Ideas come to you. You breathe life into them, take action on their behalf, grow them. And then after a while they are stable and have a power all their own. A power that will breathe life back into you when facing obstacles and opposition. A power that will coax you to take further action.…
Entrepreneur Traits: Romance is hard work
When a friend first pitches the idea of going on ‘nature walks’ on weekends, “oohs” and “aahs” follow. Everyone is interested. Everyone wants to do it. “Such a romantic idea,” “An opportunity to smell the fresh air and roses” are the sorts of comments that follow. Then he follows up with next steps/the reality. Wake…
Entrepreneur Traits: No escaping hard work
A good career takes hard work. A good relationship takes more hard work. A good life and happiness takes some more hard work. Why, even a great vacation requires a lot of hard work. True happiness and hard work come together. We can never stop working hard if we want to live good lives. We just…
Sawubona: What you look for is what you see…
There was an incident once performed on 2 classes that had interesting results. I don’t remember the exact stats so I’m going to make them up.. It went something like this: IQ tests were conducted on a class full of students and 2 groups were made out of them. The higher IQ group had an…
Pegging your self worth
At different points in our life, we can find ourselves pegging our self worth to random measures without realising it. Our self worth is a composite index, a weighted average of how we feel about various things. At different points of time, we may overweight indicators such as the approval of a tough boss, the…
The way I see it…
‘…the way I see it, you can either run from it, or learn from it." -- Advice from Rafiki, the wise baboon from the Lion King 🙂
Capacity: Carrying more…
A business with eight people in it might be happy, profitable and growing. The same business with twenty might be on the way to bankruptcy. Ideas, markets, niches and causes have a natural scale. If you get it right, you can thrive for a long time. Overdo it and you stress the inputs. The earth…
Capacity: The core idea
The core idea in building your business, is that your business should not require you. It should run on its own without you. This is an important thing to keep in mind for distinguishing between having a job, and building a business. If your business needs you, it is not a business yet. The purpose of…
Capacity: Your business reflects you
When you go through a bad hair day, it is not the hair that started the day badly, it is what happened inside you emotionally that started badly. Your business is a reflection of you. When you don't improve yourself as the owner, the business is likely not to improve. If you cannot manage your…
Capacity: Akulaleki ma unemali [Can’t sleep when you have money]
If you give a man who has a leadership capacity [ability] to lead 1000 people and you give him 200 people to lead, 800 other people will join him. If you give a man who has a leadership capacity to lead 200 people and you give him 1000 people to lead, 800 people will leave…
Capacity: Working in vs. Working on
Most entrepreneurs have worked at a job for someone else before they decided to start their own business. A typical workday involved completing tasks that your job required in a timely manner under the supervision of your employer. We spend years of our working life, usually doing what we do best – but for someone…
Capacity: The E-Myth revisited
Sipho has been working at the car services division of the car dealership for 15 years. He resigns and start his own workshop fixing cars. Is Sipho an entrepreneur? Not really. Dineo has been working as a hairdresser at a local salon for 5 years. She decides that she knows all there is to know…