Business Sprint 2018 – Year End Planning Master Class

My daughter came home the other day and asked me, “Dad, how do leaves come out of sticks?” The dry and not very attractive stick on a tree seems to magically produce a small green bud followed by lush green leaves that in turn produce feedback to and nourishment to the stick, branch and entire plant.

Good question. Very similar to “How do we get results out of dry business processes?”

To coach any tree into the required shape there is always pruning, feeding, tying up and throwing away required. How is your business doing? Need some pruning, feeding, tying up design and throwing away?

Year-End Planning? – Does planning not only happen at the beginning of the year and not now?

Taking time for a short strategic planning session at this time of year will set you and your business up for a huge strategic advantage for the coming year.

Join me for an online master class on all things business planning on Wednesday 28th November at 12:00

Bookings on Quicket at http://qkt.io/5JQvgk Investment just R150 per business.

By |2018-11-19T15:23:51+02:00November 19th, 2018|Entrepreneurship|0 Comments

NTT DATA to hold Open Innovation Contest 9.0 in search of new partners and businesses

NTT DATA Corporation (NTT DATA) will host its 9th Open Innovation Contest and is currently accepting applications through the contest’s official website: Regional contests will be held in 20 cities across 18 countries. Local ICT company Dimension Data will host the South African applications on 8 February 2019, in Cape Town, with the regional winners being invited to the Grand Finale in Tokyo in March of 2019.

Any start-up company is welcome to submit a proposal for a collaborative business with NTT DATA in fields such as Healthcare & Life Sciences / Finance, Insurance & Payments / Automotive & IoT / RPA & Back Office / Storefront & Digital Marketing / Data Distribution / Disruptive Social Innovation. NTT DATA welcomes business solutions, which are designed to achieve sustainable development goals.
The Grand Finale in Tokyo will be held in March 2019. NTT DATA will cover travel expenses for the presenter of each winner of a regional semi-final. The Grand Finale winner will receive a three-month in-kind contribution to support the development of their proposed new business.

Closing date for entries is November 16, 2018, 5 PM (JST) For more information and how to apply, please visit: http://oi.nttdata.com/en/contest/

By |2018-11-09T12:15:43+02:00November 12th, 2018|Entrepreneurship|0 Comments

Business Sprint 2018 – Staff

As a part of our final sprint for 2018, we are looking at 10 key areas of your business that could give you that added advantage in the final push before Christmas.

Last week we looked at staffing issues and we reviewed 7 R’s related to how we deal with staff. Here is a short summary:

1. Respect – always show respect to your staff by greeting them, listening to them and saying thank you at the end of each day.

2. Refine – Constant training and education is key to refining staff to fit into your changing business and to become effective for your vision.

3. Rejoice – learn to celebrate both success and failure and always learn from both.

4. Reward – Paying your staff and rewarding them with gratitude is key to retention and the longevity of your business.

5. Repair – always fix what is broke. Learning to understand your staff’s home, emotional and physical situations are key to helping to offer support and solutions to fix what may be wrong.

6. Renew – Change is constant, but often we stagnate in our own companies. Mix things up a bit and renew things in the office. You will see the results.

7. Rest – Take time off. Give staff leave and time off for their resting and rejuvenating. The investment in rest will be well rewarded.

This week we big our focus on Marketing and Branding as we unpack some interesting facts on what you can do this week to improve your market penetration and retention.

Join us on Wednesday at 12:00 Noon: https://zoom.us/j/723567165

By |2018-10-29T12:44:45+02:00October 29th, 2018|Year-end planning|0 Comments

Business Sprint 2018 – 4D Products

In our current series dedicated to sprinting to the close of 2018 and finishing strong, last week we unpacked the 4 Ds of Products. Here are they again for you:

Define your Products: Each of your product offerings should be well defined detailing amongst others the Features and the Benefits of that product. Knowing how to describe your product goes a long way to creating an effective sales funnel for the business.

Develop your Products: Your products should always be in development, but not ever changing. Getting feedback from your clients and customers and gathering information will give input into an agile approach to product development and improvements.

Data about your Products: Gathering data about each one of your products is key to understanding how they interact in the market. You need to know how well each product sells, to whom and when. Any type of data is important, collect, store and do analysis as often as you can.

Diversify your product: It is always important to look at other ways your product can bring you income. Too often products are created for a specific purpose and never looked at again for an alternative use of income generation.

Pause a little and relook at your products through each of the 4 lenses above and see what you can do to improve your business before the end of 2018.

This week we look at staffing issues through the R-Lense. Join us on Wednesday at 12:00 noon. https://zoom.us/j/723567165

By |2018-10-22T09:18:37+02:00October 22nd, 2018|Entrepreneurship|0 Comments

2018 Business Sprint: Business Compliance

Last week was the first in a series of 10 webinars that we are presenting on Wednesday’s at 12 Noon. Each one aims at tackling a specific area of your business that may need some attention before the end of the year.
Our first webinar addressed issues of compliance, regulation and legislation. We thought we would start off with a hard one, and based on the feedback we go, it hit a few nerves and open wounds. But this is what running a business is all about, sometimes it is fun, but other times we need to do what needs to be done. Once done, we can go back to having more fun.
If you missed it, you can watch it below, but do not miss this week Wednesday Weekly Webinar at 12 Noon as we address issues related to your products and services that may need some attention to finish the year off with a bang (in a good way)
The link to the webinar each week will be: https://zoom.us/j/723567165

By |2018-10-15T14:17:55+02:00October 15th, 2018|Entrepreneurship|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

2018 Business Sprint Webinars

There are just over 80 days left on the calendar for 2018.

It has been a year of water focus, mayor disputes, petrol price hikes.

Now we have rain, the winter cold has gone and the end of the year is just over the next hump. Shops already have Christmas puddings and decorations for sale. Yikes.

But the next few weeks could be the most important of your year. It is a time to focus and finish with a sprint, not a whimper. So why not create a sprint plan for your business to get you to the desired end point before you shut down for the holidays and enjoy a rest.

We have 10 working weeks left in the year. Each week we will focus on a different aspect of your business and help you focus and get things done. Each of these will be done via an online live webinar broadcast every Wednesday for the next 10 weeks, starting this week on 10th Oct at 12:00 Noon.

The topics we will cover, not necessarily in this order, are:

1. Business compliance

2. Products and services

3. Customers

4. Internal processes

5. Financial management

6. Marketing internal

7. Marketing external

8. Branding

9. Risk Register

10. Year-end tips

Join us each week from 12:00for a 45 minute live webinar as we unpack your business to help you stay in business and be ready for2019.

The link to the webinar each week will be: https://zoom.us/j/723567165

By |2018-10-08T16:27:33+02:00October 8th, 2018|90 Day Sprint, Entrepreneurship|0 Comments

Innovation vs Invention

What is the difference between an invention and an innovation? This is the topic of many discussions we seem to be having recently. Does it really matter? Do we need to clearly define these things to get our businesses re-geared for the future and more sustainable?

Well, yes and no. No, it does not matter for the business development side. It does not matter if you are just improving current things in your business (innovation) or creating something unique and new (invention). If it works in your business and makes you more money, then just do it.

But there is a little thing called IP. That Intellectual Property that you may be creating through either an invention or even through innovation. If you create a unique, new idea, design or formula or process: this could be seen as a new IP for your business. And if you have created IP, then you need to protect it from others and ensure that you add it to the balance sheet of assets for your business.

IP consists of a wide variety of things from a simple design to a global patent: each with a number of classes, sub-classes and classifications: each with its own registration process and associated costs. We understand some of this and work closely with people who live and breathe this stuff. So to make it all simple and easier for you, we have created an online assessment process that will help evaluate your IP and give you clear direction on where to proceed without having to have met with a legal team and breaking the bank on your first few visits.

This simple assessment is done and paid for online and in just a few days you will be presented with feedback and a consultation on the best way to move forward with the registration process of your ideas or inventions.

Check out the online process here

By |2018-08-23T11:55:02+02:00August 23rd, 2018|Innovation|0 Comments

August spotlight: Marriet

Marriet is a FlYght Coach, and is also a self-published author of the book and board game named “Ready, Steady, Fly!”. Marriet is a public speaker on the topic “Start to Finish” and the author of the “Plan to Action” and “FlYght Coach” Programmes.

Initially, Marriet struggled to find her own special place in life, with this she created intelligent tailored solutions and hopes to touch and encourage others to discover their own potential and to act on it. Her goal in life is to help people find their unique place and to implement their purpose in life. She believes everyone is unique and is capable of playing a role in society and the teams we operate in by bringing about their unique contribution in life.

Marriet is a multi-talented person who enjoys piecing life’s lessons together in a fun-filled manner. She shares her life experiences and feels it could change the way we think. She loves to encourage people based on her lessons learnt through her experiences of being torn apart.

In addition, Marriet is also an artist who enjoys arts, crafts, writing blogs and making music. She has published her own songs and paint on consignment. She also has a great passion for learning new things everyday.

By |2018-08-16T14:03:19+02:00August 16th, 2018|Entrepreneurship|0 Comments
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