Many moons ago, when I started my first blog, the idea was to write about anything entrepreneurial I stumbled upon. That ranged from local innovative businesses, to starting a monthly business networking talk called the Netweb Event and later NetwebTV.

The idea behind these concepts was to work on every single one consistently whether I had earth-shattering ideas, or not. They were started as concepts that one could say were borne out of inspiration. They weren’t, in and of, themselves a guarantee that I would be inspired every week.

Simon says: Do It

Some of the top bloggers, authors, entrepreneurs, artists and speakers I follow have a simple formula and that is ‘Do It’. They all advise people to do it, and do it daily. Do it consistently.

So whether you are an entrepreneur, artist or a writer, the only way to summon more inspiration quicker is to stay on course. It seems we are all waiting for that one moment the clouds will part, and suddenly out nowhere we will take the world by storm.

Wikipedia describes inspiration as: Creative inspiration, sudden creativity when a new invention is created.

Enter consistency

The idea of doing something daily, or as often as possible, ensures that you (a) get better every time and (b) you get more innovative ideas to improve yourself at it. That enough to summon more inspiration, more often.

In my experience, you are more likely to get an earth shattering idea when you do something regularly. When I wrote daily, the ideas came more as and when I wrote more.

How do you summon inspiration? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Image by: photosteve101

On Saturday evening, I had the privilege of being co-MC at Richard Branson’s Book Launch in Johannesburg – South Africa. As you expect with Sir Richard Branson, there were quite a lot of highlights at the event and here are some of the top ones for me. You also stand a chance to hang out with Richard Branson at his private game reserve in 2012.

The value of ideas

We had an onstage Q & A where I asked him – What is the value of ideas?

Sir Richard Branson: “Ideas by themselves have very little value, how they are executed determines how far you will go. A lot of people will tell you why it won’t work, focus on why it will.”

As a global entrepreneur, who is also passionate about entrepreneurship, he is constantly approached with many business ideas, some of which, are more innovative than others. It was eye-opening, for me, that even at his level the principles haven’t changed. That he still grapples with resistance and continues to question the status-quo to make a difference.

Screw Business As Usual is a book that I find questions how business views both, business growth and community development. In this book Richard Branson approaches the idea of developing communities, as everyone’s concern and in that sense challenges businesses both large and small.

He cites cases from how Danone and  Professor Muhammad Yunus of Grameen Bank pioneered a new way to provide nutritious food to communities, while making profits that grow both the community and the business. The book also makes mention of how a lot of startups changed how business is viewed and blazed a trail for how we can continue transform business models.

Get the latest updates on Twitter by following this hashtag: #SBAU

You get to write the next book

I have come to know Richard Branson as an entrepreneur who re-invents the rules, and he does things differently in Screw Business As Usual. He is already working on his next book, but this time you write the story.

Go to Screw Business As Usual here and share how you are screwing business from how it’s traditionally been done, and your story could be part of the next book. Richard Branson and the team are coming to South Africa in 2012, where people with the best ideas get to join them in the trip to SA and hang out at Richard Branson’s private game reserve.

Download the first chapter here. Upload your written idea or a video to stand a chance to win.

Will you be part of it?

Imagine a hub for innovative companies, tech startups and international investors; all in the same part of town. In the UK it’s not just a dream, it’s a reality. It’s called Tech City and you’ll find it in East London, where it’s grown up around the old Silicon Roundabout.

As part of their efforts for Global Entrepreneurship Week, they are hosting the Tech City UK Entrepreneurs Festival, a  weeklong event with  over 300 companies from across the world, all meeting with over 50 Top Entrepreneurs and investors.

The first two days will be an intense boot camp with mentors and investors, where startups get empowered with pitching skills and product development. These are some of the top minds in business globally.

Following the sessions with investors, the Tech City UK Entrepreneurs Festival will also allow the Top 20 companies to pitch their ideas to investors and mentors. The opportunities are huge for those presenting, successful businesses have the change to gain new business, mentorship and investment.

You may also want to hear from the Top 20 Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs and Investors who’ll be sharing their experiences on Saturday the 19^th.

We take off for the Tech City UK Entrepreneurs Festival this Saturday, which will be held from 14-19 November on London’s East End.

Follow us at @Mongezi or @WordStarters and check out the Tweets of what’s happening and send some of your questions and ideas of what you’d be interested in.

Tech 4 Africa very quickly became part of the African, not just South African, technology calendar. In mid-2009 when I met Gareth Knight, the founder, Tech 4 Africa was still a concept. Although, I could tell back then it was a big idea. The kind whose growth you want to be part of.

In case you missed it, I interviewed Gareth Knight on NetwebTV about his experience in building and selling a technology startup. Tech 4 Africa aims to contextualize technology for the African continent, which is really oversimplifying it.

The first edition had insightful speakers ranging from developers to technology activists. Some of the most influential platforms online today had speakers at the conference. They came from; Ushahidi, Twitter, Yahoo and Mozilla.

We caught up with caught with some of the speakers, including Clay Shirky, and Gareth Knight after the conference. Here’s what they had to say:

This year it seems there are more African speakers than the first one, which looks promising. Most of them are familiar names in the South African tech community. It’s also exciting to see more South African entrepreneurs come to the fore and become a recognized part of the event, I think more than last year.

There are fewer speakers this year, most of whom are entrepreneurs, and this for me makes it more worthwhile. The last event was worth attending, and I’m guessing the team learned from last year and set out to create a different experience, as opposed to work off a formula.

Seedcamp was one of the partners last year, where technology entrepreneurs got an opportunity to attend Seedcamp Week in London. Some of those guys are speakers this year, which will be interesting to see.

The theme this year, seems to be more about business with speakers from Google and Simone Brunozzi of Amazon.

Have a look at what’s on offer this year at Tech 4 Africa this year and follow this hashtag #Tech4Africa on Twitter for updates.

The Discovery Invest Leadership Summit happened this Wednesday and caused a lot of conversation both online, and among attendees at the Sandton Convention Centre (Johannesburg). Being my first one, I had really high expectations, and they raised the bar from the moment I arrived.

Without going into too much detail about all the talks, the speakers who stood out for me were Dan Ariely and Chris Anderson. It is not the things I hear or see for the first time that make sense, it’s realizing I’ve overlooked them in all of their simplicity.

Note from Chris Anderson’s talk

He spoke about concepts from his book ‘FREE – The Future Of A Radical Price’. Here are some highlights:

• Zero as a price, is not a price, yet drives economic behaviour.
•  The internet created the new form of FREE, which is really free.
• Things are too cheap to meter when you can treat them as though they were free.
• “In a competitive market, price falls to the marginal cost.” – Joseph Bertrand 1883.
•  This era is the end of physical media, as all media goes digital, it is moving to a marginal cost of zero.
• Younger people have more time than money, older people more money than time. As a result young people can consume free, yet problematic media that has formatting issues, with advertising. But the older audience would rather pay for a better service.
• We created the internet, with our content, our ideas and our time.

In closing: As you offer your service or product for ‘free’, what will you sell that people will need to use with your product?

Dan Ariely

His talk was about irrational behaviour, its importance in our business and personal lives. Here are some key points:

• “As decisions get bigger, we don’t know what to do and leave it to someone else to make that decision for us.” He was referring to how we make choices and decisions when using online platforms and deciding on courses of action.
• We need to evaluate things in relative terms, rather than absolute terms.
• “How is it possible that people working in a particular field are always wrong based on their intuition and legacy?” Because things have always been done a certain way, we continue to do them that way without questioning.
• Opportunities exist for us to constantly improve ourselves.  How often does intuition fail us? It is time we tried something else, doubt your intuition and try something else.

Without taking away from all the other speakers, these are some of the many highlights from the conference. For snippets of all the other talks, have a look at the conference blog here.

Image by PopTech on Flickr

So a friend, Philén Naidu (aka. The topless host) and his wife Kim Naidu, hosted a group of friends (and me) for potjiekos. Among the many thrilling stories shared, were the undertones of resistance.

For our non-South African readers: Potjiekos -  is a stew prepared outdoors in a traditional round, cast iron, three-legged pot (the potjie). From Wikipedia.

Since its inception in 2009, the Discovery Invest Leadership Summit  has consistently challenged leadership issues of the day. This summit was the first to bring Malcolm Gladwell to our shores, and continues to engage and inspire audiences with the help of high-calibre international thought leaders as speakers. It is definitely a conference worth marking on your calendar. This year it happens on the 21^st of September.

Raising the bar

The inaugural 2009 summit featured Sir Richard Branson, Malcolm Gladwell and Wendy Luhabe amongst others. In 2010, they outdid themselves again with insights from Adrian Gore, Nassim Taleb and Tokyo Sexwale. This summit transforms our ideas of what a “headline speaker” is and who to look out for.

This year, they’ll have me – in the audience – not as a speaker. (Well, for this year at least.)

This year’s draw-card speakers include Al Gore, Graça Marcel and Chris Anderson (Editor-In-Chief at Wired – not to be confused with curator of TED). It is expected to shift paradigms. And I have high expectations that it will. The idea that Chris Anderson will be there, is enough for me to go.

In addition to his role at Wired, Chris Anderson is also the author of “The Long Tail” and “Free”, both of which change your perspective after reading them. His thinking is current. He writes the kind of material that is for this time – for the ever-transforming digital age. In both books, he creates a vivid image of how any thriving business model became profitable online.

In “The Long Tail”, Chris Anderson delves into what creates a niche and how the blockbuster culture was eradicated. It demonstrates, through research analysis, why the future of business is selling less of more. He goes into how the lowest selling songs on iTunes create niche categories in themselves. How having 1000 True Fans (as first written by Kevin Kelly at Technium) is the way to go and why niche has eliminated traditional business theories of creating and developing for the masses.

That leads me to how the rules of leadership have transformed over the ages. These interesting times we live in demand that leaders focus on building communities (“tribes”) and on creating a compelling story that connects people. I look forward to hearing what he proposes the new way of leadership for niche audiences, is.

This conference comes at a time when my search for leadership ability has reached levels of obsessions. It became evident to me, that leadership is a significant way to coordinate change and create a community of people for a cause. So, they have a lot of high expectations to measure up to.

If you would like to get an idea of how Chris Anderson thinks – have a look here.

If you would like to follow the conference, search for #DILS11 on Twitter.

To become involved in the search for leadership, take a quick look at their blog or book your tickets here. The conference is on the 21^st of September at the Sandton Convention Centre.

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Photo of The Long Tail by: topgold on Flickr

Seth Godin made an announcement last year that he wouldn’t publish another book through traditional means. Never again! There was much debate online, questions were asked and many speculated that he still will.

All speculation was cast aside when he launched The Domino Project, with Poke The Box being his first release. So, I went over to Amazon, ordered a copy, waited 3 weeks. . . . . . And voila! The 84-page little book, with a running man arrived.

Seth Godin cuts through all assumptions and challenges you right from the start. Much like he did in Linchpin, he tempts you out of comfort, he calls you out, he asks you to take a stand. No contents pages, no forewords, no introductions, he just gets right into it.

In all of four sittings, each less than an hour – with coffee breaks – I was done.

“The job isn’t to catch up to the status quo; 

 the job is to invent the status quo.” 

When you read those opening lines, you know it’s you. Or not. If it isn’t, don’t bother reading further. This post is not for you. Check back next time.

Poke The Box – is a book about:

• Doing!
• Doing what you love
• Questioning the status quo
• Starting things
• Starting everyday
• Failing!
• Failing often
• Making a connection
• Finishing what you started
• Shipping
• Shipping often
• Repeat!

In 84 pages, Poke The Box takes you through a journey of changing things. A journey of getting to ‘Yes!’. Of facing fear. Of living without the fear of starting. You realize when you’ve done enough and you need to take your ideas out to market.

Now go!

Go start!

Start new things. Start every day. Ship your ideas. Repeat!

After reading most books, I would review them. That is, comfortably write about what I got, yet The Art Of The Start was different. It goes in depth about starting an organization (whether for profit not), and running it successfully. If you are running a successful organization, then it’s a book you wish you read before starting – and a hardback you want to own.

Guy Kawasaki had me gripped in his introduction, where he wrote:

“When telescopes work, everyone is an astronomer, and the world is full of stars. When they don’t, everyone whips out their microscopes, and the world is full of flaws.”

Granted! We all start organizations to cause – some much needed – change in the world. More important than change, if you take away one thing from this post – it should be go out there and make meaning. Guy warns entrepreneurs against “being solutions looking for problems”, which most experts won’t tell you.

Carve a niche

An entrepreneurial organization that serves, and targets everyone, is a solution looking for a problem. A well defined business model quickly resolves this issue and helps you cut your losses. Here are Guy Kawasaki’s guides to defining a business model:

• Who has your money in their pockets?
• How are you going to get it into your pockets?

Tips to develop your business model

1. Be specific – Know who your customer is, serve them and grow outwardly.
2. Keep it simple – Narrow your business model down to ten words.
3. Copy somebody – Many people have innovated business models, you can copy what exists and innovate in technology, markets or customers.

Have you ever had a great idea, one you knew that was sure to be the proverbial cash cow, but you never acted on it?

Well….ideas by themselves are worthless and Guy Kawasaki advises that you create a prototype to end the uncertainty and get it to market immediately. Most of us want to perfect our offer, as though that is the final version of the product, when our customers will need us perfect and change it.

The Art Of Bootstrapping

Having read (and lived by) Seth Godin’s, Bootstrapper’s Bible and being eager to reach Guy Kawasaki’s chapter about it. It seemed to take me too long.

I admit, the possibility of raising capital, building an organization that quickly gets acquired by a conglomerate and “living happily after”, crossed my mind. Sadly, happily afters are great before bedtime and 8pm romance thrillers.

From being an Evangelist at Apple in the 1980s, to starting Garage Ventures – a venture capital firm. Guy Kawasaki himself emphasizes how the odds of raising capital are slim to non-existent.

In the beginning stages of this chapter he states that “entrepreneurs can bootstrap any business model”, because bootstrapping is managing for cash flow. And when done correctly, it will be a stage in the life of your business.

Here are some excerpts to note about bootstrapping:

• Build A Bottom Up Forecast – Know the minimum achievable goal, then build your cash and sales forecast from there.

• Ship, Then Test – Get your product to market immediately, fix problems that may arise, ship again and alter product till you’ve perfected it.

• Forget The Proven Team – Forget about hiring well-known industry veterans. Build a case for your team.

• Start As A Service Business – You can making cash immediately and pay for further research and development.

• Focus On Function, Not Form – When selecting service providers, pick them based on your needs – not their size.

• Pick Your Battles – Make money from you magic, not things anyone else can do.

• Go Direct – The more middlemen there are between you (the seller) and your customer, the longer it takes to know what to fix.

• Position Against The Leader – Your competition has done you a huge favour by establishing themselves ahead of you. Use known equivalents to describe what you do.

• Take The Red Pill – As in The Matrix, rid yourself of fantasy and face reality.

• Get A Morpheus – As in The Matrix again, this is the person who sees to it that you achieve your objectives and is realistic.

• Understaff and Outsource – Run with a lean team, it’s better than laying off people you didn’t need in the first place. Outsource everything else.

• Build A Board – Not only for funded businesses, it helps with evangelism and maintaining innovativeness.

• Sweat The Big Stuff – Looking big and fancy are less significant than developing your product, selling and getting paid. Focus on what matters

As you can tell, bootstrapping is one of the lessons I had to learn again. It keeps you on course and definitely differentiates you from everyone else. That, like romance thrillers, leads to a happily after.

This chapter, which also quotes Seth Godin, drives home the idea of making meaning and strengthening your business model.

These, as said earlier, are just some of the highlights and lessons I had to learn. You’ll be seeing a lot of quotes from The Art Of The Start, going forward. It spoke to areas in my startup that need perfecting and improving and testing. Other things that also ring true from the book are the Art Of Pitching and the Art Of Selling.

What is the most significant lesson you’ve learnt in business, lately? Care to share?

Let us know what you’ve read as well. If you’d like to share it, you could write a guest review.

A blank page is quite scary. Really daunting to say the least. Well….it has been, for me,  lately.

Here is the thing, you want the writing to come out perfectly. To bring hundreds, if not thousands, of readers. But the real intention was never that, for me. It was to track where I was at any stage and continually improve.

In came all the expert blogging advice, SEO and ‘master blogging in a month’ or day. Then the pressure followed.

A friend, who admittedly subscribes to ‘tough love’, always says – “be the one to kill your last great idea”.

It’s great to have hundreds of people read your blog and follow your work. It’s when  you lose of why you do it, that it loses its essence. We all want to, absolutely have to continually redefine ourselves and do the next best thing.

Your last great innovation, is what the masses define with. The hardest thing – is to be the one who exterminates and kills that idea, to replace it with something better. More innovative.

The focus should always be your audience, and that being an audience of one. The one client, who evangelizes to hundreds. Not the hundreds and thousands that soon dissipate into thin air.

Image by: fo. ol on Flickr