Tag: passion

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Ever wish you had a beakthrough idea? Ordinary people like this didn’t wish, they made it happen

Fun in the sun. Copyright Chesney Bradshaw 2016
Fun in the sun. Copyright Chesney Bradshaw 2016

A personal breakthrough is any breakthrough that you have made that improves the quality of your life. It’s a breakthrough for you. It means also any idea you have come up with that ties together your interest or passion together with a way to produce income.

Let’s face it. In this hard economic climate income opportunities are difficult to find unless you are enterprising. Every day ordinary people identify or even stumble across ideas that fit with their interests and passion and that help them achieve the lifestyle they want. Continue reading “Ever wish you had a beakthrough idea? Ordinary people like this didn’t wish, they made it happen”

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What’s it all about?

Sunset over the Atlantic Ocean, Kommetjie, Cape Town, South Africa. (Copyright © 2015 by Chesney Bradshaw, all rights reserved)
Sunset over the Atlantic Ocean, Kommetjie, Cape Town, South Africa.
(Copyright © 2015 by Chesney Bradshaw, all rights reserved)

I want to give you my thoughts before I attended a memorial service and wake for a long-standing friend who died tragically in an air accident not too far from where I live. He was a great guy, successful at business, full of life and laughter and a kind, loving man. His passing makes one wonder what it’s really all about.

Small business ownership, when you get right down to it, is seldom about the money. It’s always about the passion, a means to an end, which is to spend more time doing the things you love and being with the people you love. I have seen people who were mainly in it for the money but they lived mean, miserable, barren, soulless lives. It’s the ones who have used their money from whatever business activity they have been involved in or created themselves to bring joy to others, to share and to help and support others. Continue reading “What’s it all about?”

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Are you working hard enough to grow your small business?

English: Kalk Bay habour, Cape Peninsula, Sout...
English: Kalk Bay harbour, Cape Peninsula, South Africa  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In the summer months in False Bay when the snoek run was on we would get up early in the morning, around 3 AM, to go out to Simon’s Town with my father’s ski boat to be out on the water by 5 AM.

When the snoek were biting like crazy we would fill the ski boat fish hold with a load of snoek and take it back to Kalk Bay harbour to auction the fish.

If the fish were still biting and the fish market was still open at Kalk Bay we would go back for a second catch. Continue reading “Are you working hard enough to grow your small business?”

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Hard work comes easier when your work is your passion

English: Catherine Malandrino - Fashion Designer
English: Catherine Malandrino – Fashion Designer (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We went to visit a fashion designer in Salt River, Cape Town, because of my daughter’s interest in fashion. It was two days before New Year and the fashion designer was working flat out at 3 PM. She showed us some of her many patterns, we watched one of her staff cutting cloth from a pattern and were told how she farmed out the garment construction to a sub supplier. She preferred to outsource this part of her garment construction because it is a specialist field in itself and requires a different overhead to where this fashion designer is presently located. But one thing stood out. Continue reading “Hard work comes easier when your work is your passion”

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What is the best predictor of your success in a start-up?

John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit.
John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A weekly supermarket checkout gossip magazine featured some spoof horoscopes on their front cover. Take this entry, for example: Libra – you get $100,000 out of the blue. Capricorn: a new home – and a new job. Virgo: Lottery luck is yours… At last!

Everyone knows that horoscope predictions are as flimsy as the gossip stories you get in the same supermarket checkout magazines. The same seems to be true of the guesswork involved in predicting whether a start-up founder, entrepreneur or small business owner is going to succeed or not. But that doesn’t stop the experts and guru consultants all pointing to success predictors that they swear by. Continue reading “What is the best predictor of your success in a start-up?”

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It starts with a small step

Aircraft_Rescue_Firefighting_training
Manuel F. Guerrero, U.S. Marine Corps – This Image was released by the United States Marine Corps.

Scary events when you are a child stand out forever in your mind. When I was a young boy, probably around five or six years old, my parents went on a trip to Witsands near the Breede River in the Western Cape Province. On route there a car passed us at a terrifying speed. My father said to my mother that the driver in the car was being reckless driving at that speed. Not so long afterwards, we came across the same car. It was lying across the road upside down in the ditch with its wheels still spinning. The driver and passenger were dead. Continue reading “It starts with a small step”

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Three ways to tell if you are excelling in the right area

Passion is Everything | Kodai
Passion is Everything | Kodai (Photo credit: rAmmoRRison)

I was looking at an interview in a leadership magazine about Whitey Basson and saw his answer to a question about advice to leaders. He is the managing director and chief executive of Shoprite Holdings Ltd, the largest food retailer in Africa.

If you want to become a leader or entrepreneur, you must evaluate yourself “genetically” to establish if a certain field is one in which you can excel, he says. You need to evaluate yourself first and secondly it needs to be all about passion. Apart from this, hard work and much commitment, including the support of your family, co-starters and people with whom you work, is important.

Continue reading “Three ways to tell if you are excelling in the right area”

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What’s the special quality behind exceptional performance?

Rob Taylor (Photo credit: Chensey Bradshaw)
Rob Taylor (Photo credit: Chesney Bradshaw)

At 11 pm Rob Taylor, guitarist and singer, is getting ready to play his next set. He will entertain the crowd until 12:30 am. He’s playing a gig this night from 8:30 pm through to 12:30 am and it’s his second gig in two consecutive evenings.

How does a professional musician like Rob keep energised so much so that he is able to work at peak intensity for so many hours?

Just to give you an idea of what a superb and intense guitar player he is, on this evening, a Friday evening, he has already broken three guitar strings. Each time he’s stopped playing, repaired his guitar and come back on stage to play at the same spectacular level. None of this has got him down. Continue reading “What’s the special quality behind exceptional performance?”

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Is passion enough?

Passion
Passion (Photo credit: Alex Abian (Also on flickr.com/alexabian))

I’ve just come in from an early morning run. En route I saw a man walking in the street and greeted him. He could barely push out a greeting from his mouth – it seemed to be there but at the same time it wasn’t.

It was early in the morning and yet this person looked frustrated, down, dejected and almost as if he had given up hope.

Have you ever felt this way? Have you ever been paralysed by your negativity? Have you been unable to find your passion? Perhaps you tried and tried and tried and just couldn’t find your mojo.

Is passion really that important? Continue reading “Is passion enough?”

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What have you lost recently?

English: Title of the tv-series LOST. Français...
Title of the tv-series LOST. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Have you lost something recently? Something valuable. Perhaps an object, a bunch of keys, your wallet, a memory stick that you looked everywhere for but just couldn’t find?

A few weeks ago I “lost” my swimming costume. I looked everywhere but couldn’t find it. I was very disappointed because it fitted me well, dried quickly and has lasted for several summer seasons. Lo and behold, the next day I found it hanging up outside the shower on a railing. I must have left it when I got back from swimming and forgot all about it. Continue reading “What have you lost recently?”