If you’ve been in business more than a week, you’ve made your share of mistakes. What counts isn’t avoiding errors, but never committing the same mistake twice. That’s why, in last week’s column, I offered a list of 50 business bloopers commonly made by entrepreneurs — in the hopes that naming specific errors will help [...]
Q: Friends who run companies, as well as the occasional investor I have spoken to, keep asking me what my exit plan is. I do not have one. I am not looking to raise money at the moment and have no plans to sell my business so as far as I am concerned I do [...]
From Barack Obama to Jacob Zuma, every politician is out there making promises about the millions of jobs they are going to create. Zuma is shortly going to come face to face with his pledge a year ago that 2011 ‘The Year of the Job’ would produce at least 500,000 jobs. The truth is rather [...]
The 2012 Sanlam/Business Partners Entrepreneur of the Year competition is open for entries. Now in its 24th year, the competition celebrates excellence in entrepreneurship, serving as an inspiration to others to succeed in the world of business. It is open to entrepreneurs from all industries and for businesses of any size, closing for entries on [...]
A new survey finds that while workers want overall success, none want to be a corporate executive. In a survey of over 1,000 people, more than half aspired to be entrepreneurs or work as an independent, while not a single respondent aspired to be a corporate executive. These are the results of Intelligent Office’s first [...]
On my desktop is an image of rap mogul, Jay-Z, and the phrase, “Not a Businessman—a Business, Man.” There’s a great deal aspiring artists can learn from him and his wife, Beyonce, who gave birth to the couple’s first child, Blue Ivy Carter, last month. According to theNational Foundation for the Arts (NEA), over one-third [...]
Business strategists and government officials routinely visit Silicon Valley in hopes of learning how to emulate the area’s wildly successful startup culture. Now, thanks to a new book byLinkedIn Founder Reid Hoffman and entrepreneur Ben Casnocha, the curious can save themselves the plane ticket. The Start-Up of You, which is written mostly in Hoffman’s voice, [...]
Though it’s important to self-market your business and follow your intuition when making decisions, no startup should be completely dependent on three very particular things. Acquiring New Clients When I was starting out as an entrepreneur, I was only concerned about one thing: acquiring more customers. I thought I understood the logic: more customers equals more [...]
