EFC Entrepreneur's Bootcamp 2013

The EFC Entrepreneur’s Bootcamp will be one of its own kind. We are not holding a theoretical showpiece of rhetoric prowess. Instead we are preparing Start-ups and SMEs for the marketplace in a practical way.

When you attend the EFC Entrepreneur’s Bootcamp, not only will you learn the most practical fundamentals of planning, starting, and running your business, you will have the opportunity to interact with some of the most prolific business personalities and professionals in the country. These include renowned former ZRA chief Mr Chriticles Mwansa, CB Engineering President Mr Berry Claude Mwango, Head of Local Business at Barclays Bank Kafue House, Matilda Karimamusama, Finance Director for the Lantana Group of Companies, Chisha Kumisuku, and SME crusader and SME Toolkit coordinator Edwin Zulu, Trio Consult and brains behind www.mpoto.info, Lee Muzala, and Tax, Accounts, and business consultant Gabriel Bwalya among others.

Secondly, you will enjoy a fast track set-up for your business, and most importantly, you will be introduced to available capital sources.

As an added incentive, one participant will walk away with an interest free loan (T and Cs apply), and that could be you.

The format for the training will be such that, when you are done, you will have not only opened and started your business the right way, you will have also achieved the following

• Increased your business management and entrepreneurial skills
• Introduced to available capital sources on the marketplace
• Introduced to models of business that significantly reduces your cost of business

I wish to invite you to this momentous event. Now, you will be required to pay K700.00, which will cover your coaching fees, hotel standard meals, teas, and refreshments for two full days. Its worth your best shot, if you asked for my coaching advice.

This magnanimous event will be held at ACAMM’s Lodge, in the quiet environment of ROMA TOWNSHIP, where you will enjoy a totally focused atmosphere pinned at your success in business. The dates are 28 and 29 March, 2013.

Kindly note that beside the bootcamp, we are also running an INFORMAL diploma in Business Management and Entrepreneurship at the cost of only K350.00 every Tuesday. We are also running a Radio Show on QFM on Mondays from 18:40 to 19:00hrs.

For more details please feel free to contact me on 0967908628 or brianmatambo@gmail.com. Now go ahead and share this. 

Five Steps to Building Start-up Teams

Starting a company and making it successful are huge challenges for an entrepreneur. In fact, such challenges are so huge that founders usually conclude that they can’t do it all themselves. This means that they must hire other people. But how can entrepreneurs ensure that the benefits of those new hires exceed the risks?

To answer that question and five others that are vital to start-up success, I set out to interview at least 150 entrepreneurs and ask them how they build and grow their companies. My new book,Hungry Start-up Strategy (forthcoming in November 2012), details the key concepts that emerged from those interviews — focusing on six key questions of start-up strategy: how to set goals, pick markets, raise capital, build teams, gain share, and adapt to change.

When it comes to building teams, entrepreneurs make plenty of mistakes. Among the two most common ones are

• Hiring friends who don’t add the skills that the venture needs at each stage of its development. Founders too often think it will be fun to hire their friends and just do it before giving much thought to how those friends will affect the start-up’s ability to grow. I have had several conversations with young founders who do this and wake up fairly early on in the process realizing that those friends are adding little to the venture and demanding a big cash payment to go away; and
• Assuming the start-up’s culture will take care of itself. Another common problem is start-ups that do not understand the importance of culture — since the founders are often people who excel in developing the product and lack a deep understanding of how to work with other people. One of the unintended side effects of technical excellence is the failure to realize that hiring and motivating top people is a critical element of the entrepreneur’s job. And actively managing a culture is an essential part of that. Failure to do so leads to poor productivity, high turnover, and increased odds of running out of cash before getting market traction.

So what is a start-up CEO to do if he or she wants to build a team that helps the venture achieve its growth goals? Here are five key steps (assuming you already have assembled a team of co-founders):

• Evaluate founders’ skills and adjust accordingly. Once the founders have identified the skills required, they should take a hard look at whether the current founding team has those skills. If so, the start-up should get to work. If not, the founders should reconstitute the team to add needed skills and shed ones that are not adding value. Although it is painful, such reconstitution boosts the venture’s odds of succeeding. 
• Agree on roles and goals. Once the founding team has been assembled, each member should agree on their role and set goals. And if the founding team can build the company to the point where it can raise expansion capital, it must decide how to articulate its culture — particularly if those funds will go to hiring a bigger team.
• Create culture. Many start-up CEOs perceive that they ought to define the venture’s culture in ways that will help them to hire. To that end, entrepreneurs develop a set of core values—either unilaterally or in collaboration with other stakeholders. The goal is to agree on shared values to build the team and boost its effectiveness as the company grows.
• Analyze skills needed to prove start-up concept. The start-up founders should take an objective look at the skills that the venture will need in order to prove that the concept can work as a viable business. To do this, it helps to look at successful competitors in the market the venture is seeking to enter.  If there is a common bundle of skills that the most successful competitors have within their founding teams, the start-up should consider whether it should follow suit.
• Use culture to hire, promote, and purge. Finally, the start-up should use these core values to hire people. To that end, it should devise processes to find candidates and screen them that explicitly incorporate those core values. In that way, start-ups can limit the number of hiring mistakes they make. Moreover, entrepreneurs ought to use the core values to decide who to promote and who does not fit.

FROM IDEA TO BUSINESS AND PROFIT

Oprah Winfrey

Most entrepreneurs have lots of innovative ideas. And 99% of the ideas do not materialize. That in itself is not such a problem until you begin to lose out on ideas that could have turned out to be massively successful. Here are some pointers on what you need to do to make sure that you maximize the potential of your ideas.

WRITE THE IDEA DOWN

This practice in itself can increase your chances of succeeding. Whatever is not written down does not have the mandate to become reality. The psychology of writing places obligation on the subconscious to demand action.

Writing your idea down also helps in sticking to the original idea or monitoring its metamorphosis. That means the only way you can be faithful to your original idea is by writing it down. And if the idea requires a process of metamorphosis in order to increase its chances of achieving your mission, then writing it down will help you to track and manage those changes without losing the idea to the pressure of change.

BRAINSTORM THE IDEA

Brainstorming opens your mind to further possibilities locked in your idea. Do not be afraid to share your ideas with your trusted colleagues or friends and be open to their suggestions and input.  But be careful who you tell about your idea because there are idea vultures who may go ahead and implement your vision without consulting you.

RESEARCH

Research is key in business. You have to be curious about the projected market, the numbers, and the kind of cash flow you expect. Use the internet, talk to people in similar business. Talk to potential customers.

·         Will it make things better?

·         Will it solve a problem?

·         Will it make things faster?

·         Will it cost less?

·         Will it add value to the customers’ life or business?

·         Will it be preferable?

·         Will it be profitable

BEFORE YOU FIND MONEY FOR YOU IDEA, FIND A MARKET FOR IT

The only way to succeed in business is to make sales. Therefore top on your priority list should be “where will i sell it?” If you can have an order before you get the capital, the better.

CRITIC YOUR IDEA

Do not be overly confidence in your ideas. Subject them to criticism. Can you use it yourself? Can you pay for it at the price or would you appreciate it better at a higher or lower price? Is it better than current alternatives?

QUALITIES OF A GOOD IDEA

Need: more people will need it

Cost: more people will afford it

Location: more people will access it

Ideas also fail when -

Timing: Moving to fast or too slow.

Pricing: Too expensive or too cheap

Location: To far, inaccessible. 

Welcome to the Fraternity

A photo for your motivation: Andrew Carnegie

The levels of poverty and unemployment in Zambia can be reduced and we the entrepreneurs of Zambia are determined to make that happen. It is not easy, but entrepreneurship has always thrived on overcoming hardships. 

This is why we have formed the Entrepreneur Fraternity in order to motivate, educate, empower, and unleash a generation of entrepreneurs who will win in any environment, under any circumstance through leverage and the power of outsourcing. 

The entrepreneur fraternity will mentor it's members to business success and maturity and will never leave them. A the name suggest, when you belong to the fraternity you will never take the business journey alone. 

Welcome to the Entrepreneur Fraternity. You can register by sending your FULL NAME, email address, and occupation to 0964561505 or brian@zambezihub.com. 

Look out for the following activities that are lined up

1. The Entrepreneur Fraternity Mentorship Class that takes place every Friday, from 17:00hrs to 18:30hrs at FINDECO House, 11 Mezzanine Floor, Cairo Road, South End, LUSAKA. Charges for this program are free. You are only advised to bring a contribution of any amount to pay for the venue costs, and this is not mandatory and you should not feel intimidated to come if you do not have anything. 
2. HUSTLING 101: This is a 10 minutes radio show focused on giving entrepreneurial tips. The show will start on the 18th of September on HOT87.7. Other details will be announced as soon as possible. 
3. Entrepreneur Fraternity Boot-camp: This will be the highlight of the year and we wind up a year of activity with a camp for 35 entrepreneurs. The aim of this camp is to develop a generation of entrepreneurs who will be able to make it anyway under any circumstance using leverage and the power of outsourcing. This boot-camp to us means jobs and wealth creation. For more information contact us by email on bookings@zambezihub.com, or call 0955215151. 

The Entrepreneur Fraternity - Overcoming Business Limitations.