Entrepreneurship

So often we don’t utilise one of the most persuasive selling components in our marketing materials – the words of our own clients. Many creative people have wonderful testimonials from clients, but never use them for fear that they are [...]

It is no secret that “Word of Mouth”, or referral business, is one of the most effective ways to bring in new clients while simultaneously strengthening relationships with your existing customer base. But even though it is extremely powerful and [...]

So what exactly is a "Small Business Lone Ranger?"  A "Small Business Lone Ranger" is a business owner who does all the work themselves. No matter how big or small the project, the Lone Ranger handles 100% of it. Either [...]

In a recent conference call, one of the delegates on the call described a scenario where a prospective client kept on asking the question: “ If I buy your product, what am I buying?” Often times, our response to this [...]

As business owners, we have to wear many "hats". The quality of leadership and management are two aspects that will have a profound impact on the results of the business.   What is the difference between leadership and management? A [...]

From my point of view, management must always aim to find a strong balance between, what I would like to term, “Telescope Work” and “Microscope Work”.   The “Telescope Work” entails the longer-term view where the focus is on the [...]

An article in this morning’s Business Day caught my attention. Headlined – “Capitec eyes bigger market share and hints at offshore expansion”. In the article CEO, Gerrie Fourie, was quoted as saying – “We need to get to 20%-30% of [...]

I remember as a teenager, watching my mother going about the house doing her chores and thinking to myself, “I would love to be happily married, have children, and run a home one day but I would also like to [...]

We are all familiar with the seasons: Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring. If we think about it, applying seasonal cycles to business makes a lot of sense. Just like farming, each business has the same cycle: growth or recovery (spring), [...]

As I am writing this blog, winter has arrived in Cape Town with a bang, which means rain, cold fronts, and fewer daylight hours compared to the summer months. People travel to work and drop off their kids at school [...]

John D. Rockefeller, Sr. was a man who possessed incredible amounts of money, but he once remarked, “I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making [...]

Several people have the desire to become an entrepreneur because they view it as a pathway to wealth building. In my locality, Nigeria, we recognise that entrepreneurs are people such as Aliko Dangote of Dangote Group, Oba Otudeko of Honeywell Group, and Abdulsamad Rabiu of BUA Group. All these well-known entrepreneurs started out as small trading businesses and grew into conglomerates operating across various [...]

You’ve heard it all before – a few steps to do this and five ways to do that – all designed to help you to succeed in one way or another. However, the point is that when a program has [...]

Think of a 911 Porsche. The Porsche 911, launched in 1963, traces its roots back to the 356 Porsche of the 1950s which actually shared a drivetrain with the Volkswagen Beetle. Similar underpinnings but a vastly different package. Which would [...]

If you go to Google and type in ‘challenges that business owners face’, one of the results listed in 2018 is ‘Lack of business funding, marketing, and cash flow’. Now, if you Google ‘business challenges for 2021’, suddenly results are very, very different; ‘how to avoid burnout, how to avoid fatigue and how [...]

What seems like a lifetime ago, on a Thursday morning, ActionCOACH business coaching was launched in South Africa at the Sandton Convention Centre.  On 3 May 2007, we launched the global business coaching phenomenon at the Franchise Association of South [...]