Running a Small Medium Enterprise (SME) in the current South African economy is challenging. As a growing film production company in the commercial space, Ola! Films have hit barriers to entry at almost every turn. For us the requirements to trade are not dissimilar to larger entities: we need to have a suitable corporate image, a good deal of budget must be set aside for our regulatory OPEX and tax affairs, plus we have to be BBB-EE competitive – that is our rating counts as much to our clients as the bigger enterprises.
When we found ourselves up against it in a recent property dispute, we asked ourselves when we would catch a break. Surely it was not much to ask to go about our business without expectation and inconvenience from banks, council, SARS and the new BBB-EE code? Everybody seemed to want a piece of our little pie. The new code especially rankled, as for advice from several empowerment specialists, we were informed we had to shape up. Think about your ownership structures and your skills development plans, they said, or you’re dead in the water and no use crying about it.
We cried for a bit. It felt unfair to be forced to do things we didn’t feel we had the expertise or resources to tackle. There aren’t armies of talented professionals rolling around SMEs ready to sort out these difficult organisational commitments. But our tiny little team had to get to grips with it, and get to grips we did.
The first thing we did was start an internship programme. Basically this meant applying for funding from government to train and pay young graduates. This required months of reading, negotiation, information gathering and presentation, but eventually we got our grant approved from MICT Seta and we could begin interviewing candidates. And an unusual thing happened while we were prepping for the grant: we became excited by the programme. It suddenly made sense that we should play a part of growing the youth and providing them with much needed paid work experience and mentorship. The candidates we spoke to were bright, enthusiastic individuals who just wanted to be given a chance to be taken seriously and learn. The feedback we got spoke to the fact that it’s one thing demanding free university education, but an even greater concern is employment and employability at the end of it. Many felt the wrong focus has been highlighted with the recent riots and that these sorts on internship programmes are vital to assisting the transition to a meaningful adult life through gaining much needed, and often inaccessible experience.
The second thing we did was look at our ownership structures. Look, no one wants to give their hard earned business away for peanuts as a lot of businesses out there presume. But there are ways to incorporate people of colour, gender and disability into white owned business and protect what has been built before and go on to build even greater things after. Frankly, and we have always believed this, it is downright offensive to assume that people of colour or disability would want to simply be a figurehead in a business and contribute nothing – there are fewer people willing to operate like that than experience tells us. As well as this, becoming a meaningful shareholder in a business is hard work – especially in a SME, and just like any other business, if it is a viable going concern, you will have to buy your share. SME’s can’t afford to give the love away for free – it has to be paid for and maintained, just like in any other business. Addressing ownership structures and really hammering out what can be gained from forging new relationships could in fact be a good thing and set your business in new and exciting directions. Rarely have great businesses survived or grown by doing the same thing in the same way year in and year out.
The third thing we did was change our perspective. Looking at ownership, structures, strategy and internships would certainly assist moving our business into the right space with the right credentials – indeed credentials we needed to survive. But we also needed to re-think what it is we wanted from our trade. The bottom line in any enterprise is undeniably important but in a world that is increasingly unstable, risk averse and partial to change resistance, we’ve learnt that sharing our knowledge and bringing in new talent is key to protecting that bottom line we care so much about. If we are to grow a forward thinking self-sustaining society employed and operating in a successful economy, we all need to be embrace some changes, even in businesses as small as ours. The added benefits are working in an environment with new, excited faces – talent the film industry so desperately needs but is afraid to embrace. Our new partnerships have created a refreshed work environment, a place of learning, idea sharing and opportunity seeking – and that is forward thinking worth every cent.
By Eleanor Talbot, FD of Ola! Films PTY LTD
