BECOMING AN ENTREPRENEUR - CHANGE YOUR MINSET

Changing your Mindset to an ENTREPRENEURIAL ONE

Following up on my recent post “Parable of the locked-down village” I would like to elaborate a bit

In this present situation, there are a lot of people losing their jobs. It sometimes started with the businesses they worked closing due to diminishing cashflow.

The normal cry is “Me and/or my spouse lost our jobs” and are now in dire straits.

Those affected go into stress mode and the only thing on their minds are “What are we going to do at month end? “How are we going to survive?

As I mentioned in the parable there are only two modes people can go into (anything else is just a variable of one of these)

        1.       Accept their fate, put their moan & groan caps on and do nothing more.

  2.       Accept the challenge, put their creative thinking cap on, and prosper.

Most people that lost their jobs were EMPLOYEES.   As a rule, that is all they can or ever wanted to be.

Our solution and the one I am going to talk about is to change your thinking mode from Employee to

Employer or Entrepreneur.  Reactions to this are often “I cannot run my own business”  “I do not know how to start a business “

And my answer is always:  You can do ANYTHING if you put your heart and mind to.

I am going to discuss the processes as we employed it ourselves broken down into practical steps.

The steps will be discussed in detail in upcoming posts

Here are the basic steps.

1.       Know yourself and your skills - draft a Cv (See yourself as an employer who has a job for someone

          with your skills and what would you like to see in the CV presented to you. 

         Your cv should be totally elaborate to describe your skills but it must be the truth, the whole truth 

         and  nothing but the truth)[1]

2.       Identify possible opportunities and markets you can target with your skills[2]

3.       Draft a plan (again not a massive marketing plan or business plan – just what can you offer to 

          whom and how.[3]

4.       Set yourself a vision[4]

5.       Follow this up with a mission statement[5]

6.       Now draft an action plan.  Who are you targeting, what products are you going to offer, what would your profit be, How are you going to deliver the service/s.? What are your resources? [6]

7.       Determine a start date and what is going to happen chronologically? You need to enlist the help of a mentor and someone you are going to be accountable to.[7]

8.       Start doing something today

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[1] I WILL DISCUSS THE IDEAL CV IN A FOLLOW UP

[2] The second discussion in this little series

[3] An outlay of such a plan will follow shortly

[4] Look out for a definition of how to do this also shortly

[5] I will discuss the difference between a vision and a mission statement

[6] Notes on this to follow shortly

[7] I will discuss this in detail – probably the most important point to keep you from getting despondent

New Business Ideas

7 Steps to take in identifying new business ideas:

Step 1: Take stock of yourself

Statistics prove that new businesses have a much better chance of success if the person starting the business has sufficient skills and experience in that industry. It’s also very important that the potential business suits the owner.

The most important questions to answer are:

1. What knowledge do I have?

2. What am I good at?

3. What do I love doing?

Step 2: Keep track of events, news and trends

There are many other events and trends that create opportunities, just like the current credit crunch did for debt counsellors.

A great way to keep track of events, news and trends is to follow the news and passing of new legislation.

By looking at your personal skills and experience and combining that with what’s happening in the world, you will be able to identify a trend or event that you can capitalise on.

Step 3: Inventions, patents and copyright

People often forget the thousands of archived patents and inventions that are not being taken to the market. These un-used inventions are just waiting for someone to exploit them.

Maybe you don’t have the ability to invent something but you might know how to market and sell it profitably. This can benefit you and the inventor; who might lack your business skill.

Creative thinking requires no action. Innovation requires action and implementation

Step 4: Look at adding value

This means taking a raw product and putting it thru a process that changes it and adds value to it, then selling it for a worthwhile profit.

Examples:

• Someone who buys fruit and vegetables in bulk and then repack it into smaller packs to sell in convenient sizes. The fruit and vegetables can also be chopped and peeled, adding even more value to it.

·         Get rich by solving someone’s problem and offering value!

Step 5: Investigate other markets

A popular product or service that are in abundance and inexpensive in one area, might also be popular and profitable in another area. You can make money by taking these products or services from one area to another.

Why do people pay a lot of money for Microsoft products when they can get everything Microsoft offers, for free? (Linux and Open Office can be downloaded and used free of charge). The Microsoft organization claims to have a superior product.

Step 7: Getting on the bandwagon

A sudden increase in demand for a particular product or service creates opportunity. It’s like the current need for debt counselling, or the demand for generators during the ESCOM Power outages 

Homeschooling : South African Research

Reproduced here from the following site in the public interest:
http://www.homeschooling-curriculum-guide.com/statistics-homeschooling.html

Research in SA regarding homeschooling
In South Africa, research done at the University of South Africa (UNISA) by Ms. Dierdre Bester has found that children who receive home education perform much better in academics than their school counterparts and that they are very well adapted socially as well.Her comprehensive research paper is called “The effect of home schooling on the social development and academic performance of the pre-adoscelent”.She also found that there are a lot of positive effects on children who are home educated in that

Home educated children have :

· a greater sense of responsibility

· a positive self-image

· improved self confidence

· a positive outlook on life

· better time management skills

· own opinion formation and better decision making ability

· the ability to define and pursue own goals

· an independent work attitude

Bester also stated that one must never assume that positive socialization happens in schools – in fact quite the opposite can be true.

Homeschoolers can usually :

· relate better than average both horizontally and vertically

· take leadership positions often

· has positive role models

· have the tendency to build quality friendships and

· their self image is not dependent on group pressure

Amazing customer experiences

My recent experience with a bridging finance company and the total incompetence of the staff involved to comprehend the client's need
prompted me to post this gem on my site :

Enjoy

Creating Amazing Customer Experience - Excellence or Consistency

Presented By: Lior Arussy, Strativity Group


We live in challenging times. Customers’ expectations are increasing exponentially. Their tolerance for anything less than amazing is diminishing. They demand excellence or they go elsewhere. Competitors are trying harder to delight customers constantly raising the customers’ expectation bar. On the other hand, cost reduction efforts are everywhere. We try to control costs by optimizing services. We do so by creating consistency everywhere. While striving to solve the excellence question, we end up with consistency as the answer.

We often make the mistake of confusing excellence and consistency. Consistency is about optimizing services and products to be without flaws. Delivering a “consistent” product or service focuses on removing elements of dissatisfaction and achieving parity.

At best, consistency meets customer expectations. Eliminating inaccurate invoices is an example of a consistency effort. Ensuring that all your products share the same level of quality is consistency. Responding to customer inquiries in a timely manner is consistency. Consistency is heavily dependent on processes, and these processes become the primary objective of the performance; employees are merely executers of carefully managed procedures. In a consistency-driven environment, employees themselves are secondary to the process. They are subservient to the roles dictated to them by the process definition. Consistency emphasizes optimized processes and de-emphasizes the role of employees. At best, consistency reaches parity but never exceeds expectations.

Consistency is basically just doing your job. Some companies do it well; others do it in a mediocre way. Delivering consistency is nice, but it is not excellence—unless the rest of your industry is consistently awful and you stand out for being able to meet basic customer expectations. In fact, the definition of consistency is being on par with customer expectations. It is a boring, uninteresting place to settle. No one will celebrate your consistent performance.

Excellence and superiority, on the other hand, are about going above and beyond. They are about pleasantly surprising the customer. Excellence is all about exceeding the expectations, not just meeting them. By definition, this type of performance requires human intervention to set higher goals, individualize and humanize the interaction, and be authentic throughout the whole experience. At the core of the contrast between consistency and excellence is the role of people and processes. With excellence, processes are merely a means to a goal. A tool to deliver a greater solution. Employees are in charge, and use of accepted processes are subject to their judgment. If a process assists them in achieving the goal, they will use it. Otherwise, they use their discretion to get the job done and exceed expectations. With excellence, the corporate culture permits such employee discretion and provides permission to perform, as well as permission to make mistakes.

Excellence requires an emotionally engaging performance that delivers an authentic and memorable caring touch. Processes are not able to do this, only people are. So, excellence is not a matter of a better process. To achieve excellence we need to place processes in their rightful place, as tools, and give people the freedom to perform.

In times of excellence or nothing, we must exceed the consistency paradigm and focus on reaching to the excellence standard. To do so we will need to rethink the tools, information and authority we provide our employees to deliver on the ever increasing customer expectation for excellence

The Ultimate SMME Marketing System

With acknowlegment to John Jantsch of Duct tape marketing
After the 7th post I will give the link to the free ebook


How to create the Ultimate
Small Business Marketing
System in 7 steps
Step Number One – Narrow
Your Focus
What I’m really saying by that from a marketing standpoint is, don’t try
to be all things to all people. You really must find a target market. That
may not sound like new news or new information, but it is amazing
how easy it is for small business owners.
The phone rings, they pick it up and somebody on the other side asks
if you can you do “x.” Typically, you say you’ve never done it before,
but how hard can it be? The next thing you know, you end up being
scattered so thoroughly that no matter what you started out to do in
your business, you end up off target.
In many cases, when I ask small business owners to describe their
target market, it comes down to anybody they think will pay them.
Unfortunately, the problem with that is that it becomes so difficult to
distinguish your business from another. Prospects want to believe that
somebody can truly fill their needs.
A good example is a financial planner who works with family-owned
businesses or maybe a financial planner who bills himself as a
specialist in working with recently divorced individuals. If I’m a recently
divorced individual or I own a family-owned business, whether his
claim is true or not, I will be predetermined to believe that his business
is more suited to fill my needs.
It doesn’t matter if it’s true. It doesn’t necessarily matter if that person
who works with family-owned businesses has any more special
knowledge or experience than I do. If you say you work with just
anybody, a lot of times your prospects will look at that and say they
want to work with the other person who says they work more
specifically toward their needs.
The problem really comes down to trust. One of your biggest
challenges as a small business is to overcome this lack of trust.
They’ve never heard of you. Why should they trust what you have to
say? For many people, if they believe you understand them, you serve
their needs or if you’ve served somebody just like them, you are more
suited to meet their needs.
What I’m really asking you is to take a look at your ideal client. For
those of you who have been in business for any amount of time, I want
you to think in terms of what makes up your ideal client.
For many people, it’s as simple as taking a really good hard look at
their current clientele and looking for common characteristics among
you’re their best clients. For a lot of people that may not be the clients
you do the most amount of business with, perhaps. Sometimes it is.
It’s great when it is.
I want you to really take a good hard look at your existing clients and
find some common characteristics of your best clients. For me, the
best clients are those who really trust what you do, who really value
what you do, who really look to your specific expertise in order to
bring them the results they want.
Sometimes the case may be you’re just starting or thinking about just
starting and don’t have any clients. If you don’t have any clients, one
of the tips I’ll give you is to think in terms of going to some
complementary businesses, ones you admire perhaps, ones that
wouldn’t necessarily consider themselves competitors but probably
serve the same target market as you, and ask them to describe their
ideal client.
For those of you who have been in business or have owned your own
businesses, I think you’ll find people are very willing to help. People
love to be asked their opinions. In many cases, that can be a great way
for you to go out and find common characteristics.
When I’m talking about common characteristics, I am talking about
types of businesses, sizes of businesses or number of employees. For
individuals, if you’re dealing with homeowners, look at what the
neighborhood’s like. Does the level of income of that neighborhood
dictate where you might find your ideal clients?
One of the things I have found is when people will go as far as doing
this and then look for ways to rank their clients, that they end up
finding what makes up their ideal clients. It rises to the top in many
cases.
Then again, what I want you to do if you go through that exercise,
would be to then sit down and really describe your ideal client,
business or person. Write it down on a piece of paper as though they
were literally sitting across the table from you.
This exercise is very important for several reasons. I think it helps the
business get a firmer grasp on who makes up the ideal client and who
to go after. It can be as simple as asking where more people who look
and act like that or have this problem are.
It’s also a great tool. I find very few businesses that actually explain to
their employees or other associates who they’re looking for. In some
cases, their salespeople don’t really even know what to look for in an
ideal client.
Once you describe that, you can go out and tell the world. You really
stop talking to people and stop taking work from clients who don’t fit
your profile. In some cases, it’s just as important to know who is not a
client, as who is.
There are many times that I have taken work from clients who don’t
really fit my profile of the ideal client. If I go back to the idea of valuing
what I do, what happens is those become the biggest headaches. You
can really save yourself, in many cases, some of those headaches by
really having this firm description and narrowing your focus. You can
say “no” every now and then when you know something won’t fit your
profile.

Business plan for finance

Writing a winning business plan to get finance for your business is easy - That is if you know how

Here are a few basics:

 

Business plan guidelines (with recognition to Business partners)

The drafting of a proper business plan to get an investor or financier interested must be realistic and executable as a plan.   Apart from fine tuning the business plan in detail for implementation it must basically be able to be implemented .  If it is only your vision you will not get investors or financiers involved.

Idealistic ideals and community involvement is not important for especially financiers. It should be a very small part of your motivation

Any credit application has to address the following 3 critical areas;

The entrepreneurs; You will have to convince a financier/investor beyond a reason of a doubt that you know what you are doing and will be able to sustain the business.

Cash flow :   You must be able to proof beyond any reasonable doubt that the business will be able to sustain the projections show in your financial calculations. If R x amount of turnover is projected proof how you got there. (letters of intent , orders , minutes of meetings , newspaper clippings etc etc.) The same applies to all other figures in the cash flow

Security.  Very few if any financier will finance a project without own contributions from entrepreneurs and or security . These are normally notarial bonds on equipment , mortgage bonds on immovable property, sessions on debtor books etc.

Any Business plan must be compiled using information obtained in a proper feasibility study conducted by the entrepreneurs.   This might include visits to potential suppliers , clients , competitors  and end users of the envisaged product. The more comprehensive this study is conducted the better chance of successful involving investors and or financiers

 Elements of the Plan

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The executive summary is the MOST vital part of the business plan — it has to sell your strategy for success to the investor.

The summary is an overview of the entire plan and must contain the highlights of the business plan and summaries of each section. Therefore, although it is at the beginning of the document, it is usually written last to capture the essence of the plan.

The summary stands alone and should not refer to other parts of your document.

BUSINESS OVERVIEW

1. Write a business profile, including the following:

• information on the background and history of the business
• indicate the business form (proprietorship, Close Corporation, Company)
• Is it a new business, take over, expansion, franchise?
• The mission, and the company's long and short term objectives in terms of business growth and development, as well possible exit strategies (for example: buy out investors, sell to larger company, go public, etc)
• It is imperative that this must be specific –vague ideas does not impress an investor/financier

2. The product or service

• describe in full the product or services offered by the business and the innovative features of these products and services and the competitive edge they afford the business over rivals in the market.
• the expected product life cycle where applicable
• include descriptions of key technologies employed and current and future research and development

3. Describe the location, premises and — where applicable — production facilities

THESE AGAIN MUST BE VERY SPECIFIC

4. Production and technology

• describe production processes and capacity, identifying any existing constraints and possible problem areas
• include a detailed analysis of the process of installing and commissioning any new technologies and production processes
• include information on quality assurance systems and procedures, and certification
• details of suppliers and sub-contractors, and any contractual arrangements governing the supply of key inputs

5. Elaborate on the business's past achievements and strengths and past problems and weaknesses, and critical success factors

COMPANY MANAGEMENT

1. The entrepreneurs

• include a description of the skills and experience of the entrepreneurs covering the key areas of technology and product development, production, sales, marketing, finance and administration
• describe the position and the specific functions and responsibilities of each entrepreneur and/or manager
• attach a detailed curriculum vitae of each entrepreneur
• indicate the financial contribution of each entrepreneur to the business, and the current shareholding structure.

2. The management structure of the business(ORGANIGRAM FORMAT )

• show company ownership structure, business units and subsidiaries where applicable
• attach an organisation chart showing the functions and responsibilities of directors, key management and staff
• formulate remuneration, incentives, share options, and conditions of employment of key management and directors
• analyse of any deficiencies in management and how these positions are to be filled
• comment on current and future employment levels, labour relations and union membership
• include details of systems to be implemented: information technology, accounting, administration, management information and stock control systems
• include details of auditors, attorneys, bankers and professional advisers

3. Franchise information (where applicable)

If the business is a franchise, include what is covered in the management package the franchisor provides in this section

THE MARKET

1. Industry analysis

Summarise the industry in which you will compete. Find most of the facts from government statistics and trade organisations. Discuss topics such as:

• current trends and developments in the industry
• large and important players in the industry
• how the industry is segmented
• problems the industry might be experiencing
• national or global events influencing the industry
• national and global growth forecasts
• how legislation affects the industry (for example, how the law limiting smoking in a restaurant affects the industry)

2. Market analysis

• describe the existing market and its potential for growth
• include a detailed analysis of the size and maturity of the market, trends and seasonality exhibited by the market, and the business's current and expected market share together with an analysis of the time, resources and actions required to achieve this desired market share
• list existing and potential customers, supported by letters of intent, orders on hand, contracts, where applicable
• include a detailed analysis of competitors, the price and quality of their products, service and delivery, and their expected reaction to your activities
• highlight and discuss your competitive advantage

SALES AND MARKETING STRATEGY

1.      elaborate on current and planned sales and marketing strategies and promotional activities (advertising, exhibitions, promotions, public relations, etc.)

2.      describe your distribution strategy and channels

3.      formulate sales staffing, recruitment, remuneration and commission structures

4.      include a detailed motivation and substantiation of sales projections (in monetary and physical terms) with a comprehensive analysis of the lead time expected to reach sales targets and milestones (e.g. break-even point)

5.      elaborate on your pricing strategy and how it compares with your competition

6.      where the business is a franchise, include the full marketing strategy of the franchisor

Business plan training

Small Business owners and Startups are always faced with the challenges of raising enough money to finance their operations.  Almost all will have to borrow money at one stage or another from a bank or respected financier like Business Partners

The first thing any financier asks of you is your business plan.  Most Entrepreneurs will at that stage get a professional to help them and pay anywhere between R 5000 and R 15 000. This plan does not guarantee anything ! But you still have to pay for it.

What if you were able to do it yourself in a professional way ?

We have been facilitating loans for Small businesses for over 10 years and have over 30 years banking experience.  As part of our 5 day Small business course we spend a whole day on the technicalities of a business plan and the cash flow projections.

As a community project we are now running the contents of the Business plan day as a full one day course on Saturday 22 and Saturday 29 May at a never to be repeated price of only R 600 per person.  You may bring a second person with at only R 300.00

Bookings on a first come first serve basis. Email business@brandow.co.za or phone 012 654 6879 or 0828051615