Business Springboks

Felix Dennis wrote a wonderful book on how to get rich — and he should know, because he did — and now whiles away his days on an island beach in the Caribbean. His book is typically English — no-nonsense, with a scathing opinion on all the people telling you how to make it, but who haven’t yet made it themselves. (You can get it from Amazon here.)

One of the things I enjoyed most about the book was his analysis of when the best time in your life cycle is to start a business. Would you believe that the best time to start is as soon as you leave school? This is about the only time in your life when you have absolutely nothing to lose! At this point, it is OK if you totally mess it up. Typically, however, most of us wait until we have some experience.

Unfortunately, by the time most of us have enough experience (in our own humble opinion) to start a business, we have also acquired some baggage — in the form of a spouse (or two) and a child (or two or three), some dogs and a mortgage — which increases the risk of starting a business dramatically. (Actually, the risk is probably lower because we have acquired some knowledge, but the perception that we might actually lose a month’s income: that is scary.) So we delay it until we have some capital in the bank, and the risks are lower again. At this time, we think, our mid-40s is a good time to start.

Of course, by then, it’s too late — and we’re on the downhill run towards retirement, so it just doesn’t seem worthwhile to gamble it all on a whim.

Apart from the time that we have just left school, most of our decisions are deeply influenced by the need our partners and children and parents have for us to go for security. And most of them opt for the security of a permanent day job — “wisely” telling us to wait until the time is right. Unfortunately, the time never seems right.

For most of us starting our own business is a little like the process of giving birth. (We are not the mommy, we are the baby.) One-day we wander into the office, relatively happy and secure and employed, and that afternoon we wander back home with our life in tatters because the employment situation turned out to be a little less permanent than we thought yesterday . It’s a little bit like falling out of the womb, but without a doctor to catch us before we hit the concrete floor. It’s called retrenchment, or being fired, or company sequestration, or company merger, or company acquisition. It actually doesn’t matter what it’s called, it’s terrifyingly painful.

Being “jobless” in your mid-40s with a family to support: I cannot imagine anything worse for the uninitiated. (In my case, apart from a very unhappy three-month stretch of employment in 1993, I have been “unemployed” since 1984. But then most of my friends acknowledge that I may indeed have been dropped on my head as an infant.)

This is particularly important in the South African context, where the job market is extremely volatile, and about to become much more so with the introduction of the Broad-Based Black Economic Equity legislation which is going to impact on virtually every job in South Africa — either positively, or negatively. Your individual experience of the BBBEE depends on your perception of your PDI status:

• Previously Disadvantaged Individual
• Presently Disadvantaged Individual
• Pretty Darned Independent
  

A volatile job market is not good news if you like security. Not only is it extremely stressful constantly wondering whether your job will still exist tomorrow — at least for you — but it is also very difficult looking for a new job that will offer as much (or more) security. (And if your current employer finds out about your new interest in the job market, it may well precipitate your entry into it!

In my simple mind it consequently makes a huge amount of sense to spend some time looking at setting up your own small business, leveraging from where you are now (happy, warm, financially comfortable, with access to credit) into a place where you are financially self sustaining (a traditional business, an Internet business, a franchise, a consultancy). You can do this from home, in the evenings, with zero pressure while you still have an income – and that day job.

I’m not asking you to do something that is comfortable, because it isn’t. But this is Africa, and it’s not for sissies. Being employed right now is a little like being a Springbok in the Serengeti. I have never seen a relaxed Springbok. They are very nervous creatures, because that’s the only way they stay alive. The moment they relax, they get eaten. When you watch a Springbok go down to the water, ready to leap 3 metres straight up at the sound of a beercan opening 1 km away (or a crocodile launching forth from the muddy waters right here) you get an idea of how nervous they are, and how “aware” they need to be to stay alive.

Running your own business — at least for the first 50 years — is just like being a Springbok. You celebrate the highs with incredible enthusiasm, and the moment you bump into a tiny setback, you think it is the end of the universe as you know it — and you treat it accordingly. No matter whether it’s going well or worse, you stay “aware” and very, very nervous, or else you end up as somebody’s lunch.

All I’m saying is that in a volatile market, it makes an immense amount of sense to be ready for anything. In the same way that I would advise a business owner to get the appropriate marketing skills to survive in a changing market — may I suggest that (if you are currently employed) it makes sense to leverage your current position into a place that you can move into if your current position suddenly changes?

And you can do it from the safety of your own home, with nobody any the wiser until you launch forth like a hungry "All Black" to have some Springbok for lunch.