next month im gonna submit a totally auto traced design, yes it?ll be my original pencil sketch but im gonna auto-trace that mother to death, i?ll auto-trace like a man possesed, i?ll auto-trace my auto-traced design,i?m even going to call it ?Auto-traced?

i want you all to critique that submission, i garantee all of you i will flatten most of the ?originally pain staikingly designed? submissions, why?

because its about the finished product not how you got their, this is a god damn t-shirt design competition site not an illustration technique competition, if half of you put the Auto-trace swear word in your pocket concentrated more on the objective i?d actually see better designs, most of you are acting like true South Africans sabotaging each other to the point where some one bows out deflated and frustrated, out of the competition and we loose a valuable designer like Integral. King C must be on his way out too with constant abuse.

You people piss me off, your part of the reason this country wont fly ahead of the rest of the world, we sit back and argue the hell out of subjects that dont matter and leave the important stuff behind, your curses and insults fly around cyberspace like cotton wool daggers. Fight back with your designs, prove your point with a submission.

As for leaving the site because it?s got a negative vibe, you big yellow coward, thats the same as emigration, you stay you fix it, you die trying. This site is South African and i will stay i will change the vibe, i will make it the greatest design community their ever was, i will eclipse threadless and any other, i will be the best, we will be the best, join me, im SOUTH AFRICAN
and i?ll auto-trace if i want!

We launched our eCommerce section on springleap at exactly midnight last Saturday night which was the 1st June.

And as I keep getting emails from tons of people asking me to review this and review that, I thought we should make it worthwhile for bloggers to let us know how we’re doing with springleap.

So we came up with the Buy1, Blog, Get1Free springleap bloggers special.

1. We might have already sent you an email invite to take part, in which case just reply to the email saying you want to take part in the Buy1, Blog, Get 1 Free offer.

2. If you haven’t got an email from us, contact me OR through the contact section at springleap with the URL of your blog. If we like the look of your site, we’ll email you to tell you “yeah, you’re in“.

3. Once we approve you to take part, you have 7 days to buy a Tshirt from springleap.

4. After you receive your springleap tshirt, tell us what you think of the entire process in a blog post. The springleap website, ease of buying, customer service, first impression when your new springleap tshirt arrives, and perhaps a pic of you wearing it. We want to hear the good & the bad.

5. Send us the URL to your blog posting, so we can either jump around congratulating each other for doing a great job, or start making improvements.

6. Wait for your FREE Tshirt to arrive.

So you help springleap improve and we’ll send you another springleap Tshirt as a thank you.

Now back to work for me. Catch me on Twitter.

small print: The buy1, blog, get1free is ONLY for South African bloggers whose postal address for the Tshirts is IN SOUTH AFRICA. buy cialisbuy cialisbuy levitrabuy levitrabuy propeciabuy propeciabuy somabuy somabuy levitrabuy cialisbuy propeciabuy levitrabuy somabuy cialisbuy propeciabuy levitrabuy somabuy cialisbuy levitrabuy propeciabuy soma

Business the Branson Way

It’s been a crazy few weeks, but the 3 sessions Brian Walsh is putting on looked interesting enough for me to decide that I’m going to give up staring at my laptop screen for a few hours, and get out there and network and hopefully learn something new.

So if you want to hang out with me, I’ll be twittering at the “Real Entrepreneur” sessions in Cape Town, & blogging my thoughts after.

Check out what this one guy said after the last course…

“It is seldom that I meet someone who has a message for me that is as profound and life-changing as yours. I felt a cold chill in my body for most of the event on Saturday, and left inspired and with a desire to truly make a difference to my life and everything around me. Thank you so much!”

- Robert Jewell

CEO Jewell & Co Chartered Accountants

(Johannesburg)

I’ll let you know afterwards if I felt the same way!

So if you’re in JHB, Cape Town or Durbs, check out the details, & if you’re going to be at the Cape Town sessions, come say howzit to me.

We’ll be trying something a little different this month at the OpenCoffee meetup, and give it a dash of structure to encourage networking. Every attendee will get a colour-coded name tag to indicate their service industry. We will also ask that you complete a short questionnaire before leaving OpenCoffee to assist us in planning the next event.

If you haven’t RSVP’ed yet, please do so by logging on to http://entrepreneur.meetup.com/1144/.

See you there!!!

Two weeks ago, I was speaking on Affiliate Marketing at the 2nd Annual New Media Marketing Conference in JHB.

Then last week I spoke again on Affiliate Marketing at the Online Travel Summit in Cape Town.

This week I’m off to JHB again, but this time as a delegate at The Marketing Show.

It should be an exciting action packed 2 day seminar as they have 6 INTERNATIONAL speakers flying in.

Designed for marketing professionals, the event focuses on the best new marketing innovations and e-marketing techniques from leading international markets of US, UK, Europe and Asia; and is sponsored by Microsoft who will host the event as well contribute to the event’s content with it’s leading insights into e-marketing technologies and strategies.

There are still a few last minute tickets available, so speak to me if you find the schedule interesting, as I might be able to get you a discount, although the R5000 price is already good value with so many International speakers taking part…

And then later in the week is my mate Dave Duarte’s Nomadic Marketing course taking place in Cape Town, so hopefully see you there on Thursday if you’re attending, although I’ll probably be a little grumpy as getting back to Cape Town late Wednesday night.

What a week!

Who would have guessed that Vernon Koekemoer would be featured on Sky Television and David Bullard would no longer be the first place many South African’s turn to when they open the Sunday Times.
online pharmacycialislevitrasomaviagra

Here’s a quick summary of springleap stuff keeping me busy over the last week…

Charl Norman is an SEO GURU. That’s right, Charl, won the springleap SEO competition by getting his bandwidth blog website in number 2 AND 3 spot when searching on google.com for the word springleap.

Rafiq & Chris contested hotly, but you got outmanoevured guys…

The presentation ceremony is happening sometime today in an undisclosed secret location…watch this space!

My April fools joke was a talking point, and got coverage on Biz Community. Once again, sorry to anyone who took me seriously - I got a call this morning from someone who has been upset about springleap shutting down for SIX DAYS!!!!

And now for something serious - springleap needs more brilliant people involved to take it to the next level. We’re looking for 3 people to join the team ASAP (there will be more openings announced later in the week)

1 x junior developer

1 x senior developer

1 x marketing assistant

Last time we gave a R1500 thank you for helping find us the right person to join the team. This time, if you know of the right person, send them our way, and if they join the springleap team, you’ll get R1500 in hard cash & and R500 springleap voucher.

Last week we had mentions in the Citizen, UCT radio station, Biz Community, Leadership, & the Natal Witness - if you’re a journalist and want to talk about our plans with springleap, get in touch…

Lastly, thanks to everyone one of you that has already voted. The more people that vote on the tshirt designs, the more accurate the results will be…

Remember that this month, Coffee Club is happening at Sinn at Wembley Square at 2pm today…

See you there.

Well, for the last few months, Eran & myself have put our heart and soul into our Internet start-up springleap.com but unfortunately we were the only ones who saw the potential in our new venture.

Since we launched a month ago, we’ve had 17 registrations, and only 3 people entered our first Tshirt competition although we thought the prizes were attractive.

We had committed to printing 20 tshirt designs a month, but with such a poor response, we had to “shoot the puppy” & “jump the shark” - if you don’t know what i’m talking about, ask Mike Stopforth.

There were a few of you that told us you thought the site had potential, and we thank you for believing in us.

For now, I’m going to be heading to my beach house - I might even write a book about this experience. I’ll be back stronger!

We’ve set up a message board on springleap where you can leave a message. It would mean a lot to me if you left a message!

A few days ago, Justin Drennan from Internet Start-up wantitall.co.za mentioned springleap in a wantitall newsletter.

When I was living in London i used to LOVE walking through gadget shop, and wantitall reminds me of gadget shop. Flying planes making you duck as you walk in, lots of interesting clock type gadgets projecting images on walls, and tons of other gizmo’s and gadgets. (the mini bar fridge which held ONE COKE was one of my favourites.)

Co-incidentally… the day after springleap was mentioned in the newsletter, Ronnie Apteker wrote a piece on wantitall on moneyweb - in all my time reading moneyweb, I have NEVER seen a reaction from the community like that. It wasn’t pretty!

Ronnie is a SMART guy. I know of some other ventures he is involved in other than IS, and some of them look VERY INTERESTING…

If he has invested in wantitall, there is a reason - perhaps the long term vision of the company is very different from where it is now. It’s like this with MANY company’s I’m involved in…we already know how we are going to be different, better, profitable etc, even though it might not look like that at the current time to external eyes.

One things for sure - I’m going to be keeping a close eye on wantitall in the future.