Get Quick Answers to Tough Business Questions

As a business owner, the person taking all the risks, who do you call when faced with sudden big challenges?

Hi.

I'm Peter Carruthers, and I've been self-employed since 1984. It's been a lonely road much of the time.

I have worked with more than 30,000 owners of small businesses since 1992. Each has had a unique business, but as business owners we've all shared the same problems. We've all struggled to get answers that are practical and easy.

The biggest challenge is that we often want a quick, short, practical answer. That's not often what we get once we've found a relevant expert (often in the Yellow Pages). A single consultation with an attorney, or a labour specialist, or an accountant can reach R1,000 pretty fast! And often they will give us far more detail and theory than we want.

Lets keep this as simple as we can. Your business efforts typically go through three phases. I have tried to match those on this page. Click on the links below to go to the relevant section, of just keep reading down the page.

• Click here if you're facing business closure. This is where the rubber meets the road, and this time is probably going to be the most expensive time in our lives. We're the only crowd in town that have some real answers and help during this awful time.
• Click here if you're starting up a business. This is one of the scariest phases of business because there is so much to learn, and so little time to learn it. We can help by offering guidance, knowledge and skills from folk who've been there and survived.
• Click here if your business is alive and kicking. You might be expanding, or facing a few questions that don't yet have answers. We can offer support and direction from a very experienced base.

 How do we add value to the owner of a business in trouble?

Imagine that your business is really in trouble.Who can you turn to for useful advice?

• Your bank? That's the last place to go, because they have a very active interest in your finances, especially if you have an overdraft, or hire purchase, or a loan.
• Your suppliers? You probably don't want them to know how much you're struggling because they'll stop supplying instantly, and start demanding payment.
• Your accountant? Maybe, but since she is obliged to tell the government the moment you're in trouble, that's a no-go.
• Your lawyer? Assuming you have one, this will be a costly chat. He can only tell you what the law says, rather than tell you what actually happens and how you can protect yourself and your home and your life savings.
• A friend? Maybe, but my experience in this has been echoed by hundreds of others. My personal friends don't really want to know, and my business friends don't know much more than I did.

Bottom line, when times get tough, useful advice is very scarce. That's why I lost more than R2 million when my first business closed in 1992, despite being voted the leading small supplier to the IT industry for a couple of years.

At the time I went down there were just four books available in the world on closing a business. Three of them were no longer in print and their publishers had also gone out of business!

 After 11 years of studying the challenges of closing a business in South Africa, and consulting with hundreds of business owners in that same boat, in 2003 I wrote the only South African book on the subject, CrashProof your Business. It's since become a South African bestseller.

You can get it from your nearest Exclusive Books, or you can get it direct from the publisher here. The last time I looked the price was about R160-00. The entire content of the book, as well as the complete seminar, and a few hundred thousand words of discussion on the subject, are inside the Business Warriors members area.

You won't find much useful guidance outside of this website to help you make the decisions you must make as you close your business. You won't have to do it too often -- thank heavens. Sadly, that also means you won't know enough as you go down this road. That lack of knowledge cost me more than 2 million rand -- money that I would have saved if I had known then what I know now.

(One of the reasons I live outside South Africa is so that I can offer unbiased advice without any fear of the government demanding access to my files. The other is to get the quality Internet access that I need to support an online community.)

Here are a few of the questions that have been asked in our Forum:

• How can Telkom sue me in my personal capacity for a PTY that went into liquidation?
• What rights do we have with regard to a verbal agency agreement with a supplier that wants to terminate with one months notice after ten years?
• Regarding a CC debt with no sureties, how can a supplier sue us individually?
• How does one close down a company with minimal bruising? There are leases on equipment, a lease on premises, and money owed to suppliers. But business is not going well. What do I do next?
• Some family members have gotten themselves into huge debt - the bank is now after their house, SARS is onto them, final demands are flooding in from all and sundry. All the assets are in the husband's name. They are wondering if it would work for them to divorce and transfer the assets in to the (ex) wife's name?

The most important thing to understand as you go down this road is that it is not you that is failing, but rather it is the business. It doesn't matter what mistakes you think you have made -- we call that life. What matters is the decisions that you take now to minimise any damage, and maximise your chances of getting back on your feet quickly. No matter how bad the situation might seem, we can help you save more than you can imagine. And no matter how bad it seems, you still need to find an income stream fast!

Please test us for a month. If we don't add immense value to your life, we will refund your previous months subscription if you choose to leave. And you get to keep all the knowledge, all the downloads, all the books, all the seminars, and all the answers to all the questions you've asked. This means that if you test our mettle for a month, and choose not to stay, you get it all for free.

  How do we add value to somebody starting a business?

In this phase most of us are struggling to pull together all the different strands of knowledge we need to give our business some traction. We're buried in detail.

We Warriors act as startup mentors. We know what you're going through. And we know what's important, and what you can leave until the cash starts to flow in. When you ask a question you will not only get your question answered quickly, but you will also get a bunch of answers that will cover the background - the stuff that you didn't know to ask.

If you want more detail, we have more than enough. You will need a working knowledge of the Companies Act, the Close Corporations Act, the Financial Intelligence Centre Act, the Basic Conditions of Employment Act, the National Credit Act, income tax and SARS, the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, the Labour Relations Act, and CIPRO, and the Workmen's Compensation Commissioner.

We're talking thousands of pages of legal gumph that writers try and compress into books on how to start up. This information changes by the month. Most of us business owners started out thinking that our accountants would keep us in the loop with most of this. They don't. Nor does your attorney. They all wait for you to fall foul of one or other of these, and then answer your questions as you ask them.

It seems silly, doesn't it? Yet that's the way it is. And that's why so many of us have been in this group for so long. No matter what you want to know, somebody here has a lot of experience (and pain) to share on the subject.

The most important aspect to starting a business - by miles - is finding enough clients to buy whatever you're offering. It's also the aspect that most startups leave until it is too late. Maybe that's why more than 50% of startups fail in the first year. (After five years 80% have failed. Only 4% survive the first decade!)

This seminar was presented in Cape Town on December 1st 2008, and features some of the most advanced material available on how to use the internet to find lots of quality clients.

We also have a complete book writing that rocks! When we first start up in business, almost all of us write very formally just as we were taught in school. The world has moved on, and in business you need to write to persuade others to buy your stuff, to accept your proposal, to pay your invoice, etc. We have an outstanding book on the subject -- Power Copywriting for the Internet, written by one of the Internet's leading copywriters. We bought the rights a few years ago when we realised quite how badly most of us were at writing! It's yours when you join.

Please test us for a month. If we don't add immense value to your life, we will refund your previous months subscription if you choose to leave. And you get to keep all the knowledge, all the downloads, all the books, all the seminars, and all the answers to all the questions you've asked. This means that if you test our mettle for a month, and choose not to stay, you get it all for free.

Most of the books written about small business seem to think that a small business is merely a little version of a corporate. It isn't.

As a small business owner you don't have the resources available to the Managing Director of, for instance, Telkom. You don't have a listed company with millions of shareholders that you can turn to for money whenever you need it. You don't have a bank happy to give you millions without sureties. Most of all, you don't have the freedom to leave your business without losing everything.

Each day you're called on to make decisions. Most of them are easy. Some of them are vexing. And a few could cost you everything that you have worked for until now

I could tell you about the vast array of material that we have, most of which is unique to this community. But honestly, if you're running your own business comfortably, our real value lies in the constant sharing of thoughts and ideas relevant to small business.

For instance, a few years ago when the legislation was being finalised for Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment, we were extremely unhappy (as a group) about some of the contents. Over the space of four weeks we unpacked all of the material into our forum. Once we understood exactly what it meant, we added all of our comments, ideas, and concerns. And then we packaged it into something that even government could understand, and presented it at the final meetings -- as the only representative of small business in this country. We don't like most of the legislation. We never did. But we think our contribution made it a little more bearable for us little guys.

The business environment is changing rapidly Right now we're faced with the biggest economic setback since 1930. There is an immense value in getting the considered opinions of more than 1000 people to balance your thinking. It helps a lot to know that you're not the only person worried about a particular situation. It helps a lot to have a lot of experienced people throwing ideas into the pot.

Please test us for a month. If we don't add immense value to your life, we will refund your previous months subscription if you choose to leave. And you get to keep all the knowledge, all the downloads, all the books, all the seminars, and all the answers to all the questions you've asked. This means that if you test our mettle for a month, and choose not to stay, you get it all for free.