5 Tips for business success from the co-founder and MD of Payfast:
Last year, Payfast, the company Jonathan Smit co-founded with Andy Higgins, made history by becoming the largest-ever acquisition in the African payments sector, after selling a majority stake to Kenyan-based DPO Group. The deal extends Payfast’s existing South African user base of 55 000 to allow merchants and consumers from another 18 African countries to carry out instant EFTs on e-commerce sites. Speaking to Marnus Broodryk’s on his “Making SMEs Matter” podcast, sponsored by Investec Business Cash Solutions, Smit shares his 5 tips for business success:
1. Problems are the bread and butter of entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurs thrive on solving problems, but more specifically on creating solutions that the rest of the world didn’t even realise it needed. “I wanted to pit myself against the world and see if I could figure out this problem, which for me is kind of what it entrepreneurship is – a never-ending series of, let’s not say problems but, challenges you have to solve. If you see something in the world that doesn’t work, but think that it should work, that’s where entrepreneurs come in. Entrepreneurs see the world as it is but believe that something could be better.”
2. Don’t disregard capitalism
There’s a tendency to consider capitalism as a negative, but Smit believes there is no greater measure than money to provide feedback on your product. Capitalism is a great feedback mechanism, if you get it right the market will tell you that you’ve got it right. People don’t appreciate how great capitalism is in terms of quantifying things. It’s a brilliant system for self-regulation. “People try to make money a bad thing, but money is just a concept we’ve created where we ascribe value to certain things. It’s not that there’s some person saying ‘this is what the value is’. We as human beings are saying something is valuable or not. We as people determine where the power in [money] lies.”
3. Start young, stay hungry
You can decide to become an entrepreneur at any point of your life; however, youth has its advantages. Start as young as you can. It’s a lot easier if you don’t have lots of responsibilities. Your 20s is a great time to be an entrepreneur.
4. Communicate with your customers through good times and bad
Good customer service isn’t difficult. Businesses make mistakes all the time, but when you own up to making a mistake, people appreciate it more. They appreciate the human touch. If you make a mistake, there’s no point hiding it away or sweeping it under the rug.
5. Put your emotions aside when making big decisions
“As human beings we make decisions based on our emotions,” says Smit. “But it’s helpful to try and remove ‘too much’ emotion when making critical decisions. I take the same approach to problem solving, people get too involved with why something happened and who’s to blame. It’s not very helpful. What you need to think is ‘where are we now?’ and ‘where do we want to be?’”
“South Africa is an abundant breeding ground for entrepreneurs and SMEs (small and medium enterprises), yet they are faced with a variety of challenges as they endeavour to grow their operations into sustainable organisations. Investing is just one element and understanding what it takes and having insights and words of wisdom from those who have walked the path is invaluable for those that find themselves in similar situations as they build their businesses and dreams,” adds Sean Jackson, Head of Business Cash Solutions at Investec.
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