Every small independently owned business begins as a dream for its owner. July is Small Business Month, a time to acknowledge those dreams that have blossomed into thriving enterprises and to inspire other entrepreneurs to put their vision for the future into action.
According to Santam’s Most Loved Local Report, South Africans overwhelmingly believe in supporting local businesses. Released in December last year, the report’s survey showed that 97% of consumers agree on the importance of backing community establishments.
Conducted by Arthur Goldstuck’s World Wide Worx among 2 400 South Africans, the survey highlighted the resilience of small businesses amid economic challenges.
Santam’s Fanus Coetzee emphasised the significance of supporting small enterprises for job creation and economic growth, but also acknowledged the financial challenges entrepreneurs face.
Read: South Africans rally behind local businesses
Recent research by the University of the Western Cape found South Africa has a higher failure rate of SMMEs than the global average, with 70% to 80% failing within five years. In previously disadvantaged communities, only 1% of businesses grow from employing fewer than five people to having a staff of ten or more. The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor attributes this high failure rate to a lack of financial and marketing skills. In 2017, Professor Christian Friedrich, co-author of the study, emphasised the need for a new training approach that includes personal initiative to reduce the failure rate and make South African entrepreneurs more successful.
Mauritz Bekker, author of the book Wake-up: Unleash that Entrepreneur Within, refers to personal initiative as “the passion factor”.
Bekker, who has a Master’s in Business Leadership, has started and managed several small businesses. Having trained would-be entrepreneurs for more than 20 years, Bekker says the research findings corroborate with what he has experienced in the field.
“I am aware that these kinds of studies have a limited scope in the assessment of this comprehensive topic. I strongly agree with the fact that current entrepreneurial training is limited. Most courses are only addressing the skill side of being an entrepreneur.”
In addition to the research findings, in Bekker’s opinion many failed small business were started from a short-term need and not by choice.
“The ‘need and not choice’ category of people who started new businesses were almost certainly not driven by an internal force ‘to do what they love to do’. This category of ‘entrepreneurs’ was most likely also not previously trained in any form of entrepreneurship. Personal initiative was probably also not part of their make-up,” he says.
Drawing from his experience in fostering an entrepreneurial mindset in students, Bekker outlines the following study fields to supplement business management skills and acumen:
- An understanding of basic economics. The need to understand the rules of the game and the dimensions of the playing field.
- The psychology of paradigms. To understand how to create a paradigm from where possible business opportunities would be noticed.
- Techniques on how to develop your creative and innovative abilities.
- How to develop your intuition or gut feel.
- Techniques to discover what makes you tick which will create the very critical element of “work passion”. You need to love what you are doing.
In the list, he includes the psychology of self-motivation and the art of mind programming to create and develop the following traits:
- A paradigm from where possible business opportunities in you domain of interest would be noticed.
- The ability to live with uncertainty.
- Perseverance and dedication.
- Initiative and a drive to achieve something better.
“Entrepreneurship studies as briefly discussed above should be an all-inclusive subject and not only an add-on,” he says.
Putting his experience into practice, Bekker developed the study material for Moonstone Business School of Excellence’s Entrepreneurship short course.
The eight-week online course consists of six modules:
- Enhance your entrepreneurial abilities.
- Assess the viability/feasibility of a business opportunity.
- How to manage your marketing actions.
- Understand and recognise the modern business environment.
- The strategic positioning of a new business opportunity.
- How to create a bankable business plan.
While an invaluable building block for entrepreneurs wanting to start their own business, Bekker says entrepreneurial ability has become a life skill needed by all people and should not be limited to prospective entrepreneurs.
Read: Prepare for the world of AI with MBSE’s Entrepreneurship course
He says the drive to develop “entrepreneurial skill” in students can probably be placed in the same category as the development of “leadership skills”.
“Entrepreneurship is not a room in the house; it is now the house.”
He says entrepreneurial abilities are not limited to starting a small business.
“The reality is that economies all over the world are critically in need of entrepreneurial-minded people,” says Bekker.
Prospective students can enrol for the eight-week online course at any time during the year.
