Are you building or just raising money to grow the business?

After speaking to over 500 entrepreneurs over the past couple of months, I was amazed at what I found.

My observation was based on identifying what could be keeping most businesses from starting and also what could be keeping these businesses from trully succeeding.

The one thing that came out loud and clear was the issue of capital as the main obstacle to starting and making a success of the business; this was the view of about 89% of the participants.

I find this disturbing. People are really giving it their all in trying to obtain capital, never mind the fact that statistics show that only 17% of those people who get lucky and received some form of funding managed to make it through their first year of trading.

The government and developmental institutions can only give so much to assist and people need to start looking at alternative ways of starting their business without waiting for someone to fund them.

I am sharing these statistics so that you can understand that, while capital can propel your business quicker, the capital is part of all the factors that make up a successful business.

Most important is your competency level as a business owner. You can be given all the money in the world and you will still fail to maximise on the money because you do not have the skills to do so. Your skills and knowledge in terms of building a business are of paramount importance, not the capital.

Only a few business owners are prepared to go through the pain of learning and improving their skill to become better business owners and the greater majority is looking for handouts to start businesses which will hardly operate past their first year.

I believe it is better to teach a man how to fish than to give him all the fish he wants.

It is time to make a choice: do you want to be a fisherman or do you want to be the consumer?

This is exactly what I will be sharing with attendees at the free Wealth Creation Workshop at Café Pavilion in Polokwane on November 16. Join us at 18:00. You have nothing to lose and a whole lot of knowledge to gain for you and your business’s growth.

Kholofelo Pholafudi is the author of The Psychology, Science and Art of Turning Contacts into Connections