Stacey Vee: A get down & get dirty guide for new entrepreneurs

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The world needs entrepreneurs, bold starter-uppers who have what it takes to create opportunity, prosperity, and jobs. But what do entrepreneurs need, aside from an abundance of faith and hope? Here are some inside tips. 

By Stacey Vee*

Build Your Own Desk. It’s a hands-on, do-it-yourself mantra for anyone who wants to make a success of their own business. Here are some other handy tips and bright ideas from Stacey Vee, who runs a small and fast-growing content agency in Johannesburg.

The Internet zings with advice for entrepreneurs. The 20-something CEOs of disruptive startups moonwalk the stage at TED talks, in their limited edition Nikes.

They leave audiences feeling electrified, pumped up with one-sentence epiphanies. “People don’t buy what you do,” they say. “People buy why you do it.”

It’s become a cult. The only thing people talk about more than the highs of entrepreneurship, are the lows. And even the lows are glamourised. “Fail fast” is one of these start-up mantras that comes to mind.

What no one really talks about is what happens in between. For the last two-and-a-half years, I’ve been running my own agency. My business partner and I are in the comfy phase where we’re not too concerned about sinking, and we’ve figured out where this ship is headed. I guess this phase is called ‘growing your business’.

It’s an awkward period where you’re steadily plodding towards your goals. You’re wiser, more realistic, and have settled into a daily routine instead of flying by the seat of your Spanx. Here’s what I’ve learned:

Plan for profits. In the beginning, you’re focused on trying to pay overheads and salaries. We closed off our books recently, and were pleasantly surprised that we made a modest chunk of moola (yay) and we have to pay company tax on it to the vogons at SARS (boo). Now we need to decide what to do with our earnings. Reinvest it in our business? Take dividends? Invest it? Don’t be caught with your profit pants down.

Make your get-shizz-done hour untouchable. When you’re running a company, there’s always someone popping their head into your office to ask something. You’re busy all day, hummingbird-style, but get bugger-all done.

I solved this problem by blocking out my most productive hour in my calendar. I don’t take meetings in that time, I close my office door, and I sure as shish kebab don’t waste it by catching up on emails. Answering emails is not work.

Think about the wheels on the bus. That’s the stuff that makes your business go round and round. For instance, every time we hire an extra person, we need to buy another desk, chair and laptop. BYOD – build your own desk – has become an amusing part of our culture at Content Candy.

But we’ve reached the point where we have to make some expensive upgrades to things like our phone points (we’ll need a proper switchboard soon and not just a single line), our DSL network and investing in one of those Hulk-size printers. This is not cheap, and you need to put in in your budget well in advance.

Don’t stop getting your hands dirty. I’ve helped build every single chair in our office. There are photos of me, on the floor, assembling desks, with my underwear sticking out. When you start out with a small team, everyone gets stuck in, even the boss.

But the bigger you get, the less time you have to help out with the day-to-day stuff. I think it’s a mistake not to roll up your sleeves occasionally and work in the trenches alongside your team.

But remember, you’re not friends. This has been my toughest lesson. I want everyone to like me, so I overshare. But with more staff, comes more responsibility. Those first few months of getting your business off the ground are so intense, it’s impossible not to bond with your employees on a personal level.

Now that we’re bigger, I need to hold myself in check – because you can’t be presiding over a performance review when the person you’re evaluating knows about your secret KFC hot wings addiction. It’s just not professional.

Clone yourself. By this I mean, you want to be able to step away from your business completely and it’ll still run like clockwork. This comes down to finding a person/people with the same skillset as you – my clone is my partner Brendah – and building processes that keep everything ticking along when you’re stuck in back-to-back client meetings.

These are some of the hard-won lessons I have to share with you. Excuse my lack of snazzy PowerPoint slides. But I did wear my Nikes while I wrote it, promise.

• Stacey Vee has worked in the media for over 15 years, runs a charity, and writes one of SA’s most potty-mouthed blogs – it’s about parenthood, obviously. When she’s not running her small agency, Stacey is competing in a sport she calls ‘stress-baking’ and kissing better the ouchies of her three devastatingly handsome sons: Travis the Lionheart, Ryan and Oliver.

• This article first appeared on the Change Exchange, an online platform by BrightRock, provider of the first-ever life insurance that changes as your life changes. The opinions expressed in this piece are the writer’s own and don’t necessarily reflect the views of BrightRock.