Ask yourself: Is this the hill you want to die on?

Every day, we fight.

We fight to live, we fight to get our way, we fight for our relationships and we fight at work. Every day, we fight.

The issue is not so much that we fight a lot, it’s that most of us don’t realize we’re fighting and don’t know which hills we have climbed are important enough to die on.

In battle, hills are typically important pieces of ground that provide strategic advantages if won. It’s important to know which hills are worth climbing and fighting for and which are not. Once you have won a specific hill, are you willing to die to retain it? By choosing this particular hill, could you win the war?

These are all decisions that must be made before you wage a battle for ownership of a hill.

Hence the phrase; “the hill you want to die on.”

I have adopted this idiom in my life and apply it to the battles that I enter into every day.

When my partner and I are arguing over something, inevitably one of us will ask: “Is this the hill you want to die on?” and if one of us answers yes and the other doesn’t, then we give in because it’s more important to the other. If we both answer yes, then we argue and see where it ends up. I mean this literally, we actually ask the question out loud.

In a professional setting, battles are being waged constantly. Whether you are aware of them or not, there are power struggles, internal maneuvers, strategic decisions, and wins and losses all over the place. The important question you have to constantly ask yourself should be: “Is this the hill I want to die on?” and if the answer is no, have the sense to walk away. Ego plays a very large part of being able to walk away. It’s of no use if your ego is so big that you can’t walk away from any battles. You become tired and the people around you become tired of fighting with you.

Ego is the biggest contributor to most of my losses.

To effectively assess whether this is, in fact, the hill you want to die on, you will need to understand yourself and those around you.

It’s always important to know at least some basic negotiation techniques and one of my favorites is BATNA: The best alternative to a negotiation agreement. In short, who is worse off if they lose the negotiation (battle)? Is it you? If it is you, then ask yourself how you can overcome the odds or if perhaps this is a hill you should be walking away from.

For BATNA to be effective you need to be able to put yourself in your opponent’s shoes and figure out what their advantage is and if they want the win more than you do. Is the hill strategically more valuable to them or to you? Do you think that they know what your strategy is? Do you think you can move faster than they can to change your position?

If your BATNA is stronger than your opponents then double down and take the hill. You will gain a strategic advantage and can then plot your next move accordingly.

Photo by Valentin Salja on Unsplash

Most people don’t understand that every day is a battle. Some people have given it thought but don’t agree that every day we’re in a battle. I understand that every engagement is a kind of battle whether big or small, important or irrelevant and I have learned to quickly assess if the hill I am approaching is one that I’d be happy to die on.

This skill is one that is honed over time and with practice. You have to be aware that you are in a war to understand that the hills we approach are worth something strategically. Often the hill you approaching is not worth dying on and it becomes more valuable to offer up the win to your opponent and walk away.

In a professional setting, do you want to stick your hand up in that all-hands meeting and challenge your boss publicly? Is that a hill you’d be happy to die on? Or do you want to wait and approach them privately to debate your point?

With your partner, friends, and family do you have a good grip on what is important to you? Do you know which hills you would be willing to die on? I do.

It’s important to define what your victory condition is and then figure out which hills are the most important for you to achieve this victory condition. Once you have those things figured out it becomes much simpler to decide which hills you are willing to die on.

Take some time to think about the last year and even the last decade and consider the hills that you fought for. Were they worth it? Did the hills you won improve your position or over time diminish your position? Did you choose the right hills and fight alongside the right people?

Plan out the next year and the next decade and think about how you can improve your decision-making skills. Every battle becomes more important when you choose to fight it if you know what you are fighting for.

It’s not your fault. It’s your choice

Almost everything in our life is simultaneously our choice alone and a choice we make that we have no control over.

Everything you have ever experienced influences the choices you make today. You are not an island. You have not been raised in isolation. You exist as part of a whole, an ecosystem that imparts influence upon you each day with every Instagram post you swipe, every advert you see and every article you read.

Once you come to terms with this (that you are influenced by your inputs), you can begin to understand and acknowledge that everything is a choice.

I often receive very angry responses to this concept. People hate this idea because choice gives you agency. Once you admit to having agency you have to admit that you are acting upon your environment and things are very rarely acting upon you.

This boils down to choice.

You make one or another choice constantly whether you notice yourself doing it or not.

This means that we choose our priorities. We choose what we focus on whether we like it or not. No one else forces us to do it, even if that’s what we believe and what we tell ourselves.

You choose your family and friends.

You choose your job.

You choose your partner.

You choose your path to work each day.

You choose to work overtime.

You choose to watch TV.

You choose to be unhealthy.

You choose to not exercise.

If you choose all of the above then you can also choose different versions of the above or entirely new scenarios that do not include the above. You can choose something different today, right now.

Your current level of happiness is a result of choices that you have made, are making and will make.

Happiness is an outcome of choices and perspective.

Whenever you believe that you do not have a choice what you are actually doing is avoiding the difficult choice.

There are always options. You just may not like them.

Of course, there are situations that you did not choose to be in (a child with abusive parents) but you can choose how you respond to the situations you are in. You can choose to be proactive or reactive. You can choose to be passive or active. You can choose to be a victim forever or to learn, evolve, forgive and move on.

There is always a choice, you just have to make one that moves you forward, not backward.

Reframe, Rethink and Reassess Everything

I was walking home the other day and looked up to see a slightly different path than I usually take. I have walked the same route to work every day for the past 18 months but for whatever reason looked up and saw a gap I hadn’t seen before.

Perhaps it was the music I was listening to. Maybe it was something that caught my eye and made me look in a new direction. Whatever it was ended up saving me 5 minutes on my way to work every day.

A five-minute savings every workday saved me 2.5 days in a year. A simple shift in the way I walked to work saved me 1200 minutes a year.

One thousand two hundred minutes every year.

What else am I doing out of habit that needs to be reframed? What other repetitive things in my life can be shifted, changed, removed or renewed?

How about your life? Is your root to work the same that it’s always been? If you change something small do you think it can lead to a big shift in your life? I bet it can.

When was the last time you changed your sleeping habits? Let’s do the calculations:

If you wake up 30 minutes earlier every day:

10950 waking minutes have been created.

= 182.5 hours

= 7.6 days every year

That is a lot of time you have given yourself if you reassess your sleep habits.

It can be a tiring exercise to continually reframe everything in your life but doing this keeps me fresh and makes sure that my decisions are made every day, not once and forgotten.

The lies we tell ourselves to feel OK

It’s tough out there, people. Every entrepreneur knows it is. So to make ourselves feel better and others feel worse we tell ourselves and others lies that make us feel better. These lies help us make it through the day and push us forward but ultimately they damage our ability to build something truly amazing. It’s time we stop telling lies and let our guard down.

Lie - Working 18 hours a day is a good thing

Yes, there are times when you absolutely have to pull an all-nighter and work back to back to back 18 or 20-hour days. This should be the exception but when you are a young and hungry entrepreneur trying to stamp your mark on the world, you convince yourself that the only way to beat your competition is to outwork them.

Sadly this is just not true. What happens when after your 18-hour stint, you hear that your competitor worked 20 hours for more days than you did? What then? Do you work 21 hours a day? Don’t be ridiculous.

We have allowed ourselves to fall into the trap of comparison and we believe that we need to brag about how busy we are, how late we worked and how much we have to do.

I prefer to brag about getting a full 8 hours of sleep last night and that I had time to go to the gym this morning before work. That’s a truth I’m happy to tell.

Lie - You are competing with every entrepreneur out there

Just like in golf, entrepreneurs are very, very seldom competing against one another for survival. We are competing against the previous version of ourselves. We are iterating on the previous version of our own product and we are engaging with our own customers to retain them and give them the best service we can.

Every day you are in a race with yourself to get your personal best time on the track. All you can control is how hard you are training and the effort you are putting in. Just like in business. You can’t control your competitor's strategy. You can’t dictate how much money they raise or who they hire. You can control the things you do so make sure you do them as well as you know how to. If that’s not good enough, then you need to figure out how to level up.

Lie — Your cofounder will always protect you

A sneaky truth baked into this lie is that it is hard to start a business as a sole founder. Being alone and going through the brutal experience of running a startup is extremely difficult.

Having cofounders definitely makes the startup burden easier to bear. This is not to say that the cofounders will always be aligned. It’s actually very likely that at some point your vision will deviate from theirs and a rift will form.

I have had cofounders in the past who have abandoned the business, sold the business behind my back, mentally checked out or just simply given up. Nothing about building a business is simple and the interpersonal relationship between cofounders is often severely overlooked and neglected. If this happens there is no turning back in my experience. Someone will have to leave.

Photo by Phan Hoang Phe on Unsplash

Lie - You always have to look/feel/sound good in public

Being an entrepreneur has become a very sought after title over the past twenty years. It’s cool to run your own company. It’s cool to post to the socials about how amazingly well your business is doing. It’s cool to grow your “headcount” (man I fucking hate that word — they are people, not heads). It’s cool to have bigger offices in more countries. It’s cool to raise money and tell people about it.

What’s not cool? Struggling.

What’s not cool? The reality that building businesses is, and should be, hard.

What’s not cool? Telling people that you need a bit of help from time to time.

If you know someone or follow someone online who is always “killing it”, just know that they are probably lying. No one is killing it all day every day in every Facebook or Instagram post. It’s just not possible.

Lie - To win, someone else has to lose

Building businesses is not a zero-sum game. Google is not the only search engine out there, believe it or not. I use DuckDuckGo and they are more private, more secure and, shockingly, profitable. They did not lose because Google “won”.

There is more than one chat app. There is more than one social network. There is more than one dating app. There is more than one car company. There is more than one streaming service. There is more than one space exploration company.

Life is not a zero-sum game, don’t treat it as one. You are competing against your previous best (see above) and you are not exclusively trying to destroy anyone or anything.

Lie - Numbers are for accountants

The very hard and pragmatic truth about startups and business in general is that you have to understand the hardcore numbers. You cannot leave your cash flow, gross and net margin calculations and salary bill up to the accountants. As an entrepreneur, it’s imperative that you understand the position your business is in every day, week and month. If you let this slip it’s all over before it began.

Lie - You have to grow big, fast

This is a very popular lie at the moment. The only successful businesses seem to be the ones that are raising a bazillion dollars and are about to IPO. Well, that was true until the WeWork bubble burst. Alongside companies like Lyft, Uber, Beyond Meat and others, WeWork is in crisis mode. These mega-businesses grew quickly, raised a shitton of capital and are under serious duress.

I am more intrigued by businesses like Basecamp, Shopify and Buffer who have taken their time to figure out what they do, how they do it and who they want to do it with. These companies are all profitable and growing at their own pace.

You do not have to raise money to be successful. There is no pre-defined parameter for how long it takes to become profitable and sustainable. There is no model for this thing we do called entrepreneurship. Every business, every entrepreneur and every idea is different.

I know it’s hard to see the wood from the trees sometimes. I know that we’re fighting for our survival and livelihood. I know we’re all building a business that is going to change the world. I know. I know.

But it doesn’t have to be so lonely and you don’t have to be so isolated. You don’t have to suffer in silence and you don’t have to hide your victories.

It’s OK to be proud of your successes when they happen and it’s OK to be proud of your shortcomings and the subsequent learnings too.

I have always held the view that a rising tide lifts all ships and that you don’t have to feel like shit for me to feel good today.

Do you agree with the lies above? Would you add any to the list?

When was the last time you were honest with the people closest to you about how you are feeling and doing? Try it today.

Filter your network or fail

Are you happy with the five people you spend the most time with?

We’ve all heard the saying that you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Simply being aware of this statement doesn’t mean that most people take it to heart. I wish more people actively curated the human relationships they accept into their lives.

There are people in my life that I am very proud to know that I call my friends and family. These are the people who I hold closest to my network and the ones that I turn to for just about anything, good or bad. But these are not the people that I spend the most time with. I try to spend time with them but just like me, they travel a lot, they’re active, they have lives to live and ambitions to achieve.

Most of the hours in your day are spent at work. Not with your family at Sunday lunch, not with your spouse at home and not with your friends out partying. If you don’t agree then quickly do the math.

That means that the five people you spend the most time with are likely your coworkers. Tell me something; did you interview them when you joined your company? Did you work out what kind of people you would be spending all of your time with? I bet you didn’t. You were interviewed, you were hired and now you’re stuck with the people that someone else hired.

Now give further thought to the other groups of people that you didn’t choose or haven’t recently chosen: Family, friends, sports teams and any other collection of people that you spend more than an hour a week with. Answer some questions about these people:

• Do you really like them?

• Do they add anything to your life at all — negative or positive?

• Do they insult you often, even “just as a joke”?

• Do they bring you down or pull you up?

• Do these people support your ambitions and help you achieve them?

How do you feel about the answers you’ve just given?

Do your friends and family actually support you and your ambitions? Do you even talk to them about the life you live and the life you want to live? Or is it just status quo every day, rinse and repeat day in and day out?

If any of your answers to the above questions surprise or upset you then what are you going to do about it?

Are you going to find a new group of friends who support you? Are you going to find people who will make you a better version of yourself? Are you going to cut out that uncle who is a little bit racist and refuses to sort his shit out in 2019? Or are you just going to let the world exist the way it always has, with you in it as a passive participant?

Why do we put up with people who bring us down and treat us badly? We don’t have to but we are conditioned to have friends forever, to believe that family will always have our best interests at heart and to think that we deserve below average people in our lives. Why are we not more vicious in filtering our network of people?

I’ll tell you why: we are afraid.

We are scared that if we make the hard choice we’ll be left alone. We’re afraid that if we find friends who want to help us become better, we’ll have to actually go out and become better versions of ourselves. We’re afraid of what people will say when we walk away from difficult relationships and move on to better ones.

Here’s the only way I know how to respond to all those people: Fuck ’em.

Perhaps no one has ever said these specific words to you before so here goes: You do not have to like your family. You can stop talking to them and cut them out. That is a perfectly acceptable answer to a real problem. You are allowed to find new friends and move on. If you don’t like your boss, you are allowed to say something and then find a new job if need be. If your coworkers are assholes, you can say something and transfer to a different department or find a new job with people you like.

Every year you spend with a person who brings you down is a year you have to recover from in the coming decade. One bad year with shitty people stacks up to many years of damage done and many more years trying to undo the mess they have created. This messes with your mind and destroys your self-confidence. Rather than have to overcome this damage, just remove it altogether. You’re allowed to protect yourself from these people.

The next time you’re out with your people, think hard about the reason that you continue to give your time to them. You’ll never get that time back and you’ll very quickly become the worst parts of the five people you spend the most time with every day, not the best.

Don't make people earn your trust - give it away for free

Respect and trust are complicated. They are intangible and nuanced. They need context and differ from person to person and situation to situation. When you first meet someone the default is to not trust or respect them and I fucking hate that.

We have been taught for generations that respect and trust are earned. Both are tough to get and once you have them, you should protect them at all costs. I call bullshit. The older generations definitely got this wrong.

I have a different approach to trust that also applies to respect:

Trust people until they give you a reason not to.

This is one of my rules for living. I practice this every single day. I trust people when I meet them for the first time. I trust and respect people when I hire them and I continue to trust and respect people who have earned it.

I give respect and trust but never recklessly.

I have spent years curating my network and associating myself with incredible people. I have built a deep and personal respect and trust for these people and their opinions. When someone from within my network introduces me to someone I have no reason to hold back my trust and respect.

In my interactions, I give respect and trust first and upfront. I do not withhold them and hope that one day in the distant future I can respect and trust. Withholding these two basic requirements is a terrible way to begin a relationship.

Sure, if you give trust liberally and respect everyone you meet you are going to get screwed and not in the good way. This is game theory at play. You cooperate, they cheat. You cheat, they cheat more. I get it. It’s hard and complex. It’s likely that bad actors were going to harm you regardless of you giving them your respect. I choose to start relationships off on the right foot. I don’t want to force people to break through some impossible, subjective, random and ever-changing benchmark for earning my trust and respect. How self-indulgent of us all.

There is one catch when dishing out trust and respect; zero tolerance. When people abuse either or both, let them know and cut them loose.

You cannot maintain a balanced relationship if one of you is abusive towards the other. The minute someone lets me down and abuses my trust or blatantly disrespects me, I’m out. This is absolutely fundamental to a strategy of openly giving of yourself.

Unfortunately, some people are unaware of their infringements when they occur. They even repeat the abuse because you haven’t laid out that their actions are unacceptable. That’s on you, not them.

The minute someone steps out of bounds it is up to you to let them know. How can anyone adapt, apologize or work within the boundaries if they aren’t clearly laid out?

Imagine we treated dogs in the same way we treat people. You get a new puppy and do not trust the poor little guy. You suspect he is hiding something and reluctantly engage with him until one day in the future he saves your life. Only then do you trust him, but it’s too late. Your dog is suspicious of you and your actions and doesn’t respect or trust you. Now you have to work extra hard to rebuild the relationship that you broke because you didn’t give your trust freely. We don’t do this with our favourite pets, why do we do it with other people?

In a professional setting, I have a document that I give to everyone who I work with titled “How to work with Nic.” This document explains the kind of work relationships that I expect. They have the chance to read it and ask me about some of my oddities, quirks, and boundaries. If they never come back to me with a question or edit then I assume we’re all on the same page. They then have a few days to respond and provide me with their working document.

It’s incredible to me how few people have thought about their ideal work scenario. Does anyone think about the kinds of communication they can cope with and how they want to work with others? Do you know how many people have responded and sent me there document back over the past two years? None. If I don’t know how to earn your trust and respect, then how the fuck am I meant to do so?

We’re setting ourselves and each other up for massive and consistent failure because we can’t communicate effectively.

I prefer to give you my trust and respect on day 1 and then tell you how to keep them intact. I expect you to do the same and then we’ll make our relationship work better and for longer.

Go out today and give people the respect and trust that they have spent their entire lives earning.

Plan in decades. Think in years. Work in months. Live in days.

Four years ago I wrote a story that blew up a little around the Internet. It was titled: Advice from 30 year old me to 20 year old me.

I ended that article with a quote which I coined that summed up my advice from me to myself:

Plan in decades. Think in years. Work in months. Live in days.

That was the most highlighted and commented on sentence in the entire article. People have copied it, claimed it as their own (you sneaky sneakers), put it on t-shirts, posters, pillows, bedspreads and even mugs.

After four years I have had time to reflect on these words that struck so many people as important and decided that I should explain a bit more.

Plan in Decades

The older I get the more I realise how much time I have.

When I realised that I had decades and decades in front of me, I understood that I needed to plan more seriously for being alive for perhaps another 6 decades of living.

Personal Life

Saving became immediately relevant to me and compound interest started to play a big part in my thinking about money. For example, I could buy a new pair of sunglasses today that I don’t really need, or I could save the $50 and watch compound interest do its thing if invested properly.

Every dollar I save contributes towards an earlier retirement.

Fulfilling frivolous and immediate desires became less and less important to me when looking ahead at the next 50 years.

I also began to understand that my health needed to be a focus as a matter of urgency. Being healthy cannot wait. You can’t plan to be healthy in 20 years if you don’t start being healthy today. That applies to mental and physical health.

I do not fear death. I do fear being incapacitated in my old age.

Business and Work

It takes at least five good years of work to figure out if a startup is going to be something real and worth sticking with. If you want to retire at the age of 60 and you are 30 years old now then you have six businesses in you before you call it quits. If one of those businesses works out and you stay in it for ten years then you can start 4 businesses before you want to retire.

Four businesses. Single digits. That’s it.

You only have four chances to choose the right thing to build to make you happy and earn enough money to retire. Four. Choose wisely, think carefully and be vicious with your focus.

I also started thinking about people I know who were “stuck” in shitty jobs that they hated because they were earning a decent salary. I became very sad for these people. Planning in decades means that you have enough time today to leave that shitty job, find something new and be even slightly happier. If you want to learn a new skill and you take ten years to learn that skill you still have at least another five decades to work with that skill.

Take the time to learn something new.

Get the fuck out of that job you hate.

Think in Years

It’s extremely hard to think in decades. It’s mentally very difficult to think about what the world, your relationships, your life, your business will be in ten, twenty or thirty years from now. Humans just aren’t wired that way. We think in much shorter stints.

However, it is completely possible to think about the next 12 months, 24 months or 3 years and imagine that you could save enough money to go on a dream vacation or move to a new city or country.

Thinking in years while planning in decades allows you to plan for big moves every decade or so and think about how to action them every year or two.

Personal Life

Short term goals (yes, 1–3 years is short term) are lofty but attainable and you should absolutely have them. I’m shocked at how few people have personal goals laid out.

Do you want to be married and have kids? Are you with someone who makes you unhappy and you’d like to leave them? Do you want to get fit and healthy? Pay off your house? Sell your car? Get out of debt?

Think about these things and pick some that are the most pressing. If you don’t know which are the most pressing then perhaps start there and think about what you want your life to look like in three years. Then plan out the things that you absolutely have to do to get to that three-year goal.

Don’t just meander through the next 3 years aimlessly, you’ll be stunned how quickly you turn 35 and then 50 and then 75. Three years becomes thirty in an instant.

Business and Work

Anyone can do just about anything for one year. When I hire people to work with me I always ask them to give me at least one year before they make any decisions to leave or stay. I believe it takes at least 3 months to learn your work, another 3 months to become proficient at your work and a remaining 6 months to figure out how to do your work properly with the people around you and the business goals.

Quitting sucks, doing it within one year of starting something is a tough call to make but honestly, if you’re thinking in years it can be difficult to think about staying in a difficult work environment for longer than you absolutely have to.

If you’re unhappy then speak up and attempt to resolve things. If you’re happy then think about how you can maximize the experience over the next 2 years and really go all in.

If you’re thinking in years then you’ll likely begin to understand that your plan for the decade is informed mostly by the things you set out to do and then achieve the years that make up that decade.

It’s November 2019 as I write this. It’s less than 60 days until the end of this decade. As you read those words, how do you feel about the last ten? Ten years are up. What have you achieved?

Work in Months

I find it impossible to work effectively on something for one day of work. The best work I’ve ever done happens when I have set a goal for the year and every month I work towards that bigger annual goal. It’s important to me that the annual goal ties closely into the plan for the decade or the next two decades.

Each month I reevaluate and iterate on the annual goal and decade plans. How has the world changed this month? How have I? What has happened that I can retroactively learn from between January and July?

I find that thinking about my work in days becomes extremely complicated and overwhelming. What do you start working on today if you want to be financially free in 20 years? I don’t know. Maybe you can resist that coffee and save $2 every day? Sure. In that scenario, you are working on your plan to save money by living a frugal life every day.

Working every month towards a bigger, deeper goal makes more sense to me.

Live in Days

I am an existential nihilist. I believe that each human creates their own meaning from a life that we did not choose to be born into.

This gives me a personal sense of freedom that if we are barred from knowing the grand “why” regarding the existence of life then it is ours to define. This gives me agency. Each day the meaning of my existence is mine to decide. I absolutely love this feeling but it is a dangerous one because it gives you control of your own life. There are no scapegoats, there are no outs and there is no blame to place. One of my favourite statements comes from Jim Carrey, he said: “You can fail at what you don’t want, so you might as well take a chance on doing what you love.” This kind of change and decision happen today, not tomorrow, not in a year and not the next decade. Start making decisions today and start making plans in the coming months.

Today is the most valuable day that I will have and that’s a fucking scary thought if you’re unhappy or feeling trapped. But here’s the thing; if you’re living in your days and you hate them, the only person you can possibly blame is yourself because you have free will and agency over your life. You can choose different thoughts, you can react in different ways and you can approach life in an altered state from the one you are in right now.

A Minecraft simulation.

A good friend of mine recently said to me: Different inputs lead to different outputs. If you change the things you read and listen to today, if you completely flip the script that you have been reading for the past ten years then you have a chance at a different day tomorrow. Different inputs lead to different outputs.

Elon Musk recently suggested that he’d be surprised if we weren’t in a simulation and to be honest, I’d be shocked if this was the one true reality. Seriously, Donald Trump is president.

So for a second let’s believe that today is the most important day and that you are not working towards an afterlife of some kind. Then let's throw in the simulation theory. Combining the two; I live in a simulation and anything is possible so today may just be the day that everything changes.

Live in the days. Don’t toss them away like tomorrow is an expected response to turning the lights off at night. It is not.

Plan in decades. Think in years. Work in months. Live in days.

Ten Years of Business Lessons From a Startup Founder

Ten years is a long time, but actually not very long at all.

I started my first business when I was 16. I had no idea what I was doing. I barely knew that I was starting a business if I’m honest.

That was almost 20 years ago and since then, I have continued to build businesses. Over the past decade, I have taken my entrepreneurial journey very personally and dedicated my life to building businesses.

I spend most of my time thinking about businesses, building them, engaging with people who build business and think about them. I am entrenched in the world of building things and I absolutely love what I do. But it’s fucking hard. It’s meant to be hard. There are real, brutal lessons to learn at every turn.

I have failed more than I’d care to remember but the past decade has been an incredible ride. I have learned many things but below are some of the most important business lessons that I have learned.

Raising money is not hard

I have spent so many coffee meetings talking to entrepreneurs who believe the world doesn’t understand them and their amazing idea or business. I’ve heard about fundraising difficulties in every format, industry, vertical and market. I mostly hear about fundraising difficulties from founders who should be struggling to raise money because money isn’t free.

“VCs are idiots.”

“Money is dumb.”

“I have to move countries to raise funding.”

“My startup is worth more than this offer.”

These are typical statements from startup founders.

Here’s the hard-hitting truth: If you can’t raise money, it’s probably your fault, not the investor’s.

Reasons that you’re struggling may include:

• You have no traction.

• You have no revenue.

• You have no track record as a founder (this is a tough one).

• You are lacking a good network to provide warm introductions to investors.

• Your idea is bad.

• Your execution of the idea is bad.

• Your market is too small.

Money is not hard to raise. Good partners are hard to find. The right partners are hard to find. But raising money, any kind of money, is not hard.

Building a business is difficult. You do not deserve funding. Investors don’t owe you anything. You need to prove that your business is worth investing in and if you do that, money is not hard to raise.

As a parting note; my last few businesses have taught me that more than raising funding, founders should be improving sales. Selling is the best kind of funding. If you can’t sell your product and generate revenue then you shouldn't be able to go out and raise funding either.

Finding a partner is incredibly difficult

Often a business partner is someone you know already. Perhaps from childhood, school, university or a colleague. You fall into this relationship out of convenience, comfort, and safety. You likely did not specifically seek them out, interview them and then decide to build something together. You just knew them and that they were right for you at the time.

I have never met a business founder who doesn’t have a difficult, often gut-wrenching cofounder story to tell.

This relationship is often overlooked as one of the most important in your life. You will spend more time with this person than with anyone else. At a startup, you work very hard and for very long hours in high-pressure situations that can blow up at any time. You will engage with your cofounder more than your partner, kids, family or best friends. You better fucking like them! And if you don’t like them, you better respect the hell out of them because you are going to become them and they will become you.

It is with a heavy heart that I can confidently tell you that at least one of your business partnerships is going to get messy. It’s inevitable. There are precious few cofounder relationships that don’t end in someone losing out. History is littered with cofounders who are broke while their ex-partner cashes in.

Choose your next business partner very, very carefully.

With that said, building a business alone is more difficult than building one with someone else. So take your time and get to know people before you jump into a startup with them.

Perseverance and resilience are everything

Here’s something that very few bright-eyed, aspiring startup founders understand or believe: You are going to fail.

You’re going to fail every day and at every turn. Most of your failures will be manageable and small so you’ll be able to withstand them. Building a business is going to be difficult. Long periods of consistent fun are hard to find when you’re building something new on the cutting edge.

There will be months and maybe even years where at the end of the period you’ll feel like it was mostly good. And that’s amazing. There may even be periods where you thrive on the excitement and things feel amazing. I am sure that in those periods you will just have adjusted to the hardships of startup life.

The key skill that I realized I needed to refine was perseverance. You can’t be a “one and done” kind of person to be a successful entrepreneur.

You have to an “onto the next one” kind of person. You hit a wall, bash through it, climb over it or walk around before you figure out that there actually was no wall to begin with and then you hit the next wall and do it all over again.

The key is to do it all over again. DO. FAIL. LEARN. REPEAT. This is my business mantra. As Dory would say: “Just keep swimming”.

I also realized that people love to say “no” to startup founders doing crazy and new things. You’re going to hear the word “no” more at a startup than you ever thought possible. When I was building a mobile internet startup almost ten years ago, I went out to raise a second round of funding. I met with nearly 40 different investors in six different countries and guess what? They all said no. Every single one. But I pushed on continued to build.

If a single “no” can knock you off your feet and send you spinning then you’re in trouble. If it’s important, it’s meant to be difficult. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

Luck and timing are real variables

When I was at university I built a social network for students in digs. It launched shortly after Facebook launched. It was an unabridged failure. There are many variables at play when something succeeds or fails but two that are undeniable are timing and luck.

You don’t really have control over either of them but you can use both to your advantage if you are experienced and aware of the world around you.

Practice is a key component of improving your luck. The harder you work, the luckier you get. The golfer, Jerry Barber coined that phrase and I think it’s true. There is no such thing as a shower moment for someone who is not an expert in their field. That’s not the kind of luck that exists to me.

If you spend ten years refining your skills, working hard and practicing it is possible that you will one day hit the jackpot while taking a shower. Only with dedicated work and consistent practice will you “stumble” on a solution to a problem that you’ve been contemplating for a year. This is the kind of luck you can control. You put yourself in a position, through hard work, where luck matters.

Timing is an entirely different kind of variable that can make or break your business and brain. Launch a year too early and you miss a trend. A year too late and the trend has missed you.

I’m a firm believer in “done” being better than “perfect” for this reason. You can capitalize on a trend with a product that is out in the market whether it is perfect or not. You can iterate and make the most of your luck and the timing available to you.

Tied into this is the ability to look up and recognize shifting macro trends in the world. While building Nic Harry (a sock company I used to own) we started aggressively opening physical stores while the world was experiencing what we now call the “retail apocalypse”. Stores and malls across the world were closing while I was opening a new store every 3 months. Insanity that could have been avoided if I had just taken a month to breathe, look up and research the world I was living in.

Cash flow vs Revenue vs Profit

Over the past decade, I have explained this simple concept to so many entrepreneurs that I feel like I should tattoo the phrase to my forehead:

“Cash flow vs revenue vs profit: Ask me about it!”

Believe it or not, your business can be bringing in massive revenues and go under the next month. If you are reading this and wondering how then you don’t understand what cash flow is.

The simple version: Money going out of your business (expenses) VS money coming into your business (revenue). If the expenses are due sooner than the revenue is coming into your account, you are screwed.

If your revenue is high, expenses are low and the money lands in your account often but leaves infrequently then you have time and cash flow to keep your business afloat. The flow of cash is an incredibly important and potent concept that most entrepreneurs just don’t grasp effectively.

Not enough businesses aim to be profitable consistently. This is the holy grail for a business owner if you haven’t realized it yet.

If you can build a business that consistently has more money coming in than going out you are profitable and sustainable. That’s the dream!

Hiring is more important than you think it is

We all talk about how important hiring is but when you are scaling a business you just need bums in seats doing work. Often you bend on your criteria when you’re in a rush and up bringing in a sub-par team member.

Take it from me; the bad eggs rot from the inside out and the rot spreads faster than you can manage it.

Hire slowly. Fire quickly.

When you are just starting to build your team, remember that you will become the five people you spend the most time with. Even darker, I believe that you will inherit the worst parts of the five people you spend the most time with. Make sure that their worst parts are better than the best of anyone else.

These first five hires will also very clearly define your company culture. Don’t underestimate how important this is.

One of the most important lessons I have learned around hiring and firing is that sometimes your best performing team members are assholes.

You have to fire the assholes immediately.

One person can destroy your culture far more detrimentally than the work they do or the money they bring in.

Remember: Hire slowly. Fire quickly.

It’s OK to walk away

When you start building something it’s usually because the business is important to you. You are trying to solve a real problem that matters in the world or your world at the very least. This emotional commitment to your idea or business is a silent happiness killer.

We marry our ideas but we forget that half of marriages end in divorce.

Don’t marry your business or idea. There are lots of businesses to be built and lots of ideas in your head. There is a lot of time for you to start something new.

If your business makes you unhappy, if you hate going to work every day, if you can’t get up in the morning, if you are unhealthy, fat, tired, drained, fearful, stressed out and suffer from panic attacks, do yourself a favor and consider walking the fuck away.

You may be embarrassed for a short time. You may feel depressed and sad but I can tell you now that you’ll get over it. You’re an entrepreneur and we are survivors, builders, thinkers, and opportunists. We make it through.

No one ever tells us it’s OK to walk away so I’m telling you right now; It’s OK to walk away and burn it all down if you have to.

Failing is integral to succeeding

I have never met a successful person who has never failed. The smartest people I know embrace failure, they seek it out and work towards it as a goal. They aren’t shy about making mistakes.

The moment I decided to talk openly about failure I realized that everyone I know wants to talk about it too. We’re all neck-deep in imposter syndrome trying to feel OK about ourselves and our failures.

The more frequently we engage in conversations about our failures, the more we’ll all learn from them and accept them as normal. If you hide your failure and try to protect yourself from it you never become battle-ready and resilient.

The more you fail, the better you get at recognizing when you’re on the cusp of failing. As soon as you see the signs you can pivot, bob and weave and try something new. If you spend your days trying to avoid failure then the impending failures will just get bigger and bigger until one of them crushes you.

Failure will eventually catch up with you and hurt your business. It’s just a part of building stuff. The first lightbulb wasn’t the one that we use today. The first social network didn’t live forever (and I doubt FACEBOOK will either).

Lots of little failures are manageable, aim for them, seek them out, recognize them and kick them in the ass!

Your network defines you

Relationships are really difficult to build and maintain. Most people have a core group of people and are set for life. This has been true for my immediate network of people that I rely on day to day but isn’t true of my broader network of people that I trust and that trust me.

I’m a 50/50 kind of guy. 50% of people really like and trust me and I have a feeling that 50% of the people I have met dislike me immensely and probably wouldn’t work with me if they had the choice.

I like these odds. I don’t live to placate the people around me. I don’t live to make everyone happy. But I do respect people even if I don’t like them and I hope that people who encounter me respect me because I tell it like it is.

Early on in my life, I realized how important making and retaining relationships would be. I may not be the best friend to everyone but I have always stood by my way of life and am consistently the same person with everyone.

If I don’t like you, you know it. If I respect you, you know it. If you do something I don’t appreciate, we’ll have a conversation about it. This is how I maintain my network; I’m honest and I am who I am.

I take very seriously who I choose to spend time with. Time is literally the only asset that we cannot make more of so I am extremely careful with who I spend my time with. This is why I curate my network so carefully.

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt and engage with them to figure out if we can help one another. But I don’t abuse my network of friends and colleagues. I nurture it, I add value, I provide an ear when they want to talk and connect people that I think can and will do amazing things together.

As my network has grown I receive requests for introductions. I once read about a double-opt-in introduction rule; you can only introduce people if both parties agree to the introduction. This is now my default rule. There is nothing worse than forcing a friend who trusts you to engage in a useless connection that you haven’t vetted properly and isn’t beneficial to both parties. Give the parties the ability to say no without any awkwardness.

Growing and maintaining a wider and more important network of people is a difficult task and requires dedicated attention. Don’t neglect it and then expect help one day. You have to nurture and grow with and for the people around you. Add value and then ask for help when you need it.

Sleep can make or break you

The older I get the more I want to ensure my sleeping routine is right for me. Early in my entrepreneurial journey, I worked through sleep cycles and ignored the damage that sleep deficit was doing to me.

Staying awake until 3am and coding, writing a business plan, hustling, grinding and pushing through the wall of doubt is destructive and frankly very naive.

If you are dumb enough to think that you are special and can survive on 3 or 4 hours of sleep then that’s your choice. I am not that person. I like to wake up fresh and well-rested.

You’ll probably ignore me on this one but remember reading these words in ten years when you’re exhausted and realize that you actually do need 8 hours of sleep.

If you are interested in figuring out how much sleep your body needs to survive then try this:

Go to sleep relatively early for a week, around 9pm and don’t set an alarm. Make a note of the time you wake up naturally. Do this for 7 days and you will figure out your body's natural requirement for sleep. My minimum is 7 hours and max is 9. If I sleep for more than 9 hours I am a mess.

Here are some simple tricks I’ve learned to help me with my sleep:

• Meditate in the morning or the evening. It teaches you to calm your mind.

• Don’t look at your phone before you go to bed.

• Don’t watch TV in bed (duh).

• Try to watch less TV overall.

• Exercise.

• Don’t check your email (duh).

• Turn off all notifications 30 mins before bedtime.

• If you can’t sleep because your mind is racing: Count your breaths to ten and then start over until you fall asleep (there are lots of this kind of trick).

Mental health matters

I spent my early twenties ignoring my mental health.

I ignored the physical manifestations of my severe mental tension, stress, anxiety, panic, imposter syndrome and fear.

I ignored it when it gave me a stomach ulcer. I ignored it when it ruined my relationships. I ignored it when it sank my businesses. I ignored it because the world told me that men don’t have mental health issues, they are strong and it’s not manly to admit you need some help and mental coaching. I ignored my mental health until my mind broke.

Eventually, I saw a psychologist and took my mental health seriously and I have never looked back.

Now I meditate multiple times a week and whenever I can, I talk to people about how I’m doing and how they are doing. I talk openly about mental health being as important as physical health.

Learn from my pain; take your mental health seriously and if you feel like anxiety and stress are overwhelming you then talk to someone.

None of it means as much as you think it does

You think that your social media widget thingy is the most important thing in the world when you’re building it. The truth is, none of it really matters that much. Yes, it’s good to be passionate about what you do and yes your business is important to you at the time you’re building it, but it’s likely going to fail and you’re likely not going to die when it does.

If it literally isn’t going to kill you, it isn’t the most important thing.

You think that you need to answer that email at 10pm. You don’t.

You think that you need to wake up and get straight to work without exercise or meditation. You don’t.

You think that if you don’t make this business work your life will be over. It won't.

Your business is going to fail, trust me. It’s going to happen.

You know what happens tomorrow if your business fails today? Not a whole lot. You may have debt and that sucks, but you can work your way out of it. You may have some pissed off staff or suppliers, but they’ll get over it.

Something only matters as much as you give it relevance and weight.

You can choose a different reaction. You can choose a different feeling. You can integrate your work with your life and vice versa. It’s not a zero-sum game.

The biggest lesson that I’ve learned as a startup founder and entrepreneur is this:

Life is not a zero-sum game and nor is business.

How To Work From Anywhere

Running a retail business is a lot trickier than I was led to believe early on. Who'd have thought?! Well, to be fair, initially I thought that I was running an ecommerce business and now Nic Harry is a full-on multichannel affair. That makes it complicated and intricate for me as the founder. I have multiple stores to visit, a warehouse, meetings to have and my team of specialists to engage with. That's all without even touching customer service online, ecommerce management and the general daily operations of running a business.The most complicated part for me is that my team is never in one place at the same time, ever. That means that I'm on the go and engaging with them all at various points and places throughout the day.This makes mobile and remote work essential to my job.Let's take a short diversion here: In the past I have been very vocally anti-phablets. If you're wondering what a "phablet" is, it's a phone that's big enough to be mistaken for a tablet. I've mocked friends for using the iPhone 6+ (although I was probably more mocking them for using an iPhone in general, to be fair). Recently I was asked to use the Huawei Mate 8 device. It is massive. It's as big as the iPhone 6+ physical and they managed to fit a bigger screen into the device. I was very nervous using this device to begin with. But I have to say that it has turned out to be the best device I've used in the past few years.Now, back to business.

The Right Tools

There are some key things you must have to run a business on the move. From the start you need to set things up using tools that operate effectively on mobile devices. Google Apps for Business is the perfect tool across the board for this.Nic Harry uses for everything: email, documents, word processing and project management as well as a central resource for our team to find things they're looking for. Best of all, it's fully mobile optimised. Well worth the money.We also use Slack for all communication and short messages that don't require paragraph form emails (I hate emails longer than 5 sentences).Very practically it's important to all have data on your device and ensure that you have a phone that can access the 4G networks. Slow or no Internet is the end of your work day.

Practical Examples

I took the decision to spend money on data so that I wasn't tied to wifi networks when I absolutely have to do something on my mobile phone.Recently I was caught between stores and meetings and had forgotten about a Skype call with my investors that I had to be on. There's no real need to find a wifi network or an office when you can open up Skype on your device and make the call. I use my headset effectively too so that I can view the documents we're discussing while still on the call. With the Mate 8's huge screen I didn't struggle with this at all.For all of our stores we use Vend point of sale. They have fantastic reports that I use frequently throughout the day to keep my team of retail specialists engaged with our figures and performance. Opening up the reports, screengrabbing and sharing on slack is simple and there isn't really a need for a laptop or computer that's larger than the one in my pocket.The major key to working from anywhere is to be prepared. Have a mobile device that has tethering if you need to connect your computer, have data on your device and make sure that you are using the right tools for your needs. 

Charity Will Not Save South Africa

*This story was originally published on Medium.I am a business builder in South Africa and I don’t take money out of my business to give to charity.I spoke at a conference in Cape Town recently and at the end of the talk there was a Q&A session. One of the questions I was asked made me angry and frustrated about the perceived value of charity in South Africa.The QuestionHave you considered partnering with a charity to give some of your business proceeds to their cause?The AnswerI do not give money to charity out of my young business. I use every cent I can to grow my business, make it sustainable and employ more South Africans.The thought processThis is a very prominent way of thinking in South Africa; If you do well, you are obligated to give back to your country. It’s also something I agree with. But depleting the imperative cash flow of my young business is no way to help.The South African concept of Ubuntu roughly translates to “human kindness” and explains that I am because we are. So yes, I believe that we are all obligated to do our best to help one another.We’re a country with a complicated and traumatic past that we pay for on a daily basis. There have been, and still are, injustices that are unavoidable. This latent guilt is unfortunately often expressed in the form of a monetary donation by the privileged which they think will be used to bail out the under privileged and previously disadvantaged.That’s a nice thought but a deeply flawed one.There are a massive number of organisations that exist in South Africa that receive an offensive amount of money on an annual basis. I’ve spoken with some of these organisations, I’ve met with the people who run them, I know people who work in them and many of them are not working effectively.Many charitable organisations do fantastic work that creates sustainable change but on the whole, charity is crippling South Africa. The money is mismanaged, the infrastructure that is needed to distribute this money effectively is not present and often many of these organisations are corrupt and ineffective.I would argue that many of these organisations instil the wrong attitude in people by providing them with a short term solution and not empowering them to change in the long term.Charity allows us to believe that we are owed something. Charity forces us to become dependant on the kindness (guilt) of others. Charity does not empower us. Charity will eventually come to end.Businesses create jobsThe reason that I am so steadfast in my opinion about small businesses donating money to charity is simple; Small businesses need every single cent that they earn to grow. Taking money out of a business early on puts unnecessary pressure on the business and will ensure its slow demise.In short: Keep cash flow in the business.Why? Simply put, the more my business can grow, the more people I can employ, the more I contribute to the economic growth of the country which ultimately leads to long term empowerment of people who deserve a real shot at a sustainable living.Obviously there are exceptions, there are always exceptions. One such exception is Toms Shoes. They built in the charity aspect of their business model directly into their product, pricing and structure from day one. In fact, it’s so entrenched into their business that it’s a selling point for most of their customers. This is intelligent use of the charitable angle. Toms Shoes, however, owns the entire experience. They give out the charity in specific ways to specific organisations with a very clear and specific intent. It’s not endless, aimless, fruitless charity. It has intent.Aimlessly donating money to “your favourite charity” will not make a difference. You’re piling money onto problems that are not being rectified but appeased. Lipstick on a pig. Bandaid on a broken arm.A SolutionMy proposed solution is a simple one. Take a portion of the money being dished out to under prepared, overfunded, ill-conceived and often corrupt charitable organisations and give it to small businesses. Give them each enough money to have a shot at building a real business.If a small business can grow to employ more and more people who will in turn plough their hard earned money back into the economy spending with other businesses then we’ll all benefit in the long run.Henry Ford used this simple tactic in his own company when the US was going through a recession. Instead of copying his competitors who were cutting jobs and paying staff less, he decided to pay his staff more so that they could afford to buy the cars they were making. This increased his sales, increased their spending power and helped (even in a small way) to rebuild their economy.It’s a simple shift in thinking but an imperative one.I don’t want to help create a generation of human beings on our continent who believe they are owed something. I want to help create a generation who understands the value of hard work and determination as a means of upliftment.I want to help create a generation of people who feel empowered to change their lives, not to wait for a charity to give them just enough to survive.Notes I am not talking about every charity in South Africa or Africa. I’m not talking about your charity specifically (although if you feel offended in some way, perhaps you should take a harder look at your organisation). I am not trying to say that everyone who works for a charity is corrupt.I am, however, making a statement about small business being the future of our country and charity being a short term fix to a long term problem.I specifically address the question of donating money to charity in this post. I am massively in favour of small business, big business, any business for that matter, donating their time and skills to charity. 

Stop Being a Knowledge Snob

*This story was originally published on Medium.Every day entrepreneurs learn new things, we fail in new ways and we stumble over new steps. It’s time to start sharing these lessons, not protecting them.I’m so tired of people protecting their experience and knowledge as if it’s the one ring that binds them all. Your Precious.You might think that the special trick you just learned is unique. It’s not.You may think that the lesson you just learned after spending a ton of money is worth protecting so that no one else will know it. It isn’t.I understand that you believe you’ve got an edge. I understand that you think that everyone else needs to suffer through their lessons the way that you suffered through yours but that’s very childish and short-sighted.The more we all share, the more we’ll all grow.There’s this new thing that’s burst onto the scene recently that’s a great example of how sharing knowledge can help everyone. It’s called the Internet.Sharing knowledge really works. Crazy but true.But I Need My Knowledge To Beat My CompetitorYes, you do. That’s 100% correct.I’m not asking you to divulge industry secrets.I’m just asking you to be honest and transparent about what you’re going through. Don’t mislead people and tell them that everything is going brilliantly when it’s not.Don’t let younger entrepreneurs believe that starting a business is a cake walk.Don’t force other people to blow their hard earned (or raised) cash learning things you can help them learn faster.A rising tide lifts all ships.The more money we all make, the more money we’ll all make.Read the above sentence again. Let that sink in.If there is an ecosystem of wealth and wealth creation, it becomes contagious and self-fulfilling.It’s extremely rare that you are the only person breaking into a completely untapped market and that you need to hide your trade secrets from everyone to get a leg up. It’s more likely that you’re entering a cluttered space and could either use some help or could help others.The advertising industry is a great case in point. There is very little new and innovative that’s happening. Clients cycle from one agency to the next looking for a silver bullet. That silver bullet at the moment is digital. All the agencies have a similar product or service offering and they all ultimately do similar things. But there’s one thing missing that they can all work together to improve.The entire industry (agencies and their clients) could massively benefit from more knowledge sharing and less knowledge snobbery. If a few agencies got together and decided to educate their clients en masse about digital do you know what would happen? No, the clients wouldn’t abandon ship and hop to a different ageny. They’d probably spend more of their marketing budget on digital overall. That would mean that everyone would have more budget to play with. Right now, education is the problem and it’s one that everyone can solve if they all actively engage with one another instead of bumped heads.The Startup Knowledge CurseStartups across the world believe that they are onto something that no one has caught onto yet. I know. I was there too and sometimes I still think that. But the truth is, we all deal with the same difficulties that end up destroying our businesses and very rarely is it our core idea.The things that destroy us all are cash flow, accounting, HR, PR, Marketing and all of the other business basics that we’re too proud to admit that we struggle with. Imagine if we all willingly gave of our knowledge on these topics and shared the best solutions to get into the game. We’d have a whole culture of strong businesses that are able to focus on what really matters, not the business basics that slowly kill us all.The Fear of FailureA big part of the secrecy that we all perpetuate is fear. Fear forces us to clam up instead of ask the stupid questions. No one wants to look like the dumbest person in the room. We all know the saying and it’s a cliché for a reason:There are no stupid questions.There are only condescending and stupid people who answer questions like assholes.The other day I had to ask a client what a monthly statement was. I had invoiced them, they owed me some money and wanted a statement. I had to google it as well as wait for their explanation. That’s a pretty simple thing that I should probably have known. Once I had googled it, I immediately knew what it was and why I needed to provide one. But without actually googling it, how wouldI have known? I wouldn’t have. I’m not an accountant, I’m not the CFO in my company. But now I know. Simple problem, simple solution.You may be sitting there smugly laughing at how much of an idiot I am to now know what a monthly statement is in that context.That’s exactly the problem right there. I’m most definitely not the only person who has had that problem. But culturally we’re programmed to immediately make people feel small and less intelligent than ourselves. That’s got to change.The more empowered we are to take risks and share knowledge, the more chance we all have to create sustainable and profitable businesses.It’s hard out there on your own. It’s time we start to share our experiences so that we can create a thriving economy.

Inspiration Indaba is Coming

One of the things that I hear all the time from young entrepreneurs, from people trying to start their own business or even people who just like to complain, is that there are no local success stories.The truth is that there are many success stories of South African entrepreneurs and business people who have excelled but these stories aren't being told frequently enough.In the USA they have something called the FailConf where they get a bunch of business people, founders and entrepreneurs together to talk about and learn from one another's failures. In South Africa we don't necessarily need a FailConf so much as we need an event to inspire us to push beyond our corporate aspirations and start something new that can grow into something amazing.The Citadel Inspiration Indaba seems to be this type of event. The very first event is taking place in JHB soon and is going to feature some impressive entrepreneurs who have achieved great levels of success.Herman Mashaba started the now iconic Black Like Me, from the boot of his car. Although he did not complete his university education, Herman ensured that, step-by-step, he “created the reality that [he] had envisaged for [himself]”, becoming one of the most recognised South African entrepreneurs.
 
Rob Stokes started Africa’s largest independent marketing agency, Quirk, in his bedroom whilst still a student. The serial entrepreneur is a firm believer that “hard work is the only way to go”, and it is this discipline, coupled with creativity, which has resulted in his agency being one of the most awarded on the continent.
 There is a great line up of other speakers that I'd be happy to sit down with over a dinner and pick their brains. Head over to their site to have a look at who else you can hear from. September 2nd is too far away so it's worth visiting the website to find out more about the times, tickets and general information.

AfricanUp.com goes live

Today marks the launch of a platform that Paul Cartmel and I have been working on for a while now. His team at New Media Labs have been fantastic in getting us to a point where we can launch a beta version of the platform.AfricanUp.com is a place where we hope startups, investors, tech hubs and accelerators around Africa will be able to connect with one another.Here's the press release for more info:Cape Town, South Africa – South African entrepreneurs Paul Cartmel and Nic Haralambous have teamed up to launch AfricanUp (africanup.com). The platform is touted as a space for startups, technology hubs and accelerators​ to connect with one another, for investors to find startups, and for the technology eco-system at large to tell the world its story.True to AfricanUp’s purpose, the platform is the result of a connection between the power of New Media Lab’s Lenticular technology (lenticular.io), and Haralambous’ business-development.“There’s no need to reinvent the wheel when launching a platform like AfricanUp. Our goal isn’t to build a revolutionary technology business. Our goal is to connect startups, founders, investors and accelerators from around the world,” says Haralambous.Explaining his vision for AfricanUp, Cartmel shares, “When Nic approached me with the idea, I instantly felt that the Lenticular platform New Media Labs has been refining would be perfect for the job. We decided to partner up and launch a minimum viable product to put Nic’s brainchild to the test. Powered by the reputational scoring and social features of Lenticular, AfricanUp has an incredible potential to be much more than a listing of startups, angel investors and hubs in Africa.On AfricanUp, both start-ups and investors have the opportunity to tell their own stories, recommend their peers, and ultimately grow their profiles and reputations. There are currently four main categories through which these conversations are facilitated: Startups, Accelerators, Investors and Tech Hubs.”The founding team looked at a few key countries when building the platform, considering factors such as existing technology ecosystems, their problems and opportunities.Through the research process, Haralambous and Cartmel both gained a strong belief in the talent, opportunity and investment possibility to be found in Africa. “However,” realised Haralambous, “One of the major requests that I get from investors and accelerators around the world when discussing technology in Africa is for ‘the great startups’. This made me realise that there is a search problem in the technology startup space (ironically) and I wanted to create a platform to help startups and investors spend less time searching for each other, and more time building great things together.”Cue AfricanUp: helping startups, investors, accelerators and tech hubs connect with one another across borders.“In a sense, this is a proudly African way of strengthening businesses – by strengthening the connections in the entire eco-system,” remark the founders.

Use your own product or die

Don’t hide behind the bravado of being an entrepreneur, fess up and admit that you don’t use your own product or face destruction.

5 years ago I was working inside a very large corporation on a product that operated like a startup but from within corporate walls. The product was a location based mobile social network. We had grown the user base to a couple of million users and things were fine.

But after a while growth stagnated and I noticed that I wasn’t using it as regularly as I wanted our users to. Statistically I would have been classified as a Monthly Active User but only just. We kept building and marketing the product while trying to solve the stickiness problem by adding features and complicated solutions to simple problems. The truth that no one wanted to point out was that most of the core product team didn’t use the product at all, let alone every day.

In the end I left and started up my own mobile social networking company, Motribe.

The business was simple; a platform that allows anyone using any mobile device to create their own social network. I had a great technical cofounder and we raised funding, hired staff, gathered users and found clients.

But early on there was something deeply wrong with what we were doing and I just couldn’t put my finger on it. We had growth but nothing explosive. We had usage but sustained usage wasn’t where it should be. We had revenue but nothing earth-shattering. We had customers but not the ones we wanted.

We successfully sold Motribe in 2012 and I started an ecommerce fashion company called NicSocks.com.

My experiences with NicSocks.com have taught me something that I wish I had noticed and admitted when I was at Motribe. You see, I wear the socks that I produce at NicSocks.com every day. Literally every single day. I consume my product more than any of my customers and believe in my brand with ferocious dedication. I drink my own Koolaid.

In hindsight, Motribe created a solution that was looking for a problem. I don’t recall a single Motribe staff member (myself included) who was using the Motribe platform to run a mobile social network for fun and for themselves. We didn’t use our own product. We didn’t obsess over it and we didn’t love it. We loved the idea of it.

There were some major business issues that we should have rectified, technical fixes that we could have implemented and ways to start fixing things but I didn’t have it in me to admit out loud that we had a very real problem. We weren’t building a product for ourselves. We were building a product for someone who we thought wanted what we had to offer.

I wish I had the guts back then to to admit that this is probably the simplest success test for your company: Do you use your own product?

If it’s a car, do you drive it? If it’s a watch, do you use it to tell the time? If it’s an app, do you open the app daily, weekly, monthly and use it as you hope it should be used?

If you don’t use your own product the way you want your users to, you’ve got problems.

If you can recognise this as an issue at your own company then you are at the start of a long and hard journey that will either end with you shutting down your business or fixing the endemic problems that your product has.

The test is usage and the solutions are big, hairy and difficult. You owe it to yourself, your team, your investors and your users to be as honest about your company and product as you possibly can be. If you sugar coat the truth you’ll have rotting problems that fester and destroy you from the inside out. If you are honest and upfront then you leave yourself with a small window of opportunity to redo, rectify or reevaluate the viability of your business.

Pay to watch advertising - can it work?

I've seen a lot of different advertising platforms, companies and businesses come and go. I've interacted with many having worked at various media houses in SA as well as at a major mobile network. Everyone is trying to solve a problem in advertising. Advertising makes the world go round whether we like to admit it or not.It's quite well known that people are becoming blind to advertising. This is a problem for anyone with a brand trying reach an audience.SeeSayDo.mobi is a company trying to combat ad-blindness by incentivising consumers to visit their mobile site and watch advertising. In exchange for a consumers attention, SeeSayDo will pay out airtime, cash or data.The service talks about DSTV as their major partner right now amongst "others". I think there's legs for something like this to really work if the advertising being showcased is sufficiently engaging to keep the consumers coming back. Ultimately we'd all like to think that people will do anything for money but the truth is, it has to be time well spent and money well earned.The service is definitely trying to keep you on your mobile phone. The desktop website explicitly tells you that the best viewing is done on a mobile device.Registration was simple enough and I had no problem kicking off into the advertising categories. The first advert I listened to was a Mini (the car) advert and was an audio ad. The quality of the audio was listenable but not fantastic. I imagine they're doing this to keep data costs down, which I appreciate.I am curies about the value in spending data to listen to ads in comparison to the amount of money I would be paid out to listen to those ads.This isn't a new concept when you look at the global market but all in all it's a well executed platform that seems to do what it promises: Pay you to watch adverts.Your attention is a valuable commodity, don't forget that. SeeSayDo.mobi knows this and has created a smart model to gain your attention. Bare in mind: If you're not paying, you're the product.View their TV ad above. And no, you wont get paid for watching it.*This is a sponsored post

Talk to your customers and actually listen

I had a very interesting exchange with a NicSocks.com customer recently.While reviewing failed subscription orders I noticed that two orders back to back were from New York and both customers had canceled their orders at the final checkout hurdle. This struck me as odd so I decided to contact each of them.One of the customers responded to me almost immediately. He explained that the shipping price was firstly not stated on the product page and secondly was unexpectedly high in comparison to the monthly cost of the subscription.I immediately apologised and explained that shipping to countries other than South Africa was a costly thing to do.Fortunately I don't work alone at NicSocks and Jen noticed that the site was set up incorrectly for this particular order and was charging this particular type of customer for shipping when it shouldn't be.If I hadn't have taken the time to email a customer who had chosen to cancel an order we would never had discovered this mistake. We have since rectified the error and I have contacted the customer to thank him for helping us discover this little bug.In short - contact your customers, listen to what they have to say and respond.

Learn How to Apologise

I like to be right but I am wrong a lot of the time and for much of my career I struggled to apologise when an apology was needed.Not wanting to apologise is about pride and ego. Both of these things can get in the way of a good relationship (in business or in personal life). Apologising for a mistake, bad service, bad performance or for generally doing wrong is a pretty standard response. It amazes me how many businesses don't allow for this response to take place.For a long time I would blame clients, blame the individual who I was dealing with, blame staff members or anyone I could point a finger at if there was an issue. It's easy to blame.It is significantly more difficult to acknowledge a problem, apologise for it and rectify it.In truth the only thing that makes an apology so difficult is pride. Once I was able to get over the fact that mistakes happen and that most people and clients allow for mistakes to happen, I began to apologise when things went wrong.The most incredible thing happened after that... problems actually got solved, arguments end quickly and issues are resolved swiftly. I even found that fewer problems arose when I was willing to own them.An apology is free, and so is great customer service so you should use both when they are required.People respect the honesty it takes to acknowledge and own a mistake.It must be noted that sometimes an apology isn't enough to save a relationship. Sometimes it just serves as a final statement of ownership of the mistake and the final step towards a parting of ways.

The Sony Xperia Z Ultra "Phablet" & Smart Watch 2

I have been using an iPhone for almost 2 years now and I've had it up to here (imagine my shaking my right hand wildly above my bald head). I feel locked in, I feel like I don't have the ability to customize the operating system, I feel... I just feel like it's time for a change.It was with this in mind that I decided to start seeking out phones I could test. Sony were the first bunch to be kind enough to send me a device to test.I received the Sony Xperia Z Ultra (XZU from here on out) along with the Sony Smart Watch 2.

First impressions last

This phone is absolutely massive. Unexpectedly and absolutely massive. Going from the iPhone 4S to this is an incredibly shift.I'm not entirely convinced that I like it but with that said browsing on the XZU is fantastic. The only real issue I have is how much of an idiot I appear to be when I hold up this boat to my face to answer a call.

In the pocket

I took the plunge and entered the wild world with the XZU. The phablet (I don't think I'll ever get used to that word) barely fits into my pocket. Having the XZU in my pocket makes riding a Vespa to work extremely challenging. The earphone jack is situated on the side of the device which for me is problematic. I have my phone in my pocket all day and much of that is on a bike or walking around with earphones plugged in. If the jack is on the side of the phone, it pokes me in the leg (especially when seated). I'd rather have it at the top like the iPhone.I have had two meetings today. Both meetings I tried my hardest to keep the phone in my pocket and make use of the Sony Smart Watch that I've been given. But alas, I don't feel happy calling a watch smart if all it can do is display information when tethered to my phablet via bluetooth. Maybe it's an expectation management issue, but I wanted my watch to actually be smart. For me that means that I can leave the phone somewhere, like at home, and go for a run but still access things via the cloud. This would require a sim card and data bundle. But that's what I was hoping for. Colour me disappointed.Back to the meetings. In spite of wanting to check email, twitter and instagram I was fearful that I would be mocked if I pulled out the XZU boat. So I kept it in the pocket.People are significantly more polite to me than I would be. Both meetings, when I eventually did have the guts to pull the phab-let out my pocket, gave it a look and enquired about the size of my device, politely. Both however commented that it was the largest device they'd ever seen and weren't sure they'd know what to do with a device this big.How big I hear you ask? Let me show you a side by side of the XZU and my iPhone 4S:

Ultimately the size of this device is just unmanageable for me. I'd love to say, as Andy Gilder mentioned, that phones just aren't for making phone calls any more but I can't. I want my phone to fit in my pocket, receive phone calls and, at the same time, not make me look like I'm holding up a black box flight recorder in case of emergency.This device has the potential to please many, many enthusiasts; it's thin, light, immensely powerful and fast, has a great screen that is large and in charge and it even looks sleek and well built. For my practical day to day use this phone just wont make me one of the many enthusiasts that it will please.

Days like these

There are days when I question every decision I make. When my head thumps from the second I wake up to the second I hit the pillow to sleep.Days when every email I receive makes my heart sink because I think I've screwed up.Days when a phone call isn't a conversation but the end of something.Days when a tweet could start a war and a SMS could end one.Days when it feels like no one understands anything I'm saying.Days when even just the sound of someone's voice can send me into a rage.There are these days when my list of tasks seems insurmountable and ever-growing.Days when I feel like a breakdown is right there at the end of every word that comes out of my mouth.Days when fear is all I can see in front of every opportunity.These are the days that make things seem very real.Being an entrepreneur is not for the weak.

Data is like breathing. You don't know you need it until it's not there

Every business needs data. If you think you're different you're wrong. Whether you are selling cupcakes, socks, strategy, advertising, cars or anything in between you need to know things about your business.What do I mean by "data"? Basic information that your business generates around core product or services. Information like this: How many customers do you have? How many return every day? What's the average size of their transactions? How many people do they tell about your product?These things can help you understand your business better and ensure that you have a good grasp on the parts of your business that you can improve upon or can be satisfied with.The complicated part is know what data you need. What things do you need to know to make things better or find what's broken? Here are some questions to ask and things to think about when considering what to track and why:

What is important to you and your business

Is it your customers, the number of sales, the time of day? What exactly matters to you? What's on the decline or on the up and why?

Constantly challenge what you think is important

Things change. Sometimes what was important to your business last year isn't important (or as important) now. Constantly reassess your requirements.

Ignore vanity

This is simple on the surface but it's tough to execute. Forget about your ego and then try to assess what matters to your business. It's not about how many new users you have; it's about how many of those new users return to your service and become life long customers. The Vanity metric there is "New Users", the relevant metric is "Returning Users". Drop the ego.

Don't lose data by being unprepared

When you launch a new product it can be exciting and overwhelming. But that's no reason to forget to track things. If you wake up 6 months in and realised that you didn't record any information then you'll never be able to get it back. It's gone forever. So plan from day one to record things.

Actually listen to the data

Don't simply track things, listen to what the data is telling you and actually execute changes to improve the situation. You may have thought that product X would sell but the data suggests product Y is selling better. You need to shift and emphasise product Y so you sell more, or angle marketing back to X and figure out why it isn't selling. React. Quickly.

Build graphs and keep up to date but don't obsess

When I worked at Vodacom we received an email once a day about user growth on our products. This was good to begin with but ultimately lead to me obsessing over numbers and tiny incremental shifts that I had very little control over. Let the data guide your bigger picture not create an OCD issue in your business.

If you aren't tracking it, it's hard to get better at it

Try to do things that are quantifiable and comparable. If you can quantify and compare you then can improve. The truth is that many business people are scared to track things because deep down they know that the truth which will be revealed may kill their business or product. You need to overcome this fear. If you believe in your business, product or service then the data can only help you improve if you're willing to listed.