Monday motivational: The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now - Chinese proverb

Monday motivational: You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try - Beverly Sill

Monday motivational: Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be – Grandma Moses

Monday motivational: The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is mere tenacity - Amelia Earhart

Monday motivational: I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that's why I succeed - Michael Jordan

South Africa – The Importance of Small Business

 

As a country it is more vital than ever to reform, to redress, and to carry on growing our country, and this can only be possible with small businesses growing and thriving, and mentoring other small businesses to grow and thrive and employ more and more people. Traditionally, the economy and indeed the world’s economy depended on large organisations to employ and to train, and to develop. Today the grid has changed and tipped, begging SMMEs to prosper, to train and to employ.

This is the way of the future and the only way that we can ever assist our youth in being trained, by implementing Learnerships in our SMMEs, transferring skills, and opening doors to young entrepreneurs to pursue their own dreams of small business.

Don’t ever give up on your dreams, small business owners. Weather the storm and continue to look at the big picture and the end result, and it WILL become your reality!

How important is Small Business Development?

 

Last week I was privileged enough to meet with a Member of Parliament, our Shadow Minister of Small Business. He came to chat with me about the work we do, and about the various barriers facing SMMEs in our country.

I explained to him that in my opinion, there is far too much red tape for a small organisation to ever really know if they are abiding by all the applicable laws that are relevant to their organisation without the assistance of a professional consultancy. Even if they had to become okay with these, chances are that they will be amending, be revised or become obsolete in the next few months as our labour legislation and compliancy laws change often with the needs of our country ebbing.

So one can never be totally guaranteed as an SMME that you are indeed ticking all the boxes without a specialist keeping them in the know.

Monday motivational: I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse - Florence Nightingale

Monday motivational: Do what you can, where you are, with what you have - Teddy Roosevelt

Tuesday motivational - There are no traffic jams along the extra mile: Roger Staubach

Monday motivational: Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see - Confucius

'Monday' motivational: Education costs money. But then so does ignorance - Sir Claide Moser

Monday motivational: You miss 100% of the shots you don't take - Wayne Gretzky

Duties as humans

As humans, we are the top of the food chain. What does this mean? It means that we have no natural enemies. Nobody wants to eat us, or use us as by products for clothing, nutrition or carpeting. 

As a result, we have God given rights, duties and responsibilities.  Duties and responsibilities we are failing at, dismally. Look at the state of our oceans. Look at the state of our rivers, dams, reservoirs. Just open your front door and look at the litter adorning our streets. How can we be the guardians of our world and yet we allow our planet to suffer the way it is?

Do you recycle? Are you aware of your electricity consumption? Do you turn plugs off at the wall? Do you ensure taps are turned off and not dripping or are you quite content to let the water waste?

Its time to be aware of our responsibilities. If flowers and trees could talk, would they be happy with the state of affairs? No. Let us all be conscious of the little efforts we can make each day to preserve our world for generations to come and to fix the mess we have made!

Road Safety Tips

 

With all our long weekends in April , one of the most important and yet most often overlooked dangers we as road users acknowledge, is road safety.

 

Which sounds like basic common sense. But when last did you check your tyres? Not just the pressure in them, but your spare’s pressure? What about your wheel alignment? Your tread? Yes, tyres are expensive. Very much so. But what is the alternative to maintenance and replacing? Blowouts? Endangering our families lives?

 

And while on the subject. How many people have seen the ‘Arrive Alive’ campaigns on our TVs? Do you flip the channel or do you watch and observe what they are telling you? Next time they are on, watch them. Listen. And learn. When you drive, keep your lights on. The visibility it adds to your presence on the road is priceless.

 

If you are the driver, make sure to rest and stop often to stretch. Stay hydrated and nourished. If you are the co-pilot, make sure you chat to your driver. Keep them awake and alert, and ensure that they are well looked after as they are totally in charge of your life at that moment and any other passengers.

And lastly, watch out for other drivers on the roads. You may be perfectly capable, and totally aware, but are your fellow South Africans on the same path as you? Give way. Keep a safe travelling distance. Do not allow road rage to have a seat in your car.

Arrive alive.

Introduction: Rising Star Entry Form - South Africa

Introduction: Rising Star Entry Form - South Africa

Mentorship and your future

Mentorship is a concept that in South Africa has been around for many years, but yet many companies have not embraced it for the incredible opportunity and career advancement and indeed nation advancement that it deserves.

 

You may not be one hundred percent certain of what mentorship is. Wikipedia describes mentorship as being a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or more knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgeable person. The person in receipt of mentorship may be referred to as a protégé or a mentee.

 

Mentoring in Europe has existed since at least Ancient Greek times. Since the 1970s it has spread in USA mainly in training contexts, and it has been described as ‘an innovation in American management’.

 

This is not a specialised skill. It involves one person with business knowledge, generalist or specialist in nature, transferring their knowledge on to somebody less experienced. It is about a relationship of trust and knowledge transfer. It has a starting point, and must be governed by guidelines agreed to by both parties, inter alia how long will the relationship last, which party will be responsible for meeting dates, meeting venues etc, what the goals and objectives for each party will be.

 

Start-up companies and SMMEs in particular can benefit from such a relationship, but so can employees within an organisation, in career advancement and indeed personal development. Managers, CEOs and MDs, in the same vein, can benefit as they learn from those who have been there and done that.

 

It is not archaic, it is not soft, it is indeed vital! Research this, read more about it, and explore the amazing world of mentorship toady.

Your financial future

Future is a word that makes you automatically think of a time, far far ahead, when you are old and grey and ‘big’. When you are an ‘adult’. Let me tell you, at 38, I am still not a grown up. In my head. But the reality is that in actual fact I have been working for 20 years. I have another 20-30, and then I am done. And then? Who will support me? How will I earn my salary?

Well, I won’t. And the reality is, me. I have to support me. Most South Africans have no idea just how scary the real amount needed is for retirement. They think if they save a little here, and open a pension fund there, they will be fine. The truth is, you cannot be an ostrich. The amount is huge, and the sooner you start, the better. The more you save, the safer you are.

 

The time is now, not next week, not when you clear an extra R500. It is now. My advice? Get a financial advisor to come and see you. In fact, get a few. Choose who you like the most, as remember this is a relationship that will hopefully span a good few years. Let him be independent, and let him offer you various solutions for YOUR needs. It doesn’t matter if you earn R10 000 or R100 000 a month, the future is guaranteed to nobody. Financial futures need to be created. They don’t just appear, and the chances of winning the lotto, let’s face it, are slim.

Examine your options, be it unit trusts, RAs, pension funds. Even stashing the money under your Sealy. But start now. Make a decision and commit to your relationship with your future, with your money, and with your security. Don’t delay!

Boost your business

Your Business should be Visible On-line

It’s a jungle out there. It is vital for all business, specifically small business, to have a highly visible online presence. And their online presence, specifically their website, needs to have absolute quality content. Why is this so vital? We live in a Google era. People will find your business online, rate your business online, and crucify, condemn or commend your business in that same space. You need to be prepared.

 

Make sure that you are highly visible in all Google searches. Ensure that your Search Engine Optimisation is maintained, current, relevant and visible, so that when companies search for you, they not only find you, but they contact you. Pull them in; have them fill out their email address in order to access certain information, so that you have a guaranteed manner in which to contact them again. Enthral them with the content of your site. Do not overload them with frivolous facts, but ensure that you have just enough to answer any questions they may have, all the while convincing your reader that you are, without doubt, the only subject-matter expert in this field worth consulting. That any other searching would, in fact, be futile.

 

If you can engage your reader with quality, they shall come back with quantity. Repeat visits, increased curiosity and vast faith in your brand will abound.

 

Boost your business by giving it a website to be proud of. A website that does it justice and will generate all the business you can handle. Ensure that it gets repeat visitors which will ensure repeat business for you. Many happy returns!

5 Great plans for 2015

We always start our new year’s full of plans, dreams and aspirations.

2014 for so many was a year of immense challenges and also much hardship. Trials, tribulations, and some hard life lessons.  I, like so many of us, am speaking from experience.

So what can we do, now, in this moment, to begin to change our courses for 2015? To dust ourselves off and carry onwards? I have 5 tips for you

Hold a post-mortem – identify what didn’t work in 2014 – make changes, eliminate but do not repeat them! How did your life shine? What made it shine? What is still holding you back? Have your beliefs, habits and ways of accomplishing tasks – professional and household, kept up with the times? Are you efficient? With a brutally honest swot assessment of your life you can now guide the implementation of any improvements that need to occur within your life.

Stand out – find your niche and distinguish your individualism! 2015 is a year to do things differently. Get out of your rut, leave your comfort zone, and innovate. This year is about new ideas, new ways of doing things and new processes. Stretch your wings and stretch your abilities. Explore greatness.

To take care of yourself, your family, your home, your business, you need to take care of yourself. Spend time focussing on your personal goals. Eat well. Exercise. Get enough sleep, have alone time for meditation, reflection, or simply solitary indulgence. You deserve this and in fact your body demands this if you want it to perform at its peak!

Be positive and be present. How many times do you drive to work, to drop the kids at school, to visit your boyfriend or girlfriend, and only once you reach your destination do you realise that you have no recollection of how you got there! This is because we have trained our minds to focus on our destination, not on how we get there. While focussing on where you want to end up in life is vital, what you do along the way is even more important. We are so quick to focus on the negative. Let’s be mindful, be positive and let’s make the leap to positivity!

Back to school

And 2015 is already in full swing. Hard to believe that just a month ago we were all in the hype of the Christmas bug, frantically buying last minute groceries and presents, and now all mommies and daddies are back behind their desks and our little darlings are back in their cells. I mean, back at school. New teachers, new timetables, new extra murals, new books, and new challenges. Both for them and for us, the parents. Covering books as though your very life depended on it, feverishly sticking yourself to the sticky plastic, and ruing the day you ever chose to be the perfect parent.  Stewing over the lunch menu. Sandwiches piled high with cucumber, cheese, ham. (brown bread naturally). Lunch boxes stuffed with carrot sticks and celery.  Water by the bottle. Gallon bottle.  Perfect haircuts. No glimpse of gel, hair dye or nailpolish. Gleaming new school shoes which in turn give gleaming blisters.  School dresses way too long for their wearers, school shorts hanging nearly below the knees, too-long school socks. And an all-over feeling of hope. Hope that the teacher will like your darling. Hope that your darling won’t bite another child in full site of anybody. Hope that you will continue being mom of the year and supplying balanced healthy lunches and not, out of pure desperation, shoving some pizza slices and left-over bread into an old margarine tub with a bottle of Coke. Hope that you will stick to your own diet, and manage to at least keep going to the gym until the end of February. Hope that demerits will be curbed and detention will be a thing of 2014. Hope that petrol prices will plummet. Hope that the cost of living will somehow decrease by 20%. In general, hope that this year will be better than the last. That your resolutions will be kept. That you and your beautiful family and friends will be healthy, safe and prosperous in the months to come. And we wish you the same. From our family to yours, Happy Back to School!