Tag: small business

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Picking the eyes out of a failed business

English: Ringwood : Royal Mail Postbox One box...
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One publisher was so fed up with the collapse last year of the Post Office services that he has vowed never to use them again. For his subscribers he set up a door-to-door delivery service and deliveries via POSTNET.

The complete breakdown of the postal service showed how quickly a going concern can die because of poor management. It’s ironic that the executive managers were patting themselves on their backs over and over about how “sustainable” the business was when they completely lacked a plan to deal with changing circumstances. Continue reading “Picking the eyes out of a failed business”

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Information is a commodity, specialised knowledge is valuable

liquid paper (A bottle correction fluid), pict...
Liquid paper (A bottle correction fluid), picture and eraser – Nakhon Sawan, Thailand (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One of the small businesses I was trying to get up and running some years back gave me a lot of headaches. A big challenge was getting the distribution right. Without distribution channels, the business could not get off the ground. Another issue was trying to attract a specialised staff person but with the small business not having any track record.

These are the kind of issues that the person who is starting something from scratch often confronts. Other issues could involve product prototyping and estimating market demand. These are not easy to issues to solve especially when you are a small business person operating on a shoestring budget with your resources only being yourself and meagre savings. Continue reading “Information is a commodity, specialised knowledge is valuable”

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How long will it take for you to get your new business idea off the ground?

3_1The founder of Liquid Paper, Bette Graham, came up with an idea while watching painters decorate Christmas Windows at the bank where she was a secretary. She came up with a way to correct typing errors but had to work five years while sending her product from home. She mixed up different colour paints with a kitchen blender until she was able to come up with a suitable product which essentially was correction fluid. After being fired by her boss because of the mistake she couldn’t correct, she started out full-time and grew her business into a large company. Continue reading “How long will it take for you to get your new business idea off the ground?”

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Do you have a cash kitty to invest in your new business idea?

227_1At a small rural town that I was visiting I came across an interesting business relationship between a butchery and a small micro-enterprise trading on the street cooking and selling meat products from the butchery. The small enterprise, run by a husband and wife team, had set up and warning canopy and were grilling boerewors (farmer’s sausage) and vetkoek (fat cake) and curried mince. They were doing a brisk trade because many people were stopping at the parking area which also led onto a liquor store. The butcher benefited because customers could taste his meat cooked outside and the small business benefited from the quality of the meat products as well as the steady stream of customers that flowed into the butchery. Continue reading “Do you have a cash kitty to invest in your new business idea?”

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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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Who would you go to for advice on starting a business?

English: Trawler Hauling Nets Source: http://w...
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When my father was big in fishing and the fish in those days were more plentiful it was very tempting to become a professional fishermen. So tempting, in fact, that several people who had full-time jobs did so. One youngster who came fishing with us wasn’t particularly motivated to work for a boss and learnt as much as he could from my father about how to fish professionally. Continue reading “Who would you go to for advice on starting a business?”

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Can you acquire entrepreneurial instincts?

IMG-20141216-00107The other evening I was part of a discussion about business education and entrepreneurship. One of the participants made the statement that an MBA degree could not make you into an entrepreneur but if you were already an entrepreneur it wouldn’t hurt to have additional business knowledge.

I’m not going to argue with this statement because I think it is correct. But it does beg the question about what then do you require to be an entrepreneur? What is entrepreneurship? Even though you may have worked for the family business or a company can you still become an entrepreneur? Continue reading “Can you acquire entrepreneurial instincts?”

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A tool that helps you decide if your new business idea is viable or not

Kalk Bay station, Cape Town, South Africa. A s...
Kalk Bay station, Cape Town, South Africa. A shot of a departing commuter train. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Growing up in Kalk Bay, Cape Town, my mother used to make delicious pickled fish. Being so close to a real, working fishing harbour she was able to buy fresh fish for frying, baking and pickling. My father had a ski boat and he would catch various fish which could be pickled such as Cape Salmon, white Steenbras and yellowtail.

On Sunday we ate delicious pickled fish for lunch. But this pickle fish was not made in Cape Town where one would expect pickle fish to be made but was rather made in Bloemfontein in the Free State. Interesting, isn’t it, that a small business in the heart of the country has come up with an idea to produce pickled fish and make it available in various convenience stores and butcheries. Continue reading “A tool that helps you decide if your new business idea is viable or not”

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Where do small business ideas come from?

A rose-cut synthetic diamond created by Apollo...
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Have you ever found a diamond in the ground, in a river or deep beneath the sea?

I have never met anybody who stumbled across a real diamond in nature. Most diamonds anyway are found in restricted areas that are demarcated for mining. I suppose if you, for example, lived along the Orange River you may have heard stories about the old diamond prospectors who came across these precious stones in the river. Continue reading “Where do small business ideas come from?”

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Does your small business help young people seeking new ideas?

English: Luxxe® is a clothing brand that is th...
English: Luxxe® is a clothing brand that is the first to use performance, high technology (and organic) fabrics, many developed for compression and moisture wicking (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

One early morning I went with my daughter who is studying fashion design to a large shopping centre in Northcliffe, Johannesburg, to take photographs of woman’s clothing for her design project.

Her assignment was to take photographs of clothing that women would wear to work. She could take photographs of outfits for working women and also some photographs of details such as buttons, soaps, pockets and collars.

But at almost all of the retail clothing stores we were turned away because either the security or the manager said that the policy was not to allow photographs. Continue reading “Does your small business help young people seeking new ideas?”