Tag: business advice

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Advantages of a small business idea accelerator

(Copyright © 2014 by Chesney Bradshaw, all rights reserved)
(Copyright © 2014 by Chesney Bradshaw, all rights reserved)

A man hung on to his idea to start a small businesses and worked hard to bring it into reality. After the inevitable false starts and dead ends, he got his hand and body lotion micro-enterprise off the ground. He started small, hand selling at Saturday morning markets, travelling from one part of the city to another like a Gypsy. His product was of a high quality made with a combination of milk and honey. Soon it began to take off. He branched out into online selling and keeps growing his business.

How many people do you know who come up with a promising idea but never turn their business idea into reality? Some research says that half of the working population have an idea that they wish to turn into a micro-enterprise, small hobby business or small business. Yet the percentage of those who do take their business idea and make it into reality is minuscule. Why is that so? Is it because they don’t have cash? Don’t they have motivation? Or, don’t they have the right mentor or business adviser to help and encourge them to bring their ideas to life? Continue reading “Advantages of a small business idea accelerator”

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Where do you get the best business advice?

Copyright © 2014 by Chesney Bradshaw, all rights reserved
Copyright © 2014 by Chesney Bradshaw, all rights reserved

On the road from Aliwal North down to Cradock in the early morning crows are picking at roadkill on the tarmac. Two white breasted crows swoop down and devour the fresh flesh from a small jackal who didn’t make it across the road. Three other white breasted crows are perched on a telephone wire waiting their turn to feast on the jackal.

We arrived in one of the small towns struggling to survive in this economy. It was a town with no large fast-food chains. We had to ask a man at a petrol station where where we could find a take-away food place. We drove down the road to the small take-away that he suggested and that from the outside looked dodgy but they serve the most delicious hamburgers and chips, at a good price, better than anything you could get from a fast-food chain. Just before we got back in the car I noticed two dilapidated buildings that displayed a hand-painted car wash sign. In one of the buildings five men were sitting around but but no cars had stopped there to be washed. Continue reading “Where do you get the best business advice?”

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How would you solve this business challenge?

Photo credit: Wikimedia commons
Photo credit: Wikimedia commons

It’s everything you want. You’ve got a new idea and it holds great potential but you don’t know how to turn it into a viable business. What you do?

A skateboard maker Ted Hunter, a 62-year-old furniture design Professor at a Canadian university and founder of Roarockit Skateboard Co. with his wife, Nora Jackson, has come up with a new way to shape wood veneer. He found a way to “punch” layers of wood veneer to make them ripple like the surface of the ocean but at the same time strengthening the product and still preserving the flat, rideable side of the board. The conventional process involves inserting pieces of veneer to create contours. Although he has patented the pinch process in Canada and the United States, Ted has to work out how to use this new process. He wants to start manufacturing but doesn’t have a lot of cash. He could also use the process in furniture and housewares. Continue reading “How would you solve this business challenge?”

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How do you avoid bad business decisions?

This is my picture of a closed sign. I am usin...

At least 4,000 businesses went insolvent in South Africa in 2013. It’s an unbelievable number of bad business decisions. These are insolvencies that are reported. Imagine how many businesses went bankrupt without being reported.

The human impact and scale of so many insolvencies is so huge that it’s difficult to even comprehend the full extent of the tragedy.

Small business owners who had to shut their doors and try something new.

Employees who lost their jobs.

Stock that had to be sold at reduced prices. Continue reading “How do you avoid bad business decisions?”

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Watch out for dodgy business advice

Open mike night, Marks Park, Emmerentia, Johannesburg. Photo: Chesney Bradshaw
Open mic night, Marks Park, Emmerentia, Johannesburg. Photo: Chesney Bradshaw

We were halfway to a music venue when we realised that all the suburbs were impacted by the electricity power failure. But we really wanted to see the show because we had heard good reports and had waited several weeks to attend. When we got there the venue was in darkness except for a few candles.

The organisers had decided to continue with the musical show despite the electricity failure. One of the organisers drove his car up to the back window and shone his car headlights onto a circle in the middle of the large auditorium to light up the performers. This was a showcase of local talent young and old and gave us an opportunity to listen to music that you don’t hear on the radio, at big concerts and in pubs. Continue reading “Watch out for dodgy business advice”

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This is the kind of business adviser I would trust

Cover of "The Trusted Advisor"
Cover of The Trusted Advisor

I heard a small business adviser on the radio the other day dishing out advice on starting your own business. He was talking about the many people who have got retrenched from large companies in recent months and now might be considering starting something of their own.

He started out positively enough but soon he was making starting and running a small business seem such a terribly difficult thing to do that I began to wonder what his potential consulting customers must think when they hear all of this.

When he selected an example of a well known US small business adviser I had my doubts. Couldn’t this person who claims to be a small business adviser of standing come up with local examples of business people? Yes, small business owners may hit walls in the growth and management of their operations but to talk about banging their heads on desks in pain and frustration makes it all sound so negative. Continue reading “This is the kind of business adviser I would trust”

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Create your own magic

English: The circus comes to town in Aberdeen ...
The circus comes to town in Aberdeen Chinese State Circus by the beach (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I was a little boy I used to love going to the circus that used to come each year to the beach. Out of all the wonderful things at the circus what I enjoyed most was watching the magicians.

The magicians, dressed up in smart black suits and top hats, would do things like waving their wands and magically a dove would appear from their hat. They would also pull handkerchiefs from their sleeves that seemed to go on and on. The one I think that everyone loved was how they magically found money behind people’s ears.

In the real world how do you create your own magic? What does magic mean for you? Have you created real magic in your life through your business, products or services?

Making something from virtually nothing has always appeared like magic to me. Let’s take the example of someone who makes a scrumptious dinner. All the ingredients are there in the kitchen. The chef puts them into pots and pans and into the oven and from these various ingredients a transformation occurs. These ingredients become tasty meals or dishes served on a plate. The ingredients by themselves have not suddenly become a tasty dish – the real magic has been the chef who has used their skills, know-how and ideas to make ordinary ingredients such as flour, butter, eggs, meat and vegetables into a cordon bleu meal.

It’s amazing how some people can create products or services themselves from virtually nothing and live and work in their hometowns and enjoy themselves. Sadly, others take years to learn professional services and then find that their home town or home city is too small for these services. Then they have to go sell their services in other countries in far off lands. Why is it that these people can’t come up with products and services that they create themselves and can support their lives in local communities?

Creating an income for yourself on your own terms and serving and supporting others is a kind of magic. Not only is this liberating but it’s also empowering and helps you love every day with joy and excitement. Coming up with things to sell yourself is deeply fulfilling especially when you are engaging with your passions, aligning your work with your values and sharing what you have created with others. A business of your own can be a way of sharing your gifts.

So, how do you create your own magic in your life? How practically do you go about coming up with ideas for products and services and turning them into commercially viable products? How do you take ordinary objects and inject life into them so that they magically take on a life of their own?

It all involves coming up with new ideas, seeing opportunities in the market, spotting trends, identifying gaps and using your imagination and passion to come up with something from scratch. You can do all of this on your own or if you are stuck will need to speed up the process, you may need help with pragmatic, practical and enjoyable advice and guidance as well as coaching to help you create your own magic.

Life is short. Some people say that we shouldn’t could our years but live for each and every day. Others have taken it further and have said that we should live every second and yet others say we should live every breath we take. Why wait another moment? Why not use your next breathe to send me an email to get started?

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Can you succeed as a lone wolf business person?

Akela, the Lone Wolf

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that trying to be alone wolf small business operator doesn’t work.

If you take yourself back to a time when you were struggling on your own, you may remember how hard things were.

Go back to when you were just starting out in your own business. What did it feel like working on your own? Didn’t you find that it took your time, too much time, to learn through trial and error what you could have learnt with someone helping you?

Being on your own, facing the world alone, is not easy. You have to work out everything for yourself. You have to do everything yourself. You have to come up with your own ideas for everything. Continue reading “Can you succeed as a lone wolf business person?”

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Who else wants to learn the hidden secrets of quickly turning any business idea or concept into a R10,000 a month automatic profit generator?

Sungai Tua Fall waterfall feng shui activate f...

The problem with a lot of would-be entrepreneurs who believe they have a brilliant idea for a product or service is that they want to do it on their own. Yet in today’s highly competitive product and service markets competitive positioning, knowing how to develop a product or service that creates value for prospective customers and knowing how to commercialise a product or service including marketing and selling as well as distribution can’t be learnt overnight or at a drop of a hat.

A pioneer Internet marketer recently surveyed his customers and email followers to find out what range of income they were returning from their online businesses. The results were surprising. Only a small percentage were making any money online and even fewer were realising an income that could make them self-supporting. The majority of his followers had started businesses but unfortunately had made no income. Their businesses, if you could call them that, were actually no more than a hobby. Continue reading “Who else wants to learn the hidden secrets of quickly turning any business idea or concept into a R10,000 a month automatic profit generator?”

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If your idea flops, what do you do?

Samsung to Unveil Premium New Products at IFA 2013
New products face tough competition. (Photo credit: samsungtomorrow)

A young man decided that he would be an entrepreneur, came up with an idea for a retail product but never listened to an expert in the retail business who warned him that his initial concept was impractical, too costly to produce and would make no profit.

Being a clever would-be entrepreneur who knew best he went ahead spending thousands to develop his concept with a product design company, consulted an expensive patent lawyer, filed a patent with the intellectual property office, and talked with costly plastics manufacturers to make his product.

Continue reading “If your idea flops, what do you do?”