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Let us be perfectly honest. Making money online in SA is difficult unless you are employed by a big media house (which in itself is tough).

Those who know me or read this blog will know that I am an entrepreneur and media practitioner and not necessarily in that order. This means that I am broke some of the time. This gets old really really fast, if you don’t know, trust me on this one.

What I am getting at is that it’s tough to make a living online, it is. I am really curious to know if there are gabillions of online entrepreneurs in SA who are making boatloads of money or at least, are making a living? Are you out there? If you are, let me know cause I wanna know how you did it.

Who am I kidding? As if anyone who made the dosh is going to splurge their secrets to me on this blog? Are you?

Being a young entrepreneur has opened my eyes to numerous things in the last year. The most amazing of all of these things is the astounding amount of young people doing incredible things.

Be it entrepreneurs, media practitioners, young accountants, academics or wood importers (yes, there are people who import wood), there are young people succeeding and making millions.

It really does beg the questing though, how do we manage? How do these young and successful people deal with the pressure of being broke, being wealthy, carrying employees, salaries, decisions, organisations, reputations, meetings, dinners, parties, presentations, financials, tax, registrations and more? How?

I am not sure that all of these young go getters are managing to do all of this to be honest. I am sick of seeing people loving life, happy as the day is long and rich as shit. Bull. Ask any entrepreneur and they will tell you that their success did not come easy and did not come fast. It came after planning, work, failure and diligence.

There are many young people in the SA industry at the moment who are youthful, talented and going to be successful. There are also many people who are young and talented but who are also arrogant, naive, idiotic and moronic if they think that the sun shines out of their ass and the job will make them who they want to be.

You make the job, the job does not ever make you. Let’s just be honest here for a second, reputation is not everything, practical experience and a history of success is. Your friends make you, you on the same level, make your friends. Do not let the job taint your life, your lively hood and your friends. There is more, at our age (my age of 23) than the job. There really is.

I have been in meeting after meeting this week. People pitching me ideas, concepts, website, companies, organisations and people pitching people who know people who can possible do something for me.

If there is one thing that I cannot stand it’s when people don’t know when to stop selling. Learn this lesson quickly: Pitch me your product, tell me about what you do but then stop. Finish. End. Quit and let me think about what you are telling or selling me. Do not try to resell and rephrase and re re re re re. I got it. I’m a quick learner (or so I’ve been told).

Another thing that has irritated me beyond belief is self proclaimed experts from abroad who have learnt how to “fix” our “problems” here in SA. Do not preach to me about the airs and graces of the United States of America (said with a pseudo-American-twang). Do not go in to a meeting with a South African entrepreneur and tell him that South Africa is 20+ years behind America technologically. That is not a good way to sell me on your product or concept.

The next thing is research. In today’s day and age it is possible to gather a vast amount of information about someone from the internet. Look at this blog. I have my personal details on here, I have links to things that can help you clue together my background. Go and visit my LinkedIn profile, its all there. Then come in to a meeting knowing about who I am, what my company does and where we are planning on going. Research, research, research.

These are basics that I have seen in maybe two of the eight meetings I have had this week. How can people still be missing this stuff? It’s simple. If you haven’t thought about this before, then you are hearing it now. Think about it and you will soon realise that if you do not prepare you will not be successful. You can’t invade a country without weapons, you can’t sell yourself without research.

Right now I feel like my life consists of none of the above things. I have ducks, plenty of them, but none of them are walking a nice neat row. I need to sit down, prioritize and streamline my business endeavors. This might take some time, but it is something that must be done.

I also feel the need to minimize the effect of negativity in my life. There are some things that happen that need to happen and somethings that happen that don’t need to. The latter needs to be minimized and ultimately extinguished completely!

At the moment I am one person dealing with multiple business opportunities and offers as an individual, companies need to be registered, bank accounts opened and business deals closed. Partnerships need to be formed and consolidated. All of this needs to be a part of a great transformation in my life currently.

Lets hope. Watch this space, streamlining coming soon!