Bennie Groenewald

LLM Tax Law, B.Proc, HDip Tax

The Tax Shop Head Office

More about Bennie Groenewald

After having qualified and practiced as a Commercial lawyer Bennie worked in the Banking and Financial services industry for 25 years across multiple market segments in South Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa and the UK, the last 14 years of which in senior and executive leadership positions. During this time, he dealt extensively with cross-border banking and finance including project finance, asset finance, debt capital markets and derivatives, including the legal aspects thereof. In recent years, Bennie has played an active leading role in investment, credit and risk management as well as sound corporate governance.

The conventional wisdom about entrepreneurs, is that following the textbook approach to entrepreneurial success is your biggest mistake of all.

Well known entrepreneurs have created products & services that we’ve all heard of, turned entire industries upside down and redefined what it means to be successful when you start a business.

Here are some of the things to avoid:

• Business ideas alone are worth very little;
• Don’t extend that start date. You can’t afford to wait for certainty, for funding or hoping someone else will come along to help you execute on your great idea;
• Making excuses or complain that you don’t have the time or resources, won’t help you start a business;
• Striving for perfection over getting it done, is obscene;
• By not putting yourself out there and show the world what you’re doing is just avoiding taking those small steps;
• Don’t hide your idea(s) and overthink things behind closed doors being afraid someone will steal your magic idea, go out, test the market and validate your idea; and
• Not asking for advice.

One of the biggest reasons many of us will never start a business is because we want to first be certain before we take action.

We all know that start-ups around the world has a high failure rate but it now appears that failure is not necessarily due to outside factors, but to an internal one. And it isn’t economic – it is mostly emotional.

You may have a brilliant idea that will add value to others lives but if you keep it locked up in the pages of your imagination, that’s where they’ll remain, until somebody else takes the initiative and puts it into action.

An idea is worthless if you don’t take action and make an effort to execute it. So, don’t bury that business idea in a drawer and put your plans to grow your business on the back burner. Get up, act and execute!

Remember, deferment is the enemy of success, so start small but act now.

2018-04-25

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