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Teaching Entrepreneurial Literacy In South Africa

Teaching Entrepreneurial Literacy In South Africa

Loral Langemeier is known as the Millionaire Maker. She has written five New York Times best-selling books on entrepreneurship and claims to have helped more than 2000 people become millionaires.

Now she’s teaching business strategies to South Africans who desire to learn how to become successful entrepreneurs. 

Langemeier, CEO of U.S.-based company Live Out Loud in Nevada, has been teaching financial entrepreneurial literacy since 1996. She formed the company in 2001 and has been doing business in South Africa since March.

She was invited to come and speak with English business magnate and investor Richard Branson and Dr. John Demartini at the Success Summit in South Africa in March.

Langemeier said she decided to do business in South Africa because she has more than 17 years of experience teaching entrepreneurs wealth creation. Her goal is to change the conversation about money globally by helping people make more instead of living financially challenged lives.

Because Live Out Loud is a global company with offices in the U.S. and Australia and clients on every continent, Langemeier said she feels South Africa is a great place to focus as part of her continued global expansion.

One of the biggest challenges in South Africa is getting money into and out of the country, Langemeier told AKFinsider.

“Local banking is very regulated, so it’s very difficult to get credit unless you have pretty high status,” Langemeier said. “Many of the credit cards there operate like debit cards and you need to get approval to buy something and then the amount is often capped per day.”

What’s interesting about the economy in South Africa is the diversity of income, she said.

“The diversity of absolute poverty to extreme wealth is staggering there,” she said. “It is extraordinarily difficult to do marketing.”

Transportation issues and limited Internet connectivity in certain areas add more challenges.

“The business culture there is like a subculture that has its own set of rules depending on where you are,” said Langemeier.

Live Out Loud teaches the “fast cash” concept, which explains how you can make money to grow your own sustainability.

Most of Langemeier’s clients in South Africa are new business owners from as small as jewelry makers to large restaurant chains. They include clothing makers, artists, web designers and business consultants.

“I did a three-day workshop last May where you were guaranteed to make money and they (a class of 100) made more than $18,000 dollars,” she said. “It’s a very hungry nation in terms of getting education, due to the poor educational base.”

Teenagers were invited to attend the workshop free.

“Two young men approached me from Stiletto (in Johannesburg) and wanted to learn about the system but couldn’t afford it, so I gave them my Millionaire Maker game,” Langemeier said. “They took it to their village and shared it with all the people there.”

Some teachers in Johannesburg have taken the Millionaire Maker game into schools to teach financial literacy at very basic levels, Langemeier added.

Johannesburg business owner Matt Clark attended a Live Out Loud event in 2013 called the “Big Table.”

“Since joining I have managed to discover what it is I really want to do and how to get it done,” Clark told AFKinsider. “I always wanted to be able to generate more sales in my business but didn’t want to be the key person who bears all the weight on my shoulders, working long hours and putting everything back in to my business.”

Clark said being exposed to new ways of creating, managing and running a business have been useful learning tools.

“My sales process is now automated so that my business is not 100 percent reliant on me to do all the sales as well as generating more income,” Clark said. “My mind has been completely opened to new and better business strategies and tools and the program has made me realize how possible it is to open and run multiple businesses with greater ease.”

Clark said he has since been able to figure out how many people he needs to employ which now allows him to hire a better caliber staff that can do much more work with fewer resources.

“This is a big issue we have in South Africa and a huge obstacle to help overcome,” Clark said.

Meredith Liepelt, is a marketing consultant at U.S.-based Rich Life Marketing. She is also a former student of Langemeier.

“The coaching that Live Out Loud has done in South Africa has been very well received because it is helping people to increase their personal economy and increase their ability to create cash,” Liepelt told AFKinsider.

“It’s really quite phenomenal because there is nobody else out there doing what she is doing,” Liepelt said. “Growing a business while helping others learn to be successful entrepreneurs is both respectable and humanitarian.”

Langemeier started the Live Out Loud website in 2001 because she believed very few people have accurate and appropriate conversations about money and most people who get a business degree often have no idea how to build a business, she said.

For more information, visit http://www.liveoutloud.com.