“The 90 Day Test” for entrepreneurs

I always wondered to myself is there something that helps the entrepreneurs that succeed that they have which other entrepreneurs don't is it something they know is it how they run their businesses is it the people they hire is it where they went to school is that their socialization their background their education their mental spaces what is it that makes the entrepreneur succeed welcome to my master classes where I share with you everything you need to know about how to become a high-growth high scale entrepreneur I'm joined by guests we break down the myths the ideas the lengths the legends everything you need to know to become a high-growth entrepreneur Warren this is the high performance zone [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so they've three rules then we start so the very three rules that you just need to remember terms are these master classes work right so rule number one is there is no such thing as a stupid question in my years of doing this one of the things I've learnt is you're typically sitting there and you've got a question and you're just not quite sure how to ask it so usually what happens is after this and if you do this I'm going to get so upset after this if I'm if we still have time and I see some of you did you buy books okay come see me after this I'll sign it for you yeah all right so after this one I do some book signing someone's gonna come and go you know I really wanted to ask so my business men don't do that ask the question while we're here so everybody can hear because usually if you're thinking it somebody else is thinking it like if you're facing that problem somebody else is facing that problem right and it it could be something as I don't know rudimentary or standards as how do I make sure that my v80 returns are done properly on time so I don't get penalties well if you're an entrepreneur and you haven't had a v8 e return problem yet call me because it will happen it's not an if it's a web okay the entrepreneur's no I'm nodding hey the startup guys are like what is what do I find at the shop these great teams at the shop well bad then why don't we say bed why he doesn't see why he doesn't say that okay so like that's guys that's the truth if you if you've never even never had the taxman call you call me when he does because he will so whatever the point is whatever the question ask it okay first first rule second rule is this space only works if in the room we have what I like to call a low center of gravity that means there are no titles were all equal I'm not presenting a show I'm facilitating a discussion right so if you're in this room and you have some sort of education or you've built an amazing startup or you went to a saint somewhere school or an old something excuse my language nobody gives like get your head out of your own ass and join us human beings on this little rock called planet Earth okay none of us care some of us succeed in spite of ourselves I think a lot of entrepreneurs succeed in spite of themselves so I'm just call it lucky you get into the right industry at the right time you know the right people and then all of a sudden you begin to believe your own PR right so whatever it is you do here whatever your background let's leave that at the door in here we're all people just trying to share collaborate trust each other in information and learn okay and the third rule is you would notice that there is no presentation none so these master classes aren't curated we don't go we're gonna tell people 1 2 3 4 5 we go what are the problems and let's help each other solve them in the last masterclass we lived in Joburg we had a kid who does designed South Africa's very first own native soccer boot very interesting kid he's 19 years old right so his design and he's built the soccer ball he's got like 50 pairs of something so I so I said to her I said to him there's a couple of instructions I've given him and I said to him once you fulfill these things I'm gonna buy a pair of these soccer boots for my son's entire soccer team anyway so he's built these soccer boots and he comes and he brings the boot with to present to everybody and show them the boot right amazing story and the innovation for him was how do I design a soccer boot that for the majority of the population who live in areas of the country where the sports grounds on grass but gravel the soccer boot will sustain it won't wear right but what an interesting innovation right it's what I call the real world innovation not not apps no offense to anybody with an app I need an app about what app not to get that's that's the real app somebody needs a designer so anyway so he so he comes any lady presents this and everybody loves it and he asked me a couple of questions and the truth is I had nothing to tell him I'm like great business but nothing to tell him in the back there's a lady sitting down very quiet tiny lady about this high from the from literally from the floor to here is about this high she puts up her hand and she comes forward and she says she says I'm a trademark and copyright lawyer I've been doing it for 15 years I'm gonna do a trademark and copyright for free that's why we're here that would have cost him a hundred thousand ran to probably do it properly and now he's getting it done for free right you're gonna love this another lady is sitting at the front with dreadlocks blonde dreadlocks puts up her hand and says oh I used to be an executive at Edie Kong so I'm gonna see if I can connect you with one of my people that had conscience taki merchandise so the email two days ago they take an initial batch of 2,000 orders that buzzer run is why we are there now how do I explain the sovereign to white people how do you see Hey Saints name yeah vassal I so it's just how we call each other as black people when we are lifting it I'm good shall we get started so no presentation this really just starts with the question any questions from anybody anywhere and from the questions we just begin to have a conversation if you can just kind of introduce yourself tell us who you are what you do and then let's get going sir the Speaker of the House recognizes you sorry guys how many mics have we got - okay can we have one this side who's gonna ask the next question right can you make sure that you get the mic so that we don't do this running around and how do you find your niche what do you mean by that I don't know I don't know I don't stand it that means right what do you design yeah you're in trouble so first don't take the mic away cuz just want to have a conversation the first the first thing the first reason you're in trouble is because a lot of creators particularly who work in sort of like the graphic space the videography space and the illustration space actually don't know that your entire craft is being commoditized so there are firms today and their platforms built where I can go in and punch in a name and it'll give me a thousand iterations of what that name can look like as a logo right different fonts different illustrations I can buy it as a video a gift I can buy it as a 3d deep image and and I there's one I saw day ago literally a day ago which blew my mind away and what they do is they do application of the logo so once I bought the logo from the platform they'll give me the entire collateral what that means is they'll give me the logo yeah they'll give me their renders yeah they'll give me the AP file the PNG file and then they're gonna give me the letter has the business cards everything and I'm paying this with a credit card for like $1,000 bucks so I don't need to have a coffee with you anymore go my business sells Coldfield it's like you know I go into the thing and I typed my business sells coffee and asks I saw the quests like seven questions what is your business do who are your chief competitors yadda yadda yadda and then it in first from all of that it runs an AI behind the scenes and it goes if these are the businesses you're competing with this is kind of what the lower needs to look like so for instance if I was if I had a business to sell water my logo would look different for a business to manage pensions because the pension fund is a trust economy so I need like dark colors more trusted colors black navies and Gray's so my my logo might look like something like Ellen gray assessment it won't look like Val pray it does that it determines that you just spent four years at graphic design school I just paid two thousand bucks and I got the stuff done so so the reason I'm telling you this is here's what I would do if I was you and I think every creative in the room needs to do this guys if you're creative working a Content house who needs creatives content mostly needs a creative I don't know why because we're publishing three videos a week who's that who the hell's doing my edit yeah like when we put up the poster for this who did that I don't want to sit there and do posters like it's a low-value activity for me right but what a lot of you are doing is you're going I want to run a design house sure you and 500,000 other people what I would do is I would really go and find a niche environment in each entrepreneur in a nice space who needs a lot of creative and I would make myself an asset for that guy it's a bit like the kid who's taken a job today as a business analyst or as a coder at APSA I wouldn't do that odd well I don't want to find a guy with a crazy idea I want to become the CTO of his Facebook same skill very different trajectories yeah cool man yes ma'am no please just [Music] do it my question is saying I've got a business which I've started I'm gonna use the example of setting em up with right what is the mukwege in English I'm a winger but with a lot more flavor yeah so I'm using the example I'm hoping I say I'm saying I'm offering a half but the corner that I'm spending in selling it for a teach right and now I want to take my business to the next level right what are the structures that I need to put in place in order for me to push my business to the next level now I know when we talk about interpreters everybody says you need to be the person who prepares all the soft skill for a look of better work but what are the hard skills or hard way that I need to have in place in order for me now to move from three corners or selling out media to the next level yeah that's a great question that that is the fundamental question of why we're here right it's a small little word called scale right so and people often ask me the question why didn't nobody tell me this is in my ear I can trust you guys there people often ask me the question so how do I know how do I know when my business oh you can't hear me from the back can I have the microphone back please the same lady who said she can't hear me last time she just said it again this time so people often ask me the question how do I know when my business is not scaled the answer for that is actually very simple could you take three months leave and your business still needs performance targets if you can't disappear from your business for 90 days you're not an entrepreneur you're what we call self-employed whatever gonna did it hits you hard okay is that you okay guys only laugh at that when they hear a nice vine the hip-hop song like oh yeah you're not it that's guys that's why for me the distinction is not the distinction is actually not not academic it's important right it's a very important distinction there's a a couple of models that go around I'll share with you one that I kind of share with entrepreneurs right so there is a difference between being an entrepreneur yeah being a business owner yeah being self-employed yeah a bigger part big an employee no well that wouldn't that wouldn't quite make it onto this and being a professional these are not the same things so a professional I am a doctor I'm a dentist yeah I heal the patients but if I'm not there nobody heals the patients right so so I'm fascinated by the idea that there is a doctor who runs a practice yeah and there was a doctor who runs a hospital and there was a doctor who's a CEO of a hospital group I like I'm fascinated by that because they clearly have the same training they just operated very different levels yeah the other thing you need to recognize is this is not for everybody it's not most people I think like 90% of people who say they want to be entrepreneurs actually just what I mean I want to determine our own life now if that is what you're saying and that is what you want which is you want to take your kids to school and rock up at the office at 10 o clock leave the officer to work a four hour day then that's not quite what we mean by entrepreneurship you want to be self-employed very big difference so the graphic designer is somebody who's self-employed I employ me but I do the job I am the value yeah the professional is the lawyer the Advocate the person the accountant you absolutely positively must have them as some part of your business they may use an under and under person under link to do the work usually some sort of apprentice but they it's very difficult for them to scale their businesses because they need to sign off the document you know when my audits get done by ey I know who the partner is so if that documents not signed by him even though I know he didn't do the work and his name is his apprentices did he must sign the document right so he's clearly a professional employed makes sense if he was to start his own business a lot of professionals do this so you leave ey you leave PwC I see a lot of black professionals by the way who walk into companies oversold on this thing of transformation and then get then realise that the companies are quite as transformed as you used to be Oh rule number four the master classes we call it as it is here and I've just seen so many of my friends we do this like oh I've joined company X Y and Zed and then three months later they go yeah no I'm leaving right typically when they leave in this am starting my own business really what they mean is I want to be self-employed now I used to do HR as an HR business partner and I'm gonna start a recruiting company yeah I used to be in the legal team now I'm gonna do legal stuff right those people aren't entrepreneurs you're self-employed big difference the business owner is kind of the level you're talking about right so the business owner goes so I've got this business right and rather than employ myself I'm going to employ people to manage the people I used to manage right the thing is you can never shortcut this process from here to here to here you can't shortcut it you have to go through all the steps all right so so if you think from day one and this is in my mind a lot of the mistake I see some of my briefs the VC friends make who are chasing valuation growth long story for another day but I really think that there's a bubble in South Africa particularly in the tech space where were over valuing companies off the base of the fact that there's more funds than there are good tech companies so they attracting very high valuations they're getting a lot of money but the the entrepreneur driving that business hasn't gone through natural process of growth if I took a potato and I put it in the ground and I gave you another potato and put it in the ground and you watered your potato twice as much as I did mine your potato wouldn't grow twice as fast because the laws of nature are fixed like you I love my son he's eight but he has to go through puberty he can't skip it didn't make sense so a lot of us try to skip phases of growth because we want to get to the other side what you the mistake you make is you don't realize that in that phase of growth is a lesson you've got to learn so you have to manage your people long before you get manages to manage your people yeah Gary Vito calls it being dangerous enough dangerous enough means I know each and every single thing about my business that I'm dangerous enough to know when you're bullshitting me yeah but if I start with the business today and then the government agency gives me funding and I employ a hundred people I'm not dangerous enough because I wasn't there like if your business who wrote the sales process if it ain't you there's a problem you've got to write the sales process then you've got to sell it you've actually got a try it you've got to sell to the first few customers and test and make sure the sales process works because if you don't do that when you employ 20 salespeople and they're not giving you the numbers and they give you a thousand excuses which all sales people will do you're gonna believe them it's only if you go through the process of building it that you got no men it's rubbish what are you talking about my team will tell you like if a client comes to us with a with with it with a sale it's not the scariest thing for them to go how do you know all these people I'm like 15 years dude of course I know them I work with them at some point or another oh who called you from one company oh yeah they used to work with so-and-so how do you know that yeah I know they used to work with so so then they left and went here now they back but they back is a consultant they're not there full-time anymore oh by the way they're not gonna give you X amount for the transaction you're gonna have to go go in at 85% of the value of the transaction but what we should do is at a 20% premium on the actual proposal so that when they discount us down at the 20% we get the value we wanted not the 85 percent they were willing to pay how did you know that we're going to do that I know the company I know the pull another politics I know how they justno gassy you're gonna have to go through those steps yeah so your question was so hard do I know to scale like now I've got my mic with my McWeeny a business in three corners how do I get it around the country right it's it's a bit like saying - it's a bit like saying to the general deal in a Township what's the difference between you and pick and pick because if you really think about it a retailer's retail as a retailer they take a brick building they put goods on it they put prices on the goods with its shelf talker when you go and pick up the goods you go to the front - somebody who helps you usually a cashier you pay them you take the goods so why is the one listed and the other one you have to work it every day and it's because of how you gear it for the growth of the business right the point is just on that alone you could run an entire masterclass just like where do you focus where do you grow what are the key areas that are important let me let me let me ask you a question this way the first thing to understand about scale is you will get a draw nobody scales right the first time and if they're scaling right their first time here's what's happened they've raised money and they've got enough money to pay for the sins of failing so you can't see it I've never guys there's not what I've never met one guy who scaled the first time and got it perfectly right doesn't exist as you know if that was the case then your weight wouldn't be going through what its going through right now right those of you don't follow the EOH story eh is a listed IT stock and for like the past decade there were the best performing IT stock in the country like doing really really well eeeh wages model was very interesting they were going around and buying small IT companies and so the revenue growth of those IT companies showed on their on their top line is there every new growth and to buy those IT companies they weren't actually using cash they had some sort of mezzanine structure so they would give the entrepreneur who started the IT company a little bit of money but they'd pay them a predominant amount of money in the shares of AOH so as an entrepreneur because as an entrepreneur your biggest risk is that you're locked in you are your business when you die your business is gone right so if I'm thinking about my family and I go how do I make sure that my enterprise value I can leave to family if I listed my company then I could sell all my shares as the majority shareholder so that was the idea join us as a OAH and we'll give you a Oh eight shares which are listed and journal book stock exchange and that's a part of how we pay you great story one tiny evening we need little problem which is all these companies you're buying are different names different cultures they work in different industries they sell to different people and they do it in different ways when you're a listed company you can't have the word different anyway because if I'm a shareholder buying your shares I've got to know that you know exactly what you're doing that you've taken the right precautions from the risk and a regulation perspective so where did they get caught they got caught with state CAPTCHA when it turned out that some of the small businesses they bought were facilitators of major contracts that facilitated in state capture project now I don't imagine the people sitting at head office knew maybe they did who knows I mean I I'm very good friends with some of the executives who've just left there right and Stephen has taken over is a proper risk guy but Stephen has just taken over that business is coming to turn that company into a bank which very simply means no deals gonna get approved unless he sees it you think the rate of growth of the earwigs share price is gonna be the same of course not it's gonna slow down now right but even when they scaled the model of scale they used when you look at it you go oh this is a fantastic scale model yeah until the rubber hits the road yeah here are I think three things I would I would give you we do this you know copy not accelerate the program so we have an accelerated program and we put entrepreneurs through it's a 12-month program we actually launching our next one I think in a month's time and it's this model isn't new any of you here who've done like some sort of Management Studies you would have seen this model so we go so we go what is the functional area of your business and then we go how robust are you very simple it and again this this isn't our model it's all over the place so it looks something like this so from a functional area perspective we would go sales is a functional area marketing is a functional area HR is a functional area IT is a functional area legal functional area you know there's an entrepreneur sitting in this room right now who's a one-man show who's looking at this what is he talking about let me tell you you are doing all of these every day you're just not realizing that you're doing the different stuff mostly phones and says can I please buy you're now a salesperson but before Lucy phoned and said can I please buy you posted a photo on Facebook you were a marketing executive at the end of the month you have to pay yourself a salary now you are HR to send will see the invoice you send an email but now your IT chief and before I pay you you send me a contract now you want lega the penny trough for you did you this is me so your multi-skilled right remember my comment about being dangerous enough so first my mind let my like model of growth is first do all of them then hire people to do all of them then you'll hire people who manage the people who do all of them what most people just want is to have the perfect business that has managers who manage the supervisors who supervise the people who do all of this that's gonna take your time's I'm gonna come overnight right nothing worthwhile actually just doesn't come without effort so these are functional areas then the question you gotta ask yourself is what do I need in terms of people yeah-ha what do I need in terms of process yeah and what do I need in terms of technology in each of these so let's test this I run a business I am a a company that manufactured cells water everybody these days in the water business so I run a water business so from a sales perspective what would I need let's imagine my model is something like this time with the sun's remotely familiar we're going to make a thousand liters of water and I'm going to bottle them each in 500 milliliters which means I'm gonna have 2,000 bottles then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna find young kids in townships um we're standing on corners and I'm gonna give them my water and when I say to the kids you sell the water I'm gonna say water to at 5r and you said that at 7r and yeah and I'm going to call these kids entrepreneurs which they're not but that's what I'm gonna do and then I'm gonna go on social media and I'm gonna tell everybody about it and I'm gonna go this is what I'm doing check me out write down wood no no no done with good intent but I want to show you I want to show you why this model is important done with good intent right so now I've got I've got 50 kids out there selling my water okay the kids don't know anything about the manufacture process of the water I probably don't even know what I'm in fact to pursue the world I just get the water right but these kids who are selling are now my sales people they're not really entrepreneurs they my sales people I've got to have a process of recruiting the right people because if I get the people wrong I've got a huge risk with people to control my products and you can sell it and not pay me and I don't know them so there's got to be a way about recruiting the people then I've got to have a process when do I deliver to them every Monday every Tuesday every Wednesday or Thursday when do I collect when do they collect what's that what's the what's the process that they use to tell me how much quantity they need how much demand they have and I'm actually going to document that process and if I'm smart and I'm thinking like a scale entrepreneur what I really want to do is go rather than do this myself I'm gonna find some sort of technology that I can put in place hey guys here's a system a platform an app put in all your orders all of your information that way at the beginning of the new week I know exactly how much demand you have for the rest of that week yeah and I would document all of this and I would do it for every single part of the business that's how you scale and this is a living document mine is said of a my Evernote on my dashboard so it's a living document so I know where the weak spots in my business are and I go wait so with on marketing we're really really great on people oh well mazing on process we're just terrible on people okay so the process works I just need to find really good people make sense and sometimes sometimes it'll be the other way around because the business goes through variations sometimes it'll be the other way around but it's the same dashboard I'm looking at and I'm making decisions about how to scale that business it's the only way to do it one last thing about scale scale is not for everybody right like sometimes sometimes it's actually guys I I probably was the happiest on our self-employed it was so nice that's just me reporting to me it's cool like you know there's no leave days you know there's no there's just none of the stuff you have when you have a firm there's no left the G there's no inertia there's no there's no so-and-so is fighting with so-and-so so-and-so is not getting up it was just me nice to listen to read it live in the morning just me it was like it was it was cool right and that's why many people who say they want to be entrepreneurs actually mean they want to be self-employed it's perfectly fine yeah the life of a guy who's a real entrepreneur who's scaling that business is actually not quite all that attractive they don't sleep those guys because the minute you become an entrepreneur and you're managing this you're managing a thousand moving pieces at a time it's a thousand moving pieces at a time so every single shop you open every single branch you open every single employee you hire every single new client you onboard you literally have it changes this complexion of your business so you're never off even when you are off you never on leave even when you're on leave you're constantly and consistently thinking about this system how do I make it better how do I make it function better yeah cool Wow all right so what an amazing time we've had in Cape Town like I honestly didn't expect the turnout we had today so we just had our Cape Town master class when we thought we'd get a couple of people in the room we ended up with a couple of hundred people in the room I think easily over 500 people entrepreneurs in that room it was absolutely amazing first to the t-bird workshop 17 thank you so much for accommodating us and allowing us to create a platform for sharing collaboration and Trust right that's really important to us and to all the entrepreneurs that came out what an amazing time they're learning the opportunity to share the experience is the cross collaboration of opportunities about what we can learn from each other was absolutely amazing so so so cool that we continue to be on this tour to do these master classes and to each and every single entrepreneur that comes with these master classes that trusts us with their story their opportunity their struggles we really appreciate it we'll hope that you guys are learning about your business and about yourself as much as we're learning - Cheers you [Music]

Channel: MyGrowthFund Venture Partners

Views: 294,079

Keywords: Vusi Thembekwayo, scaling, entrepreneur, self-employed, Vusi, Thembekwayo, Cape Town

Id: KDSGhvrmD7s

Length: 31min 43sec (1903 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 01 2019