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...

The new trend for blogs and business websites is to make a short video, upload it to Youtube and play it on your site or blog. This has been encouraged by Google for better SEO and it helps build relationships with people who get to see you in action before they get to buy from you.

In theory this is a brilliant idea and easy to do. Or is it?

If you have a Mac and plenty of high tech equipment, a degree in sound engineering and video editing then it is fun and easy. If on the other hand you...

How long does it take to get retweeted or mentioned on Twitter 1 000 000 times. As an experiment for this post, please retweet or mention it on your twitter or DM it to your followers and let’s see how long it take to get to some mile stones of 1 000 to 1 000 000.

I will monitor it on search.twitter and post results tomorrow. 

We thought that in the interest of celebrating Women’s Day this year we would share some of the workshop titles we have been asked to run by some our women members over the years.

1. Dressing Up:  Beyond the Wedding and the Funeral
2. Refrigerator Forensics:  Identifying and Removing the dead and beyond repair
3. Accepting Loss:  If It's Empty, You Can Throw It Away
4. Going to the Supermarket - It's Not Just for Women Anymore!
5. Recycling Skills:  Boxes that your Electronics Came in.
6. Bathroom Etiquette: Five ...

Reading books has always been an expensive necessity as a business owner. The amount of information required just to get to know what you do not know can keep your book budget working flat out all year.

When electronic readers came out like the Kindle, I was super keen to get one, but logistics and once again expense of having one in SA was too much. The iPad and other platforms now offer similar functionality but all cost a huge initial investment before any download can happen.

But wait, ...

We got to listen to a thrilling presentation by Michael Jackson at the Business Breakfast/Sanlam event today at Kelvin Grove.

Here are some of the points made by Michael relevant to Innovation and Entrepreneurship

• The world is running at a lot faster pace today than we have ever experienced before.
• Previous 10 year cycles are now down to 3 years
• Work is a privilege now not a right
• Get to know the difference between cash and credit
• Invest in your own health each day
• Never allow your opposition to o...

Any small business owner will tell you that their work is done for passion and the pleasure of seeing a satisfied customer before the gain of any financial return. This is what keeps us going and what gets us out of bed each morning. Over the years we have seen many of our members enter various competitions and even win a few. This has been the result of a focused team effort and the ability to develop a business around a solid strategy of growth and value based foundations. 

Cape Talk and S...

Back in the days when we wrote Cobol code on the big IBM mainframes, sitting in Cubicle nation, we had a saying that rung true every day. The Sooner you start coding the sooner you will have to start again. This was told to us again and again by our project manager. It proved to be true then and still hold today. Too many people jump right in and do the ‘work’ of a task before they have stopped to think or plan.

Another useful saying “Failing to plan is planning to fail” once again w...

At first this may seem a weird topic for a Monday morning but actually are three critical activities that every business owner and entrepreneur needs to take into account each week. 

Working ON your business requires working on the strategy, developing new markets, more products, brand footprint, reputation management, building expansion and foundation networks. Each of these tasks are critical and should be scheduled into every weekly programme. 

Working IN your business is what the techni...