“How’s business?” I asked. “Fine” he smiled. “Is it profitable?” “I think so: I’ve still got some money at the end of the month.” Some small business owners know where every cent is coming from and going to. Others just don’t have a clue. Which means that they have no idea if their business is …
Why are so many SMME owners serial incubates? Why do so many small business people leave enterprise development (ED) and supplier development (SD) programmes feeling that it wasn’t worth the effort? These disturbing realities gave rise to the title of this article. Here are some useful pointers: Know your business development programmes Make sure that …
What a revelation. Delegates and government officials at the 2018 Southern Africa Business Incubation Conference (SABIC) quibbled over whether our incubators and their skills transfer processes positively impacted our ecosystem sufficiently well enough to get them out of the starting blocks. By contrast, in advanced economies like Sweden’s, where there are over 120 incubators, their …
SA Entrepreneurs are Naïve, Lazy and Self-Centred Read More »
What a revelation. After all these years – no – decades; I had thought: maybe I’m stupid. At school, they told me I was lazy, so I compensated by working like a demon. That didn’t help enough, so maybe I really wasn’t all that bright; maybe that’s why I battled to succeed. To confuse me …
AND THERE WAS NO excuse for it. I knew what was happening, but I put my business at risk, and I put my family at risk. It had nothing to do with taking entrepreneurial chances; it was just reckless thoughtlessness. It went against all the sensible advice that I give to my small enterprise clients. …
REMEMBER THE STORY about the ships that arrived in the new world, but the locals could not see them because ships were a phenomenon totally unknown to their minds? Sometimes we just can’t accept unbelievable news. People are known to have denied having been given a cancer diagnosis because their minds couldn’t accept it. Today, many …
