Expert Financial & Business Insights for South Africa
Strategic analysis from Idea Accelerator and ready-to-publish content from Financial News Daily.
With this economy every bit of extra cash counts.
Many aspiring entrepreneurs are turning their hobbies, favourite pastimes, and passions into profitable businesses. They are making a living doing what they love. And because they love what they do, they work harder at it.
Experts say eight out of ten small business start-ups result from hobbies or long-term interests. Continue reading “Turn your passion into profit but look before you leap”
For the small business owner wanting to get started on a green journey there are more than 100 ways to begin but if you listen to all the ideas and suggestions and advice out there on the Internet in books and from consultants it would be pretty difficult knowing where to start.
I’ve noticed that much of this advice came about 4 to 5 years ago when in an enthusiastic rush advice flooded the market on “how to improve your bottom line, grow your brand and save the planet”, one hand “101 ways to turn your business green”, and “the hands-on guide to creating a successful and sustainable business”. Continue reading “100 smoking-hot ideas to make your business sustainable but which one is right for you?”
A digital ad campaign for Clorox Green Works mocked people who are conscious about their impact on the environment and the products and services they buy. If you’d like to see the ad, check it out on the Internet.
While many sustainability professionals are calling for boycotts of the product, perhaps what needs to be looked at more closely is the publicity people. They need to be better informed about what eco-friendly products are really all about. Continue reading “Glib green marketing gets sustainability crowd all frothed up”
I’m itching to tell you this story. But before I talk about it, I’d like to get some things out of the way.
Let me confess, I’ve made my fair share of mistakes in sustainability projects. But like others in the business to be professional and successful in sustainability, I’ve had to sweat out worrying nights, put in hard work against skepticism, cynicism, resistance and even ridicule in selling sustainability and sustainability projects.
And it’s not only been from start-ups and small business…
With that out of the way, let me tell you a story. Continue reading “It’s people like this that give sustainability a bad name”
There’s more than meets the eye in this horse meat scandal. The shortcuts that large food producers are taking casts a spotlight on the shady practices that have been kept from public view. Substituting horsemeat for beef is despicable but finding no meat in a beef pie in Iceland is another thing. Smell a vegetarian conspiracy here?
All the fuss about substitution of beef products is important because we want to know what we are eating and paying for. But what about other foods such as bread, grains and fruit and vegetables? Continue reading “Horsing around with meat is one thing but investigators should crack the whip on carrots”
I just got back from holiday when I saw something wrong in my local shopping centre. There it was: another empty shop. A business that had run smack into the wall. It was the video shop. Now, video stores have been under threat for a number of years. A whole chain went under administration in the UK recently (528 stores employing 4,000 people). But I’m not here to talk about the reasons why video shops are collapsing (hint: the rise of e-commerce) and retail chains going under (50 folded last year in the UK alone).
Ever-rocketing energy costs didn’t force that business to close. But not caring about it may have been just one of the many indicators of laxness in the business. For example, I never once saw the owner ever in his store. Says something, doesn’t it? Continue reading “Will energy costs break your business?”
Walking past an Italian restaurant in a shopping centre, the owner came up to me with a round wooden board with piping hot Marguerite pizza.
“Please try a piece,” he said. I did. It was delicious. I had no intention of eating pizza, perhaps stopping for a coffee, but 20 minutes later I had a pizza in front of me and bit into my first slice. Continue reading “Something small like this can give your sales an instant rush”
When I was a youngster growing up near the fishing harbour at Kalk Bay, if any of us became too big for our boots or foolish, one of the boys would catch us unawares and jet chokka (squid) ink into our face.
I won’t talk about the ungenteel language that spewed out so even the seals below would look up (wondering what the commotion was all about).
Although you can’t do that sort of thing in the adult world of business – whatever the size of your business – one sometimes one feels so frustrated by what happens in practising sustainable solutions that you’d like to spray some obnoxious fumes towards all the people who are falling all over the place doing their own thing. Continue reading “Sustainability is a symphony, not a grouping of raving solo acts”
Discover the sneaky marketing secrets of a drug-crazed, boozed-up heavy metal rocker (to quickly make your marketing $#$@ edgy online and off-line)
“I thought I was just going out, having a few beers, going home, shitting myself, then wetting the bed. Everyone did that, didn’t they?” – Ozzy Osbourne, “I am Ozzy”
Brutally frank autobiography. Jail time. Attempted murder charge. Stuff up the nose. Killing chickens. Biting a bat’s head off. The pain, the ecstasy and a mountain of money to live on in comfort and security.
The product so outstanding that even if you don’t like Black Sabbath or the solo Ozzy Osbourne, you’ve got to admire the brilliant achievement of the music.
But between the lines of Ozzy Osbourne’s outrageous, painfully honest autobiography you see the push to break through the over-crowded heavy metal market.
The early positioning, the clear understanding of the young adult market and the clever marketing methods and tricks to push concert and album sales.
It all ended up in selling more than 100 million albums both with Black Sabbath and as a solo artist.
Reading through the book, which must set some sort of record for openness and honesty in the autobiography genre, I was struck by all the marketing lessons that you won’t find in MBA courses and books written by the self-proclaimed marketing experts.
I’ve come up with 12 marketing lessons from Ozzy Osbourne. If you decide to subscribe below, you’ll get one lesson a week for 12 weeks.
You won’t find these lessons anywhere else.
I’ve used my marketing experience over many years, some of which was in FMCG, startups and small businesses and, yes, my MBA degree (which covers none of this stuff but at least embeds the principles), to give you what I can honestly say is a fascinating story of marketing.
I wish someone had written something like this for me to read and put to use … already years ago.
Are you ready?
I can assure you it’s not what you’ll expect.
Take the first step and enter your email below to begin.
It’s free.
It’s the music. Compelling music that broke through the heavy metal and pop of the seventies.
Music that spoke almost in one mysterious riddle that helped unlock the angst of our youth … growing up in a time with seething below the surface … awakening to a perspective streetwise, injured, cynical yet alluringly beautiful. Continue reading “I wonder what would have happened to this mysterious musician without such a loyal fan base … wonder I do”
