DEMISE OF BLACK BUSINESSMAN

Growth requires ownership and accountability, which is something many small business still need to master. To grow your brand you must perceive it as the world – with professionalism and etiquette.

To understand that a brand is not the chaos of working behind it, but rather the image that sells your product or service and so people do not look at your brand and see the struggles of the business owner or the problems in the daily operations or even the imperfections of the employee culture and behaviour – they just see the brand, which is what sells and what is also on the line.

Exploited

This means that you cannot separate the brand from the ‘behind the scenes’ and in fact there is a unison in the different factors. For example, when employees are underpaid or exploited and this reaches the public, it is not just a company issue or an employee issue; but it also becomes a brand issue because of how this can jeopardise the image of the organization.
It is fundamental to understand that there is a difference between being blessed with a great business idea and having the skills to run and implement it. As soon as you have one, it must be your mission to acquire the other. These should go hand in hand because to have one without the other is to set yourself up.

There is a reason big establishments invest in these skills and the education to properly navigate through the social responsibilities of the business, because to be a successful business owner is to understand the pillars that make you the people’s choice and how you can maintain and capitalise on that. People buy more than just a product, they buy an experience and they buy with their feelings before they do so with their money. The idea that a sad story should suffice for a business is ludicrous and remains one of the reasons why many businesses are established and still fail, because of the idea that a businessman only needs a sad background story to make it through.

Accountability

Where accountability is needed there is the idea that, ‘it is a black owned business that irradiates the consequences’ and takes away the need to still be held accountable. We want to wear excuses when accountability is needed, to assume that our struggles hold foot to the consequences of what we need to work on which is wrong. A few years ago, the typical story of growing up poor and struggling would suffice to get the masses going; because as individuals we are black people sharing in the struggles and relating to how difficult it is for the common man to make it in such a big world and in such an economy.

The lower socio economic class emphasises with the average struggling man because of how they understand his struggles, but for the average business man to use the struggle and race card as a way to buy compassion and escape accountability at critical points is problematic. It manifests a poor business culture within the small business community and reinforces the idea that the community is an enemy that seeks to destroy the black businessman, in the words of our language ‘ngobe ngumuntfu lomunyama nimucekela phansi ninemona’.

This thinking continues to destroy the potential of businesses growing at international level because it enables poor customer relations and business culture and, as a result, insinuates that there is a free pass for lacking professionalism, respect, etiquette, good quality and great customer care in our society. If by mere grace of our race and struggles, we are allowed to treat the community as we wish, who then takes accountability when we lose the trust and support of the very same community?

Survive

Perhaps, in some lengths this is also an issue of being a ‘small fish’ trying to survive in the ocean? Even so this should be a sign that there is so much room for improvement, to grow and to understand why it is important to invest in skills training and education aligning to the specific industry your small business is in and business in general. There is also a need for us to change our perception of who we are so that we do not try to capitalise on emotional blackmail to cover any areas of incompetence. There is no easy business, in fact the more that a business grows, the more likely it is to have challenges; and, therefore, the bigger your business grows, the more you need to invest in creating a reputable brand.

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