About Bruce Wade

This author has not yet filled in any details.
So far Bruce Wade has created 106 blog entries.

We welcome the new Cape Chamber President

EM Solutions welcomes the incoming Cape Chamber of Commerce President Mr Geoffrey Jacobs who takes over the reins from Janine Myburgh.

Geoff holds a Master degree in Business management and currently focuses his business efforts on Human Resources with over 22 years of experience.  As a former school principal, he also brings a deep understanding of the education system.

The new Deputy President is Jacque Moolman, a Swiss-trained hotelier and current GM of the Tsogo Sun Waterfront hotel in Cape Town.

Also voted in by the Board is Stephane Rogovsky, CEO of R-Squared Digital SA, who will join me Bruce Wade to head up the Innovation and Digital Portfolio Committee at the Chamber.

We look forward to working with the new leadership and helping develop a solid and positive impact in the business sector well into the future.

A big thanks must be extended to Janine for her awesome and impactful 5 years as President of the chamber. We have seen her personality impact every aspect of the business sector in Cape Town and across the globe. She leaves big shoes to fill and a legacy that will remain for many years to come.

By |2019-03-12T11:01:28+02:00March 12th, 2019|Uncategorized|0 Comments

The Choices We Make For Our Kids

Being a parent involves a bunch of activities that you would never get to do otherwise. There are those tasks at the beginning that include poop, power and pee but they get better as time goes along. Or do they?

Making decisions on behalf of your child has to be one of the toughest. The pre-school we select will determine the first friends your child makes as well as the first educational foundation. Get this wrong and you will have an under-achiever in education for the rest of your life. Then it is the primary school followed by which high school to select. But it is not the way it was when I was young when you just went o the nearest school and that was that. Today there is a selection process, interviews, written portfolios and money up front before selection.

One of the schools we looked at only take applications for Grade 1 after the second trimester of pregnancy and with an R10k non-refundable deposit: Flip, how insane is this?

Each decision for schooling has an effect and either limit or opens the choices they have later in the education and career funnel. Get this wrong at pre-school and sorry-for-you you reap the choices of the bad decision for years to come.

I am at the stage with my son now after many choices, of having to select what to do after Matric. He finishes up with school this time next year and in 2020 he will enter his next phase of education.

So where do we begin to ensure that any progress made thus far is capitalised on to ensure some form of success in his future? We have the gap year, College, University, Tech, Learnerships, or a number of private colleges. Each one offers what they describe as an education for the future, but I am sure all they are thinking about is filling their quota and paying their bills way before they are thinking of their student’s futures.

The correct choice comes from pounding the pavements and going to open days, unpacking the often complex handbooks and websites and doing a full comparative analysis on what is best for a future that no one knows and that will contain jobs that have not yet been invented using education geared for jobs that will no longer exist.

But what about being an Entrepreneur? This is my first choice today, but it took me 5 career changes to find my niche and today I have a job that did not exist when I was in school. After all this, my conclusion is that education does not or may not be an indicator of the job you spend most of your life doing. But it does give you an advantage of being selected for the job you will want. And a good education will only teach you to learn and then embark on a lifelong journey of continuous learning that will lead you to the perfect job and income protection.

Watch this space and we embark on making the future a reality.

 

By |2018-10-10T16:13:30+02:00October 10th, 2018|Bruce on Business|0 Comments

Rules for Prototyping

A recent article on Techco by Tishin Donkersley gives us some simple rule to know when developing your idea from ideation to prototype stage. Here is what she had to say:

  1. Have a Purpose and a Plan
  2. It doesn’t have to be perfect
  3. It’ll take longer than you think
  4. The design will change
  5. Quality = Cost
  6. Find a Mentor

We fully agree with each of these and encourage our innovation clients to come prepared for failure, iteration and a journey of exploration of both themselves and their product.

To read the full article: http://go.conceptdesign.co.za/what-you-need-to-know#https://tech.co/6-tips-prototyping-idea-scratch-2017-11

By |2018-09-17T10:47:49+02:00September 17th, 2018|Uncategorized|0 Comments

Dreams come true in BotRivier for Portia

 

In the small village of BotRivier just off the N2 on your way to Hermanus, you can find the Botrivier Hotel, a fuel station and a hand full of shops. Other than these and a few outlying wine farms, there is not much else to write about. Until now.

 

Portia is a resident of the informal sector of the town. She and her husband Joe live in an informal home with other members of their family. Parked outside their home is a caravan that they paid R5000 for with the plans to open a business and serve food to the local community and at functions around the town.

Portia started attending business courses offered through the local municipality and SEDA offices. She built up enough money to buy a laptop and printer that she uses to plan her business ideas and keep track of her emails.

Then through an initiative with the Kliphuewel-Dassiefontien Wind Energy Facility who sponsored a programme that we got involved with, this started to become real for Portia.

Her business now registered as Joe’s Braai Place started to gain shape and momentum. A number of planning meetings and site inspections gave rise to the approval of some money to buy equipment and stock. Last week I felt like Father Christmas delivering a carload of items that will help Portia launch her business and start making money.

Portia has been equipped with not only the stock and kitchen tools but enough business tools to give her the jump start she needs to develop a sustainable business in the community.

We are still looking for partners who will continue to work alongside her after the contract expires at the end of the year to assist Portia in the financial accountability and supply chain issues she will face.

What a privilege and honour to be involved with her to help realise her dreams.

By |2018-09-03T16:21:48+02:00September 3rd, 2018|Uncategorized|0 Comments

August Spotlight: Welmien Foster

Welmien is one of our smartest clients with one of the biggest hearts we know. She has a degree in microbiology and is fascinated by anything that can only be seen under a microscope especially if it is infectious and dangerous to human health.

Welmien is currently working on a number of new innovative ideas to not only monitor waterborne microbes but be able to identify them and their source before they infect animals and humans. She works as a water analyst doing surveys at hotels, hospitals and other public entities, but her passion is finding that innovative way to be ahead of the curve of infectious diseases and stop them dead in their tracks.

We are always excited to have her in our offices as this is always followed by great conversation, laughter and yet another brilliant idea to add to the product development cycle we are working on. We look forward to the near future when water becomes a safer resource for both urban and rural consumers throughout Africa because of what Welmien has developed.

If you are interested in knowing more about water and those pesky micro bugs, Welmien is available for short talks and water assessments. You can contact her through our offices.

By |2018-08-06T11:36:25+02:00August 7th, 2018|Uncategorized|0 Comments

Help I have a new Idea?

New ideas come and go as fast as taxi buses on the N2, but knowing which are good and which to let go is the difficult process that most people struggle with.  But help is at hand: The Innovation Wind Tunnel is now officially open for business.

The Wind Tunnel is a place where new ideas are tested against a number of different platforms to ensure they are robust and geared to withstand the stresses of the current marketplace. The first filter is a simple pitch to the panel: this is done at initial idea stage where you can pitch your concept, no matter how early in the idea phase, to get some solid expertise feedback. This feedback is designed to enable you to iterate the concept as many times as possible in the early stages of development to ensure your idea becomes as solid as possible before you begin to test it in the marketplace and cost you money.

On completion of the pitch, we offer two sets of reports that do solid research on the presenting problem you are addressing and another report to validate the product offering you are proposing. These two reports will form the base of your application for funding from TIA or similar institutions for seed funding that will address the POC or Proof of Concept development and any IP or Intellectual Property submissions.

For a more comprehensive look at these stages: check out our website on https://em-solutions.co.za/wind-tunnel/

By |2018-08-06T10:49:50+02:00August 6th, 2018|Business Resources, Entrepreneurship, Innovation|0 Comments

Do you need to do your CIPC annual Return?

When we chat with business owners about their CIPC annual return, we too often get blank stares with a small side of fear.  “Oh no, not another compliance issue we need to take care of” is the reply.

Ok, so let’s put things right here and help lay your fear to rest, a bit.

Yes, every registered business needs to submit an annual return to CIPC. It is not a very tedious task and only takes a few minutes of online work. But it can only be done through a person or business that has a registered account with CIPC.  EM Solutions has such an account.

So, what needs to be done? On or as close to the annual anniversary of the registration of your business a submission needs to be made on the CIPC system detailing your last annual turnover, business email address and telephone number and description of the business.

Payment is scaled according to the turnover and ranges from R100 for turnover less than R1 million to R3000 for a turnover of more than R25 million. There are also late payment fees applicable to anything older than 3 months.

This equates to not a huge amount of money, but by not submitting your annual return could result in your business being listed as deregistered by CIPC. Once this happens, your bank will be notified and soon all your contracts, lease and creditors will become aware of this and you will become personally liable for any outstanding overdraft, accounts payable and surety that has been signed for.

Gulp! So please check when last you submitted your annual return or contact us to check for you directly on CIPC and we will advise you accordingly.

Compliance is just one of those things you need to do to run a sustainable business.

By |2018-06-18T09:12:08+02:00June 18th, 2018|Entrepreneurship, Financial Management, Legal|0 Comments

Google Duplex: the future is here

Google has released their new Artificial Intelligence platform dubbed Google Duplex. The key aspect of this application is to relieve us humans of mundane tasks that can easily be done by a smart computer giving us more time to do the important stuff like running our businesses.

I the video below you can see, or hear an example of Duplex phoning an actual hair Salon to make an appointment for Lisa. The interactions and understanding of the human conversation are astounding. All the research and data gathered by Google from years of ‘failed’ projects that we have seen come and go online have all added valuable input into this now clever system.

The future is here. I am keen to see where we go from this as we begin to interface AI speech robots with wearable devices and mobile phones. Scary or not: the future has arrived.

By |2018-05-22T13:21:11+02:00May 22nd, 2018|Entrepreneurship, Innovation|0 Comments

Win €500,000 for your Green Innovation Idea

Get in the Ring and the Dutch National Postcode Lottery are looking for start-ups and scale-ups to combat climate change together. To face the issues of our time, the Postcode Lottery wants to boost and support start-ups that are ready to speed up the transition towards a low carbon economy.

The Postcode Lottery Green Challenge is one of the world’s largest competitions in the field of sustainable entrepreneurship. Green start-ups from all over the world can submit their promising sustainable business plans. The winner will receive €500,000 to further develop the product or service and to bring it to market. The runner-up will receive €200,000 and the three other finalists receive €100,000 each. An international jury selects the winner and runner-up.

The Dutch Postcode Lottery started the competition in 2007, after being inspired by President Clinton to look for those dedicated entrepreneurs with brilliant green business plans. Plans that are ready to speed up the transition towards a low carbon economy. The answers to the issues of our time are already in front of us. But it takes entrepreneurs like the Postcode Lottery Green Challenge finalists to present us with sustainable solutions and get them out into the world.

THE CHALLENGE

We are being confronted with the consequences of climate change around the world. We are looking for solutions from green businesses, which have the potential to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Al1bp8U9hg

For more information and entry forms: https://getinthering.co/challenges/combatclimatechange/

By |2018-03-08T10:34:45+02:00March 8th, 2018|Entrepreneurship, Innovation|0 Comments

Client Focus: New App Launched: SightSeeking

It is not often that we get to celebrate a new mobile app launch here at Entrepreneur and Management Solutions but today is the exception. Evert Hoff is a seasoned app developer and techno guru with a number of apps, websites and many corporate offerings under his belt has launched version 2.0 of Sightseeking.

We have been working with Evert for a number of months now as he has firmed up his Treasure Chest app run mainly in Canada. Treasure Chest is an aggregation platform for online competitions, allowing users to see in one space all the current competitions based on entered search criteria.  This has proved to be very successful and profitable for Evert.

In between his corporate contracts and taking time off to complete his new project, this month he realised the launch of Sight Seeking on to the Apple store.

Sight Seeking is a simple and effective way to hunt ‘treasure’ using GSP tagged photos that are loaded onto the app by different users. You select the picture you wish to hunt and when you estimate you are in the position that the photo was taken, you ‘dig’ to find the treasure and claim your virtual prize.

Launched in its early stages Sight Seeking offers the user a number of photos to find with the initial load. Hailed as the best app since the Pokémon hunting game took the world by storm last year, Sight Seeking offers the users localised, customisable treasure quests and tourist destination offerings.

If you are wanting to get outdoors or get the kids away from their beds, then download Sight Seeking today from the Apple store and get hunting. http://sightseeking.com/

By |2018-03-05T16:38:56+02:00March 5th, 2018|EI Clients, Entrepreneurship|0 Comments
Go to Top