The pedantic will turn their noses at the slightest use of cliches. Within reason, of course.
But there are times when a well-worn phrase carries the day. As a struggling entrepreneur, nothing lifts me up like a positive statement. It becomes a pick-me-up, a mantra, a war cry.
Alan Knott-Craig – the son, not the father – has a knack for these things. He writes an internal email meant for staff in 2008. It goes viral and ends up as a book!
This is the first of his books I’ve ever read, an oversight I plan to remedy soon.
Having founded no less than 21 business entities – including Mxit, iBurst, Hero, fibertime, etc, he certainly has the qualification to speak to entrepreneurs, with authority.
He says “hold my beer” a number of times. Hold my beer while I knuckle down!
And knuckle down he does, as any self-respecting entrepreneur with a business worth saving will be well-advised to do. Knott-Craig says there are no days off in the game.
Talking of games, another phrase – not so hackneyed, which resonates with me is “skin in the game”. Do not trust a director with no skin in the game, he says. When you have skin in the game you have equity in the business – you have put in your own money.
It is easy enough for business mentors to mouth off the tame: “don’t quit”. Knott-Craig does better than this trite line – he throws chestnuts that keep you keeping on.
Each time he gets a breakthrough (after a setback), he says “we were off to the races.”
Off to the races sounds to like we were going to play. The only way a businessman knows how to play is to make money.
Each time he makes a point, too good to be credible, he says ‘Google it.’
A bad business (dela) he calls ‘snakes and ladders without the ladders’.
Business books are dull and grey, boring. But Life Lessons How to Fail and Win is alive and vivid, thanks largely to Knott-Craig’s tongue-in-cheek writing.
His turn of phrase is just to die for. He does business with a buddy named Rich Henn. It is a business relationship that doesn’t end well.
What does he call it? A Henn grenade!
He says: “Only you can save you.” I laughed at this because this isn’t really true – in his case. He had Daddy Dearest’s money to count on!
The son of the one-time Vodacom bigwig whose name he shares, of course Knott-Craig was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, a privilege he doesn’t deny.
He says of the book: (It) “explains what I’ve done with the lucky ticket I won in the lottery of life”.
He’s 47 now (started handling millions at 29) but has packed a body of work into his life most men go into retirement without having achieved, even by half.
Don Makatile
The Star