Over the festive season, I walked down to the rocks near Kalk Bay to show my daughter and son an old fish trap along the coastline. They were amazed. They asked me how old the fish trap, made in the rocks on the water’s edge, was. I really can’t give a precise answer because to my knowledge there is no history of these fish traps around the South African coast. Some romantic historians would put these fish traps in ancient times but this one in particular looked as though it had been made about more than 100 years ago. Continue reading “An old Kalk Bay fish trap reveals a secret to sales”
A few weeks ago I was walking through a mall in a coastal town and noticed a retail shop that was converted into a play room for children. Inside the playroom were several children sitting at tables playing games, making things and enjoying themselves.
Some mothers can have an awful time of it shopping when the children are nagging and even screaming for attention. This is a problem for mothers. I have not seen local entrepreneurs come up with such a playroom but have heard of an entrepreneur who has developed several for mothers in Malaysia. Their children play mainly with Lego which he sources cheaply from an Asian country. Now an entrepreneur locally has woken up to the problem that mothers face while shopping and has developed a playroom for kids where they can enjoy themselves while their mothers shop peacefully.
An author of a little book on advice for entrepreneurs claims that employees are problem solvers while entrepreneurs are solution finders. But is it really fair to say employees are problem solvers rather than the solution finders? The thing is that when people write books like these they tried to simplify everything and often these statements are not accurate or based on fact. As much as entrepreneurs can be solution finders, employees need not only be problem solvers but can also look for solutions that benefit business entrepreneur really.
Just in recent months I have come across entrepreneurs who have found solutions for green gardening and landscaping, energy efficiency in the home, an ointment for bluebottle and insect stings from the humble pawpaw fruit and a woman entrepreneur who came up with specially designed swimwear that doesn’t fall off when women are surfing.
What problems save you come across recently in your daily personal or business life or that of others that you can turn into solutions other people would be willing to pay for? There are so many problems that consumers and customers have that it pays to look and listen. What about health and safety issues in small businesses? What are entrepreneurs doing to protect their staff from harm? As you probably know, many accidents don’t always happen in an industrial workshop or factory but occur at home. Slips, trips and falls are common accidents at home where many entrepreneurs now set up the home businesses. How can they better protect themselves?
Problems with poor quality products seem to have grown exponentially. Do you have any solutions for helping to improve the quality of products or come up with a better quality product? It was sad to see how many presents under the Christmas tree this year – sourced from Asian countries – were damaged or fell apart. What can we do about better quality products? Do we have to accept such cheap junk?
Poor quality service is now so prevalent if you stand out with excellent service you will be far ahead of other businesses. Small businesses have a huge edge for better quality service. The cost of eating out needs better solutions as the price of meals rises out of reach of many people. The high cost of electricity is begging for domestic energy efficiency solutions.
If you are looking for a solution to turn your promising business idea into a source of income, you may want to consider “Breakthrough Ideas”. It’s essentially a solution finder. It helps you find a solution that you can turn into a product or service to form a small enterprise, something of your own from scratch. You have an opportunity to secure this resource with a special incentive before the general public… So don’t miss out! Don’t let your dream pass you by. Secure your copy now by putting your name down on the waiting list.
Online auction sites have become a popular way to sell used goods in recent years. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
A while back I tried to get a copy of an album that hasn’t been available for a long time in music stores or second-hand CD and record shops. So I had to do a search online and eventually could only find the album on Amazon. The album was “Pick up a Bone” by Rupert Hine and was only available in a Japanese edition. I placed the order and received the product about a month later.
That’s the thing about ordering physical product online: it takes long to deliver unless you are prepared to pay what is sometimes three times the value of the physical product to get it sooner. If it’s a non–essential product, something that is more nostalgic or of entertainment value, then it might be worth the extra long wait. But if the products is essential for your business or a component that you need urgently, and the product or component is not available locally, then you need to decide whether you have to pay the steep courier costs.
On Christmas morning we went down to the beach at Muizenberg for a swim. The water was lovely and cool and enjoyable beyond measure. Afterwards, we all felt a bit peckish from the sun, sea and sand and went up to a small restaurant for some calamari, chips and coffee. The coffee was all right but the chips and calamari were nothing really to speak about. In fact, the calamari was tasteless. It was so easy to spot the fault with the calamari. It had been soaked in meat tenderiser to make it soft which had left the calamari tasteless. Continue reading “Businesses that don’t keep their promises to customers get away with it but at their own peril”
I met up with an entrepreneurial couple who had returned to the country from the UK and had decided to make energy bars to sell. They began making and packing their energy bars at home and then going around to shops and delicatessens to leave samples. Soon they were receiving calls from where they had left the sample energy bars with shop and deli owners placing orders. Sounds like a success story, doesn’t it? Continue reading “Are you paranoid about other small businesses copying your ideas and products?”
What are the key traits of successful entrepreneurs? If you had to boil it down, what would you consider to be the top few characteristics of outstanding entrepreneurs? From your own behaviour and that of other entrepreneurs what do you think makes one entrepreneur more successful than another?
Are the characteristics or strengths of entrepreneurs different from other business people? Most business people need to think creatively, identify opportunities, be outstanding implementers, sell their ideas and concepts and possess a mindset where they take failure in their stride and persist against the odds. Often it’s important to look at the whole, the Gestalt, rather than just one or two traits because successful individuals have a combination of strengths, talents and skills. Continue reading “5 key traits of entrepreneurs”
A physicist who has taken up science communication teamed up with a professor to produce a simple explanation of how the body gets rid of fat. This, they felt was a contribution to the war on obesity. They found that heat is released, especially when you exercise, but that is a by-product of the chemical reaction that takes place in the body when you lose fat, not the conversion of fat. Calculations showed that the lungs are the primary excretory organ for fat. When you lose weight, you need to unlock the carbon stored in fat cells. You release fat as carbon dioxide and water through your lungs. Continue reading “Do you need to put your business on a fat reduction programme?”
English: Marske beach Gentleman metal detecting on the sands. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
One evening when we were down at the coast we went into the sea at Fish Hoek beach corner and saw a couple with a metal detector combing the beach. When we came out of the water, had a shower under fresh water, walked back to our sitting place on Jaggers’ Walk where we dried ourselves. Next to us, sitting alongside on a bench was the couple who had the metal detector device. They got talking to us and we found out a whole lot of interesting things about metal detecting on the beach. They had started the hobby when they had been in the UK, saw one of their family members over there doing it and got bitten by the metal detecting bug. Continue reading “Where do ideas for new products and services come from?”
Easter postcard circa early 20th century (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
How do you know if your new business idea will be a winner or a loser?
The marketing consultants Al Reis and Jack Trout tell how product ideas don’t always test out well. The inclination is to do market research but that can be a big mistake. One example they mentioned was Univac which pioneered a big product idea called the computer only to lose its early lead to IBM. It seems Univac lost out because its own market research predicted that by the year 2000 there would be only 1,000 computers in use. So they didn’t invest in a product with such a limited potential market. IBM, on the other hand, didn’t spend money on research and didn’t know about this bad news about computers. As Reis and Trout say, “Instead they geared up for a market that proceeded to exceed every market researcher’s wildest dreams”. Continue reading “Tooth fairy, Easter Bunny, market research and other myths”
While on holiday in the southern peninsula of Cape Town I was told that the metro or municipality is no longer collecting kelp or seaweed from the beaches. For many years the practice on Cape Town beaches was to use tractors with trailers, collect the kelp that had washed up in the storms and take them off the beach. It seems like the seaweed was used in kelp processing and fertiliser operations. Now apparently the City no longer collects the seaweed because environmentalists have found that the seaweed or kelp helps to propagate a host of marine organisms and life on the edges of the coastline. Continue reading “It’s not always new ideas that are winners, old ideas can be powerful too”
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