A SMME is not simply a small version of a JSE listed company. This is important for your future, so listen up. Your basic BIG firm has a variety of public shareholders, which means that it has huge financial resources, as well as access to even more resources via banks. In contrast, a SMME spends 99.9% of his/her time struggling to survive.
Your basic BIG firm has vast hordes of staff to ensure that they're doing everything correctly for their shareholders, who do not want to lose money on their investments in shares. (ENRON would be a shining example of how well this system works.) In contrast, a SMME usually works alone, often in the dead of night with just a candle for light because s/he/it forgot to pay the electricity this morning while rushing around trying to placate customers.
Your basic BIG firm can afford to retain the services of esteemed professionals (like Arthur Anderson) to interpret new rules, regulations, legislation, practices, and other business environmental issues. In contrast, a SMME will usually try and do it him/her/self because s/he/it couldn't afford a professional, even if s/he/it had the time to look for one, or the time to meet with them.
Your basic BIG firm has virtually unlimited staffing to donate time and effort to drafting burdensome rules and regulations - as well as to spend time and effort ensuring compliance [and actually reading the rules - which is almost as much fun as reading the Bible on the Dead Sea Scrolls in the original Arabic or Greek]. In contrast, a SMME spends the remaining .1% of his/her available time trying to get some sleep before facing the heathen masses again tomorrow.
You see, your basic BIG firm is like the proverbial horse designed by a committee. It isn't alive. It doesn't take responsibility. It has no conscience. And when it screws up [which we all know occasionally happens] it tries to solve the problem with money. Which is easy because it is always the shareholders money - not the MD's money. It's easy to make decisions like that when the only risk you run is losing your job. In contrast, a SMME is a lean, alive, one man money making machine [at least the vast majority are either one or two man/woman combinations] completely focused on surviving just this current month. Yet despite this focus, this minuscule business has a conscience because the business is the man/woman and vice versa. And when the business screws up the individual tries to make it better before thinking about money because the individual wants the relationship. You may have noticed that BIG businesses also talk a lot about relationships, but haven't quite worked out that they cannot be 'done' by 'Relationship Managers'. In fact, now that I think about, BIG businesses sure do talk a lot, don't they? Bit skimpy on the action though, aren't they?
But the hundreds of thousands of tiny, cellular, one person enterprises [like yours and mine] underpin our economy. They're like the cells roaming around your body, each focused on an individual task to ensure the survival of the whole. The BIG firms are like the organs in your body - like your stomach, or your colon, and maybe even your rectum.
But this is a call to arms, blessed friends and cellular businesses. The BIG firms are gathering in committees to define BEE charters that will kill us over the next 10 years. Before you shiver and shake over my insensitivity to the current state of affairs in our wonderful country, and the fact that I must make reparations for the years that I benefitted from my apartheid education [and I know I did], I am not against the principles and concepts behind BEE.
I am against trying to apply the same rules and regulations to my tiny, insignificant business [which feeds my family and keeps them off whatever welfare we have] that are being applied to Telkom, Vodacom, Anglo American, the government, and all the other BIG enterprises that do not take personal responsibility for their actions.
I quote a few lines from the ICT Charter - which echoes the charters of all the salaried persons deciding my future:
"Company" or "
In English I understand that this means that if a sole proprietor [specialist computer programmer, for example] does not 'meet the transformation targets' s/he/it cannot supply any BIG firm in the ICT sector. What I don't understand is how my tiny sole proprietor business can achieve the following goals within 5 years in order to get the Gold Certification that I will probably need to be merely considered as a supplier:
between 25% and 35% direct shareholding by black people (the definition of black people includes anyone who is not white)
between 15% and 30% of these must be black woman or black people with disabilities
between 30% and 50% of the people in senior and/or executive management must be black
and between 15% and 30% must be black women
apart from my contribution of 1% of payroll in terms of the Skills Development Act, I must offer an additional 1-3% of my payroll targeted at black employee education
30 to 60% of my goods and services must be procured from black-owned enterprises
I must publish an Affirmative Action
Procurement Policy and Supplier Questionnaire approved by the ICT BEE Council
I must invest between 1% and 2% of my profits before tax in sustainable ICT Council accredited projects
That's a small sampling - gleaned after reading the 63 pages of the draft charter. [It's like a George Bush speech when he's overloaded with Prozac.] This is the stuff that bored 'employees' and full time salaried s/he/its come up with when they don't have gainful employment. And it's happening because we cellular beings do not have the time to get involved. Apart from the time needed to understand, assimilate, implement, certificate, and confirmate my compliance, how do I - your basic sole proprietor with no staff and lots of computers - get a black shareholder, other than by grafting a large black body part onto me?
And since the government has to import more than 20,000 workers to fulfill their own demand for skilled civil service personnel, having found the broad mass of remnant humanity (like me) unusable, where will I find a suitable candidate to share my load {or maybe donate that spare body part)?
Why is it that we SMME-types cannot group together in moments of crisis - like the myriad Taxi drivers who block the highways when something threatens their future or when their favourite soccer team loses? Why don't we band together, my impoverished brethren, and declare a national day/week of passive resistance? Take a week off and give the entire staff a week of unpaid leave; don't pitch to work; slop around in our jammies; watch the Series Channel; drink 17 beers; and tell the s/he/it/s in the BIG world to get real and spend some time on our side of the business fence?
And if you feel that I may have had too much coffee this morning, check out www.ictcharter.org.za and wade through the latest draft. Our cellular future looks donders bleek unless we do something about it ourselves. Your suggestions welcome.
May 19th, 2004 - Taste Coffee Shop, La
PS
Whenever I feel real down an email like this arrives to give meaning to this Petes Weekly effort. Please share it with as many folk as you can think of.
Hi Pete,
Great newsletterÖ You are 100% correct, MARKETING MARKETING and MORE MARKETING with a HUGE amount of personal interaction = success.
I am nowhere near where I want to be, but since your guided inspiration to take my business on to the web and do away with the staff I have been nothing but happy. Can you believe that in the last six months I have done over 1.2 Million Rands worth of business exclusively via the web WITHOUT EVER SEEING my clients face to face?
And even more amazing is the fact that I am selling a commodity that involves thousands of
I donít know if I would ever have considered doing business via the web if I had not stumbled upon your newsletters 3 years ago, I am forever grateful to you Ö
Have a FAB week!
Kind Regards
Justin Harrison
www.techdirect.co.za
PPS Apart from the gastroexcitement last week I enjoyed a complete email systems meltdown. This means that I lost almost every email - including a bunch of unprocessed ones. Please resend if you asked for something and it didn't happen.