Old Mutual On The Money
Old Mutual On The Money
Interior Designer and Businesswoman, Qinisile Dlamini talks about Making Money from Property You Don't Own
How do you make money from property if you don’t own any? By age 25, Qinisile Dlamini had already made her first million through rental arbitrage and co-hosting. Our Group Head of Financial Education, John Manyike, sits down with this remarkable interior designer and businesswoman to learn more about the opportunities, risks, and challenges she had to overcome.
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John Manyike 00:00:05
Welcome to another episode of “Old Mutual's On The Money”. Today we've got an interesting guest, very much known in TikTok. I mean, some people call her TikTok entrepreneur. Whatever they call her, she's a businesswoman. What I like about her is that she's not scared to face up her failure. And she believes that she can help people by sharing some of her own experiences. Very rare quality from a lot of business people or people who see themselves as celebrities who don't want to give us the truth about what went down behind the scenes. I think we have a lot to learn today. So today we're joined by lady Q, you know, so she's going to tell us more about herself. Welcome, and thanks for joining us.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:00:47
Thank you so much for having me.
John Manyike 00:00:48
Okay. I always want to start from the top so we can look at what a person is doing now. But it's important to know where you come from, you know, your upbringing. Where are you from?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:00:59
So I'm originally from KZN, and I actually grew up in an orphanage because I lost both my parents when I was newborn. So it was myself and my sister. We grew up in an orphanage. For me, I was very aware of how I was actually starting off on the back foot. But I really, really wanted success, so I worked really hard. I always stayed focused. I never really got involved in things that children typically get involved in. You know, like teenagers, they might start drinking or hanging out with boys. For me, I didn't really do that because I knew that there's no backup plan. I am my own backup plan. So I stayed focused. I knew what I wanted to do in life, which was to be an entrepreneur. And when I left the orphanage at 18, I was given a scholarship to go study in Cape Town. So I studied interior design for four years and then moved up to Joburg around COVID time. I was working for a small design company which had to shut down because of COVID. Shortly after that, I started my own businesses out of desperation. And then since then, it's just been taking off. I've tried many, many businesses, which we'll get into a bit later. But, yeah, I've just always been very entrepreneurial because of that goal in mind and knowing very well that no one's going to help me get there other than myself.
John Manyike 00:02:17
I think that's so humbling to hear somebody share that, you know, with that background, growing up from an orphanage. But to have that kind of mindset of being a go getter, you know, you could have chosen to lament about, you know, your background. Why this? Why that? But you chose to look at life positively. So you're a qualified interior designer. What sparked your interest in starting a business in Airbnb?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:02:44
Desperation. It was not planned. The first business that I started after COVID hit and I lost my job was actually in fashion, because one thing I did throughout college was I bought myself a sewing machine. I learned how to sew from YouTube, and then I was selling, like, little things that I'd made to my classmates and people at church. And that then grew into me having a small CMT business where I was doing white labeling. So, for example, if you wanted to make these shirts, and so we would manufacture them and we put your label in it and sell those to you in bulk. So we were doing that. It was going really well. I had a small studio, I had staff, and then things went downhill from there. So shortly after that, I was homeless, I was broke, and then someone that I knew from the orphanage helped me get a place. Now, that place that I got was in Randburg. And it just happened to have you see those floor to ceiling windows, very penthousey. And I guess because I had studied interior design, I was able to furnish it nicely using the money that I was getting from a site, like a peace job that I had. And someone came over one day and made a comment about how this place is so beautiful. Actually, it's like, it reminds me of an Airbnb. I mean, that's where the idea sparked. So I had always known about the Airbnb as a. Like, Airbnb as a concept, but I never considered doing it because I didn't own the property. But I don't know, at that moment, I just thought, “Hey man, maybe if they give me permission to do this, even though I don't own, I'm just renting, they might say yes, and they did.”
John Manyike 00:04:15
Wow. So they agreed. So the landlord agreed for you to register the apartment on Airbnb even though you are not owning it.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:04:24
Correct. So it's a concept that we call rental arbitrage. So I'm renting from you. Let's say you're my landlord and you've given me permission to do this. So my obligation, is it an obligation?
I have to pay you that rent, whatever the rent is. Let's say you say it's R8 000. I pay you R8 000. My goal is to make sure that I get bookings throughout the month that are more than the R8 000. Let's say 15. So then I can pay you your R8 000, and then I keep seven. That's how it worked.
John Manyike 00:04:54
Goodness. You know, for somebody to just think like that, it's amazing. Was there a similar concept elsewhere?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:05:03
I believe that there was something, and hence, I found what the name was. But at the time, I had just thought, I mean, let me just see what they say, and they happen to say yes.
John Manyike 00:05:13
Okay. I think I heard that at some point, you were doing classes on TikTok going live, and you were mentoring people on how to start this Airbnb. How did that come about?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:05:24
All right. So after I got, so my first Airbnb, the one I was living in. Then I went on a date. And I met someone who had a bunch of properties, and, you know, when you have that conversation about, “Oh, what do you do?” Blah, blah, blah, the properties came up and then I mentioned, “Oh, actually, I do Airbnb.” So he gave those properties to me to manage for him. So now that's a second way to do it without owning property. So one, the rental arbitrage, and then this one is what we call co-hosting, where I'm basically managing co-hosting. So that's where I'm basically managing all of your properties for you. And then I get a commission from all of the bookings that I bring in during that month. So when I was marketing these places, trying to get guests, people on TikTok are not trying to book the space. They're asking me, how do I do this? How do I do this?
John Manyike 00:06:10
Because they want to learn and do it for themselves.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:06:12
Exactly, exactly. So I just started a class. My first class didn't have many people, like maybe ten or something, and then at some point it just took off and then everyone was there.
John Manyike 00:06:23
Yeah. So were these classes free or you have to pay for them?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:06:25
No, they were paying, I think, R100 or something.
John Manyike 00:06:27
Okay. Where they were happening on a different platform.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:06:31
They were on Zoom.
John Manyike 00:06:32
Okay. So now you recruit from TikTok, and then if a person pays, and then, of course, you give them the links, and then they go and attend classes there.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:06:41
Yeah.
John Manyike 00:06:42
And how often were you running these classes?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:06:44
Once a week.
John Manyike 00:06:45
Once a week. Oh, wow. That's a nice one. But what I like about you, though, is that you're very open about some of your business failures. I mean, you made your first million at the age of 25.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:06:56
25, yeah.
John Manyike 00:06:57
And you lost all of it.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:06:58
I lost not just a million.
John Manyike 00:07:01
How much?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:07:02
We made the first million at 25.
John Manyike 00:07:06
How much did you lose?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:07:07
I don't know, but we made…
John Manyike 00:07:09
A couple of millions?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:07:10
A couple million. Because we made the first one at 25. Of course, we continued making. And then it just went downhill and it was going downhill slowly. I could kind of project. I could see it from a few months back but this ship is sinking. And it took so much to admit that, yes, it is sinking.
John Manyike 00:07:29
It is going down. So what brought this failure, though?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:07:33
A couple of bad decisions. And it's insane to me because nothing major happened, but just a whole lot of little things in sequence, continuously happening is what sank the ship. The first one that I did wrong was I have some investors who invested, let's say R100 000, and we found a range arbitrage. Remember I told you what that is neh. So we got the agreement with the landlord. We then used their investment to furnish the place, and then we run it on the behalf and then split the payment. So obviously that investor is supposed to receive a return every single month. And it was going fine until now. Landlords can be very iffy at times. They just change their mind or they see that, “Oh, these people are actually making money”. I want to get in on my own.
John Manyike 00:08:20
I want to do it on my own and myself.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:08:21
Exactly. So now they sabotage. Now, when that sabotage happened, what I was meant to do is share the responsibility with my investors, tell them, this has happened, we've now lost this unit. But instead I chose to take on their monthly returns out of my own pocket every single month. And it went on for months and months and months. So I was losing a lot of money there because obviously the space doesn't exist anymore. There were a couple incidents similar to that sort of thing, but ultimately the mistake was me taking that on the responsibility on myself instead of getting the investors involved and seeing how can we now fix this and move forward.
John Manyike 00:09:01
Could this have been prevented? Maybe, if there was a legal contract drafted with the landlord so that they understand that if I withdraw, I have to pay for the changes that I mean.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:09:13
There was a contract stating, for example, that they wouldn't be able to just terminate the lease and whatnot.
John Manyike 00:09:19
Did you go to court? I mean, did you have to tell each other to court?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:09:23
And then I had my lawyers involved, and I don't know if maybe I just had the wrong lawyers involved, but my lawyers just had this thing of always writing letters and more letters and more letters. So we never ended up in a courtroom, but there was still running with lawyers, and every time they write a letter, they consult them. Each letter is R10 000.
John Manyike 00:09:38
Oh, goodness.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:09:40
So ultimately, it never really went anywhere. There was even one case that we're still figuring out now where the hawks are involved, and it still goes nowhere because the lawyers are just writing letters and more letters and more letters, and it's not going anywhere.
John Manyike 00:09:52
And I think this is the part where a lot of people don't understand that there's no business that doesn't have risks. So even this, there were some risks and the risk materialized. What were your financial lessons that you learned throughout the whole ordeal?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:10:09
I learned that, like you're saying, any investment is very risky, and sometimes those risks will materialize. And I should not have taken it on myself, the full responsibility of what happened, especially because it was not my fault, it was unforeseen.
John Manyike 00:10:24
How did you manage your stakeholders or your investors basically? I mean, those who invested money and how did you manage them?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:10:32
Well, once I spoke about what had happened, I sent them all emails just letting them know that, okay, so right now, what we're doing, well, the returns are on hold until we are able to now find another place and do it correctly. Having learned from the mistakes that we made previously and only once, that's all back, you know, on track, then we will continue with the investment.
John Manyike 00:10:58
Okay. Going back to some of the lessons learned, because obviously somebody who listened to your story and say, actually, I want to try this business, but obviously you need to appreciate the risk in any business. So for somebody to say, okay, how can I structure my business or my business model in such a way that I'm able to manage risk both of the landlords, but also investors who are giving me the money to go and furnish this thing. How would you do it differently if you were to do the same, but to manage that risk so that it doesn't really hit too hard on your pocket?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:11:32
Ok so on the side of the investors, I think we had a very, very nice JV written up. So that one, I'm protected, they're protected. And the fact that the investment is for life, as long as the Airbnb still operates, they would receive returns. The great thing about the way that that contract was written is that even if right now what has happened, we have to take a pause on it. It's not going to really affect, like, there's no limit on the time in which the agreement was supposed to run. So you're like, oh, now if we pause for six months, then it's affecting my returns because this agreement just for five years, it’s just six months pause, or three months pause while we fix this and then we continue. So I think in that case, I would say my advice to anyone who's going to have investors is to get a really, really good lawyer who can think of all the possibilities and then just write it down in a way that's going to protect both parties. So I'm not too worried about that side.
John Manyike 00:12:26
Honestly speaking for me, I think there's a very powerful lesson in what you're sharing that in whatever business you venture into, understand the risks and mitigate those risks in terms of having the relevant contracts but have the right lawyers because, you know, for somebody who feels hard done by, they can easily accuse you of all sorts of things. But the reality is that it's a business model that comes with its own risks and you need to get into this business knowing anything can go wrong. But, you know, if this happens, I mean, these are the options that we have.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:12:58
Yes, yes. And we were able to give them options as well, according to the contract or the agreement that we signed. And all of them have chosen to give us time to now put things back into the right place and then continue.
John Manyike 00:13:10
Because one of the things that I noticed, given your business model where you're mentoring people, the very same landlords who come and attend your classes, you could make more here. It's the very same people that turn around to say no, but I think you are making more money than me. And then they decide to change their mind and all that. How do you go about setting up a business like that? I mean, to get into this rentals model without owning the property?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:13:39
So it was the two ways that I was telling you about the rental arbitrage and the co-hosting. The co-hosting one is a lot safer, to be honest. It's zero investment, zero risk. It's just managing spaces on behalf of someone else.
John Manyike 00:13:53
At least there's an agreement with the landlord there.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:13:57
And there's also no obligation to have to have to make a certain amount every single month because your rent is due. Whereas with co-hosting it's just whatever we make, we make.
John Manyike 00:14:07
Did you get to a point where you started acquiring your own properties?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:14:10
No, not yet.
John Manyike 00:14:12
Okay. How do you strike a balance between reinvesting the profits and also taking care of your personal financial needs?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:14:20
That's where I got it wrong, to be honest. I've got three bank accounts, I've got my two personal ones and one business account. But to be honest, I was never paying myself a salary. I was obviously just moving money wherever I needed to. So I think that that really did affect number one, my, what do you call it? How I look to the banks as well. Because they don't see me with a steady income, even though there is money coming in. They can see that. But I was not getting a pay slip. Which I think a lot of business people do just because it just seems like a slip. It's like, yeah, do I really need to do that? But now we're trying to rectify all of those things and pay myself a steady amount every single month. Generate a pay slip, all of those things.
John Manyike 00:15:09
Powerful. That's very important right there. I often hear people in business lamenting, even people who are in the creative arts, whether they are artists or whether they are soccer players. We say, but we don't get a payslip. But no, you can create your own payslip. If you're invoicing, it's a business. You can create your own payslip because you're building a credit profile. But also, what I'm also hearing from you, if I'm not mistaken, is that you have your personal bank account and there's a business account.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:15:43
Correct.
John Manyike 00:15:44
Drawing the line. You know that line boundaries. Which one is business? So, in other words, that was one of the mistakes there. And I think it's quite common with a lot of entrepreneurs getting into business where you can't draw the line between business income and your personal income. And then you don't realize that you're actually spending more than what you should be spending. And then, boom, then you got a challenge.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:16:12
You're now taking from what's supposed to be your own, and then you sign up on this side.
John Manyike 00:16:16
You involved in other businesses as well, apart from. Tell us more about the businesses you're involved with now.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:16:23
Okay. So at the time, my biggest income was. So first it was the Airbnb, and then it was the classes, and then it was the Airbnb again. But now it's the interior design. Because of the investors, we needed the spaces to look good. I had studied. So I said, okay, let's do the design ourselves. And people actually like them. So I said, okay, let's do this then. Good money in interior design. But I was losing it. This is another mistake I made. Being too friendly with your staff, being too accessible.
John Manyike 00:16:56
Father Christmas. Merry Christmas, in general.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:17:00
What I was doing, I was paying my people, my painter, I was paying them R1000 a day. I found out the other day that the standard rate for these people is 250 to 300 a day. Now, let's say I was paying them R1000 a day, but they were really good. That would be a different story. But they were making mistakes. And obviously, if the client isn't happy with the workmanship on something, I now need to refund. But I'm refunding after I've paid these people.
John Manyike 00:17:29
And there's no claw back.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:17:30
No.
John Manyike 00:17:32
So you got involved in other businesses, you in construction. What do you do in construction?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:17:37
We do interior design. We remodel houses.
John Manyike 00:17:40
So how does that work? Is it residential or are we talking commercial?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:17:47
Anything. It can be anything.
John Manyike 00:17:50
What services are you offering there specifically?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:17:53
Let's say you've got this studio here. You guys are tired of this. Look, you want to remodel? So we'll come in and do the floors, we'll do the electrical work, we'll do the plumbing. We will obviously do the stage, the layout, you know, just changing up everything inside space. Now with the business crashing because of the mistakes that were made previously, I've now partnered up with someone that I knew for a while, and he's more on the construction side. So now we can expand. We don't have to just come in when the building is already built. We can come in when there's not even a foundation yet. So they start up with that and then I come in later on and do the design side of things.
John Manyike 00:18:28
Okay. I'm still struggling to reconcile the idea of construction and interior design because then when you say interior design, I'm thinking they're acoustic, the look and all that, and construction. I'm thinking the structure, the structural issues around.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:18:43
They're tied, very closely linked. So if you now want to buy a house, okay, let's say you have a plot in KZN. You're first going to get the architect and the engineer, who are going to come in and they'll do the concept for you. They'll hand over the drawing. The architect and the engineer then leave, who then comes in, it's the construction guys. But even us as a designer, we do work closely with them because ultimately we're telling them what floor needs to be put in, which paint is going on the walls, what does the ceiling look like, what is the electrical plan? So we do work very closely together.
John Manyike 00:19:89
Wow. Was that part of your qualification or is something else that you're learning on the go?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:19:23
It is part.
John Manyike 00:19:24
So this interior design is quite big. It's much broader than most of us. I thought you just decided.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:19:33
So that one is interior decor. So someone actually explained this to me really nicely. Just side note, I did study both. Yes. So interior design is okay. Let's say this is your house. You have a house and you take the roof off and you turn it upside down and shake it. All the stuff that falls out is interior decor. Everything that remains, the floors, the walls, the shower, the bath all that stuff, that's interior design. That's the difference.
John Manyike 00:20:00
I see. Now, what is your approach now to cash flow management in a business?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:20:06
The first thing we did, my assistant is sitting on the other side of the camera, and she forced me to write down.
John Manyike 00:20:12
Michelle is quite loyal, I must say. She's stuck by you.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:20:18
She is. So she forced me to write down all of my debts, all of them. So I wrote them down. And the funny thing is that I was avoiding writing them down because in my head they were this big. Then when I wrote them down, they were not even reaching 100 000. And then we came up with a payment plan. So for the next couple of projects, we're not going to make profit because we're going to be paying back all of these things. From there, this Airbnb private wealth, and apparently comes with a financial advisor, which I was not using for some odd reason. So we found their number and we'll be contacting them to advise us on what's the best way to now manage.
John Manyike 00:20:56
You know, a lot of people are not aware banking is much broader than a savings account. You know, depending on what type of a client you are. If you're in business, there's a section where they focus on business before. If you are a wealth customer, they will have this advisor and dedicated consultant will advise you. You can just call them and say, no, I want to buy this. I want to invest in that. They'll move money around for you. So I think it just gives a different spin to how people see a bank and how partnering with a bank can help them create wealth and manage things like that. Do you still intend to continue with Airbnb? Are you still involved in Airbnb? Having lessons learned and you're still doing? So are you doing multiple things or are you focusing on one?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:21:43
Okay. So I am still involved in Airbnb, but I don't see myself doing it for the long run in terms of teaching. The mentoring site.
John Manyike 00:21:55
It has a season. That thing has a season there.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:21:58
But in terms of having the Airbnb, yes, I do. I do. And my goal is actually to now try and get Airbns that we actually own so we don't have to have these problems that we did with the landlords. But that will take a bit of time. But right now I am more focused on the interior design side of things which had its own mistakes that now we are really clamping down on. Being nice will kill your business.
John Manyike 00:22:22
Can you talk about the importance of diversifying your income streams? Why is it so important?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:22:29
Oh, wow. Because anything can happen. Anything can happen. And at the time, you know, when things started going wrong with the Airbnb, at least I could fall back on the design side of things. When the design side of things started to fall off a little bit, I still had the classes to see me through, even though they weren't that great. I've got income from TikTok as well. There's always something coming in so that I'm not in the place where I was when my first business failed, when that was my sole source of income and I was homeless and I was hungry and, you know, you can't even coop R50 to buy bread and maybe some tin fish or something like that, it was bad. Whereas this time, yes, I've fallen again. However, I'm not in the same place that I was. If I compare that fall to this fall, it's very, very different where there I was hungry, had no option, whereas here, yes, I've fallen. Yes, I'm a lot broker than I was before. But I'm not hungry. I'm not starving, because there's other small things to just keep me afloat and to be able to at least give me a push to be able to start something up again.
John Manyike 00:23:37
Wow. I love your die hard attitude. I mean, you can fail there, doesn't matter how many times you fail, but you just dust yourself and you move on.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:23:44
The other thing I was saying in another video is that you don't fall, let's say you start on step number one. You build, and maybe you get to number four. And then you fall, you're gonna fall to step number three. And you get up again, and you go. And then let's say you get to step number ten. You fall again. You fall to step number four. You're still not falling to step number one. It's still forward movement, even though it's a little bit back. And then you go forward again a little bit back. Ultimately, you're never going back to square zero, ever.
John Manyike 00:24:10
So, because you have multiple businesses and you've got these multiple streams of income, what financial tools or apps do you use to keep track of your business expenses?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:24:24
Don't ask me those questions a lot.
John Manyike 00:24:26
We want to know. We're learning from you. You're the business woman. Surely you must have ways of tracking.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:24:31
I use Michelle.
John Manyike 00:24:33
Okay. So, Michelle. Hey, that's a nice way out. Michelle must worry about, how do you check businesses and you already said what Michelle would say, okay, let's break down your finances. But I think also what I'm hearing you say with your partnership with Michelle as your manager is that she's a voice of reason. And your conscious would say, hey, hang on a second, how about this? And let's talk about the importance of having proper business partners. And I'm not talking partners in a form of somebody you're doing business with, but I'm talking about whether it's a lawyer, whether it's an accountant, but actually having business partners that are going to help you achieve your vision.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:25:15
So I was speaking to the CEO of Google and I was telling him my story about how everything went wrong. And he was saying that his advice for me is to find someone who is good at the things that I'm not good at, because there's no point in me taking on, let's say, the accounting side of things or the administration side of things when I know that I'm not good at it or it makes me miserable. I like marketing, I like doing the design side of things, but Michelle will be better at something else that I'm not so great at. He said, even if it's not a business partner per se, because a lot of people don't really like partners, because things can happen. Even if you employ someone at a senior level who's going to be responsible for the things that you fail at, that's one thing that's really going to help you to go much further.
John Manyike 00:26:06
But more importantly, about talking to the right people, I mean, how many people can say, I was having coffee with the CEO of just a phone call. Which leads me to my next question. How do you decide when is the best time to have to move into the next business, the next opportunity, to the next Airbnb. How do you decide this is the right season?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:26:33
When we saw the others were working out fine, we were able to pay the rentals on them on time, we were able to make a profit from them, and more importantly, we were able to get another investor on board. So that was our indicator as to when to get another one.
John Manyike 00:26:50
Okay, how do you prepare for emergencies? Unplanned expenses?
Qinisile Dlamini 00:26:55
I’ve an emergency fund or savings. Actually, something happened. I went to one of my previous assistants and they were making prawns for dinner, and they didn't know that I was allergic to prawns. Now, I didn't eat the prawns because I know I'm allergic because they were cooking it and the fumes got into my system. I had to be rushed to the hospital totally unplanned for. But at the time, I did have an emergency fund, so I was able to pay that. It was a couple thousands. I don't have medical aid. I think it's a scam, but that's conversation for another day.
John Manyike 00:27:32
I'm glad you mentioned that, you know why, because I had somebody sitting on the same chair you're sitting on, and they were lamenting about the worst mistake they made by thinking that medical aid John, because then they broke their leg. I think I can mention that's Nicolette Mashile. She broke a leg and then she went there, they did scans, and then all of a sudden to get a bed in a private hospital, there's scans and everything. It was coming to around R250 000. The question is that can you really put aside R250 000? If anything happens to my body. But anyways, that's a conversation for another day. Last question. Can you give me your top three tips to young people out there who are venturing into business, what are the things they should look out for when it comes to venturing into business if they want to thrive? Your top three tips.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:28:28
Okay. My tip number one is “Quote or charge correctly”. That's a big mistake that I was making. Client says, okay, I've only got this budget and we like to say I'll make it work. It will not work. It won't. In the end, you're going to be paying for that project on your own. You're going to be working pro bono, and that's obviously not why you started the business to begin with. So charge your worth. Know your worth. And I know even if you're just starting out research, what does an entry level designer charge for the service or whatever it is, and charge exactly that? There are people with money, they will pay whatever it is. Obviously, I'm not saying that you must overcharge now, but charge your worth. A lot of people are failing there. The second one will be “Set boundaries with your staff.” Put your foot down. And if you don't have that, because maybe some people are just too nice and they struggle to do that. Put someone in place who will be able to put their foot down. And if someone makes a mistake, they need to pay for it in the same way that it happens with big corporates and their staff. They make a mistake, they pay for it from their salary. It’s the same way that we need to do it as small business owners as well. And then the last tip would be “Don't be afraid to fail”. You can't be afraid to fail because ultimately the fear of failing is what also keeps people down when they have failed because the failing is inevitable. It's going to happen. If you look at people who are super, super successful if you had spoken to them they would tell you that they probably failed more times than they can count. So it's going to happen but when it does happen just, you know, brush it off, pick yourself up again and try again because at least you learned something from it and ultimately it's not the end of the world. We keep going.
John Manyike 00:30:11
Anyway, that's Qinisile aka Lady Q. Thank you for joining us.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:30:16
Thank you for having me.
John Manyike 00:30:17
I really look forward to us, you know, going live with this podcast and I think there are a lot of jams, a lot of sauces there and there. Really appreciate you having spent time with us.
Qinisile Dlamini 00:30:29
Thank you so much.
John Manyike 00:30:30
Thank you.