PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Lo­cal busi­ness own­ers and en­tre­pre­neurs are be­ing urged to re-eval­u­ate the rules by which they gauge their mar­kets.

This was one of sev­er­al sug­ges­tions made by Vusi Them­bek­wayo dur­ing his fea­ture pre­sen­ta­tion at the Edge Lead­er­ship se­ries on Thurs­day.

The event, which was held in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Trinidad and To­ba­go Man­u­fac­tur­ers As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA) as an event tied to the Trade and In­ves­ment Con­ven­tion (TIC), was geared to­wards em­pow­er­ing up-and-com­ing busi­ness own­ers to im­prove ex­ports in the coun­try.

Them­bek­wayo not­ed that many busi­ness­es with­in Africa and the African di­as­po­ra usu­al­ly looked at North Amer­i­can and Eu­ro­pean mar­kets to struc­ture plans for the en­ter­pris­es, with­out mak­ing prop­er as­sess­ments of the re­gions they fall with­in.

"A lot of the things that we learn about how we build busi­ness­es, scale busi­ness and in­vest in busi­ness­es tends to come from some­where in the North­ern hemi­sphere, typ­i­cal­ly Eu­rope and all the Amer­i­c­as. The Eu­ro­peans, be­cause they colonised a lot of us. The Amer­i­cans be­cause they had in­no­vat­ed over the past cen­tu­ry or so? They have been writ­ing the rules about how we do busi­ness and what we of­ten do in my re­gion—and I know this is the case for yours as well—is we take those rules and plug them in­to our mar­kets with­out ask­ing the ques­tion are these rules fit for pur­pose," he said, not­ing that many of those mar­kets have been built around cor­po­ra­tions that have been in place for over 100 years, where­as the mar­kets in Africa and the Caribbean are still de­vel­op­ing and grow­ing.

He al­so not­ed that sev­er­al busi­ness­es from out­side of these re­gions are of­ten dis­cour­aged be­cause they are yet to achieve the lev­el of suc­cess seen by these es­tab­lished in­ter­na­tion­al fran­chis­es, while al­so fac­ing ques­tions of cred­i­bil­i­ty both in and out of their lo­cal mar­kets.

Them­bek­wayo said how­ev­er it was not that the di­as­po­ra was un­able to ad­dress in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets ei­ther, as he stat­ed, "It's been a fas­ci­na­tion for me, and I think it was a unique­ly black South African ex­pe­ri­ence, then I start­ed trav­el­ing the con­ti­nent and I re­al­ized not so then I start­ed trav­el­ing the world and here's what I found every­where in the world where I find a peo­ple of colour, black or brown—we are fan­tas­tic at scal­ing cul­ture but not so great at scal­ing en­ter­prise. It's our unique chal­lenge."

He, how­ev­er, said in the face of these chal­lenges, lo­cal busi­ness own­ers would have to ad­just their mind­sets.

"It's not just scal­ing the prod­uct or scal­ing the brand, it's scal­ing be­lief," he said, point­ing out that the US had built con­fi­dence in its mar­ket by loud­ly pro­claim­ing and push­ing the idea that they are the world's great­est na­tion.

Fol­low­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion, the South African coach took a ques­tion from lo­cal busi­ness own­er Ker­win Quash who ex­pressed his frus­tra­tion that while many would read­i­ly utilise dig­i­tal in­no­va­tions over­seas, they was re­luc­tance to adapt lo­cal vari­a­tions in T&T.

He re­spond­ed, " I don't like a ques­tion like the one you're ask­ing. I'll tell you why, be­cause it pre­sup­pos­es that the chal­lenge you're talk­ing about is unique­ly Trinida­di­an. It isn't even in the mar­ket I op­er­ate in, in South Africa. Peo­ple don't nec­es­sar­i­ly buy from South Africans; every na­tion state, ex­cept maybe the Amer­i­cans, is like this."

Them­bek­wayo con­tin­ued, "The re­al­i­ty is that your mar­ket is not go­ing to be­lieve you to be a top in­no­va­tor be­cause, and I say this with love and re­spect, there aren't any top in­no­va­tions that are unique­ly glob­al, that come from Trinidad, so the peo­ple of the mar­ket don't be­lieve you. Be­cause there is no test in the mar­ket that some­body like you ex­ists."

The South African en­tre­pre­neur al­so not­ed there were five lev­els of en­tre­pre­neur­ship: pro­fes­sion­al, self-em­ployed, busi­ness own­er, en­tre­pre­neur and founders. In most cas­es, Them­bek­wayo ex­plained many peo­ple don't reach the lev­el of en­tre­pre­neur or founder.

'The first lev­el busi­ness for­ma­tion is where the en­tre­pre­neur or the busi­ness is a pro­fes­sion­al. This is where you are the per­son do­ing the work. You're skilled at this thing," he ex­plained, "you have worked in it, you have tech­ni­cal­ly qual­i­fied in it and what we learned from these ex­pe­ri­ences is that the fo­cus tends to be on ac­quir­ing cus­tomers and sim­ply mak­ing sure that in­come is high."

He added, " A self-em­ployed typ­i­cal­ly will have a trust­ed, a small cir­cle, so for any of you in the room who op­er­ate in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, or are con­tent cre­ators, we are ac­tu­al­ly self-em­ployed. So that re­quires your face, your skill and your abil­i­ty to do the work, par­tic­u­lar­ly what you might have is an ed­i­tor or some­body like this do­ing some of the work for you, you might even have an ac­coun­tant do­ing some of your fi­nances and you have a small sys­tem that re­quires a small cir­cle of peo­ple to ex­e­cute on the work. Self-em­ployed. Not an en­tre­pre­neur. Why? Be­cause if I re­move the self there, the in­come is gone."

As for busi­ness own­ers, he said, "They want to un­der­stand the rules of their busi­ness and they write those rules down. If you've ever had a con­sul­tant com­ing to your busi­ness too long, if you don't want these peo­ple have stan­dard, op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures."

As­cend­ing to en­tre­pre­neur is filled with a unique chal­lenge where many busi­ness own­ers get stuck, he ex­plained.

"You're go­ing to be test­ing, try­ing, im­ple­ment­ing, fail­ing and test­ing and try­ing, im­ple­ment­ing with a lit­tle bit of suc­cess. Then test, try, in­flu­ence and fail. That hap­pens so much even the most versed and the most sea­soned of the us will tell you that what I'm about to say is true: You get a thing called im­ple­men­ta­tion fa­tigue."

Them­bek­wayo said that most busi­ness ad­vis­ers on so­cial me­dia ex­clude this part of the jour­ney, but he as­sured that every sin­gle suc­cess­ful en­tre­pre­neur has ex­pe­ri­enced this step. He said how­ev­er, af­ter mov­ing past this, "Where­as the busi­ness own­er is mak­ing the rule, the en­tre­pre­neur is scal­ing the rules. What does that even mean? It means that they are fo­cus­ing not on­ly on au­tomat­ing how they run their busi­ness but scal­ing the au­toma­tion along which they run their busi­ness­es."

The fi­nal step, he stat­ed, was founder.

'What do founders do? They plant and com­mu­ni­cate a vi­sion. They de­vel­op a clear vi­sion long term for the growth of their busi­ness and where they want to take it, and then the man­age­ment ex­e­cu­tion," he said, "they be­gin to build for things like lega­cy pro­tec­tion."

Them­bek­wayo al­so not­ed that it was im­por­tant for busi­ness own­ers to know if their busi­ness fell in­to one of four spe­cif­ic cat­e­gories; de­sire, trend, cul­ture or im­age not­ing that this would in­form the nec­es­sary ad­just­ments or pro­jec­tions for the busi­ness.