The e-mail arrived...

I opened the g-mail account and there, in between all kinds of spam and strange e-mails was an e-mail that made my heart go faster... Maybe the angel has come to call.
I quickly scanned it and then read it through slowly. I did a search on the name and the company and at this stage the excitement is filling my heart. This could be legitimate... oh, how I hope...
I am not  much good at quotes but I can get exited enough to quote with the best of them... was it Shakespeare that said ... "hope springs eternally in the heart of man" if not him, I apologize to the  writer for laying his words in Shakespeare's mouth. But whoever said it, certainly knew what he was talking about. The moment I thought all hope has gone from my heart and mind, I open an e-mail and voila!!! the hope is alive and well and living in my heart!!!!
I hope you are my angel, dear kind Sir, but even if you are not... thank you for making me feel optimistic again.
You have made my day!
And for your reading my scribbles... thank you and may you be blessed today and may hope live in your heart as well...

Exitement!!!

I wonder why when I told myself a hundred if not a thousand times I am writing this to get rid of my frustrations do I get so excited when somebody actually commented on my blog???
Well just so that you know... you have made my day!!  Can you believe it.. somebody actually read my mumbles and jumbles!!
My search for a business angel continues... I have found the farm I actually want to buy so now I have renewed enthusiasm for my search... And now I am starting to prepare for another deluge of scammers knocking on my e-mail door.
Still can anybody describe the excitement of opening an e-mail for such a prospect ... and the irritation and disappointment when it is in fact just another scam. I remain however optimistic that one of these days I will open the mail and miracle against all previous thoughts there he will be... My Angel... and his wings will be made out of money and his mind will be open for agriculture.... I am looking forward to meeting him!!
See you soon angel of mine...

Angel.. you scammer... shame on you

So here we go again on  the rollercoaster ride of trying to get funding... Would you believe if I tell you that after all the warnings and dire reports, there are still a lot of apparent entrepreneurs asking for upfront fees?
In the three weeks I have done intensive searching, I have had offers from such a lot of people all asking for upfront fees...
I look at my business plan, on which I have spend hours and hours and I wonder.. is there anything in there to make people think that I am not serious about it? What could I have written in this document to make them think I am stupid enough to pay anything from $7000,00 to $ 20 000,00 before I even have a form from them?
Do they think sending a letter with big money written somewhere in it, will be enough to entice me to fork out money?
Beware!! since I had started  my business years ago ( and first encountered one of them) ... they have also developed into a very well oiled business.
The papers and the letters are so much more "professional".  They obviously have also  developed their business and streamlined it. However no matter how well developed they are, all they are and will ever be are scammers. Stealing your money... if you are gullible enough to pay them... Sad to say that  one can almost get so desperate that on will fall for anything, just in the hope of getting your plans on the way.
Do not fall for them... persevere.. You have to believe as I do that there is still good and honest people out there...
I hope so...

Taking time...

One thing I have realised during this last week is that no matter how big your hurry take your time to make sure that all your ducks are in the right row... Study your business plan as if you are the person who wants to lend out the money and not the desperate person on the other side of the table...
Paper is patient ( Xcell files as well)... it is so easy to make things look like roses...  think about it though... if you go for the rosy scenario... your angel might expect so much more from you... and you might soon find out that the thorns are a lot more prominent than the roses...
Be realistic... after all no matter how much you want this business plan to make sense in the end you will have to survive and pay back this money... it really has to eventually work in reality and not just on paper.
If you do get this money you are hunting for... will it actually make your life better or will it be just another fight that you will have to win against all the odds? Business is a gamble and with the economic situation as it is at the moment the odds are stacked heavily against you...
If you can in all honesty answer YES IT CAN... go for it... this is your chance. Take it with both hands and do it....

The dance begins...

While writing my previous blog, I got the inspiration to go about looking for an investor in a different way...
I had immediately after posting this last blog started to look for an investor whom might possibly be interested in investing in an Agricultural business.

I did some work on my business plan and honestly though it is not quite to my liking yet... I have started to sent out some query e-mails and I have received the most beautiful and friendly answers back... Not one yet positive, but so encouraging. So I have taken a few days of from my blogging to refine my business plan and really think through all the options and plans. I would not like to be in a position of eventually getting an interested party and then through negligence on my side I am making a booboo.
This off course can easily happen as going into a new side of my business I can make mistakes and although I am a firm believe in the fact that as long as something can be done to correct a problem it is not yet a mistake.. It is only when arrogance and stupidity makes you ignore a problem that it becomes a mistake of note.

Could it be...?

Could it be that the business angels out there in the world are only interested in certain types of business'?
The type that really does not need the money? The type who already has such a credit history to show that they do indeed exist?
So here I am... business is steadily growing but could be three, if not thirty times bigger, than it is at the moment. This is what frustrates me so much! How can I convince an investor of any kind, of the viability of my business, if they are not even interested in asking about it...?
Off course, this is not a business in technology... or electronics or real estate. Although, if I am honest... I would like to buy a farm... to pack my own fruit, in my own brand and to also export that. Maybe my problem is that I am not dreaming big enough? Should I go look for a fruit farm and buy that? Will my chances of getting finance increase if I do that?  Is this the way that my business should grow... have I been blindly looking in one direction, when there might be a  solution in a completely different  direction.
Might it be that by accident I have stumbled on to another option in my quest find a business angel? I will definitely look into this ... no later than today.
My mind is now racing at a hundred miles per hour... but with this new idea, new doubts are already forming in my mind. The thought of going through everything just to be disappointed, when no one is interested makes my heart heavy.
Do people and more specifically investors out there, in their sphere realize that no inventions can be made if there is no food? So farming is not the flashiest of flashy business, but it is the cornerstone on which  the world is build. People can not eat electronic chips.. they need the potato variety to survive.
Could it be that there is someone out there with a little bit of a sense of adventure? I will let you know...

My quest for a business angel...

So on my quest to find a business angel, I have encountered a lot of not so angelic people...
I started the business with nothing but an idea and off course a big, gaping hole, I could see in the market... unfortunately for me, my bank manager could not see the hole, as well as I could... but then, until this day I maintain, that the only hole he could see, was the one at the end of the tunnel, he was looking through.. His hole was called "retirement" and he had no intention of allowing me to influence him in anyway from looking at just the end goal to his career of being a bank manager... Off course, back then, he was  a very important person in rural South Africa....Since then, all authority has been taken away from local banks in small communities and they have become nothing more than brick piggy banks. The only business being conducted in the smaller branches of the banks these days are the putting away of savings and withdrawing  money... off course, the latter will be considerably less as bank charges takes a big bite out of your money... (this is just a little pet peeve, I have)
So there I was... good idea.. blind bank manager!  I had no intention of him stopping me... so I struck out on the road alone...no money... really but the will to make it work!
Being an avid reader, I have often encountered stories or biography about people starting out from nothing and becoming a huge success with billions in the bank...!  If they could do it, so could I! In hindsight I can honestly say, I must have been too stupid to be scared, or too arrogant ... but I have taken this on and now fourteen years later I am still on the quest for my millions..
Convincing people to trust me has always been easy for me... I like to think this is because I am trustworthy, but I think fourteen years ago, in a small, small town, it was mainly the fact that they all knew me and that they had nobody else to do their marketing. I was their angel in the marketing sphere after the deregulation of the marketing councils that until then, have ruled with an iron fist, the marketing of produce in South Africa. It has to be added that in stepping up to the podium, I also took all the risk that they (the farmers) suddenly  had encountered in  the new landscape of marketing their own product... and it is always better to have someone  else to blame if something went wrong!
So I started...stupid but verrryyy forward... and it worked... beyond my wildest dreams, my business grew. It grew so well, it soon left it's cash flow struggling to breath in the dust it created, on it's avid leap forward... and thus began my quest for an angel... of the business kind.

Do you exist?

Ever had the feeling you are standing alone on the edge of a ravine? You can put your hands up to your mouth and call... "Are you out there?"  and after a few moments the ecco comes back ... "are you out there?... are you out there? ... are you out there?..... are you out there?" Getting more feint and distant with every return... This is exactly the way I feel  when I am looking at investors (angel or otherwise).
In  fourteen years of running my own business, I have yet to succeed to convince an investor that my business is a  risk worth taking on...
At first I thought..." the business is too young it wil get better when you are more established"... and I struggled and survived a year... then two... then three... now fourteen and still  I am that lonely person standing at the side of the ravine... calling!!!
After a while I started to feel  the problem was personal: I am too female in an agricultural business... Agriculture is a male driven business. I am too white... in a country where they are trying to uplift the previously disadvantage... I live in the wrong country... people are scared of Africa  or South Africa is not a country where the world feel that entrepeneurs really needs help.... but you know what?... this is not my fault.... I have slowly come to realise that the so called investors (angel or other) out there on the internet or business papers.... they do not really exist.
In my humble opinion they are more fairies than angels... just so much immagination!!
The main reason I am starting this blog is so that other entrepeneurs, like me, would know that they are not the only person standing at the edge of the world calling... no... if you care to look around and listen to the ecco you will see that there are a lot of others... and the voice coming back empty to you might be someone else's... the call is just the same.
It might be that no one else even read this... but for me it is a way of getting rid of this growing frustration  that is fed by feeling alone in the business world...
So, I will blog about  my frustrations... if you do stumble on to this and care to make a comment ... I would really like to hear from you... that way I can really find out if I am alone on the edge of the ravine..
Have a blessed day... hope to hear from you soon.


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