What is BFN Sport Results’ purpose
BFN Sport Results is a regional sports media company that provides exposure to amateur sports mostly with the occasional elite sports article. We focus on providing a calendar of sporting events happening in the area of 32 codes. At the same time, we write articles, film, produce and broadcast video material as well as publish results afterwards.
We are situated in Bloemfontein, South Africa, hence the abbreviation, BFN Sport Results. Feel free to visit our About Us page.
BFN Sport Results Origin
I’m Jürgen Smith, a 43-year-old storyteller by heart and sports enthusiast. I participated in all sorts of activities throughout my life and became irritated with how sports events are being advertised. It really struck a cord I completed my first half-Ironman, and took a small break. Coming back, I wanted to take my training up a notch, but since we had no Triathlon clubs, we needed to test our training with races. That meant, entering a few open water swimming events together with road running and cycling races.
The problem was, the different Federations didn’t have the know-how and resources to communicate activities outside their Whatsapp and Facebook groups. That meant that planning a season without being in the communication group became difficult. On top of that, we had many great athletes who never were mentioned in the local newspapers and radio stations, because those media outlets tend to focus on elite sporting achievements as if all professional athletes skipped the amateur scene altogether.
Instead of complaining about the situation, I wanted to make a difference, even if I only get the ball rolling in the right direction. We had many sports that were neglected with media attention, and I was going to fill that gap.
Selling your soul for money
As I’ve worked in the service industry as a barman or waiter for five years, I was lucky to graduate to a full-time position and stable income at a cash centre. It is basically a large vault/ warehouse setup for banks. After finding my passion for project management, I excelled in Business Management courses, but there was one drawback. I have a deeply rooted affirmation of creativity. In the bank, there’s only one excepted way to negotiate through daily work, without any leeway for trying out alternative solutions to the plethora of industry problems.
Working every weekend and usually 17-hour workdays, I was paid a decent salary with overtime, but I had no energy to spend time on my primary two passions, writing and participating in sports. I became depressed and money couldn’t buy happiness. As soon as the company started their annual restructuring process, I was offered a promotion, but with more responsibility to spend more time at work. Having a loving wife at home, I had to make a choice, die inside by becoming a machine, or doing something constructive for the community. I chose the latter, so I didn’t accept the promotion and was consequently retrenched.
The laying-off process was a long time coming, so I studied a Creative Writing course to see what options I had. I loved writing fictional short stories because it was a way for me to materialise the insanity that was mauling in my head. Once a story was written, my thoughts moved on to another story. I tried publishing my short stories on several platforms, but they never seemed to be in line with the publisher’s crowd, if there was a crowd for my work.
The road back to sanity
As I struggle to read people, I started reading my mom’s old University psychology textbooks for fun, which is reflected in the stories I wrote. Later, I self-published a collection of my short stories in a book called, “Illusion of Normal”. I like trying to put readers in the shoes of the people we judge as awkward or weird. It is merely a matter of understanding their situation without judging their response to their reality.
Getting to understand the origin of the sporting media problem we had started with this way of reasoning. Unfortunately, there was nobody in the community on whom I could learn or base a business model on. I had to figure out everything on the fly, and as soon as when I was finally released from my banking hell, I founded BFN Sport Results.
I still had some severance money at the time, so I wasn’t too stressed in making money yet. I knew I had to build a product and a brand, and for that needed to meet the community for whom I’m doing this. Writing and providing event dates wasn’t good enough. I wanted to expose the unfound talent in our area and nudge them into a life of awesomeness that they deserved. On Udemy, I took 21 courses, mostly with producing imagery and video content in mind. For my fun writing, I learned how to write movie scripts and wrote two movies, but being in the genre of what Tim Burton produces, I knew that my work was a fun outlet for what I dreamt of.
In the end, without income, I produce content that fills a gap that expanded during the pandemic as a few media houses closed.
Dealing with Challenges
My primary challenge is that every step I take to improve BFN Sport Results, I can’t seek advice on what I want to do, because the industry didn’t exist until I came along. Everything I need, I need to create from scratch. Luckily, based on the relationships I built up to now, I have a pretty extensive pool to gather experts’ information and cook up a strategy.
The problem with amateur sports is that most of the stakeholders I’m speaking with aren’t getting paid for their expertise. Like me, they are motivated by their passion to give back to the community, but it also means that they’re reluctant to be held accountable for anything that goes wrong. Amateur sports also are slowly being introduced to the fact that the exposure they so desperately wanted reveals all their activities; good and bad. They obviously don’t like the latter, but I believe that media should be as transparent and objective as possible.
It is easy to fall into a world where you feel separated from reality. Every communication effort that you try to get information from others, will make you feel like you’re sending messages to an empty office.
Trying to avoid the money problem isn’t easy. I don’t intend to sell my soul for a few extra bucks anytime soon…again, but the reality is that we need it to survive. Even staying in South Africa, we can’t walk up to the zoo and shoot something to eat for free as if the blue sky is the roof of one giant Walmart with everything for free. My business background was about managing people and problem solving, not so much about marketing, fundraising, and finding investors and sponsors. These are skills I need to obtain as a one-person company, but I have a plan to get around that problem.
Identifying Opportunities
One of the most important nuggets I learned in project management, was how to select a team and motivate them. I figured that even I have my limits, and should at some point start trusting the skills of professionals to add value to my business. Even if I’m lucky enough to get a response from a possible investor, the business still needs to make money on its own, and that is where I’ll employ advertising sales agents with an attractive commission as well as a marketing team.
I’m already spread thin, performing all the day-to-day functionalities by myself. I’m a blog writer, graphic designer, marketer, videographer, video editor, broadcaster, sound engineer, web developer and client liaison. Applying the strengths of staff that focus on one thing at a time should definitely take the company to new heights while I can focus on communicating sports passion to the public.
In time, I want to expand the region that I’m covering by creating a new company that focuses on the entire state. The project proposal for doing that was logged with the region’s Sports Confederation, Business Chamber and four other stakeholders that I’m attracting, like education, travel and tourism, Television Network and so on.
Advice to others about business
Motivational speakers are the cheerleaders for entrepreneurs. They will always have something to say about being brave and not fearing making mistakes. Being cooped up in a small room trying to work myself out of my financial worries, I find listening to a motivational podcast during a brisk walk helps me to strategise how to make my next move. As a founder of a one-person business, there won’t be people telling you what to do next, or that an idea is won’t work. You’ll need to find that out for yourself. The learning curve from making mistakes is extremely hard, but you’ll quickly find out that some ideas just don’t work.
You won’t always know whether a decision was the right one or not. Every move you make is either practice or becomes a lesson. The most important thing is to take the journey of serving your purpose, and most of us only find out what it is later on in life.
They say that hardship builds character. Running your first company will be hard, but if it fails, you’ll be the expert on what to avoid to do it better the next time. I still believe, being nearly broke, that making money should never be the primary objective, and that money will come as soon as you fill a gap in society. Being happy isn’t about smiling all the time, but it is that feeling that you’re being the best version of who you can be for others. You should be the best you.
Looking at my situation, if I would do it all over again, I would start with joining the local business chamber. They help with proving partners and resources that you’ll need to get where you want to be. Secondly, I’m glad that I started building relationships from the beginning. Closing a gap means that you’re merging two sides with whatever you’re feeling passionate about. You need to fully understand and solve the needs of both sides.
Lastly, be prepared that your feelings will be hurt. It’s not personal, just business. As a new person in a specific market, people won’t show you as much respect in the beginning and you’ll need to earn it. Respect will be given freely by the people you hand out freebies, but they’re not invested in your welfare. At the same time, without respect, other stakeholders won’t be as eager to provide you with feedback or bother to answer your communication efforts. They’re protecting themselves from what will seem like millions of scams from thieves that make a career from lies. You’re contending against them as an unknown newbie.
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