Opportunity Abounds

It is hard to explain how happy I am to be arriving in Johannesburg on Tuesday. I will begin a month-long trip to present some live Sales Training seminars, to start setting up office again (in Cape Town) and to meet with a whole bunch of wonderful people.

Having a portable/Internet business is one thing because it allows you to live pretty much anywhere. This is great in concept. The reality, especially with small children, is very different. (Tim Ferriss made us all frothy at the thought of all this freedom with his book The 4-Hour Workweek. We were too excited to notice that he was single.)
Most of the expats I speak to share the same concerns. It is easy to think that England might be similar to South Africa, especially since they too seem to speak English. But it is miles away from SA culturally and socially. And for those of us who think of ourselves as entrepreneurs, it means learning a whole bunch of new ways of doing business. We usually do this via the time-honoured method of making staggeringly expensive mistakes.
I am convinced that the fastest way to have £1million in a bank in England is to arrive a month earlier with £2million. Although, given the words of the fellow in charge of EU finances, it is a lot better to have no more than €100,000 because otherwise you stand a solid chance of being forced to help your bank pay its bills.
In other words, while South Africans huff and grump about how bad things have become, the rest of the world has been gently teetering on the edge of a very deep longdrop which that young dude with the weird haircut in North Korea is theatening to vaporise soon.

In some ways SA reminds me of the that old sales story about the two shoe salesmen despatched to darkest Africa to check out the market.

The first sends a telegram back which reads, “No opportunity here. Nobody wears shoes.”
The second sends back a telegram which says, “Massive opportunity here. Nobody wears shoes yet.”
So, I relish coming back. Just as you should relish not leaving.

In the past week I have had one SA client pop out a marketing email (the day after a very enthusiastic sales webinar) and garner 10 sales on the first day. And another told me he was going offshore for a while because the free website process we showed him last year (and which he launched in January) had just put R250,000 into his offshore (non-Cypriot) bank for his first three months of trading. (He is a wonderful fellow but not very technical.) Opportunity abounds.
If you are finding it tough, then may I gently ask you to consider joining Businesss Warriors. In amongst all the videos and the forum, the brightest light at the moment is a daily email that in four days has started to transform the way Warriors look at, and do their selling and marketing. Check us out here.

All the best