How much did your web site cost you? And how much is it costing you to host it each month?
I ask this because I have spent the past few weeks poring through 842 sites owned by South African Business Warriors. It's a dirty job because a few of these sites haven't had their oil changed since 1995. Yet each of these business owners spent time and money having the sites set up. (Most of us smaller entrepreneurs don't feel we have the skills to do it.)
Was it worth it?
That's the question that stuns me! They don't know.
Imagine that you're an 18 year old female university student. You take your old (six previous owners) VW CitiGolf for a service. Later in the day you collect the car. How do you know that your CitiGolf has actually been serviced?
You could check the oil to see that it's clear. (How do I do that? A car needs oil?) You could check a spark-plug to see that it isn't coated with corrosion and burnt carbon. (Eccch! I am not putting my hands in there. What's a spark-plug anyway?) You could check the air-filter, the radiator, the brake-fluid container, the brake-pads, or any one of a range of things.
You don't do any of these things because you don't know much about cars, and don't want to know about them. Your way of measuring the job that the mechanic did is quite simple. If the car survives until the next service, he must have done a good job, surely?
Welcome to the world of web development. No spark-plugs here. No oil either - just a little HTML guaranteed to deter the most determined investigator. (HTML is the name of the tribe of little people that carry the words down the Internet pipes as fast as they can swim, which is pretty darn amazing if you ask me.) No air-filters - just Javascript (makes the pages even prettier) and maybe a little Flash (which is a kind of digital bling).
The bottom line is that most of us start out by telling a developer that we want a site "like that one" - "that one" being an all-dancing, all-singing, Spielberg extravaganza. When said developer suggests a tentative price (equal to the production budget for Titanic - one of the most expensive movies ever made) we ask how much it would be if we leave off the air-filter, brakes, and downsize the engine. The number can still be quite startling, but hey we're running a business here and you gotta spend money if you want to make money - and this Carruthers oke has been telling us since 2000 you gotta be on the web or else face penury.
When your dealer delivers your new commercial vehicle, how do you know if your site works? Simple. You look at it. You kick a digital tyre, peruse a piece of the code for a brief second and check that most of the pages display. Nothing breaks. You pay your money and you head off West in search of them thar gold-bearing hills.
Which is what most of the South African Warriors did - business owners like you and me. Nice people. My friends.
At least they'll be my friends until this weekend, at which point I have to tell 800 of them that their websites don't work. Those 800 websites are so invisible they might as well not exist.
Why don't their websites work?
I am glad you asked. You wouldn't set up a shop with all the relevant expenses, then paint the windows bright orange so nobody could see inside, hide the door so nobody could find it (or worse, keep it locked) - would you? And would you keep an unlisted number, or stay out of the Yellow Pages, and never advertise?
And that, dear fellow traveller on this fascinating business experience, is the physical equivalent of what my friends have done in cyberspace. I started looking further afield, at a few UK sites to see if they were any different. Nope! (Although the costs are a lot higher in the UK.)
(One out of every ten Warrior sites being checked by Google has the windows painted and the door locked . Google cannot get in to find out what they do.) What Google sees is pretty critical if you want the world's biggest search engine to find your business when somebody is looking for the stuff you sell or do.
A vast number of sites are coded in such a way that they are rather hostile to Google's efforts. At the time of writing this Google can only categorise and search text - those words that are displayed on a page. Google cannot search through that astounding video on your front page. Nor can Google search that single large image your web designer created to guarantee that everybody could see his sterling fontwork.
(The worst site I saw during this exercise is the only industrial door company that operates in a tiny village in the UK. Their site cost £1000 and is a marvel of movement and sound. If you search for "industrial doors" and the village name - you will not find the company site. Their developer is that good! (A few Warriors have sites that come pretty close, however.)
In the next few weeks I will write about the most common mistakes we (and our web developers) seem to make - hopefully in words of one syllable.
Friday 14 December 2007
Wednesday 28 November 2007
Best email system around?
When I moved to the UK last year I was stunned that everybody uses the Internet as much as they do. Nobody does anything without checking the Net for traffic info, directions, bookings, better prices, and tonight's news. I use it to buy computers, books, software, groceries, support the Warrior community, phone SA for less than it costs my Mom to yell at my Dad in the shower, book trains, book hotels, ...
That's because it is dirt cheap, fast, and has no artificial restrictions.
Unlike South Africa, which is why it is difficult to persuade South Africans that this is the most important technology they will ever bump into, and any time invested in learning it is worthwhile.
South Africa for example, has the only ISP I know of that throws away one third of their clients' incoming mail. They do this without recourse, because their client doesn't know what's being thrown. Nor do they notify the sender. In my case, the first I know about it is when one of the Business Warriors asks me why I haven't sent any mail for a month!
Telkom email is another challenge, with emails bouncing all over the place these past few months as Telkom tries to figure out a way to operate on Duracells because Eskom is cleaning their boilers yet again.
A business that loses emails is not destined for success. Imagine that I send out 5 emails to ask for quotes for my new computer system. Only one person answers because three of them get blocked and one bounces back to me. Who gets the sale?
I am glad you asked.
May I invite you to check out Gmail? It is easier to use than regular email. There is no chance of a virus infecting your machine and eating your hard drive. There is no chance that your email supply will be disrupted. No emails will ever bounce back to your clients. You will have email access anywhere in the world.
You won't have to worry about downloading big attachments because Gmail will let you to read them online. Finding an email that you received from Uncle Dave sometime last year takes less than a second, as does finding all the emails since the Great Trek that mention the Potgietersrus Pink Parade. In other words, this is an industrial strength email solution that will put you on the same footing as anybody anywhere in the world - no matter how sophisticated their Internet access might be.
Did I mention that it costs absolutely nothing? It isn't tied to any ISP, so when you change your access method, or your PC, you get to keep all your emails. You get 5GB of storage. (After 700 emails/day for the past 18 months, I have only used 1.6GB - so this is enough for most of us for a long time.) I redirect all my email accounts into it because it has the best spam filters I have ever used, which I need because so many folk seem worried about the size of my various body parts, two of which I don't even have.
Head for http://mail.google.com - it will solve any email frustrations you're likely have for a long, long time. Not one of the folk I have recommended Gmail to have anything but praise for it - and you can't say that about much these days.
That's because it is dirt cheap, fast, and has no artificial restrictions.
Unlike South Africa, which is why it is difficult to persuade South Africans that this is the most important technology they will ever bump into, and any time invested in learning it is worthwhile.
South Africa for example, has the only ISP I know of that throws away one third of their clients' incoming mail. They do this without recourse, because their client doesn't know what's being thrown. Nor do they notify the sender. In my case, the first I know about it is when one of the Business Warriors asks me why I haven't sent any mail for a month!
Telkom email is another challenge, with emails bouncing all over the place these past few months as Telkom tries to figure out a way to operate on Duracells because Eskom is cleaning their boilers yet again.
A business that loses emails is not destined for success. Imagine that I send out 5 emails to ask for quotes for my new computer system. Only one person answers because three of them get blocked and one bounces back to me. Who gets the sale?
I am glad you asked.
May I invite you to check out Gmail? It is easier to use than regular email. There is no chance of a virus infecting your machine and eating your hard drive. There is no chance that your email supply will be disrupted. No emails will ever bounce back to your clients. You will have email access anywhere in the world.
You won't have to worry about downloading big attachments because Gmail will let you to read them online. Finding an email that you received from Uncle Dave sometime last year takes less than a second, as does finding all the emails since the Great Trek that mention the Potgietersrus Pink Parade. In other words, this is an industrial strength email solution that will put you on the same footing as anybody anywhere in the world - no matter how sophisticated their Internet access might be.
Did I mention that it costs absolutely nothing? It isn't tied to any ISP, so when you change your access method, or your PC, you get to keep all your emails. You get 5GB of storage. (After 700 emails/day for the past 18 months, I have only used 1.6GB - so this is enough for most of us for a long time.) I redirect all my email accounts into it because it has the best spam filters I have ever used, which I need because so many folk seem worried about the size of my various body parts, two of which I don't even have.
Head for http://mail.google.com - it will solve any email frustrations you're likely have for a long, long time. Not one of the folk I have recommended Gmail to have anything but praise for it - and you can't say that about much these days.
Wednesday 21 November 2007
The Real Value of Information?
On June 20th, 1815 Nathan Rothschild informed the British government that Wellington had defeated Napoleon. They didn't believe him.
To really upset them (my personal interpretation) he began selling all of his stock on the English stock market, and with everybody believing that Wellington had been defeated, everybody started selling. Prices plummeted. At the last minute, Rothschild's agents secretly began buying up the stocks at rock bottom prices. One day later Major Henry Percy showed up, confirming that Napoleon had been crushed. This single event gave the Rothschild family complete control of the British economy. That is the value of information. And that is the cost of ignoring it.
When I started consulting with small business owners who were in trouble back in 1992, I was always called in too late to to save the business. I found it deeply distressing to guide people through the same dreadful experiences that I had had. I felt completely inadequate that I could not rescue these businesses from failure (or their owners from bankruptcy, and worse). I felt I was adding no value, and felt dreadfully guilty at my inadequacy
I was chatting to a therapist one day, and he gave me a completely different perspective. He asked, "If your doctor told you that you had cancer, and that it was terminal, and that there was very little he could do -- is it his fault? And would his best course of action be to walk away because he felt he couldn't do anything, or to hold your hand through the process? The mere fact that you have some experience in this issue means that you lighten the load, and while you might not save everything, you will probably save enough for this person to survive financially."
Information -- the answers to questions that you haven't yet asked because you are confronting a situation for the first time -- has a huge value because it will save you time, money, possibly your business, and probably your home, and definitely a lot of anxiety.
The reason so many businesses die is that we leave things too late. It's a bit like not wanting a medical diagnosis to confirm your worst fears. We know there is something wrong, but we don't want to face how deep it goes. Indeed, the tests can be uncomfortable. Having somebody slipping a probing finger into the furthest reaches of one's 1958 bottom to establish a swollen prostate is not nearly as enjoyable an experience as sipping a quality class of 1999 Vergenoegd Merlot before slipping prostrate into bed, and consequently we delay thinking about it. We fear what might happen, rather than taking some concrete action to define what we want to happen.
Facing business challenges is never comfortable. However, just as death is an integral part of life, so are challenges an integral part of business. Of course, you can face them alone. But I'd like to help if I can. That's why the South African Business Warrior community is the leading online resource for small South African business owners - no matter where they might find themselves.
To really upset them (my personal interpretation) he began selling all of his stock on the English stock market, and with everybody believing that Wellington had been defeated, everybody started selling. Prices plummeted. At the last minute, Rothschild's agents secretly began buying up the stocks at rock bottom prices. One day later Major Henry Percy showed up, confirming that Napoleon had been crushed. This single event gave the Rothschild family complete control of the British economy. That is the value of information. And that is the cost of ignoring it.
When I started consulting with small business owners who were in trouble back in 1992, I was always called in too late to to save the business. I found it deeply distressing to guide people through the same dreadful experiences that I had had. I felt completely inadequate that I could not rescue these businesses from failure (or their owners from bankruptcy, and worse). I felt I was adding no value, and felt dreadfully guilty at my inadequacy
I was chatting to a therapist one day, and he gave me a completely different perspective. He asked, "If your doctor told you that you had cancer, and that it was terminal, and that there was very little he could do -- is it his fault? And would his best course of action be to walk away because he felt he couldn't do anything, or to hold your hand through the process? The mere fact that you have some experience in this issue means that you lighten the load, and while you might not save everything, you will probably save enough for this person to survive financially."
Information -- the answers to questions that you haven't yet asked because you are confronting a situation for the first time -- has a huge value because it will save you time, money, possibly your business, and probably your home, and definitely a lot of anxiety.
The reason so many businesses die is that we leave things too late. It's a bit like not wanting a medical diagnosis to confirm your worst fears. We know there is something wrong, but we don't want to face how deep it goes. Indeed, the tests can be uncomfortable. Having somebody slipping a probing finger into the furthest reaches of one's 1958 bottom to establish a swollen prostate is not nearly as enjoyable an experience as sipping a quality class of 1999 Vergenoegd Merlot before slipping prostrate into bed, and consequently we delay thinking about it. We fear what might happen, rather than taking some concrete action to define what we want to happen.
Facing business challenges is never comfortable. However, just as death is an integral part of life, so are challenges an integral part of business. Of course, you can face them alone. But I'd like to help if I can. That's why the South African Business Warrior community is the leading online resource for small South African business owners - no matter where they might find themselves.
Wednesday 7 November 2007
In the shuffling madness...
Some folk will not do business with you unless they can shake your hand and look you firmly in the eye. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is so limiting. As technology changes, the way we do business should change as well.
Before I talk about business, however, I must share a guilty secret. I have never been really interested in the concept of business per se. I'm far more interested in the people behind business. And I'm especially interested in those people who have the courage to take on the world in their own business.
There is nothing wrong with being a passenger in the business equivalent of a cruise liner. But the folk that I admire the most are those folk trying to cross the Atlantic in a dinghy, rowing like crazy. (This is the kind of thing you realise when you take a month off to think about your life.)
As I write this I am listening to CapeTalk 567 and laughing my head off. It's amazing how homesick you can get listening to South African humour when you are in a country where people your age grew up watching British TV, and you grew up watching American TV in Afrikaans because the Brits were boycotting us!
To top it all, they have just played one of my all time favourite songs (Locomotive Breath by Jethro Tull) while discussing how Nationwide Airlines is trying to cut fuel costs by eliminating extraneous engines from their aircraft. (Not politically correct this dark side of the Equator.)
Which brings me to the point of this email. No matter what you have to offer - there are enough people around the world who want it! CapeTalk inspired me to visit Amazon and buy 3 albums (about R200) from a band that - in music time - is from the Mesolithic age.
The concept is known as the Long Tail. And it allows me to run a business from the UK for South African business owners throughout the world. (It's not so much about the business as it is about the business owner.) Back in the day when you needed the handshake, you could meet 5 people a day - all of whom needed to be within driving range. (That was not far when we still drove horses.)
Today I spent 5 hours on the phone (actually inside a headset) talking to 10 business owners in SA and the UK, discussing their websites, debts, business partners, starting up plans, closing down plans, financing plans, as well as the weather. And it all happened at 3p/minute, without creating any carbon emissions.
Then connected with 2000 Warriors to offer a £100 discount on an Apple laptop because one of the Warriors had an order cancelled and wanted to move his stock.
It is a privilege to live in this time of technochaos where things happen faster and cheaper than ever before.
That same technochaos means that being South African does not mean that you need to be in South Africa. I still get asked why I am living in the UK right now: because it is easier to support my clients and friends from here than it is from Durban (which would be a lot warmer and far more sociable this time of year).
The next time one of your kids plays some music that involves fourteen banshees and a power drill, remember what we used to listen to back in 1975. Eish, those were the days. No CDs, no PCs, no DVDs, and Sundays that seemed to last forever because your Dad felt the need to share his Jim Reeves collection with you.
Before I talk about business, however, I must share a guilty secret. I have never been really interested in the concept of business per se. I'm far more interested in the people behind business. And I'm especially interested in those people who have the courage to take on the world in their own business.
There is nothing wrong with being a passenger in the business equivalent of a cruise liner. But the folk that I admire the most are those folk trying to cross the Atlantic in a dinghy, rowing like crazy. (This is the kind of thing you realise when you take a month off to think about your life.)
As I write this I am listening to CapeTalk 567 and laughing my head off. It's amazing how homesick you can get listening to South African humour when you are in a country where people your age grew up watching British TV, and you grew up watching American TV in Afrikaans because the Brits were boycotting us!
To top it all, they have just played one of my all time favourite songs (Locomotive Breath by Jethro Tull) while discussing how Nationwide Airlines is trying to cut fuel costs by eliminating extraneous engines from their aircraft. (Not politically correct this dark side of the Equator.)
Which brings me to the point of this email. No matter what you have to offer - there are enough people around the world who want it! CapeTalk inspired me to visit Amazon and buy 3 albums (about R200) from a band that - in music time - is from the Mesolithic age.
The concept is known as the Long Tail. And it allows me to run a business from the UK for South African business owners throughout the world. (It's not so much about the business as it is about the business owner.) Back in the day when you needed the handshake, you could meet 5 people a day - all of whom needed to be within driving range. (That was not far when we still drove horses.)
Today I spent 5 hours on the phone (actually inside a headset) talking to 10 business owners in SA and the UK, discussing their websites, debts, business partners, starting up plans, closing down plans, financing plans, as well as the weather. And it all happened at 3p/minute, without creating any carbon emissions.
Then connected with 2000 Warriors to offer a £100 discount on an Apple laptop because one of the Warriors had an order cancelled and wanted to move his stock.
It is a privilege to live in this time of technochaos where things happen faster and cheaper than ever before.
That same technochaos means that being South African does not mean that you need to be in South Africa. I still get asked why I am living in the UK right now: because it is easier to support my clients and friends from here than it is from Durban (which would be a lot warmer and far more sociable this time of year).
The next time one of your kids plays some music that involves fourteen banshees and a power drill, remember what we used to listen to back in 1975. Eish, those were the days. No CDs, no PCs, no DVDs, and Sundays that seemed to last forever because your Dad felt the need to share his Jim Reeves collection with you.
Tuesday 25 September 2007
Taking a sabbatical
I am going to take a sabbatical for a month. I have been writing this weekly, more or less continuously, since late 1999 - and it's time to take a breather.
One of my core reasons for wanting some space to think things through is the increasing amount of noise on the Internet. And the noise is not only getting louder, but more strident. I have always had a bent towards the more Japanese type Zen approach, and maybe it's just me being in hypersensitive mode, but if I get another email from another person offering to "mentor" me, I might just have a bonsai conniption.
A mentor is a trusted friend, counsellor or teacher - a more experienced person. The experience is a deep, close relationship - not something that you can do with long distance phone calls, mailed DVDs, or a flood of emails. It's a two way street in which the mentor guides the mentee; in which the mentor does not try to suck every last cent from his mentee's bank account using web analytic technology, upsales, downsales, and cross sales, combined with hypnosis, or whatever. (Gosh! As I said, I may be suffering from too much noise from too many experts all of whom seem too hungry.)
I began looking at some of the issues that sparked so much adrenalin over the past 7 years -- Telkom, the South African government messing in the small business arena with all the playful enthusiasm of a hungry elephant, and I am not sure whether any of my writing added value other than in helping me understand the changes.
So, the next month will be spent looking at where I can add value to the Business Warrior community, drinking far too much coffee, tightening my spam engine to reject any offers of remote-mentoring as well as from Russian girls who assure me that they really enjoy ironing, as well as getting fit while I slow the world down to my pace again.
I will be back in November, just in time for all those seasonal offers of Yuletide mentorship.
One of my core reasons for wanting some space to think things through is the increasing amount of noise on the Internet. And the noise is not only getting louder, but more strident. I have always had a bent towards the more Japanese type Zen approach, and maybe it's just me being in hypersensitive mode, but if I get another email from another person offering to "mentor" me, I might just have a bonsai conniption.
A mentor is a trusted friend, counsellor or teacher - a more experienced person. The experience is a deep, close relationship - not something that you can do with long distance phone calls, mailed DVDs, or a flood of emails. It's a two way street in which the mentor guides the mentee; in which the mentor does not try to suck every last cent from his mentee's bank account using web analytic technology, upsales, downsales, and cross sales, combined with hypnosis, or whatever. (Gosh! As I said, I may be suffering from too much noise from too many experts all of whom seem too hungry.)
I began looking at some of the issues that sparked so much adrenalin over the past 7 years -- Telkom, the South African government messing in the small business arena with all the playful enthusiasm of a hungry elephant, and I am not sure whether any of my writing added value other than in helping me understand the changes.
So, the next month will be spent looking at where I can add value to the Business Warrior community, drinking far too much coffee, tightening my spam engine to reject any offers of remote-mentoring as well as from Russian girls who assure me that they really enjoy ironing, as well as getting fit while I slow the world down to my pace again.
I will be back in November, just in time for all those seasonal offers of Yuletide mentorship.
Thursday 6 September 2007
What is the Stockdale Paradox?
It's absolutely vital for your future as a business owner to retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties.
We little guys know this, and we're pretty good at it, given the challenges. Yet 96% of us fail in the first decade. I have been battling with this number since 1992 - trying to find out exactly why. (Read Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited for an explanation of the numbers.)
I have also lost count of the number of aspirant Richard Branson wannabees who have assured me that their faith can move mountains, and how dare I try and confuse them with the facts, because they are destined for greatness. Most of them are now gainfully employed by others, or still struggling as the equivalent of entrepreneurial hunter-gatherers. (Richard Branson - using this same analogy - is like a feudal lord of the manor!)
What are we doing wrong?
I am glad you asked, because there is a frightfully simple answer. Jim Collins, in his excellent book Good to Great, talks about The Stockdale Paradox - the balancing act a business must work with if it is ever to achieve greatness. (By his reckoning and deep research of the US market over the past 30 years, only 11 listed firms make the grade - and they are not the firms you might first think of.)
Yet each of these firms was a boringly good firm until, one day, for whatever reason, they embarked on a series of exercises (no fanfare, no press, just a gentle series of changes in the way they did things). These changes, over the next 15 years, made these 11 firms dramatically outperform all the firms in their sectors
They simply did the following:
We little guys are great with the optimism and retaining faith thing, but we tend to be the world's biggest laggards when it comes time to confronting our reality.
Our world is changing. Macro-economically the various entities of government are taking steps that are not good for the future of most small business owners. The security issue is affecting our incomes and lifestyles.
Yet, I still have people asking if they should venture forth into this commercial wilderness and open a store in a village with population 47 during the year (92 over holidays), without even considering the long term lease (and guarantees), the cost of setting up (and guarantees when the funds are borrowed), the security and insurance costs, the costs of stock, ...
If Richard Branson ran his airline business like this all his planes would have made unexpected terminal landings miles away from airports!
The thing I battle to understand, to be honest, is why anyone would want to invest £50,000 in setting up a physical store (with all the above-mentioned challenges) when it costs about one hundredth of that to set up an Internet store with a market a million times bigger?
It can't be that they know nothing about the Internet, because they also know nothing about business at this point. (They're in startup mode.)
If you don't take time out to confront the facts, no matter how brutal, you're not going to be around for long.
Winston Churchill once said "Facts are better than dreams." I'd hate to ignore advice from him!
We little guys know this, and we're pretty good at it, given the challenges. Yet 96% of us fail in the first decade. I have been battling with this number since 1992 - trying to find out exactly why. (Read Michael Gerber's The E-Myth Revisited for an explanation of the numbers.)
I have also lost count of the number of aspirant Richard Branson wannabees who have assured me that their faith can move mountains, and how dare I try and confuse them with the facts, because they are destined for greatness. Most of them are now gainfully employed by others, or still struggling as the equivalent of entrepreneurial hunter-gatherers. (Richard Branson - using this same analogy - is like a feudal lord of the manor!)
What are we doing wrong?
I am glad you asked, because there is a frightfully simple answer. Jim Collins, in his excellent book Good to Great, talks about The Stockdale Paradox - the balancing act a business must work with if it is ever to achieve greatness. (By his reckoning and deep research of the US market over the past 30 years, only 11 listed firms make the grade - and they are not the firms you might first think of.)
Yet each of these firms was a boringly good firm until, one day, for whatever reason, they embarked on a series of exercises (no fanfare, no press, just a gentle series of changes in the way they did things). These changes, over the next 15 years, made these 11 firms dramatically outperform all the firms in their sectors
They simply did the following:
- retained faith that they would prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties,
- AND at the same time,
- they confronted the most brutal facts of their current reality, whatever those facts might be.
We little guys are great with the optimism and retaining faith thing, but we tend to be the world's biggest laggards when it comes time to confronting our reality.
Our world is changing. Macro-economically the various entities of government are taking steps that are not good for the future of most small business owners. The security issue is affecting our incomes and lifestyles.
Yet, I still have people asking if they should venture forth into this commercial wilderness and open a store in a village with population 47 during the year (92 over holidays), without even considering the long term lease (and guarantees), the cost of setting up (and guarantees when the funds are borrowed), the security and insurance costs, the costs of stock, ...
If Richard Branson ran his airline business like this all his planes would have made unexpected terminal landings miles away from airports!
The thing I battle to understand, to be honest, is why anyone would want to invest £50,000 in setting up a physical store (with all the above-mentioned challenges) when it costs about one hundredth of that to set up an Internet store with a market a million times bigger?
It can't be that they know nothing about the Internet, because they also know nothing about business at this point. (They're in startup mode.)
If you don't take time out to confront the facts, no matter how brutal, you're not going to be around for long.
Winston Churchill once said "Facts are better than dreams." I'd hate to ignore advice from him!
Thursday 30 August 2007
Plow around the stump
I have just returned from a trip to SA, with a few days in Mauritius en route home. It's fascinating to look at the country from the perspective of a 'tourist', and to see where the stresses are.
The good news: not a great deal has changed. The bad news: everybody I met seems so stressed that they go out of their way to find vexatious issues to attack.
We get so focused on the mouse that we lose sight of the elephant. As a business owner, an economic being, your task is to make as much profit as you can with the least effort. And if anything gets in your way, your task is to shrug it off and move on. Your task is not to try and convince this errant being/corporation of the error of their ways, and to bludgeon them into submitting to your will. Simply move on.
Of course it's a little vexing when you don't get your own way, but it's also the universe's way of suggesting another path, if only you will step back from whacking this poor problem/person.
So if FNB/ Nedbank/ Standard Bank/ ABSA want to charge you blood for the privilege of exchanging your offshore/Internet earned dollars/ pounds/ Kuwaiti dinar/ Thai baht/ Japanese sushi, then you face a few choices:
A farmer with a humongous stump in the middle of his primary field does not refuse to plant corn because the stump won't come out, nor does he spend 5 valuable days attacking the stump with his spade. He plows around it and gets on with his day. That could explain why he is so much more relaxed than the rest of us!
It's all a game. At least that's what we tell our children when they puff up with self-righteous indignation. When did we forget that en route to adulthood?
The good news: not a great deal has changed. The bad news: everybody I met seems so stressed that they go out of their way to find vexatious issues to attack.
We get so focused on the mouse that we lose sight of the elephant. As a business owner, an economic being, your task is to make as much profit as you can with the least effort. And if anything gets in your way, your task is to shrug it off and move on. Your task is not to try and convince this errant being/corporation of the error of their ways, and to bludgeon them into submitting to your will. Simply move on.
Of course it's a little vexing when you don't get your own way, but it's also the universe's way of suggesting another path, if only you will step back from whacking this poor problem/person.
So if FNB/ Nedbank/ Standard Bank/ ABSA want to charge you blood for the privilege of exchanging your offshore/Internet earned dollars/ pounds/ Kuwaiti dinar/ Thai baht/ Japanese sushi, then you face a few choices:
- Stop trying and give up;
- waste a lot of time and effort forcing the issue, and do yourself and your family a conniption in the process;
- open an account at another bank/branch of FNB/ Nedbank/ Standard Bank/ ABSA;
- or open an account with LloydsTSB/ Barclays/ HSBC anywhere in the world (or any other bank that you fancy anywhere in the world).
A farmer with a humongous stump in the middle of his primary field does not refuse to plant corn because the stump won't come out, nor does he spend 5 valuable days attacking the stump with his spade. He plows around it and gets on with his day. That could explain why he is so much more relaxed than the rest of us!
It's all a game. At least that's what we tell our children when they puff up with self-righteous indignation. When did we forget that en route to adulthood?
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