On being vulnerable… A post to show what the reality is behind big statement posts

Been wondering if to share this… You be the judge if it was a good idea.

Too many times we see announcements on LinkedIn of major milestones achieved. With this post I hope to help many of my friends out there to get a more realistic sense of what happens behind the scenes… of what really happens in real life behind posts that appear to show off.

(There is of course a risk that some people out there will think of us less by sharing this, but that’s a small price to pay if it helps others to feel more ok that they don’t have major resources to tap into to start or scale their initiatives).

The motivation for this post started with a little video I received yesterday from last week’s reviews from people using our online entrepreneurship academies…

Our project, The StartUp Tribe, is active in almost 400 communities across 29 countries. By end of next year we expect to have over 750 cities using our offering to improve the lives of the people living in their communities. Hundreds of cities are using our offerings to help their citizens. And that’s awesome.

But this is not a post about that.

This is a post to show you what really goes on behind the scenes of posts like this one that appear to show off. This is a post to show you what really drives a project, both financially and emotionally when they aren’t backed by unlimited resources, financial and human.

This is a post to show you what really goes on behind the scenes of posts like this one that appear to show off.

The background…

I started this project 20 months ago without any outside funding, tapping into our savings. At the beginning it was easy. There wasn’t really a plan. It was all amateurish. I was — like you — in lockdown so decided to share my knowledge by digitising the lectures I’ve done hundreds of times. So I set about finding a really good learner management system, creating and loading the content (our first course was How to find Clients) and sharing it. 3.600 people took the course. I thought I was onto something so experimented with trying to sell the courses. One sale. To a close friend 😄😄😄. So went back to the free version. Then I got the call from the phenomenonal Mayor of the municipality where I was residing, Modimolle. Marlene van Staden asked if there was a way to use those courses to help her residents. So we created the Modimolle Mookgophong Entrepreneurship Academy. The initiative grew. Other Mayor’s heard about it. The workload became too big. But help came in the shape of beautiful souls like Nabeela Vazeer , Marielle Hobson , Daniel Adidwa, Mughtaar Aghmad Gool and many others who came on board to help.

“We continued because we felt our work is important.”

More municipalities around the world started asking for what we do. Very few could afford to pay (and those that could could not onboard a small initiative like ours). That’s ok. We continued because we felt our work is important. More and more municipalities started coming on board and launching it in their communities including Bitou, Mogale and then across Africa, from Rwanda to Ethiopia to Nigeria to Cameroon and finally in Europe.

Journalists started interviewing the people who took our courses to measure the impact it was having in their lives. The feedback was the fuel to keep us going. Each day we setup a new academy (eg Mossel Bay Entrepreneurship Academy went live last month — https://www.mosselbay.gov.za). Our work isn’t glamorous. We shy away from press (for the most part — sometime we are mentioned, like in this article when Brand South Africa launched their Play Your Part Entrepreneurship Academy ).

We made sure that there is enough cash in the bank at any one point to ensure that the initiative can keep going for 3 years (again, lean and mean operating model, no offices or fancy setups, using amazing people who work for very little but believe in what we are doing and getting world experts donating their time to create incredible courses): like Naude Malan , Rick Ed, Nico Steyn, Meg Mateer, Claire J. Gilchrist and many others). We currently have over 250 new courses we are working on creating. How do we fund this? As these are not core costs that are covered in our 3 year budget I fund the new courses from projects and consulting gigs I do on the side as we go along (it is very easy to get excited and over invest in something but we have to be careful with our budgets as well). Many incredible souls came on board to help us in our journey, from the likes of the incredibly talented Alta Roets and Kelly Jayne Binda to Nico Steyn and Tessa Kerrich-Walker as well as the awesome perennial supporters like Marc Ashton and Jayshree Naidoo.

So how do we make money? We get plenty of suggestions how to monetise this and usually revolves around selling the data for advertising. The answer is no. I would not want my data sold and will protect our students to ensure that they are supported without having to worry if we are trying to sell them something. We had some very interesting conversations with large companies that want to use this to create positive brand association with their clients and prospects and the proposals are out but these things take time. In the meantime we grow, one happy student at the time. Improving people’s lives. Being careful with our resources to ensure that we can sustain this for many years.

In the meantime we keep going…

…fuelled by the amazing feedback we are getting from our students. What we do isn’t perfect. Nor do we think an online free course will solve all an entrepreneur’s challenges. But if we help even only a few people to start their businesses and grow them and in the process they are now able to feed their families, employ people in their communities… That’s reward enough.

“Not all great projects are supported with unlimited resources. Don’t let that stop you.”

Sometime early next year we will reach our 8th million’s student. So if you see a post to that effect do keep in mind what we shared above. Not all great projects are supported with unlimited resources. But we didn’t let that stop us from making a difference and I hope you’ll be inspired to continue what you are doing to make the world a better place.

Sometime we find resources to try new things (like this free directory of small business experts through which we hope to help more entrepreneurs connect to the right help). If you are an expert that can help small businesses please sign up. It’s free.

Today I wish to particularly thank Peter Senoamadi , Tshepiso Ramphisa, Wayne Enslin, Margie Candy, Mamokete Dhlamini, Xoliswa Thomas, Boy Simon, Goodwill Johannes Sikhosane, Lourens Engelbrecht , Gift Samkeliso Dlamini, and countless others who wrote to us and took the time to share how the courses helped you. You may not know it but your reviews is the fuel that keeps our fires going. I personally read each and every one of your messages.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your support. Thank you for letting us into your lives and ignite the spark that hopefully starts a roaring fire of ambition. Thank you for keeping us going.

Thank you to all the amazing friends and contacts who introduced me to opportunities to offer my services which helped generate the income to continue to invest in this project.

Thank you to all our amazing service providers who are doing an amazing job at providing us amazing technologies at prices we can afford and that really help us make an impact. We might just be a small client to you but you doing a brilliant job means we can focus on impact and not on technology. This is a shoutout to you at Thinkific and their team, led by Greg Smith.

Onwards and upwards. One beautiful amazing human being at a time. And here is the link to all the courses for you to use for free… May they help you start and grow your business!

Yours

York and the family at The StartUp Tribe

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