Starting a Side Hustle - eNCA TV Feature

Last week I was fortunate to be featured on eNCA live talking about my new book: How to Start a Side Hustle.

The book takes my 20 years of experience and distills lessons I’ve learned into a brilliantly useful guide to starting your own side hustle.

If you’re looking to start generating extra income, this is the book for you.

Many of us will agree one income just doesn't cut it. Many people are looking for a side hustle, but it's not that easy. Let's get tips from Nic Hara-lambous...

20 Things 2011 taught me about my business

2011 has been one of the most intense, fun and challenging years of my business life. I've had my fair share of insane highs and crushing lows.Speaking to people in the last few weeks I noticed that many of my thoughts begin with, "And another thing I learned this year is...". So here is a list of 20 things that I learned in 2011 as a startup founder and now the CEO of Motribe.1. Hire slowly, fire quickly.2. Trust your gut about: People, deals, businesses and contracts.3. One deal can break your company.4. One deal can make your company.5. Don't scale your staff with one big client. They will leave you (staff and client), eventually.6. Cashflow, cashflow, cashflow. Startups worry about revenues, entrepreneurs know the value of cashflow.7. Be transparent with your team, they know when something is going on.8. If you have to, work on a public holiday, your biggest deals could happen after hours. Great business minds don't keep office hours.9. Don't listen to people who like to talk, listen to people who like to listen and have achieved.10. You know best more often than not. Trust your instincts.11. Avoid people-politics and games where possible.12. Be honest, open and transparent. If you aren't happy, tell someone.13. Fire bad clients.14. Be picky about who you work with.15. Don't do business just for the money.16. Do whatever it takes.17. No one knows your business like you do, fight for it.18. Make the best decision you can at the time with the facts at your disposal.19. Say "Fuck it", and take the risks necessary for great success.20. Have a co-founder or business partner who you can rely on. When shit gets heavy you need someone to back you up.It's hard to pick the most important lessons from the list above but for me I think that number 6, 16 and 20 are right up there.What lessons did you learn about your business in 2011?

Africans Can't Be Trusted - Let's Make Some Money

Erik Hersman wrote a good post on the experience that African people are treated like second-class humans merely because we live in Africa. And let me just say; Erik has a point, a very valid point and an incredibly frustrating point. But his point leaves us with a massive gap in the market that no developed world companies or global corporates are willing to push in to. Africa is our playground and while the rest of the world avoids us and punishes us, we need to make inroads to block them out and own this market.Basically we're seen as untrustworthy by the rest of the world and are punished for that. The perception is definitely greater than the crime here. Africans appear to be untrustworthy but are by no means the biggest offenders when it comes to internet crimes as Erik showed in his post.Erik suggests two solutions:

Too true, and there are only two ways that this might change:First, we in Africa come up with our own payment and business solutions that work here first, and then interact with other global systems.Second, the global corporates wake up and realize that there is quite a bit of spending power and money to be made in Africa, just like the mobile operators found out in the 90′s.

I'd like to pitch a third and more challenge-orientated solution; screw them. Forget those who punish us for being African. There are many, many business models that don't have to include Paypal or the multitude of global corporates that punish us for where we live. Mobile is booming and Africa is at the cusp of this movement. We are setting the trends and defining the direction of where truly mobile products are going and should be going. We are the ones in control.Yet the problem exists that we, as Africans have a persecution complex and insist on needing validation from certain places, companies and organisations to justify our success and movement forward. This is absurd.Don't get me wrong, I understand that there are viable reasons which make us need validation from Paypal and require us not to be banned by Google and blah blah. But there are many, many flourishing startups in South Africa and Africa that are not running off the back of these giants. I can name 5 off the top of my head.We need to start setting the trends, bucking the trends and developing the roads instead of deciding that the roads aren't tared with gold for us as Africans. We need to stop settling for mediocrity and start striving for cutting edge excellence that we define, as Africans on our continent.The very outdated notion that there is not enough money in Africa to create a viable business model or revenue stream is long dead. There is money on this continent, there are users on this land that we occupy and there is massive, massive potential and hunger for new products and creation of wealth.What we need to do now is stop leaning on the developed world, toss them to the curb and take control of our continent, businesses and business models. It might be a hard road to travel but in the long term it will be the most profitable in my opinion.