Entrepreneur’s survival toolkit from the banker to business owners

Times are tough for South African business owners, the toughest in the nine years that Mercantile CEO Karl Kumbier has been focusing on banking entrepreneurs. So what to do about it? In this forthright podcast Kumbier provides a reality check on what happens when government and big corporates push out their invoice payment dates – and offers some sage advice for entrepreneurs struggling to ride out the storm. If you own a business or consider being one, invest some time here. – Alec Hogg

This is The Rational Perspective. I'm Alec Hogg and in this episode: survival suggestions for South Africa's cash-strapped entrepreneurs. There's a lot of hot air around entrepreneurship but one thing that is indisputable is that the thousands of hard souls who start and build businesses are the job-creating engine of any economy. With South Africa's formal unemployment measured at almost 30%, the health of this sector is critical to close the backlog and for the future of this country on the southern tip of Africa. Getting quantifiable information on this sector is a challenge but I have a source. Mercantile Bank focuses on serving entrepreneurs, primarily those in the job-creating R1m to R40m per year turnover category. Given the unique insight it has into its clients' books, to find out how well the business creators are doing, I popped over to Mercantile's Chief Executive, Karl Kumbier for a cup of decaf coffees today.

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