The consumer protection act comes into effect in October this year. This act spells out all the rules of engagement in the supply chain of both retail products and services industries. It affects almost everything to do with the running of your small business. We will, over the next couple of weeks try to understand as much of that act as we can, but please understand that I am not a lawyer, nor do I understand the law as well as I could, and that this is just an act and only becomes law once...

The path between both Human Capital and Talent to Success always needs to pit stop at Plans and Goals. There is no accidental success that I have witnessed. Success needs to be planned for. Simple setting of goals for a desired outcome it critical for the project. Begin with the end in mind, plan backwards, play it forward and you are on your way to success.

But Life also happens, we will get sick, machines will break down, staff will leave, banks will recall their loans; all these will crea...

With recent improvements in the DSL and Skype upgrades we are able to extend our coaching service to include sessions to Entrepreneurs and Business Owners outside the Cape Town area.

Our Skype coaching will include all the normal services, functions and benefits we offer our Cape Town based members, just without the uncomfortable chairs at coffee shops.

Skype members pay an initial first month R220 registration fee plus R650 per month for a minimum of one 2 hr Skype session. Addition sess...

The whole of Cape Town took to the streets on Sunday to witness the 30 seconds of destruction of the cooling towers in Athlone. Watching something destructive like this has the same attraction as medieval executions, a real crowd drawer. They estimated that more people watched the towers than the World Cup Final. Funny how people are?

It did remind me that we all have a set of towers in our own lives that we have built and treasured for years but offer no value to either ourselves or others....

This week Yola was a victim of a Denial of Service or DoS attack on their servers. This resulted in their entire service and all their client’s website coming offline, including our site. This, I can imagine brought frustration, anger, denial and then acceptance cycle of emotions for Vinny Lingham and his team. The normal response to these from leader of industry is to first deny that anything is wrong and then to cross blame anyone and everyone for the problem. This can go on for ages unti...

The new look Fin24 Entrepreneurship page here is offering a Q&A section where readers can submit small business questions to a panel of experts. Marc Ashton has asked me to be a part of the team. Check us out here and bookmark this page for future reference. Marc’s articles have been a huge source of well researched information. Marc is also a bit of a bulldog and not afraid to tackle the big issues like the CIPRO issue.

We look forward to a fruitful time of correspondence with the reader...

There is a huge increase in the requirement for small business owners to get online using video and podcasts. We have been playing in this arena for some time now and finding out the tools and techniques required for this. We have also had many enquiries about how to do this, so in response we have put together a workshop/discussion group for this Saturday 21^st Aug.

We have invited some experts in video, voice and Camera work to chat to us, but it is designed as a share and learn session. If...

It is Friday the 13^th and tradition, superstition and old wives tales tells me to stay in bed. But if I listened to all that and my own body, I would never get anything done. How often do we allow others to run our lives and make decisions for us. I value others opinions and will often ask for a different view point but the buck stops with me and I need to make the final decision.

We take new Entrepreneurs through the process of creating a brand for their new business; this includes a new lo...