Starting With Demand & Willing Buyers

Anyway, a number of emails inspired today’s article. So I hope you’ll enjoy it, if you can’t relate to it then hopefully you can find some inspiration from it.

I started my first brick and mortar business when I was 21 years old

Before that, I mostly focused on MC work, speaking jobs and other public appearance work which paid my bills and more.

The brick and mortar business was a Model, Dance and Workout studio in Rustenburg.

I started that business with nothing but R800 to my name. I used R250 to secure a booking for a municipal hall and used the rest to design and print flyers which I personally placed at every pinboard that I could find in Rustenburg.

I remember begging the municipality bookers to let me reserve the hall and pay them the remaining booking fees after the first few classes. It was a risk but it paid off.

I booked the hall for 4 Tuesdays in a row, this gave me enough time to get my first round of students.

In my flyer, I offered my students the first class free and gave them the opportunity to sign up and pay at the end of the month.

I borrowed my brother’s radio and I started with 12 students on the first Tuesday and ended up with over 50 students by the end of the month.

I paid the municipality the money I owed them and stayed in business for another year.

Due to location issues and the need to move back to Johannesburg, I ended up closing the studio in December 2012.

Fast forward to January 2015, I started my social media consulting business, TKBC Agency with NOTHING in my bank account.

I told all my friends about my business and I offered prospective clients their first month of social media marketing services free thereafter I charged them around R5000 a month.

By May 2015 I replaced my salary and by December that same year, I doubled it.

The first few months were very hard but I pushed through.

How was I so entrepreneurial at such a young age?

Was it my parents that influenced me to start my own business?

Growing up my parents were both employees and they did well for themselves. They both decided to make the switch from employee-to-entrepreneur when I was in my late teens.

One thing that I learned from my parents is that you don’t need money or funding to go into business (no matter how capital intensive the business is). All you need is a demand and willing buyers.

I know what you’re thinking… How does that work?

When you start a business the most important thing is… willing buyers.

Before you get into business, you look for demand and willing buyers. Once you find these willing buyers, you sell your product to them and use their that money to fund the production of your products.

It’s not a scam, this is how business works. 

Many first time entrepreneurs think that it works the other way around and they spend their own money developing products and services that no one wants to buy.

A smart way to go into business is to start by looking for willing buyers or customers first.

That’s how I started my Model, Dance and Workout studio, that’s how I started TKBC and that’s how many successful international business people have started their businesses too.

Don’t believe me? Keep reading!

Do you know how Microsoft got it’s first started?

While Bill Gates and business partner Paul Allen were still in university, they hatched a plan to sell a BASIC software program to a company called MITS in New Mexico, When Gates and Allen contacted the company to sell them their program they hadn’t created it yet.

When the president of the company agreed to see a demonstration the boys scrambled for 2 months to create the first prototype.

They used the computers on campus to make it happen. They had a successful demonstration, they were hired by MITS and founded Microsoft.

As you may know, Bill Gates is still one of the richest men alive and yet he started by selling a product he hadn’t yet developed! Why? Because he first looked for a willing buyer them he created the product.

Here’s another example...

Albe Geldenhuys started USN, a billion Rand business from his kitchen in Pretoria.

It started off with his girlfriend mixed formulas for him. He liked them and then he started selling the formulas at gyms and word spread.

They continued to work from their kitchen until their sales could support their investment in offices and product development at CSIR. HE STARTED IN THE KITCHEN!!!!

One more example…

Ivan Epstein, the co-founder of Pastel Accounting, was an accountant at PWC when he realized that employment was not for him. He saw employment as a controlled and structured environment which restricted him as a young, ambitious man.

When he went into entrepreneurship, he and his friend bootstrapped their business by first convincing another software company to hire them to help install and train their customers for them. Later on, when they realized that there was a great demand for this, they gathered what they could to develop their own software and sold it for R1000.

They personally installed and taught every one of their customers how to use their software. That was in 1988, today over 250 000 business use their software.

The concept of using customer sales to fund production is not a new one. 

You won't be the first person to start a business with nothing and you won’t be the last. Many people have started with nothing and have become some of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs.

Funding or the lack of money can not be a valid reason for not taking action.

Start making moves and figure it out as you go. Trust me, you won’t be the first entrepreneur to start that way.

So how do you find these customers and where do you find them? 

Let’s start with the how. If you want to be found, you have to be visible. Did you know that you can start a WordPress website for FREE! You just need a cellphone or laptop and a connection to the internet.

You can do the same with social media and email marketing. You can register on different platforms for free and load information about yourself or your business and start selling your offering!

Next, where do you find your customers? These days you don’t have to leave your house to find your customers.

It’s up to you to go online and fetch them. How? With email and social media. That’s how I started my business and that’s how many millennial entrepreneurs have started their businesses too.

My Point... I want you to realize that your life is in your hands. There is no excuse or suitable reason for you not to get started.

If you dream of changing your life, controlling your money and building the lifestyle that you want for yourself then you have to make it happen and you have to start today!

My problem is that I’m truly invested in you

I really am. It’s sad but it’s true.

When people share their dreams with me, I immediately become invested in them and I start thinking of ways to make those dreams a reality.

But sometimes, I think that I believe in peoples dreams more than they do and that’s sad.

I want people to get up and act, take control of their lives and be happy.

What excites me about the Employee-to-Entrepreneur workshop is that it’s an action-driven workshop.

People who have invested in the Early bird tickets have invested in an experience that will help them leapfrog over dreamers who’ve done nothing to bring their dreams to life.

They will leave the workshop as conquerors, people who have taken action to turn their business ideas into something real.

Their ideas will be brought to life in the form of websites that will not only sell their products and services, but they will be able to accept payments and process orders from the moment they step outside the workshop venue.

What’s more is that they will know exactly where and how to find their customers because we would have shown them how to do so through the social media and email systems which we will build together during the workshop.

I see this workshop as an empowerment session that will give people the power to change their lives from the moment they leave the workshop.

I know that they will reach their success because they will leave with everything that they need to make it happen.

CLICK HERE TO MAKE YOUR INVESTMENT AND JOIN THIS SPECIAL GROUP OF PEOPLE.

I poured my heart out into this and I hope it impacted you in one way or another.

Go out and be fabulous

Regards

Kopano Shimange