The Big “F” of doing business 2

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In this series I have take a number of ‘F’ words and unpacked some lessons we can all learn from how to do business more effectively and efficiently.

The next set of ‘F’ words are Fix Faster. In the first article of this series we spoke about learning to fail fast, this is and always should be backed up by Fix Faster. This means that as fast as you fail, you as a business owner, should be fixing the problems faster. It does not matter who is at fault, or why it went wrong, what is important is how fast it is fixed. If you are so inclined you can do the blame game off line at a later stage, but make sure that whoever was affected, no matter how small the issue, is made right and is notified.

When issues are raised online, a good rule to follow is to acknowledge it online, fix offline and then acknowledge it online again. Never get into trying to argue and fix online. This will lead to some serious arguments and will always bring in hordes of chatter that could destroy your online reputation.

Fix, make good, feedback and acknowledge: the road to maintaining your reputation as a customer centric business. One that will be around next year.

By |2016-11-01T10:20:44+02:00May 14th, 2013|Business Resources, Entrepreneurship|0 Comments

The Big “F” of doing business 4

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In this series I have take a number of ‘F’ words and unpacked some lessons we can all learn from how to do business more effectively and efficiently.

The next set of ‘F’ words are Financially Flippant. Far to many business owners do not know what financial management is or entails. I have seen many business owners living out of the till and treating the businesses money as their own. spending it on personal things, food and fuel and never recording these expenses as such. then when it comes time for reconciliation and financial statements they run around wondering why they struggle with cash flow.

Financially flippant business owners are not able to measure cash flow, manage expenses or risks. They also struggle with growth because there is not a solid base to grow from. Business owners need to become wise in their financial management and measure, manage and reward on all aspects of their business.

By |2016-11-01T10:20:44+02:00March 27th, 2013|Business Resources, Entrepreneurship|0 Comments

Human Rights and Wrongs

This week we celebrate Human Rights day in South Africa. A day when we get to look back at the checked past of our country and celebrate our constitution and the access to human rights as citizens of a free democracy.

Or is it? Jobs and secure employment is still only available to the elite and well connected. Being employed in a stable job is a privilege not a right, as is access to clean water, toilets and housing. The majority of the people in SA are no better off almost 2 decades after the ANC took over. Blame is still placed on Apartheid and the race card is played at every opportunity.

For the majority of people finding income to cover monthly expenses is a constant battle. But yet we see the fat cats of government, corporate and well connected gravy train ride-alongs gleaning huge sums of wealth for themselves and their friends.

Entrepreneurship and self-employment has become a forced way of life for many with little or no support from local government, and no regard to their struggles by central government, SARS or the Labour courts.

The daily grind we see people having to get through in order to survive and trying to make ends meet, whilst trying to cope with the high levels of crime, child abuse and violence against women, is not something we will be celebrating tomorrow.

By |2016-11-01T10:20:44+02:00March 20th, 2013|Business Resources, Entrepreneurship|0 Comments

The Big “F” of doing business 3

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In this series I have take a number of ‘F’ words and unpacked some lessons we can all learn from how to do business more effectively and efficiently.

The next set of ‘F’ words are Future Focus. Any business needs to have their sights firmly set on the future in relation to where they are going and how they will get there. Beginning with the end in mind gets one to the end faster. We facilitate a process with our clients whereby they have a constant eye on their futures through good goal setting, planning and mile stone measurement.

It is critical to keep the course of your business set on a single fixed point. I heard a story that a jet liner travelling across the Atlantic is off course 98% of the time. It is only through the hundreds of minor adjustments it make that it is able to get to its destination across the ocean. The same applies to ourselves and our businesses. We need to know the destination, then make daily adjustments to ensure that we remain true to our vision and arrive at our destination.

By |2016-11-01T10:20:44+02:00March 19th, 2013|Business Resources, EI Clients, Entrepreneurship|0 Comments

The Big “F” of doing business 1

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In this series I have take a number of ‘F’ words and unpacked some lessons we can all learn from how to do business more effectively and efficiently.

The first set of ‘F’ words are Fail Fast. The ability for any business to fail is often frowned upon, especially by your accountant and bank manger. Failure is just not why we went into business in the first place so we try to hide it and deny it and ignore the very fact it happened at all.

But a true Entrepreneur has to learn to embrace failure and more importantly to fail fast. Learn to recognise the signs of a failure, embrace it and get it over with as soon as possible. Put it up as school fees fix the cause and resolve any outstanding issues that may require your focus.

Failing fast reduces costs of denial and dragging it out in some blame game with suppliers or customers. People, being customers, will better sympathise with you if you admit up front where you screwed up or went wrong than if you try to hide the truth and then it all comes out later.

Fail Fast, learn and get back on the horse to ride another day.

By |2016-11-01T10:20:45+02:00March 13th, 2013|Business Resources, Entrepreneurship|0 Comments

What do your Customers Demand?

Customers demand Faster, Better, Cheaper from retailers all the time. This triangle of demand drives businesses into the quadrant of red water competitiveness and the price wars start. Margins are cut, service is compromised and quality fails. Major retailers are good at this because they will never supper themselves, they just pass the pressure ball back to their suppliers and squeeze them into reducing costs without allowing them any room to move at the same time pushing prices up for the consumer. It is always the small guys who suffer and end up circling the drain.

So what is the answer? Escape the commodity trap and get out of this rat race to hell and bankruptcy. Blue Water Marketing, the art of creating a clean slate of client-centric service based on the experiential market. When you make a customer feel so good through how you offer them your service or product, price fades into the foggy distance.

What would be the top two most craved commodities in the world today? Some would say oil and food. Others would say safety and health. But actually what people crave most is Convenience and Experience above all else. Offer these to your customer first and your business will move swiftly out of the red water into the clear blue water of business growth.

For more details on these strategies join us for our webinars here

By |2016-11-01T10:20:45+02:00March 11th, 2013|Business Resources, EI Clients, Entrepreneurship|0 Comments

Reducing business to simple words

Reducing what business is all about is what we are all about. It is a total waste of time expecting busy business owners to have to attend long tedious lectures, complete home work assignments, read case studies and then still expect them to find time to apply learnings back in to their own organisation.

So here is a short video of the top most important words in business. You may be surprised to not find words such as Profit, Customers and Marketing. Enjoy

By |2016-11-01T10:20:45+02:00March 4th, 2013|EI Videos, Entrepreneurship, Marketing|0 Comments

Webinars: are they the future of coaching?

This week at the Entrepreneur Incubator office we have been testing and running a number of sessions using various online applications to present our business coaching tools. It has been a long learning curve but I think we have found a good solution to the problems we faced.

This week we have spoken to many different business owners from both South Africa and abroad on the following topics:

Introduction to Webinars

10 things to do to get a business off the ground

Feasibility Assessment Tool

It has been a whole bunch of fun for us and from the positive feedback we have had, for our participants too. So could webinars be the coaching tool of the future? We thinks so, but online relationships through webinars and FB are not as real as we would like them to be, so we will still run the occasional live venue based workshop and our coaches will still see clients face to face and chat about real issues. But this has opened up doors for us to be able to reach far a wide across the world to entrepreneurs who are not fortunate enough to live in the beautiful Cape Town.

So, onward and upward. We have scheduled 3 new topics for next week:

Introduction to Entrepreneurship

Developing a 1 page business plan

The Business Opportunity Filter Tool

All not to be missed topics for the budding entrepreneur and business owner. Click here for more details and to register.

By |2016-11-01T10:20:45+02:00March 1st, 2013|EI Clients, Entrepreneurship|0 Comments

Mitigating Risks for a Start up

Back in the early days of running my own businesses, I just believed that if you came across an obstacle, all you needed to do was to work harder and a bit faster to overcome it, then move on to the next one. Well that worked for some of them but soon it became apparent that not all obstacles could be handled in the same way and not all obstacles could be overcome, some needed to be avoided.

So I set out to list all the various ways small emerging businesses fail and then began working on ways to avoid these. This formed the foundation to two tools that we use in the Entrepreneur Incubator now to assess and forewarn our clients to what could be lurking just around the corner. To learn more about these tools join us on one of our webinars or download the eBook with full details.

Our first tool, the Business Idea Filter, is a well used tool that is designed to assess in a non-emotional way any new business idea. A really easy to use and revealing tool. We have used this to decide not only on new business ideas but also on asset purchases such a vehicles, machinery as well as business partners and once even to assess a potential girlfriend for one of our clients.

The second tool is the Business Feasibility Assessment. This tool is based on the Porters 5 Forces Model, and allows any business owner to assess their current business, no matter what stage they are at, to see how feasible it is at that moment. This tool has proven to be a life and money saver as potential hot spots have been revealed that we have been able to either avoid or plan for well in advance.

These two tools will be discussed online during our regular webinars. During this one hour session we will go through the tool, discuss how it works, then send you the full eBook with the full tool for you to use over and over again in your business. Check out our scheduled Weninars here or just download them from our Toolbox here to read through at your own time.

Being a proactive business owner goes a long way to managing a profitable, more productive business.

By |2016-11-01T10:20:46+02:00February 26th, 2013|Business Resources, EI Clients, Entrepreneurship|0 Comments
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