Standard Bank Fearless
We’ve just launched a new campaign to help South Africa’s budding entrepreneurs turn their side hustles into their main hustles! My Fearless Next will provide one future mogul with funding equivalent to as much as one year’s salary, so he or she can take the plunge, running their start-up full time without the fear of losing a secure monthly income.
According to Cleo Zwane, Senior Marketing Manager for Business Banking at Standard Bank, a lot of young entrepreneurs work eight-hour-a-day (or even longer) corporate jobs, but run a small business after hours and on weekends. This is because they still rely on their monthly salaries. What Your Fearless Next hopes to do is remove the risk and fear of being without a salary, and provide a platform for young entrepreneurs to take their next step.
South Africans have always had a strong entrepreneurial streak: 73% believe that it’s a good career choice, and roughly half think they’ve got what it takes to start a business. Yet, only 9.2% actually do it, according to the GEM 2015 Global Report. Thing is, many of these side hustles are successful, as shown by an online survey conducted by Moneyweb in 2017. It found that a third of working individuals earn more than R5 000 a month in additional income from side businesses.
As a 156-year-old institution that began life as a start-up, we respect this success. So, we want to participate in an entrepreneur’s journey by providing funding, training and mentorship, while also removing the burden of having to work eight to 10 hours a day for someone else just to get by.
The three-month My Fearless Next campaign launched on 4 June and will run until 29 August. Six contestants will be drawn weekly and sent to a one-day boot camp. One winner will be selected each week and sent to the final round. This process will happen for six consecutive weeks, giving us six finalists at the final round. The overall winner will then be announced at an exclusive event in August and will receive up to one-year’s salary, capped at R1 million, as well as mentorship from Standard Bank’s Entrepreneur Development Programme.
If you’re a young entrepreneur working a nine-to-five corporate job, but run a small business on the side, this is for you; we could be buying you time to focus on your business. To qualify, you must be a Standard Bank accountholder and have a side business that is profitable. Enter via an online application from June to July.
“Being a bank that lives and breathes business banking on a daily basis, we believe it’s crucial to help rejuvenate and revive the entrepreneurial spirit in the country with programmes such as the My Fearless Next campaign,” says Mr Zwane.