Mandela Day PrepareYourBusinessForSale™

OK, so it’s happening…

The PrepareYourBusinessForSale™ seminar is happening on 18 July 2013 in Johannesburg.

Last week I sent out an exploratory email to see what sort of response I was likely to get. The result was very encouraging, and so I tentatively approached the cause which we are sponsoring. This is how it will work:

Several years ago I ran these seminars on a regular basis. Many of the attendees took heed of the lessons, and years later have become my clients and friends. After many seminars, it all became a bit much, and I got quite ill, and had to stop them. For the last year I have been toying with the idea of restarting them.

Nelson Mandela Day is a celebration of the icon’s birthday. It is a day on which people are asked to contribute 67 minutes of their time to the community, for free. So I have chosen to do so for the small and medium size business community. The problem I am faced with is that a free seminar will attract all sort of people with no commitment. So I am asking every attendee to contribute a donation to The Vula Programme, of not less than R380-00.

Amongst a broad range of issues I will explore with you on the evening are:

• issues around what needs to be taken into account when conducting a valuation of a business – any business
• the principle of always being ready for sale, even now when you don’t want to sell
• what to tell someone when he walks unsolicited into your business and asks if it is for sale
• how to deal with a business which will not sell for enough to satisfy your needs.

You should know the following before booking your seat:

• 100% of the donations received for the evening will go to Vula. The executive of the programme has agreed to accept the donations directly into its own account, issue receipts and section 18A certificates directly to you or your business. There are valuable BBBEE points to be gathered here.
• The seminar will be significantly longer than 67 minutes. As a mark of respect to Madiba, we will pause at 67 minutes for tea and coffee (if I can find a sponsor to provide tea and coffee on the evening)
• We are still negotiating for the donation of a venue for the evening, with a few possible hosts. It will be in Sandton, and there will be plenty of safe parking.
• This is probably a once off.

You can book and pay here.

Why The Vula Programme? I mentioned last week that I was looking for a charity to benefit from the evening, and was toying with a few in and around Jozi. After much debate within my family, it was decided with a hefty nudge from my son Devan.

It will take another twenty five years to see the benefits of an improved education system if it were fixed from top to bottom today. If we start fixing from grade 1 and move the “fix” with that year, we are a quarter century away from seeing the benefits. My father’s last meeting of his life was on his hospital bed, negotiating with the owners of C&A in Holland to contribute meaningfully to the education of poor rural kids in South Africa. He died that evening. Forty years of his professional life was dedicated to educating able and willing kids, irrespective of their race, when it wasn’t a very sexy thing to do.

We cannot afford to start from scratch. There is a lot of catching up to be done at a much older level, and this by necessity requires continued adult education in aiding teachers to teach their pupils. This is what Vula does in KwaZulu Natal. As much as we may be unhappy with the current leadership of the country, and the lack of meaningful results, in the spirit of Lead South Africa, it sometimes falls to the ordinary people to make a small contribution. Let’s skip the blue lights, the hot air and commissioned SMS contributions, and each make a small contribution to something worthwhile.

Educating children is without doubt the single biggest challenge in the fight for equality and employment. While we make our small contributions, we can have a meaningful discussion about how to make our own retirements more comfortable, or give a leg up to the next phase of our lives, or simply make our businesses more profitable.

I hope to see you there.