The importance of telling your story, even with extremely limited resources

A trip to South Africa to inspire entrepreneurship and innovation.

South Africa is a country of extreme contrasts, where the first and third worlds have collided.

42 percent of South African children live in a household where neither parent is employed. Settlements like Diepsloot, which are densely populated with handmade shacks, sit close by wealthy suburban neighborhoods.

But there is hope: the solution to this poverty is entrepreneurship.

That’s part of what inspired a group of 9 other entrepreneurs and myself to join forces with Paradigm Shift in Johannesburg and Cape Town.

Paradigm Shift is a nonprofit that encourages economic development in South Africa through business training, microfinance opportunities, mentorship and discipleship. The program works alongside local churches so that they can continually equip business owners with knowledge, education, skills, and confidence — all of which they can put to use along their entrepreneurial journey. To date, the Paradigm Shift program has served more than 37 locations in Africa and touched the lives of more than 2,500 microentrepreneurs.

South Africa ranks among the most materially ‘unequal’ countries in the world, but Paradigm Shift is working to address this extreme poverty. We wanted to help fuel their mission.

The two-week trip to South Africa featured a roster of Cincinnati, Ohio-based entrepreneurial talent, ranging from the head of a local urban development firm, to marketing research and branding professionals. The group also included leaders from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, ChoreMonster, Ahalogy, OCEAN Accelerator, and more.

The community of South African entrepreneurs included both men and women. Many of the people were “entrepreneurs by circumstance.” There are not many jobs available, and so they create businesses to survive. These businesses include car repair shops, convenience stores, daycares, custom clothing, or delivery services. It’s not uncommon for these entrepreneurs to start building a business on an extremely small scale, like walking around the settlement selling candies. Over the course of one year, they save up enough Rand to rent a shack for their business.

They work incredibly hard using what they have to make it work. Our goal was to help educate them on the basics to make their hard work even more effective.

Identify a Unique Selling Proposition

Over the 2 weeks, approximately 250 entrepreneurs participated in a series of workshops aimed at teaching the building blocks of entrepreneurship. An issue for many of the young companies is the concept of having a unique selling proposition. In an environment where everyone is selling what they have access to, competitors that look just like you can pop-up right next door. Most of the business owners feel as if the only way to survive is to compete on price. So, we re-focused their energy around creating a different kind of “experience” or “story” compared with their competitors.

One entrepreneur named Ntumba, a refuge from the war-torn Republic of Congo, had hand sewn all the clothes she was selling in a local market. She was struggling to attract customers, especially since competitors had popped up next to her and were selling designs they had seen from her shop.

Surprisingly, she had no branding or even a company name to differentiate her from the clothing businesses next door. Her story was key to building a relationship with her customers. They need to know her!

Everything starts with your signature

Over the course of 20 min, Ntumba shared her story. Scott, who was with me, asked her one simple task — sign this piece of paper. At first she looked at him confused. He picked up the pen to show her by signing his. She then scribbled hers right next to it. He looked at me and said this is her story, we need to make this her brand. And so we did.

Over the course of 20 min., I used my iPhone to scan it, adjusted the contrast and emailed it to my Macbook. Using Keynote, I quickly designed her “story” around the signature. Just a simple 2 sided visual that she could use for business cards and hangtags. It was super small, but incredibly powerful. You should have seen her face.

Many times, it’s the simple things we should use to tell our story. Over the course of the next 2 weeks, our team led a series of workshops in South Africa focused on storytelling and coolhunting with limited resources. I will share more of these example in later posts.

If you need any custom clothing, give Ntunba a call.