Biashara 30 Confessions II

October 4, 2010 by 29 Comments

Does anyone else like that Usher song, Confessions II? Well, I love it! And, keeping with the spirit of that song, here are our Biashara 30 (Season 2) confessions….

What is Biashara 30?
Biashara30 is a premium club meant for people interested in making money online. People who join Biashara30 will learn everything we know about making money online and, to complete the program, will be required to set up an internet business either as a group project or alone. A very important part of Biashara30 is ensuring that everyone who participates earns online before the end of the program. At every step, we will be on hand to guide and advise the members of Biashara30.

Some Background Info
At the beginning of this year, we accepted about 20 people into the second season of Biashara 30. We received well over 150 applications to the program and decided to pick 20 or so of what we felt were the best presented applications.

And, honestly, the people of Biashara 30 Season 2 were pretty amazing. At the beginning of the program, I felt very confident that we’d have lots of fun and that someone (lots of someones) would make some money!

Sad Happenings
Sadly, things did not turn out the way I had hoped. Slowly, the whole thing degenerated into the oblivion of inactivity. Biashara 30 Season 2 was not successful. Why?

  1. At the start of the program, myself and wham (we run Like Chapaa and Biashara 30) unfortunately got a really huge job that we just could not pass up. This meant that we could not participate as directly as we wished we could.
  2. A good number of the Biashara 30 Season 2 participants were simply inactive. It beats me why you would take the time and energy to apply and then never even show up.
  3. With all due respect to all Biashara 30 Season 2 participants, I would say that in general I felt a lack of sufficient focus and sense of purpose. I am willing to say that this was in part our fault in that we suddenly did not have enough time to spend on the program. I feel that, ultimately, the buck stops with you if you want to earn more money online or elsewhere.
  4. I do not know how to put this last point respectfully. I apologise if anyone feels badly for this. I had various one-on-one chats with the Biashara 30 Season 2 participants and while some of them were simply unimaginably amazing, some were less amazing than others. Let me give an example, one participant wanted an online shop, of sorts, and we helped that participant get a domain name and gave that participant free webhosting and even helped set up the website for that participant. These are things we charge for daily but they are available free for B30 guys and gals. I would have imagined that giving so generously that the participant would have gone on to do great things with the new shop. But no, the participant always came back to us in a situation which turned out to be sort of us doing all the work for the participant. I don’t appreciate laziness, and B30 will never spoonfeed anyone.

Some Thoughts

  1. We have to rethink the whole approach to B30. It is easy to sit back and blame the participants for two failed attempts but I realise that this is more likely an indicator that something is fundamentally wrong with how we handle the program. We have to find a better easier and more efficient way of transferring knowledge from us into other people.
  2. It seems to me that there is something of a general attitude problem in our great country. People very often have grand ideas and the skills to match them but they end up doing nothing at all with that. It almost feels like people (especially those wanting to earn more) read all these books and websites and…..instead of actually trying to do something, they seek yet more information and read more stuff and never do anything about it.
  3. The expectation of spoon feeding is a serious problem. People are looking for silver bullets and magic formulae instead of being ready to do real and hard work.
  4. There probably needs to be some “real life” (offline) element to B30 to make it feel more real to the participants.

Some Good News
So, was there any success story from this edition of B30? Well, yes:

  • The seeds for DukaPress were sown during Biashara 30 Season 2 as there was a lot of talk on online shops. In fact, we build DukaPress so as to enable ordinary people in our great nation to set up online shops that just work easily and quickly and be able to work with local currencies and akina MPESA. DukaPress has gone on to make wham and I lots money, too. 🙂
  • One of the Biashara 30 Season 2 participants, Crystal, continues to amaze me with her hard work and “get-it-done” attitude. I can testify that she makes lots of money online! Though I would not say that B30 helped her achieve this. It is more a case of a dedicated individual following her passion and her dreams to fruition.

The Future & Biashara 30 Season 3
So we just laid it bare for you to see. Biashara30 1 and Biashara30 2 both failed to achieve my own personal goals for the program.

However, my dear readers, we know how to make money online. We do make money online. We believe firmly that we should all be making money online and it can be a significant force in helping even just one person in our nation earn more and live a better life. We believe in helping people. We, therefore, are preparing to go through all this again. Yes, Biashara 30 season 3 is coming soon. Would you participate? Do you know anyone who would?

Since B30 Season 2, we have spent a lot of time soul searching and thinking of how to deliver a better program. We feel that we are now ready to try again. Here are some of our thoughts:

  1. B30 Season 3 will be even more selective. We only want to work with people who won’t end up to be a waste of time for us.
  2. We’re thinking of hiring someone to lead the program so that if we get another big job, it will not impact on the program negatively.
  3. The focus of B30 Season 3 will be on the three easiest ways of earning (that we have identified) money and we hope that by the end of the program, everyone will have made money online, or elsewhere.

But We Need Your Help
We realise that we are not authorities in anything. We need your ideas and input on how to make this thing better. How do we solve the problems identified above? Please help us by commenting below.

Are you an aspiring applicant? Would you please share your ideas, questions or queries with us by leaving a comment below?

Is anyone out there willing to help us run this thing? Please leave a comment below.

How To for B30 Season 3
We have not yet put up the application form. However, the application process starts TODAY! If you want to participate in Biashara 30, Season 3, you have to leave a comment here on this article. The comment should not be telling us why we should pick you, it can be anything else that is relevant. Remember that if you do not leave a comment here, you have no chance of joining B30 Season 3. Good luck!

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YU Treading On Dangerous Ground

April 26, 2010 by 1 Comment

I’ve, really, not had any problems with the YU mobile network ever since I made the switch from Safaricom. But things are starting to get…weird.

Kwanza, what happened to the clarity I used to love? Talking on my YU line used to be a joy. The last two days have been close to torture. How long shall I continue to pay someone to torture me?

Pili, and more importantly: a few of my friends have complained that they loaded airtime on YU and it simply…vanished. I did not pay much attention to this as I did not think YU would let something like that happen. I mean, if customers cannot trust that the money they put on their phone will remain theirs until they use it then YU has no business. Well, this morning I ‘lost’ Ksh 50 when I loaded my phone. Lost! To make matters worse, the customer service was unhelpful and bordering on rude…and they hang up the phone as I was talking.

Dear YU, I do not know what’s going on with you people. You used to be really good. But now….well, you’re bordering on being thieves.

YU have to realise that their business is that of providing ‘infrastructure’. People rely on their service for important things (like work). Whenever a phone company like YU has issues, the lives of its subscribers are inconvenienced in multiple and painful ways. For this reason, people will only use those phone service companies which they feel they can trust.

It seems that one can no longer trust YU. How sad – when at some point they were one of the better phone companies out there….

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With:

No Balls, No Babies

February 13, 2010 by 5 Comments

You know something? If you really want to achieve something, then the only one who can help you achieve it is you. The buck stops at you, you are responsible for the achievement of your own goals and dreams.

I met Hottie today. For those who do not know her, she is a promising local musician. What struck me about her was her passion for what she does, and her ambition. She told me a story of how she once pushed her producers, not wanting to settle for anything less than perfection, until she was 100% satisfied with a song she was doing. That particular song ultimately earned her a Kisima Awards nomination. Nice, eh? I could tell that she will go far in her career just by listening to her.

What do you want to do with your life? Where do you want to see your business grow to? Most importantly, who do you think will help you achieve all that? I do not know if you know this, but the power to achieve all that you want lies with no one but yourself. Just believe in yourself and in your abilities. Don’t you know the story of a black man from a third world country who became the president of one of the most powerful nations in the world? You have to believe that you can do it.

And belief bring courage; and courage brings success. What do you want to do? Whatever it is, you better get off your behind and do it. No one is going to do it for you.

As the saying goes, if you don’t have balls, then you won’t make any babies…

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Sunny Bindra’s Sunwords.com – What It Can Be

August 22, 2009 by 7 Comments

So I’ve been poring over Sunny Bindra’s articles really heavily recently. I love his writing and he makes excellent business sense every time he writes. I always, always end up comparing his ideas to those of Seth Godin. In all honesty, they think quite alike on how a business should be properly run. Don’t take my word for it, have a look at their websites and decide for yourself. For those who don’t know, Sunny Bindra writes in the Sunday Nation. Seth Godin is based in the USA and is a renown best-selling author.

So, did you have a look at the two authors’ sites? What do you think? I’ve followed both writers for some years now but it was only recently that I noticed that sunwords.com is, in my view, not all that well developed. I say this with all due respect to Sunny Bindra – I don’t mean to bash him in any way! However, I am an avid reader of his writings and I just wonder, why isn’t his online presence as big as it could be?

Just think about it. How many people LOVE his Sunday articles? I bet a whole lot of people love and respect his work. This is his introductory blog post. See that? 46 comments on day one! However, the rest of his 100+ entries (all beautifully written) have just a handful or no comments. Contrast this with bloggers such as Shiko or Mama whose comment count goes into double digits regularly.

Okay, okay one could argue that Sunwords.com gets a lot of visitors but very few leave comments. That would explain things, right? I thought so too, until I had a look at sunword’s visitor stats. According to Statbrain (hint: Statbrain is really useful to carry out e surveillance on other sites), Sunwords gets 320 visitors a day. Now, I’m nowhere near as popular as Sunny Bindra but Like Chapaa gets 570 visitors a day.

Now, I don’t know about you but I think that Sunwords should be a lot more successful than it is. I have my own thoughts on how to build a successful website but I bet Sunny has access to people much much better than I am at doing this. The big question in my mind is this: why isn’t Sunny doing more with his website? I do not know. There are probably very valid reasons for this. I would, however, like to point out some reasons why it may be of benefit to make Sunwords.com more successful.

Sunny Bindra is already very very successful by any means. However, more success won’t hurt, surely. Ama? Let’s take a look at Om Malik. Om Malik, in my view, is a classic example of the opportunities that the internet can bring. I’m no authority on this but Om Malik has been a writer for a long time. At some point, he set up a website and grew it. Then he set up another, and another……now he owns GigaOm, which is among the top 50 blogs worldwide by Technorati Rank, and is part of CNet‘s 100 Most Influential Blogs. And what about Seth Godin? I believe that, over the years, his blog has been one of the key, if not the key, ‘things’ that sell his books so widely. One of his books is even based on his blog’s writings.

I believe in Sunny Bindra’s wisdom so much that I know he can do something similar. He is already popular, all that’s needed is a little more focus to build an online brand. The possibilities would then be endless. What do you think?

Picture by arturodante.

Filed Under: Blogging, Case Study Tagged With: ,