An accountant who worked in large companies has started an advisory service for small businesses in her home town. The accountant is focusing on smaller businesses who often receive poor business advice which leads to horror stories.
English: The carbon footprint as it is understood by people. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
After working in transport and distribution John Bremner took a voluntary redundancy package and started learning computers to retrain for a new career. He came up with an idea to start “The Green Engineer” which offers maintenance, modernisation, installation and repair services for the domestic market in electrical, plumbing, heating and renewable energy.
John plans to build a business by working with renewables from rainwater harvesting to domestic heat recovery systems and would like to create a positive impact in reducing our collective carbon footprint. Continue reading “How to turn on your discovery channel”
A team of researchers designed a creativity test and gave it to a group of 45-year-olds. Less than 5% of this group were judged to be creative according to the test. The researchers tested other ages: 40, 35, 30, 25 and 20-year-olds. The 5% finding was essentially constant for all these groups. At 17 years old the percentage of creative individuals increased to 10%. They also tested five-year-olds and the creativity score rose to over 90%. The research team concluded that most people are highly creative at the age of five.
This doesn’t mean that people in their mature years are not creative. Other research shows that creativity can be increased through training and rewiring your brain to look for opportunities. Everyone has creativity but it can lie dormant if it is not nurtured and used. Continue reading “How to kickstart your creativity”
A small business owner was battling in a shopping centre where the demographics had gradually change. Instead of running a full men and women’s wear retail store, he came up with the idea to reconvert it into a smaller, focused store that caters for school clothing. He has also narrowed the range of clothing to six or seven schools. Within a year the business is doing well and the business owner has put it on a new, surer footing.
Start-ups and small business owners need to come up with new ideas all the time not only for new products and services but also new ways of positioning their business, locating their operations and responding to competition. But if they’ve got urgent problems they need to attend to them urgently. Continue reading “Do you suffer from a shortage of new ideas for your business?”
I walked through OR Tambo Airport in the early morning on a flight to Cape Town and saw most retail shops were not doing any business. Sales assistants were giving directions to commuters or chatting to their colleagues. Other sales people were sitting around texting messages on their cell phones.
Sure, the restaurants were doing brisk early morning trade. Travellers who had arrived at the airport and hadn’t yet had anything to eat were having breakfast. But the retail outlets might not have even opened because trade was slow or non-existent. Stores selling clothing, computer accessories, music, branded goods (such as Ferrari) and gift stores — not even a trickle of sales. Continue reading “Fire up your sales – discover ways to recharge your dead spots”
It’s one thing starting a new business but quite another to scale it up to a level so that it can grow and become financially viable. Starting up a small business is hard enough but when it comes time to grow or expand will your business model be robust enough?
To increase the size of a start-up business and turn it into a full-scale operation means that you possibly need more space, more people and more capital. But even if you have these resources, you might expand your business into a monster that robs you of your time and resources but doesn’t give you the returns you were looking for.
Here’s an example. A small business in India was serving over 7,000 sandwiches orders a day but couldn’t scale up. It was difficult for the business to encourage customers to have sandwiches for lunch. The founders realised that to become a sizeable business they would need 200 outlets with at least 15 employees in each outlet. But that would mean that they would suddenly have 3,000 staff on their payroll. Continue reading “Does your start-up have scope to expand?”
You see it all the time. The guru experts who come up with programs that can, for example, build self-confidence in seven days guaranteed. What do you make of this? How is it possible to develop self-confidence in only seven days?
Yes, perhaps a program like this can show you how to become more self confident. Maybe it takes just seven days to inform you how to do it but to go from low self-esteem and a shaky self-confidence to high levels of self-esteem and self-confidence in just seven days is a claim that is hard to believe. Continue reading “Can you really learn how to come up with new business ideas in seven days?”
A pair of modern silver pepper grinders with Peugeot mechanism. Hallmarked Asprey & Co Ltd,. Birmingham 1935.
For start-ups and entrepreneurs who want to come up with viable business ideas the first thing is to consider the marketability of your new ideas.
How do you know if your business idea will be attractive enough to get potential customers to buy? What makes one idea more marketable than another? What could you do to increase the chances that your new business idea will sell?
One of the first things to ask yourself is if your business idea solves a real problem for potential customers. So many products and services run aground because they don’t solve people’s problems easily, quickly and cost effectively. The other day I saw an app that lets you customise your own newspaper. Does this really solve a “problem” for online readers who may enjoy a range of publications. Continue reading “How marketable are your new business ideas?”
English: Product icon for MindView mind mapping software. A productivity tool for MatchWare A/S (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In this economy with high labour costs, low productivity and increased competition it’s worthwhile to look at your productivity in your start-up or small business.
The place to start is with yourself. As the title track to a Uriah Keep rock song went “Take a look at yourself”. As the driver and main performer in your small business you need to make sure that you are as productive as you could be. All it might mean is getting a full night’s rest, eating food that keeps you focused and alert and working in an environment where your temperature is controlled to the correct level. You may also want to watch noise. Some people like to crank up the music but others like a quiet environment where they are at their best. Continue reading “How do you make your small business more productive?”
Learning from WASH System Failures: Resilient Risk Reduction_13 (Photo credit: worldwaterweek)
You’ve probably met someone like this before – the guy who can blame his failure on other people or circumstances. I sat next to a man at a recent event and had to listen as he explained how he had lost his job because of the company he worked for was corrupt, he tried something new to earn an income but circumstances weren’t right, he lost his wife but it was her fault, he helped his daughter start her business but she wouldn’t speak to him any more.
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