By Teboho Seretlo
A little bit about me. I have worked for more than 25 years in corporates since 1989. These included Unilever, SAB, The Coca Cola Company, Momentum and finally Nedbank. I held various positions from being a technical trainee going through the brilliant graduate programmes of these illustrious companies. These positions offered me very well-rounded general management skills, from logistics, financial management, project management, human resources as well as transformation/B-BBEE.
Finally, in 2015, I was ready to go on my own, but I was never fully ready. I chose a premium dry-cleaning franchise, purely because of my small risk appetite and it felt “Safe”, nothing was going to go wrong on a big scale, like in a huge business. A year into it, I knew the culture and the goings-on were not fully aligned with my value system and work ethic, but I soldiered on despite my gut feel telling me otherwise.
Here are some quotes I live by:
“Take complete ownership of your outcomes” Gary Keller
“Our highest priority is to protect our ability to prioritise” Greg McKeown
“Whatever it is that you want to do, you’ll find in life that if you are not passionate about what it is you are working on, you won’t be able to stick with it” Jeff Bezos
Lesson 1 - You are your own boss
Transitioning from a corporate job to becoming your own boss, the buck stops with you. It is perfectly ok to ask for help and not wanting to do it all, just to save money (example, I wanted to do my own social media, bookkeeping etc.) and some of these things I was not even good at or keen on doing. Surround yourself with like-minded people who are also in business and can add to your business (example – you might know someone who has a digital marketing company who can help you with social media and you help them with what your business does well.) Your corporate “connections” are no longer taking your calls, so stop pinning your hopes that when you leave the corporate job, you are walking away with a huge network of people whose doors you can knock on anytime when you need business.
Lesson 2 - Set boundaries
Dare to say “no”. What you say “no” to gives you a chance to say “yes” to something you value. Taking calls at all hours just because you have no set office hours is a no-no. Sometimes the money will dry out and you are tempted to take on any project as long as it brings in some money. Do not - because you will compromise your quality and always get into an argument with your clients about price and timelines. Remember the saying, “it’s not always about the money but about the legacy”
Lesson 3 - Choose a gig you are passionate about
If you are not passionate, you will give up at the first sign of problems. Your grit will be tested. When a gritty person gets “NO” for an answer or encounters a set-back, they may be disappointed, but not for long. Better still, adopt a craftsmanship mindset as a pre-requisite to a passion mindset because craftsmanship says “how can I improve and give something uniquely valuable to offer the world?”, whereas passion is about what the world has to offer you. Getting corporate clients was hard and I should have been grittier but because I was not passionate about what I was doing, I did not persevere.
Thank you to the www.productivitygame.com for teaching me these lessons and for reminding me that actually, if I fail, like I did with the dry-cleaning franchise, I need to find a minus and teach others about my journey, instead of having a pity-party.
“Insights from the ego is the enemy” – Ryan Holiday
Teboho Seretlo is the managing director and founder of Seretlo Investments (Pty) Ltd, a business support services consultancy which assists micro, small and medium enterprises with business intelligence support, business plans and investor pitch decks, funding applications, business cost optimization and business improvement processes. She also ran a franchised premium dry-cleaning outlet of her own for 5 years. She holds a BSc (Hons) in Maths from University of Fort Hare, Management Development Programme (MDP) from GIBS and an International Executive Development Programme (IEDP) GIBS & Rotterdam School of Management. She has over 25 years working experience with corporates such as Nedbank, Momentum, The Coca-Cola Company, SABreweries and Unilever, where she gained experience in a variety of disciplines including B-BBEE &transformation, financial management & budgeting, project management, decision-support, business strategy & analysis as well as research. She is passionate about gender issues and does volunteer work for women empowerment organisations.