The Challenge of Christmas

So here we are, less than a week to Christmas, and here I am reflecting on where the year disappeared to. Business is going quiet as everyone focuses on the run down to the Christmas break and the summer holidays. Most schools are on holiday or will be shortly, the weather has largely decided to oblige us and turn to summer, and a festive mood is in the air.

And herein lies the rub for a...

Learning from Mistakes

I recently blogged about the need to remain green - to be open-minded and prepared to listen when someone more experienced offers advice. After all, one of the reasons you buy a franchise is to avoid the mistakes made by others. None the less, it seems to be human nature to defend one's position rather than admit to doing something the wrong way or accept that there might be a better way of...

Genesis of a franchisee

I woke up on Sunday morning and suddenly realised that we've reached November already. How the year has flown! It also dawned on me that it is now a year since I was retrenched from my last job. This got me to reflecting on how I have ended up as a business owner of a cost management consultancy. It is probably not where I imagined I'd be when I graduated from university, almost 30 years ago...

Remaining Green

When you work for yourself and by yourself, there is an awful lot of time for reflection. You can reflect on the good things or you can reflect on the bad things. You can be positive and upbeat, or you can become negative and get into a depressive downward cycle. In my opinion, reflection is a good thing that gets you into thinking about what has gone right and what has gone wrong. As long as y...

Reality Check

When I sat down to write this post, I realised that this is the twentieth on my blog. So I reviewed all I've written to date and thought that it's about time to update you on how my business is progressing.

As with most things in life, there are ups and downs. While it was very exciting to sign up my first client (see earlier blog), that in itself was no guarantee of success. With the ERA...