Small business coach, Dan Sullivan, says how the iPad can help an entrepreneur’s business. The Applei iPad sales are about 10 times that of the 2nd runner up and the stats all back this up. So it’s a very good time now to begin developing content for the iPad instead of other platforms.
Ramon Thomas
Psychology of Technology Blog
Toyota crisis shakes hometown, and Japan Inc. too
As a driver of a Toyata car this news is sad indeed…
By Kimiko de Freytas-Tamura (AFP)
But the group’s influence extends well beyond the city limits, and concerns are mounting across Asia’s biggest economy that Toyota’s massive global safety recalls will tarnish the brand image of Japan Inc as a whole. Japan’s biggest company — which employs more than 300,000 people around the world — has long been a source of pride for the nation.
Its cars dominate the roads, used by millions of Japanese including the royal family and the prime minister. Toyota’s success mirrored the country’s post-war economic miracle, driven by the success of its carmakers and other exporters. Nowhere are the company’s woes felt more keenly than in the eponymous city, renamed in 1959 in recognition of Toyota’s growing importance.
Top 10 Mistakes Made In Business Plans
It’s very important for everyone who’s attending my next Internet Cafe workshop to study this list in great detail. Develop a basic business plan as part of your preparations for this unique training we offer at NETucation that combines the best black business and technology expertise in Southern Africa.
Lenders and investors may see hundreds of business plans in a single day. Make your business plan stand out against the rest, and avoid these common mistakes.
- Not proving that you have the management expertise to make it happen. The quality of your people will lend credibility to your ideas and even to your financial projections. If your management team is not as strong as it could be, join forces with a great board of advisor’s.
- Not demonstrating where your revenue will come from – what customers pay you and why they pay you. Do not be too aggressive in setting revenue projections or you will undermine your credibility.
- Not proving that your business model and long term cost structure is good enough to make a real profit. How will your business make money – what is your margin structure, what are your costs?
- Not being clear enough in your product description to allow the reader to quickly see the need and the niche for this product. It may seem obvious to you, but not so to the reader not educated in your business.
- Not proving that the market opportunity is big enough to get interested in. How big is your market now and what will it look like in 5 years?
- Not adequately acknowledging your competition. Investors know that if there is no perceived competition, there may be no market for what you are offering. The better you can describe your competition, the better you understand your market, and the more likely you will dominate it.
- Not writing for the target audience. Although the core is the same, the plan should be written for the perspective of banks, equity investors, and others. Go as far as you can to tailor each plan to the audience’s specific interests to show you have done your homework and know to whom you are talking.
- Starting with a boring, unenthusiastic executive summary. This is the first section to be read, and if it is not exciting, the rest may never be seen. Make it fun and be enthusiastic. It should stand-alone and generate interest for more. It deserves all the thought you would put into a professionally done promotional piece for your customers.
- Poor presentation. If you have typos and grammatical errors in your business plan, the reader will assume the work you do in your business is sloppy too.
- Saying too much. Keep the entire plan to a maximum of 30 pages, with an executive summary of three pages or less. If investors are interested, they will ask for any other information they need. Amateurs talk in the business plan about unimportant details because they do not know what they should say and what they should not. Hire a professional editor to reduce the page count and help you emphasize your strengths.
source Jan B King
FNB CEO Michael Jordaan’s open letter published in Beeld
This seems to have been a good idea in principal. It’s a pity Michael Jordaan does not have the spine to resist the pressure from trade union Solidarity or white staff. My own experience with FNB since the age of 5 years old has been mostly good. That was until I started my own business in 2004 and that’s when the shocking truth of how banks see entrepreneurs in South Africa began to emerge. They are all part of a global cabal who has nothing better to do that charge high interest, ridiculously high banking fees for even depositing cash into your bank account. No wonder black people mostly withdraw the full amount of cash after they get paid to avoid paying bank fees on this or that 
FNB CEO Michael Jordaan’s open letter published in Beeld today on the issue of FNB’s equal access to educational assistance:
Eerste Nasionale Bank het die afgelope week of twee onder kwaai kritiek deurgeloop oor ’n beursskema wat vanjaar vir die eerste keer beurse gaan uitbetaal aan die kinders van die bank se swart werknemers wat ingevolge die voorwaardes van die skema vir die beurse kwalifiseer.
Eben Pagan's Secret Weapon: the Mastermind group
Eben Pagan also known as David DeAngelo is the creator of the Altitude programme for business owners and entrepreneurs. In this video he discusses the Mastermind concept originated by Napoleon Hill. The Double Your Dating business is a blueprint for online success. I have bought many of the products he produced under the pen-name David DeAngelo. So few people even begin to understand the value of a mastermind group but this video spells it out in plain and simple language.
Calling for a Business Blogging Conference in South Africa
Early in September I was a speaker at the 2nd Digital Citizens Indaba. Last year this conference was immensily valuable to me because it presented an opportunity to meet many of my fellow bloggers from across the African content. This year for me I realised the greater need to teach people how to use blogging to generate income. In 2006 I spent many, many hours discussing this with Emeka Okafor, before he was selected by TED to host the first TEDAfrica conference, which may turn out to become an annual conference.
So this year I spoke with Mathew Buckland and Laurien Clemence on spoke on the Marketing & Moneytizing panel. The problem with DCI is that the bulk of discussion is about online activism and citizen jouranlism. This is not a conference about serious business blogging. So I’m making this public call for a conference that would focus on business blogging. This conference would propel blogging to a new stratosphere in South Africa and Africa as a whole. TEDGlobal’s Fellow’s who included many, many bloggers are a testament to the value we can add to business. Such a conference would appeal to large corporates to introduce them to social media, and web 2.0 business strategies, which will be an imperative by 2010.
My dream panel of speakers would include the following Technorati 100 heavy weights:
- Darren Rowse
- Steve Pavlina
- Guy Kawasaki
- Seth Godin
- Michael Arrington
- Robert Scoble
- Brian Clark
- Steve Rubel
- Jeniffer Jones
- Leonard Brody (I already know him personally)
I’m looking at doing this during September/October 2008. It would take 4/6 months to secure sponsorships for this event. And another 6 moths to do all the planning and organising with sufficient marketing and public relations building up to the event. These two activities can run in concurrently to some extent.
Who’s your international business blogger of choice for this conference? And how can you help me organise this conference? Post your feedback or contact me privately.
Self regulation by knowing who's editing Wikipedia
Last Friday I was interviewed on the Midday Report with Chris Gibbons. This is a very fast paced show which addresses everything from business to politics and what lies in between. The topic was who’s editing Wikipedia which has been driving up a storm of online commentary. A Caltech graduate Virgin Griffith has developed an application Wikipedia scanner, which identifies the anonymous edits on Wikipedia pages.
Most of the articles on Wikipedia, which now has almost 2 million English language articles, are written by registered users. Yours truly included. It’s the old Pareto principle where 20% of the people produce 80% of the output. They way Wikipedia works is that even anonymous users can edit any page. That’s the classic definition of a Wiki. And so what Wikipedia does is record your IP address. There are databases on the Internet which record the distribution of IP address to large organisations, countries and ISPs. You can simply use the WHOIS function on such domain name lookup or IP address lookup databases.
As a standard practise Wikipedia records a history of edits. This becomes very useful when abuse takes place on a particular article and Wikipedia editors can roll back very within minutes of detecting the changes. Wikipedia also has a very detailed FAQ which explains it’s rules and regulations in detail. Now when you find that an article is biased in a particular direction this violates the Neutral Point of View clause.
So when you find large organisations like Diebold, Church of Scientology and the Catholic Church, removing negative comments on their entries it’s no surprise. The beauty of the Wikipedia scanner is that it reinforces the self-regulation that has made Wikipedia such a big hit. In the bigger context it’s a hark back to the Cluetrain Manifesto where conversations become smarter, the larger the network of participants.
I have for a long time been an advocate of more contribution to Wikipedia from African countries. This is one of the best ways to make our voices heard. So I encourage you to sign up as a registered user on Wikipedia and start editing and contributing more content in your language of choice.
Facebook drains attention and a mental bandwidth
This Wednesday morning I will be interviewed on eTV Morning Edition at 6h30am likely just after the news bulletin about the impact of social networking website Facebook on business. The views I am going to express is something that needs to be taken very seriously by companies, especially small business. You see small businesses and entrepreneurs often do not have the tools like larger corporates to block access in the same way. In fact in many cases they may not even realise how much time is being wasted on Facebook or sending/forwarding and reading joke emails. This must be the curse of the knowledge worker i.e. that you can pretend to work whenever you are clicking around on your PC.
There has been several articles and comments in the South African blogosphere about the impact of Facebook. Vinny Lingham highlights how stupid outright blocking of Facebook is and Mike Stopforth gives 5 reasons why you should let your employees use it. Both refer to this News24 article about South African companies blocking Facebook.
As an Internet evangelist I will always support more Internet access. So I agree fundamentally with Vinny that companies should address it on a individual basis. So I would recommend companies write Facebook and social networking access into the Internet Usage policy. Once they have informed employees that their access is being monitored the next step should be compulsory online netiquette training to increase workplace productivity and reduce technology stress.
You see there is a problem with multitasking as reported by CNN back in 2001. And if your block the access outright people will find a way around it. Secondly you won’t be able to monitor or track their activities. Remember nobody is teaching employees basic online etiquette these days. Way back in the early days of the Web there were many people who supervised things on their own accord like your friendly neighbourhood online bodyguard. Today companies are making a lot of assumptions about people’s online behaviour, their levels of self-discipline and their ability to take the initiative in improving their productivity. So for a better understanding of the Attention Age go here.
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