to the government ( better luck). This form of raising capital has and will always work. However let me throw in a quick caveat. Crowdsource funding may just change the game altogether. Where millions of ordinary Joe's fund other ordinary Joe's, anywhere, anytime. If you cant make this work however you will still need to revert to the old ways....people give to people not to great ideas.