Author: Chesney

Idea Accelerator™ is for people who have the fire to innovate whether deciding to start something on their own or re-imagine and re-invent what they do at work. Hotwire your inner circuitry with the ideas and articles you find here.
Posted on

Who’s supporting business in these hot, dusty Karoo towns?

Northerrn Cape
Northern Cape (Photo: Chesney Bradshaw)

After driving for hours through the hot, dry and dusty Karoo, you get back home to the city and miss those wide open spaces.

The veld with small bushes and shrubs that extend to the mountains on the horizon. Clear visibility enabling you to see so far that you wonder about the distance that you can see with the naked eye – is it 23 km or 30 km? The vistas are big and leave you with a good feeling that there is still so much land out there that’s unspoilt, unpolluted and even untrodden. Continue reading “Who’s supporting business in these hot, dusty Karoo towns?”

Posted on

From the road

Simon's Town (Photo: Chesney Bradshaw)
Simon’s Town (Photo: Chesney Bradshaw)

A young man hitch-hiked from Cape Town to the Eastern Free State to attend a funeral in a rural area. He can’t afford the taxi bus fare because the price has gone up. The rising fuel price is bringing the return of the hitch hiker.

A craft shop in Hanover, a pass-through town in the Karoo, displays crafted furniture, paintings and ornaments – all made with care and quality you’d previously only find in city stores. Even back water crafters have upped their game. Continue reading “From the road”

Posted on

Want five proven ways to get your news release published?


Breaking news banner logo
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I haven’t sent out a news release for some time and wanted to try out the e-news release services available in South Africa.

My e-book on the business side of blogging was up on my blog and I was curious whether I could get free publicity, how easy these e-news release services are to use… and how effective they are.

With no prior knowledge of or experience with these news release services, I searched in Google until I found some that looked reasonably credible.

Cost-shock
My first shock was the sites that charge well over R275(+/- $30) to distribute your news release. These obscenely high prices are just not worth it for the start-up or small business, and especially not for a small start-up blogging business. I’d rather steer clear of people like this who act as news censors with high-priced toll-gates to news distribution.

Registration impossible
Don’t miss a word of this… several of the free e-news release sites were so poorly designed that it was impossible for me to register on them. Surely, if these sites are not even user-friendly, how can you expect them to have the competence to send your news release to the relevant print and online publications?

A few that worked
Among the many e-news release services, only a handful worked. That is they enabled fast and easy registration and were able to confirm that my news release had been published.

Impact
I have yet to find out the impact of the news release services I used. It’s still too early to tell. But one important thing that concerns me is that I have no way of knowing where these sites sent my news release. Do they just simply publish releases on their website or do they send them to media outlets?

I could have sent my news release to media outlets direct but curiosity got the better of me. I wanted to do this as an experiment to find out costs, ease-of-use, customer service, professionalism as well as impact.

Whatever means you use to distribute your news release, it’s critically important to write your news release so it engages editors as well as readers.

I promised you five proven ways to get your news release published. If you need a copy of this news release tip sheet full in your details below and I’ll email you a free copy.

Stay inspired
Chesney Bradshaw

Send me my copy of the Publicity News Release Tip Sheet NOW!

* indicates required


Email Format

Enhanced by Zemanta
Posted on

If your competitor keeps you awake at night, you must read this now

Noordhoek
Noordhoek (Photo credit: Paul Watson)

I’ve just woken up in a strange place, tossing and turning in the dark with the autumn wind howling against the mountain side. I’m staying for a few days in a cottage high up mountain, next to a vineyard, with a view down below of the Atlantic Ocean.

In the night with the cottage creaking from the wind all the primeval fears come out. Winter is coming and there could be trouble the way the global economy is going. Business is down in this coastal town where I’m staying. Walk through the malls and main road and you see windows plastered in paper – several businesses shut down.

A business-owner I was talking to yesterday mentioned that a competitor was setting up shop nearby. Although some business owners simply brush off competition with “there’s room for us all”, it’s never a simple matter to decide whether competitive threats will make an impact or not.

It’s easier to explain what’s happened than to predict. When a business fails people want to know why. Was it the competition, the owner, the bank, customers, technology? One of the reasons or a combination makes sense. But it’s a lot harder to forecast, estimate, predict, divine what can and will happen in the future.

If you look at the advice small business owners themselves give to fellow business owners, you’ll find three main themes:

1 Ignore your competition and get on with obsessing about your business and customers.
2 Analyse your strengths and weaknesses. Identify opportunities and minimise threats. Differentiate with personalised service.
3 Make friends with your competitors, love them, unite with them, help each other.

Two main distinct groups here: the aggressive warriors and the relationship builders.

For me who has had “don’t just stand there, do something!” drilled into my early survival and witnessed many businesses successes and failures, I would keep an eye on them but keep stepping up my value for customers.

Did you know that the McDonald’s brothers started out in the drive-in food business? Stiff competition and their increasingly high-cost, labour-intensive format made them decide to sell their drive-in business and open a new hamburger restaurant in one of the new strip shopping centres. That’s where they began to develop the concept of speed, lower prices and volume. The system they were about to build and innovate would be the beginning of a revolution in food service.

Competition is good because it keeps you on your toes. But what’s far better is innovation – finding ways to look after your customers and attracting new ones even if it means a step-change in your entire business model.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Posted on

Ideaaccelerator.co.za founder introduces book on blogging for university students

How you can make money from bloggingFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Ideaaccelerator.co.za founder introduces book on blogging for university students

25 March 2013, Bloemfontein – Ideaaccelerator.co.za founder Chesney Bradshaw has just published “How You Can Make Money From Blogging”, a guide for university students on making income online through blogs.

Written by Chesney Bradshaw, who has 10 years’ experience as a corporate Webmaster and four years blogging on innovation site ideaaccelerator.co.za, the book is designed to give university students practical advice and proven strategies to help them start blogs that can be turned into viable businesses. Continue reading “Ideaaccelerator.co.za founder introduces book on blogging for university students”

Posted on

The secrets of how a mom turned an old smoker into a cash machine

Omul fish, endemic to Lake Baikal (Russia). Sm...
Smoked fish for sale. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was talking to a Chinese restaurateur the other evening about foods in South Africa. He’s newly arrived from mainland China and wants to know the different kinds of foods that South Africans eat and is fascinated by the different cultural influences. He makes a delicious tuna seaweed wrap by the way but that’s another story.

We got talking about the many ways chicken is prepared in the country from rotisserie grilled and deep fried to flame grilled. I mentioned that I had recently bought a smoked chicken from an organic farmer who had discovered a 300-year-old family recipe using hickory wood. The newly-arrived Chinese restaurant owner said he had seen a smoker in America and would love to give smoking a try.

I couldn’t help thinking of the old smoker that my father bought when I was growing up in Kalk Bay. He bought it from a man who had gone into smoking fish commercially out along the old Kommetjie Main Road above the Noordhoek Valley which was only farming land and small holdings in those days. A pioneer, he had been unsuccessful in making a go of it. Continue reading “The secrets of how a mom turned an old smoker into a cash machine”

Posted on

Is the money that you’re giving to community projects making an impact?

In the boom times when everyone was awash with cash, companies were throwing money at as many community projects as they could. That’s all changed as belts have tightened. Now there is less community investment money to go around and companies want to see proof of their return on their investment.

It might seem a bit harsh for business to talk about impacts and return on investment but donors want to know what difference their money is making. Continue reading “Is the money that you’re giving to community projects making an impact?”

Posted on

Time to tune up your sustainability skills at a fraction of the usual cost

I was looking at the cost of a basic university course in risk management and was shocked to see how much it costs. Basic three-year degrees cost as much as a top-of-the-range sedan. Not too long ago my son started a finance degree (he’s completed it) at a university and the rector in his opening address to parents remarked that the university had place for 22,000 students and had to turn away 12,000.

What a business to be in. Demand is strong despite the economy. Fees are so high that you are unable to pay for them unless you take out an education policy on the day your child is born or save for years for an amount that could buy you an apartment in a reasonably good area.

Education towards sustainability is even more expensive. At the high end, a basic one-day seminar on sustainability risk management costs up to R10,000.

For the start-up or small business, the costs of tuning up your skills in the area of sustainability can seriously challenge your non-existent training budget. Okay, that’s not to say that small businesses don’t invest in training. In fact, I was just looking at some information that showed small- to medium-size businesses invest the most money in skills.

How then do you find out the latest information, advice and techniques to take advantage of sustainability in your business? You’d be lucky to find any so-called “free” course on the market, and if you did, you will find that the information is heavily laced with sales messages for the service provider and their partners. Not only that but information is also often skewed towards forcing sustainability down suppliers’ throats. The materials have scant value to help a start-up or small business secure competitive advantage from sustainability practices.

Not all advice needs to come at a shockingly high price. One medium-size business reduced their energy consumption by 10% using a no-cost method that is so obvious but something that you won’t find on any sustainability course.

Another entrepreneurial business person in a dyed-in-the-wool business made one simple change to his process and his profits shot up.

For the costs of taking less than 30 seconds of your time, you can put your name down below and receive valuable regular tips, techniques, advice, suggestions that will help you tune-up your sustainability skills for a stronger competitive edge at a time when just that small difference can keep the wolf from the door and bring you improved profits.

Subscribe to our mailing list

* indicates required



Email Format


 

Last laugh

The bartender says “What’ll ya have?”

The climate scientist says, “I’ll have a beer.”

Turning his thumb towards the climate denier, he adds, “This jerk will have an extra strong hurricane. And no ice.”

Enhanced by Zemanta
Posted on

Denim jeans – from fashion statement to ecological leg print

The denim fabric of a jeans
The denim fabric of a jeans (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When it comes to conserving water we often just see the obvious – leaking taps, mismanaged water systems, and chemically-polluted water effluent.

But what about mundane objects, every day items that we never think of that consume vast quantities of water without us sometimes even knowing about it?

Some of the larger companies who are massive water consuming or have massive water consuming processes, have begun to look into their processes and find opportunities to reduce their water footprint.

Continue reading “Denim jeans – from fashion statement to ecological leg print”

Posted on

A dangerous word to mention in the wrong company


“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” ? Alvin Toffler

I was talking to a young sustainability practitioner this week who told me his biggest challenge: he’s trying to introduce a recycling program but managers have stopped him because they say they won’t pay for the cost.

You’d think managers in an industrial research company would be forward thinking.

I wondered what this organisation’s shareholders would say about this resistance to change, to halt progress.

The word “sustainability” is often looked upon as a nice-to-have but is attacked when its proponents recommend changes, especially changes to the status quo that might inconvenience people or require some small initial capital outlay.

Research carried out for the ultra-conservative and over-sensitive, recommends that the “S” word is not to be mentioned in business circles or in companies. Forbidden words are “zero waste”. Instead, one must use “lean production”. Another word that requires censorship is “greenhouse gas emissions”. Rather use the term “reduce energy spend”, they say.

It makes sense to couch language in terms that will be understood an appeal to end users or customers as any effective salesperson will know. But to tip-toe around words that have to do with sustainability is perhaps taking things too far.

Sustainability, the term by the way has been around for almost 40 years, is not supposed to be familiar to start-ups and small businesses. The word is seem to be mainly used by large corporate enterprises and public organisations. However, while the term “sustainability” points to an ideal future state, the practice of sustainability is something that small businesses do all the time. Not all of them, mind you, but a large number.

  • Why is then that small businesses buy second-hand office furniture rather than new?
  • How come they are the first to support local community charity drives?
  • Why is it that they look at every way possible to save energy costs?
  • How come they substitute existing raw materials with more eco-friendly raw materials?
  • What motivates them to provide entry-level jobs to young people in local communities?

Yes, start-ups and small businesses could do more when it comes to sustainability but I don’t buy the argument that they are doing nothing or very little.

In this economy lean and green make business sense.

Smaller companies are much more expert at saving costs, reusing materials such as stationery and packaging and buying new only when they absolutely have to than giant businesses.

Sustainability is not only about resource reduction, using less to do more (although this is very important) but it’s also about helping reduce poverty and inequality (as many small businesses help do) and responding to a new economy that increasingly requires new and innovative thinking.

This includes opportunities for sharp ecopreneurs, start-ups and on-line entrepreneurs to take advantage and seize the opportunities that green consumer buying is making available and will increasingly make present in the future.