We share business tips and insights from our current and past experiences of starting, growing and managing successful businesses. The site aims to impart some lessons learned from our entrepreneurial exploits and that will serve as a beacon for aspiring small business owners.
The focus is not only on sharing personal experiences, but also on offering practical, day-to-day, information that we deem indispensable — the kind of insights we wish we had access to during the early and growth stages of our businesses. We write about small business funding, compliance, technology, people, process, and we bring the spotlight to other small businesses that offer great lessons and insights. The content is meant to be very practical, and the scope is wide, but this reflects the nature of small business management and what sits on the plate of many small business owners.
We share my experiences through the following four themes:
Funding
After going through many months looking for funding, we came to learn about the three most important factors that impact the success in starting, growing and managing your business. An understanding of the stage of development of your business, what you need the funding for and a detailed understanding of the type of potential funders that are suitable. We highlight this in our funding page and curate some funding opportunities that we come across.
Stories
There are many small businesses that present remarkable and noteworthy case studies and learning opportunities. The objective is to bring teachable insights from these businesses in a way that is encouraging and inspiring. The entrepreneur stories will cut across sectors that include agriculture, manufacturing, retail, property, media, etc.; and will prioritise the companies that are ground-breaking and have navigated through huge barriers.
Governance and Compliance
The aspect of governance and compliance is one that is most underplayed by entrepreneurs that are starting, growing and managing small businesses. This is because in the early stage of running a business, there is simply not enough resources to run with this aspect of business. It is best to start as soon as possible with issues of compliance and governance because they can dramatically slow down growth and access to opportunities. Furthermore, opportunities such as grants, and funding require compliance for participation. At worst, non-compliance can attract penalties and other expenses such as interest and legal fees; and may require specialist consultants to close massive compliance gaps. Our governance page brings these issues to sharp focus.
Process and Technology
There is a huge difference between starting and running a business. The skills and activities required to start a business are vastly different to those required to manage a business through a significant growth curve. The objective, however, is to start adopting people, process and technology strategies early enough in the business to allow the growth when the pressure is manageable. We have experienced a period of significant growth in our business. Eventually this stage is about the safest way of relinquishing control to others, purely from the sheer size of the workload. We tend to agree that no company will survive significant growth if they have not defined and implemented their people, process and technology procedures, and we share how we have dealt with these issues here.
