Entrepreneurship 101: Give...your time!

A lot of people have jumped on the entrepreneurship bandwagon without pausing to consider the first and probably the most important Key Success Factor for entrepreneurship, YOU!

You need to be available, you need to be willing to give of your time, you need to be there. Lots of people think they can combine a well paying, high (or maybe low) profile job with the task of organising, managing and assuming the risk of a business or enterprise, which at the end of the day is what entrepreneurship is all about.

I say, if you have a vision and decide to convert that vision into reality, quitteth thou thy day job and focuseth thou on entrepreneuring.

Since it is your vision, the chances that another individual, especially a paid employee, will key into and run with that vision the way you would if you were personally involved are very, very low!

Real life Scenario: Two hairdressing salons.

The first, in the heart of town, about thirty minutes drive from my house, the business owner is almost always on ground. Soon as we walk in the door, we are given highly comfortable seats and asked to make our choice of tea, coffee, juice or just plain water. Your children, if any, are quickly provided with juice, toys, cartoons and the ever friendly, charming staff commence to fawn all over you and your child(ren).

The shop owner comes out immediately with a smile on her face and proceeds to interact with you, your child(ren), friends, etc. She does all her best to ensure you are comfortable and has so imbued it in her staff that the few times you arrive while she is not there, you can almost swear any of her girls have her blood running in their veins as they would give you the same matchless attitude.

Price List?

Pedicure - 4,500
Washing and Setting - 1,500
Blow drying - 1,000
Twisting - 6,000
Kids plaiting - 2,500

etc

Hm, Salon 2, my daughter and nanny can stroll down there to get their hair done and be in the salon in under 6 minutes flat. However, every time my daughter goes there, she comes back with a headache and swollen eyeballs from having had her hair pulled and tugged and pushed, all in the name of getting her to "park well". The salon owner is never on ground, you only find two completely disillusioned girls with little or no customers, just lounging around idly and transferring their bad attitude and aggression onto hapless customers.

I walked in yesterday to pick up my daughter and nanny who had gone to make their hair since I was terribly occupied and first thing I noticed, my daughter's eyes were swollen from crying. Second thing, as I write, nobody bothered to even say Good Afternoon to me. Matter of fact, from the look on their faces, you could see my daughter (and I), had come in to disrupt their day long sleeping spree!

Price list?

Washing and setting - 300
Twisting - 1,500
Kids plaiting - 500
Pedicure - 1,200

As we walked away from the salon yesterday, I vowed they were seeing the last of myself and/or my daughter and silently resolved to save myself the heartache of being treated like a nuisance to someone who needs my patronage and go instead to the place where I am treated like a king. As if she read my thoughts, small madam piped up: "Mummy, please can we stop coming to this salon and go to the other one? They do not know how to treat people here".

In spite of their dirt cheap services, it was indeed small wonder they were always customerless with the owner of the Salon a silent, sleeping and invisible partner to the entire transaction.

Working in the bank, I remember a lot of colleagues who had started businesses on the side closing them down after a few months as the businesses "were not doing well" due to lack of supervision. When the cat is away, the mouse play and none plays as hard as mice whose cat is a distracted sole proprietor.

Funds account for themselves, develop legs and walk away from the MD's books.

Staff come to work if and when they please (in these days of mobile telephones, I can be on my bed and lie to you that I am in America and you will never tell the difference).

Customers are treated like a bother, like nuisances that come to disrupt the lounging of the staff, since those staff perforce, do not see the larger picture for what it is.

Etcheteram, etcheteram and so forth....

Seriously, if you want to convert your vision to reality, throw the most important ingredient into the mix, yourself! Do not waste your time and resources enriching other people by setting up businesses for them or granting unadvised and unknown loans to your own detriment - well, what else will you call an employee chopping oga's money if not unadvised and unknown loans.

Make sure you are available. You are the Oga at the top and you do not want any other ogas at the bottom who neither understand your vision nor are willing to do the grunt work ruin that vision for you or make you believe that perhaps you did not catch the vision correctly.

Simply put, what is not monitored does not get done.

Maybe some other day, we will talk about attitude, staffing, customer satisfaction, but if you really are sure you want to pursue your dreams - ermahgerd, repetition alert - then free yourself up to live that dream!


... So, yes, ahem... darsall!