Book 2, Lesson 8 – Statistics, Vitalistics of Apple+Banna, Chocolate or Rands
WORDS:
Deployment: is required to ensure that the correct stakeholder is attributed to the correct parts of the business process. Place resources in a specific area in readiness for action, or take up position in the way that will advantage the business over time.
Tasks: a piece of work or an assignment, especially one that is important or difficult.
Distribute: immediate action of energy to sell and deliver merchandise……. transactions (wholesale goods to a retailer, retailer to customer, accounts to sales) must be vital actions of all business.
Vitalists: what is happening right now and how does it influence my decision? In the speed of today’s world and choices available to any Human, the question becomes…. what is vital minute-to- minute, hour-to-hour, day-to-day? A week may too far away.
Statistics: is the study of the collection, organization, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments.
Experiment: is an orderly procedure carried out with the goal of verifying, refuting, or establishing the validity of a hypothesis. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a particular factor is manipulated. Experiments vary greatly in their goal and scale, but always rely on repeatable procedure and logical analysis of the results.
LESSON
Okay….. back to Africa and the 4 hour workshop on setting up a business. It may or may not be obvious to all what the workshop was….. it was “an experiment to prove my belief about ENTREPRENEURSHIP/BUSINESS OWNERSHIP.”
For a year I have been involved with a group called SABEF (South African Black Entrepreneurs Forum), working out how I can best support the organisation. I have travelled to South Africa to run various workshops, including how to create a business card, People Teaching People/ Person 2Person, and the basics of ENTRPRENEURSHIP/BUSINESS ESTABLISHMENT and how to get started in a business and then maintain the flow of what is being established.
In the year 2013, I have been gathering information about what is slowing down the process of successful ENTREPRENEURSHIP/BUSINESS OWNERSHIP in South Africa.
Side note: Jason T and “ME” for the same year (2013) have been working on an experiment… being the idea of….
“Human Capacity”!
Jason T has a belief that Humanity must take a time-out to understand Human Capacity, to be able to deal with the complexities created by speed, depth, width, and choices to all humans. All of these are dimensions of human realities that have been afforded to each Human by the technologies that have been discovered in the last 5000 years of human acceleration on planet earth. I know! That is why it is a side bar and will be a whole story/lesson in itself.
Back to Africa……..
In the year, I have watched, listened and acted out to see what I understood about the marketplace in South Africa. After the year, I’m a 100% sure of this idea. The Humans in Africa are the same as Humans all over the world and the marketplace in Africa has the same elements driving the market. (Albeit in different cycles of marketplace lifecycles). South Africa has it all……very sophisticated corporate structures, exceptional mid-range businesses and very small Micro-ENTREPRENEURS….. All being dealt with as if they are the same as each other and have the same problems/opportunities available to their circumstances. Just not true. There is this idea around the globe….. write a business plan, apply for money and hey presto….. you are in business! I believe that a plan is what is done after the idea/venture has some level of market experience. In other words…..the entrepreneur must test the idea in the market place for a period of time before writing a business plan. I have been testing and experimenting in South Africa for a year and globally for 30 years and believe I can write a plan for a way forward to establish successful, new ENTREPRENEURIAL/BUSINESS ideas.
For “ME”, the number one issue in South Africa (and the rest of the world for that matter) is what “People Teaching People/Person 2 Person” are currently teaching. With the choices and speed of information, the great Human Capacity lacks capability to deal with today’s technologies. The exchange systems (ENERGY, MONEY, and TIME) are so polluted, it becomes confusing for most humans to function with any level of certainty. Mis-information gets passed on from one person to another and the learning is mythology-based rather than experience-based.
Back to the room and the workshop:
All ENTREPRENEURS/BUSINESSES must have exchanges involved in all transactions. A very simple exercise of buying and selling becomes more complex by wanting to keep track of the statistics/vitalistics. The real difference between the 2 is that statistics are used over different points of time and vitalistics are the here and now and change very quickly by decisions made in any given moment.
Example of a Statistic: In January of last year, our company sold $ 5,000 worth of product and this is how we did it. We can now plan for January of this year with a level of marketplace understanding.
Example of a Vitalistic: It is January now. We are in the middle of our sales month and have already sold $10,000 worth of product. What do we do to react to the marketplace? The above statistic is now of limited value to a business owner…. Vitalistics must be used to react quickly to the change in circumstance.
ENTREPRENEURS work mainly on the Vitalistics = fast decision making
/
BUSINESS OWNERS work mainly with the Statistics = slow and steady decision making
It is not about right or wrong……It’s always about what do “WE” do? and What Happened?
So what was happening in the workshop in South Africa, besides chaos? There was exchange going on at great speeds at all levels.
ENERGY:
1. “We” had a room of participants, all watching and learning
2. Participants became suppliers
3. Participants became customers
4. Salesperson selling = John S
5. Receiver = Judy S, taking product in from the suppliers and making sure she receipted supply transactions
6. Payments Officer = Jason T making sure agreements are kept and suppliers are paid and at the same time, keeping track of all incoming and out goings
ENERGY into an event is always the most important aspect of business …..
NO ENERGY INPUT = NO BUSINESS
“Passive” anything is a false assumption “IN” any ENTREPRENEURIAL/BUSINESS venture. There is always your HUMAN ENERGY. If you are involved as an employee, self-employed person, entrepreneur, business owner/manager or investor…… it is only a matter of how much energy!
TIME:
1. Event time to consider
2. Receiving Products
3. Sales being made
4. Payments being made
It is all about TIMING in business! TIME is only worth anything if there is ENERGY input and THE TIMING of the ENERGY.
MONEY:
1. Is changing in and out
2. Suppliers are being paid
3. Customers are paying
4. In the form of cash money
5. Money is converted to:
a. Apples + Bananas…. expensed @ 1.75 Rand (a Vitalistic)
b. Chocolates…. expensed @ 1.5 Rand (a Vitalistic)
c. Flipchart (as outgoing product for sale)…. priced @ 100 Rand (a Vitalistic)
d. Business advice (as a product for sale)….. priced @ 5 Rand per piece of advice (a Vitalistic)
Money is changing forms and yet it is still exchanging. A good business owner is always keeping track. An Entrepreneur is always in the middle making it happen.
So here are the Vitalistics:
1. Expense of products supplied from suppliers:
a. Apples Bananas: 50 Rand
b. Chocolates: 35 Rand
c. Words provided: 18.5 Rand
2. Income from products:
a. 2 flipcharts sold: 200 Rand
b. Advice provided: 30 Rand
3. Difference between Buy and Sell:
a. 200 Rand in and 18.5 Rand out = 181.5 Rand margin
b. 30 Rand in and no Rand out = 30 Rand Margin
NB: John also had a cash float of 115 Rand.
Here is the real point…… I started with 200 Rand and I ended up with 214.5 Rand in cash + cash float of 109 Rand…….and I still had half my Apples + Bananas and most of my chocolate left over …..all ready for business at the next day’s workshop (= Next week’s story).
Who said business can’t be fun?????
To be clear….. I have not made a profit. I have made margins heading towards profits.
Now….. the real Magic of a business….. what was left over from the day’s workshop?
WE KNOW THE FOLLOWING:
1. Our suppliers prefer to be paid by:
a. Apples and Bananas 54% of the time….. meaning these were cheaper to use than Rand
b. Chocolate 18% of the time……. meaning this was cheaper to use than Rand, or;
c. Rand 28% of the time…. A more expensive exchange for our business and yet the least perceived value by our suppliers!
2. Our customers:
* Will pay 100 Rand for the word product provided on a flipchart
* Will pay 5 Rand just by hearing a thought
All “WE” are testing is exchange and perceived value. What is interesting to “ME” is that everyone in the room could see it happening right in front of them and yet paid 5 times the price for words gathered for them and knew what was paid as an expense! Customers would also pay 5 Rand for a totally invisible product (advice) that could have no material value at all.
Next week, we will look at workshop number 2 and demonstrate Vitalistics to Statistics and how fast the world moves from –ENTREPRENEURIAL to BUSINESS.
Feedback Please
JDS OUT
