Front Page News

The award which I won in London's Business Awards seems to have grabbed the South African media's attention. They put together a fantastic article on me and the business which was published on our local newspapers front page. The same article can be read on the Home Coming Revolution website who are dedicated to encouraging South African expats to return home to our beautiful country.

Nothing Beats Brilliant Customer Service

Competition is good as it makes you stronger, but I'm starting to realise that while product price is a major factor in a customers mind, nothing beats brilliant customer service.

You may loose out on a few sales today because of a competitor undercutting you on price, don't fret so long as you're continually offering top class customer service and going the "extra mile" whenever needed. These customers will be so impressed (especially in South Africa!) that they will undoubtedly recommend you to anyone else looking for a similar product.

This will bring in sales further down the line so you can kind of look at it as investing your time in creating lots of long term sales reps for your business.

Beyond this, it also makes you feel wonderful to have a customer contact you after dealing with you just to say how impressed they are with your company - it can really make it all worth while!

Managing a project

When overseeing a project - large or small - you've got to focus on getting things right, right from the beginning.

Writing out the project specifications and desired outcomes must be done carefully, clearly and very thoroughly! If you don't do this thoroughly then you will run into problems down the line.

The people who quote on the project must understand what your desired outputs are from the project. If they don't then they will want to increase their quote when you "add" on extras towards the end. This can mess up your budget and delay deadlines.

Watch out for this, I've been caught out by this simple mistake twice now in a short period of time... Not again though...

Checklist when starting a new business

The following are reminders from a check-list for new SA based businesses:

• Premises – pay deposits, elect, water, rates and taxes if applicable. Alarms, insurance. Racks, forklift, office furn, telephones – business lines with hunting facility, faxes, ADSL lines, switchboard, register with white page.
• Statutory – Register with SARS to get Tax no (IT77C) and Vat no. PAYE, SITE, UIF, Skills Development Levy, (EMP101). Must register with Compensation Commissioner for Campentation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases (COIDA) (From WAS2).
• Open a bank account. You will need FICA details for all shareholders.
• Rent a P O Box.
• Print Stationery for invoicing .
• Protect brand name/s, Reg web-site

Final day as an employee!

After working here in the UK for over two years, the time has come for me to branch out on my own. As I'll be starting up my own company once back in South Africa, today is officially my final day as an employee!

I've been looking forward to this day for a long time! I now feel confident in the fact that I am prepared and ready to take on the business world on my own.

Onwards and upwards. This day marks an important step towards owning the game farm.

Failing to reach my goal

One of goals over the past 18 months has been to buy my first investment property in the UK. My time in the UK is now drawing to a close and although I wanted this, I didn't make happen.
Now I've been racking my my brain to figure out what went wrong. What has lead to me failing to reach this goal? If I can recognise this then I can deal with it and ensure it won't happen again.

The more I think about it the more I realise its not just one thing that I need to work on, it's a combination of factors which each individually could lead to the failure of future ambitions if not dealt with and learnt from. So here goes, these are the stumbling blocks that will never catch me out again.


I didn't tackle it with PERSEVERANCE!

Each little stumbling block which I came across became a new excuse to stop and complain about how hard it was. What I should rather have done is seen each one as a challenge and overcome it immediately. There will always be bumps in the road. Accept this and get over it.

Embarrassingly enough, I must admit at some times I almost found myself wanting to get tripped up and fail. I guess it is easier to fail then to push on and on and on until you reach success. NEVER let this feeling be felt again.

The intense desire I have for my overall goal, the game-farm, is incredibly strong but the desire to achieve this goal of buying an investment property wasn't nearly as fuelled. Reaching large goals is only done by accomplishing smaller goals along the way. Without the small ones the larger ones will never come. Therefore I need to transmute my burning desire for the game-farm into unerring desire for the smaller goals on the road to the game-farm.

I found myself being influenced by and listening to opinions of people who had no idea what they were talking about and even naysayers. Even close friends and family can give "advice" which is really harmful. In the future I will listen to what people have to say, nod and smile, but be very careful what I let effect me.
The opposite of this would be to surround myself with people who are in the business and do know what they are talking about. Listening to them would be very valuable.


I didn't have ABSOLUTE FAITH AND BELIEF that I could achieve the goal

This follows on from not having the desire but also comes from not having the confidence in my own ability to achieve what I had set out to achieve. To get this confidence you need to have a good knowledge of what you are doing. Get this from researching the concept and speaking to people who have already achieved what you are trying to do.


Trust your GUT

I worked with a company who promised to teach me how to find a great investment property opportunity. When I first met them I had a feeling that these people were slack and that they were over promising on what they could deliver. Long story short, they were absolute rubbish and gave terrible service. Trust your gut.


Throwing good money after bad

When the first promises from this company weren't met I decided to use an advanced service of theirs which was very expensive with the hope that they would work a miracle. Not hard to guess that this was a waste of money too. Thank goodness I've learnt these lessons along the way and won't let this happen to me again.


Finally, one thing I've had to realise is that the success principles which I've been learning didn't fail me when trying to reach this goal. I failed the principles by not following them with persistence and conviction.

Manufacturing - Keeping it on schedule

When launching a new product, you can seriously comprise all your hard work if you run out of the product you are trying to build a market for. Be very careful to fully understand the lead times of each and every component which is sourced to make the product, if any of these have a long lead time then you have to be sure to order these enough in advance so that they don't delay production units coming off the production line.
These delays could cause you to stock out of your product which causes serious problems with lost sales and probably more importantly, your trade customers who have put marketing efforts and money behind your product.

Making the most of Criticism

In his book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman explains that you should see criticism as valuable info about how you can do better, and not as a personal attack. You need to guard against your impulses to be defensive and to avoid responsibility. If you do find it becoming too upsetting you could ask to resume a meeting later after a period to absorb the difficult message and to cool down a bit.

You should see criticism as an opportunity to work together with the critic to solve the problem, instead of seeing them as an adversarial in the situation.

Happiness = Success

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

Albert Schweitzer

Outstanding Young Business Person of 2009!

On the 25th of September I was selected as the Outstanding Young Business Person of 2009 in the North & West London Business Awards sponsored by HSBC Bank.

A great honour as the awards were marketed to 4000 London businesses. It was a fantastic event held in Wembley Stadium with 600 attendees.

Here's some of the press following the award:
- The sponsors write up of the event (here)
- BikeBiz news article (here)
- An e-copy of the South African Newspaper Article, turn to page 3. (here)