Since 1999 I have lived in Melbourne (Australia), Somerset West, Knysna and Umhlanga Rocks (South Africa), and Ringwood (United Kingdom) - interspersed with a few trips to Brisbane, Sydney, Perth (Australia), Vancouver, Calgary (Canada), and Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. (Did you know that you can happily park yourself on a beach in this paradise for six months without needing a visa, although that might be too long if you land during the hurricane season?)
Netfontein is the digital home of my office. It's a very short, environmentally friendly commute, because no matter where I am in the world - my Netfontein office is as close as the nearest web browser. When the early Voortrekkers travelled North from the Cape they stopped at some delightful places, and imaginatively added the suffix -fontein to anything that had a fountain or spring. Hence, Bloemfontein (flower-spring), Koffiefontein (coffee-spring), and Rietfontein (reed-spring). Since the Internet (Net) is like a spring of money (at least if you see all the wild claims I have researched) Netfontein seemed an appropriate office location. I hope you agree.
I have owned three businesses since 1984. And presented hundreds of seminars, produced websites, and even published books - all on the subject of very small businesses, and the people that own them. During the journey I had to throw out most of what I read on the subject of business because the stuff that works for a large company will not work for a micro-business (any business employing fewer than 5 people). That's like using an elephant's operating manual to do intricate surgery on a grasshopper. A tiny business is not a little big business. Building a digital business allows you to do stuff more quickly and more effectively than a traditional entrepreneur could even conceive of.
One of the biggest benefits of owning your own business is the freedom you have to do what you want, when you want, how you want. One of the biggest risks, however, is that any single decision can destroy your income. Wouldn't it be great to be the master of your own domain, while knowing that there is enough money flowing through the door to guarantee that your children won't get too thin?
Opening your digital business in Netfontein - even though you're fully employed elsewhere - allows you to build it organically:
- You get to learn the ropes without any risks, and without pressure.
- You do it at your own pace.
- You can easily research ideas and niche markets to see whether they're worth looking at.
- You can experiment as much as you want, and test as many ideas as often as you want. (The reason most of us get desperate is that we don't have the luxury of a guaranteed income.)
- You can do this from home, from your local Internet cafe, or your local coffee shoppe if it has wireless (or you have a 3G connection).
- And there are more than 1 billion people online. (That market is 25 times larger than the entire South African population, and about 1000 times larger than the SA online population!)
- You can structure your Netfontein business in any jurisdiction in the world to control the taxes you pay. (This is pretty advanced stuff and you won't want to look at this until you have a 'money engine' that really pumps! But you are legally entitled to structure your affairs to reduce your taxes, and placing your business in a zero tax jurisdiction is just one of the methods.) Or you can choose to not structure it at all and simply trade as an individual.
- And you will end up with an asset that will generate as much money as you want, wherever you want it.
Why am I so fixated on this international aspect of business?
Allow me to give you a simple example. Lets assume that you have been in a regular, offline, 'traditional' South African business for a while and you find that you need to employ somebody to help out. Lets look at what you need to know, and understand, before you start:
- your advert must not be so specific as to exclude anyone who can actually do the job - so you can't question age, gender, race, religion, or sexual preference without the threat of being sued;
- there are a bunch of questions you cannot ask during the interview process - or else the unsuccessful applicants can drag you in front of the Labour courts
- you must specify exactly what the job entails, and you must fairly discuss any changes with the successful applicant if you ever need to change, in the understanding that this person can refuse those changes;
- you're limited to a pool of applicants who are either unemployed, or unhappily employed, and who live in your area;
- the salary you pay must be locally competitive, and must incorporate whatever additional expenses this person needs to simply arrive at work;
- you must provide space, facilities, refreshments, phones, and anything else this person will need to do the job you require;
- you must register as an employer with SARS for PAYE, SDL, UIF;
- you must register with the Department of Labour;
- the day your employee starts working you must post certain rules and regulations on the office walls;
- before the 7th of every month you must pay PAYE, SDL and UIF to SARS, or face a 10% immediate fine, and a barrage of paperwork;
- even if you feel that this person is not in your full time employ and don't conseuqently deduct these payroll taxes- if your payment is a significant portion of this employee's income you will be deemed responsible for the taxes;
- you must understand the issues of procedural and substantive fairness - otherwise your dismissal of said employee could cost you up to 24 months of salary and countless harrowing hours;
- and you have to learn all of this while you're trying to actually earn an income!
Now you will understand why so few of us get up to speed, why so many of us spend far too much time and money fixing the screwups later, and why as many as 96% of all traditional startups fail in their first 10 years.
Contrast the above with the Netfontein digital route for getting somebody to help you:
- Search any number of websites for a specialist who can help with this specific project, or post the project specification on as many freelance websites as you want;
- Evaluate the responses;
- Choose somebody that offers the best mix of price and competence;
- Pay them when the job is done to your satisfaction;
- Have another beer!
Notice anything different? You're free to focus on the one person that is paying your bills - your client! And there are a bunch of folk, all around the world, who're happy to work for you without all the palaver that accompanies employing a local. We'll go into these options in detail later.
(Above: scenes from one of the provinces in Netfontein: Canada!)
So, we can 'move' to Netfontein without giving up our day job, our home in Sandton, Sebokeng, or Somerset West, or our family and friends. But in doing so, we will open up a much wider horizon and hedge a bunch of the challenges we face living in South Africa.
Until a few years ago we (that's pretty much anybody in the world) were trapped by our geography. We lived somewhere, worked close by, and accumulated all our wealth in a bank a few kilometres away. When the 'Net arrived in the mid-nineties it was a warren of geeks before the bubble in 2000 gave most of us a real fright and scared us away.
Over the past few years a revolution has been brewing. It's now staggeringly easy to build some property on the web - in Netfontein, as it were - which can:
- Start generating a geographically independent income
- Start creating an international presence for each of us
- Start opening options that don't yet exist for each of us
For example, this web page took just 5 minutes to assemble, using incredible software that cost just £39-00. (Of course, it took a little longer to write these words - but even then you can use simple technology to get you typing at 200 words a minute.) It's not rocket-science, and it doesn't require expert help. You (even if you can barely read and write) can build a business in Netfontein for under R1000 that will start generating results within weeks. And that income opens those options I mentioned earlier.
(Above: scenes from a few other places where folk from Netfontein choose to stay!)
If you're unhappy at 'home', then consider Netfontein as a halfway house to your future - whether that's in South Africa, Australia, United Kingdom, Canada, China, Thailand, New Zealand, the USA, British Virgin Islands, or Brazil. (I have South African clients in each of those countries!)
Despite living in Durbanville, Sandton, Somerset West, Knysna and Umhlanga Rocks I have wanted to travel since I matriculated at Fish Hoek High in 1975. SInce then I have visited 50-odd countries, and spent chunks of time in each of those destinations most favoured by expatriate South Africans.
The reason for my itchy feet? I am diabetic! I was diagnosed in high school, and I overheard the specialist tell my mother that I was like a fresh apple on the outside, but with a worm on the inside. My juvenile interpretation was that I was on a one way road to a short and infirm life. At about this time I read a novel that featured an older, ill gent whose delightfully young wife looked after him in a condo in Miami while he ran his empire from his bed using computers. That became my dream.
(Back then there was no such thing as a 'personal' computer. An Apple was something you ate, Bill Gates was a precocious kid, and Tom Watson of IBM had recently mentioned that he could not foresee a need for more than a handful of computers worldwide!) My dreams were just that!
PCs arrived in 1984, and life has not stopped moving since. And the arrival of the Internet in the Nineties has opened a huge array of options for each of us. The problem is that we're so busy fighting the daily demons that we have very little energy left to take a step back and build ourselves a future!
We South Africans often mutter about Zimbabwe. It doesn't matter what we each feel about the situation as it plays out, Zimbabweans have faced only two major choices: to stay or to leave. Of those who stayed, the only folk who have prospered have been those with a solid international income. Of those who left, the only folk to survive the experience without being traumatised were those with money, incomes and options outside the country. Bottom line, the more options you have - the rosier the future.
My aim is to show you everything you need to know about building those options quickly and effectively.
1:20 am Sunday, July 27th