Do something that’s already been done, but market it well

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SIMON BROWN: I’m chatting with Hetty The Entrepreneur. Hetty, I appreciate your time today.  I was introduced to your work last year by a friend who had actually been on some of your services. She referred to you as a ‘monetisation coach’. I’ve  got to say at the time I scratched my head, I wasn’t sure. And then I’ve been reading your book, looking at some of your work. Really what you’re doing here is saying to folks, ‘This isn’t rocket science’. There really are tools out there which make it so much easier to get our idea and actually make it viable and income-producing.

HETTY THE ENTREPRENEUR: Absolutely. It’s something that I’m so passionate about, Simon, because I feel that particularly in South Africa and on the African continent we’ve barely scratched the surface as far as online monetisation is concerned. So I’m passionate about spreading the knowledge as far and wide as possible.

SIMON BROWN: And one of the key things is something I’ve always said. Your husband and you started a  boutique selling African print clothing, and a key point you made in the book you sent through [is that] you didn’t invent anything new. That’s not disparaging. We don’t need to come up with some crazy new idea. We can just do something that’s already been done, and market it well.

HETTY THE ENTREPRENEUR: Yes, absolutely. I think a lot of people stall in pursuing their entrepreneurial objectives because they think they need to invent something new.

In fact, innovation is not about inventing something new, it’s about taking what already exists and perhaps delivering it better.

SIMON BROWN: Delivering it better, doing it better. And of course using the tools that we have these days which are the internet, social media, drop-shipping, even artificial intelligence. I’ve been using that to write promotional tweets for blog articles.

HETTY THE ENTREPRENEUR: Absolutely. There are myriad tools that are out there, but it’s important for us to first have an understanding of what is out there, and how to use it smartly to be able to get our business objectives.

SIMON BROWN: And what matters there is know who your customer is, know whom you are targeting. You talk around having a clear picture of who that person is because then you know how to speak to them, and where to speak to them.

HETTY THE ENTREPRENEUR: Precisely. It’s also important, first and foremost, to understand for yourself your own objectives in the online space. Are you looking to sell a product or a service? Are you looking to build your personal brand? In other words, you are the commodity itself. There are so many opportunities within the online space that it’s worth really looking into it to say, how can I better leverage the space that I’m already on when I’m on social media already?

SIMON BROWN: We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. It’s not even that we don’t have to think of something new. This is not about reinventing the wheel. We as individuals have skills. We have things we are passionate about. We can work with those. We often think of a side hustle as something which makes us a few rands. We can turn these into proper viable businesses.

HETTY THE ENTREPRENEUR: Absolutely. I think if we’ve learned anything in the past couple of years, it’s the fact that [having] multiple streams of income is so important. [When] placing all of your eggs in one basket, anything can happen at any time.

And the beauty with the online space is that you can actually juggle that with whatever you are already doing. So it’s not a question of choosing either/or. It’s actually a case of making the circle bigger.

SIMON BROWN: Making the circle bigger, and almost in a sense you can design this around whatever the side hustle is, whatever business you’re putting together. You can design it around your existing life because you’re starting from scratch. If you’ve got a school run with kids, well then you can’t be doing anything between six and seven in the morning.

HETTY THE ENTREPRENEUR: Yes, precisely. I just love the flexibility of the online space. So for me, my office is literally my cellphone and my laptop. I can work from anywhere at all. That  for me is so amazing because it also impacts the quality of your life.

SIMON BROWN: In that sense we absolutely do live in the future. A wonderful line that you had in the book, where you talk around monetising, is about inspiring communities. You say people are not trees, they can be moved – which I thought was brilliant. But it’s also that sense of community. A lot of listeners out there might be saying, ‘Well, I don’t really have one, I don’t really have a following’. You might have, and of course you can build this as well.

HETTY THE ENTREPRENEUR: Absolutely. You certainly can. It’s quite interesting, because a lot of people have the misconception that you need to have a large following. It’s not actually about the number of people that follow you. It’s rather about the quality of people that follow you. You want to have individuals who are following you for the right reasons. So if, for example, you offer consulting services, if 90% of your audience is interested in the services that you’re offering, then you can monetise them, even if it’s 200 people.

But likewise, you could have 10 000 people and, if they’re following you for a completely different reason, then they become more difficult to convert.

SIMON BROWN: I take that point, and it makes me realise that it doesn’t matter what business you in. Whatever you’re doing you can move it forward. You can uplift it and generate more from it.

HETTY THE ENTREPRENEUR: Absolutely. When we look at the digital space, during the Covid years, during lockdown, that was the first time in the entire marketing history that corporates spent the bulk of their marketing spend in digital marketing as opposed to traditional marketing. That is because the online space is the great equaliser. You no longer need to spend a whole lot of money on billboards. You can literally put an ad out and reach thousands of people with a click of a button.

SIMON BROWN: That’s a good point. I could do an ad campaign on any one of the social media platforms and I’m right alongside Proctor & Gamble, Coca-Cola, H&M, whatever space I might be operating in. It’s that level playing field. And to your point, it’s bringing that opportunity to people which we just haven’t had in decades past.

HETTY THE ENTREPRENEUR: Absolutely. For me, running this monetisation agency has been really incredible, because our team is so expansive. It’s not just myself. We’ve got team members from all over the world, and it is literally leveraging the power of the digital space. So even the way in which we work and the way in which we can be efficient has completely been revolutionised.

SIMON BROWN: Yes. If I need a copy editor or if I need someone to do a graphic for me or something like that, I don’t have to go out on the streets at Johannesburg and find this person. I go onto the internet and there will be hundreds of highly skilled individuals who can do it.

HETTY THE ENTREPRENEUR: Precisely. That really changes the way that we work, the way that we earn money, and also the possibilities of monetising are increasing every single year.

SIMON BROWN: Yes, it’s about those possibilities. And that’s the point that I said right up front. It’s not about reinventing or starting something amazingly new. It’s not about coming up with some astounding new invention. Those are great, but actually we can do it from our cellphone, and that’s it. I was going to say we could do it from a laptop, but of course we can literally do it from  our cellphone these days.

HETTY THE ENTREPRENEUR: That is so true. We were having a personal-brand photo shoot for a client the other day, just to leverage her expertise in the online space, and we were talking about the fact that especially in Europe and in America, they now even have iPhone photographers, people who are having photo shoots using their smartphones – which are now actually rivalling your traditional professional cameras. So the way in which we engage is just so, so fascinating.

SIMON BROWN: Yes. I’ve got a ridiculously expensive camera, and my new iPhone takes better pictures. It’s an awkward admission, but it is true.

We’ll leave that there. That’s Hetty The Entrepreneur. Hetty, I really appreciate the time and the insights.

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