Diaries of a Barefoot Businessman Chapter 33: The Dexterity Dilemma
Fake it till you make it. That’s the underlying principle that guides any entrepreneur’s decision making process. After all, how are you supposed to compete with larger, more established operations without blurring the lines of truth from time to time? Sure, you might...
Diaries of a Barefoot Businessman Chapter 32: The PowerPoint Predicament
For anyone with even a passing interest in earning a decent living, there are a few critical skills with which one must be somewhat familiar: the ability to create and respond to emails, the basic capacity to cobble together a document of sorts and the wherewithal to...
Diaries of a Barefoot Businessman Chapter 31: It’s not you, it’s me
The entrepreneurial journey is a series of exciting firsts – your first client, your first employee, your first positive profit margin. Now these are all events well documented by those now at the peak of their powers, who nostalgically look back upon their roads from...
Diaries of a Barefoot Businessman Chapter 30: Looking out for Number 1
Most entrepreneurs start their business with a vision – a clear idea of where they want to be, what they hope to stand for and how their brand will be represented in the public space. We fastidiously work on our logos, our website content and our corporate identities,...
Diaries of a Barefoot Businessman Chapter 29: Bridging the cultural divide
If you’ve ever taken a passing interest in corporate culture (and if you’re reading this, presumably you have), you’ll likely have encountered articles aplenty documenting the rise of the so-called ‘super office’. Part theme park, part working space, these new hybrid...
Diaries of a Barefoot Businessman Chapter 27: Time Warped
Time is money, or so the old saying goes. And there’s no doubt that those billable hours are indeed the lifeblood of any business. But does time itself hold any real value, particularly if it’s spent trawling through YouTube or Facebook? Based on the 1984-esque ways...
Diaries of a Barefoot Businessman Chapter 26: A Lesson in Gratitude
I was recently asked by a regular reader of this column (yes, they do exist!) why I appear to so vehemently dislike what I do. Words like ‘bitter’, ‘angry’ and yes, ‘crazy’ were used to describe my weekly rants about the ups and downs of entrepreneurship. What? Me? A...
Diaries of a Barefoot Businessman Chapter 25: The Problem With Being A People Pleaser
When starting out a business, it’s important to go that extra mile for clients. After all, when your competition comes in the form of established, big-brand conglomerates that command massive sums simply for the privilege of their company, that extra helping of...
Diaries of a Barefoot Businessman Chapter 24: Running the Growth Gauntlet
When it comes to business, bigger is always better, or at least so I’ve been told. And there’s certainly nothing quite like the rush of scoring that new client, replete with ample funds and plentiful perks. Yet, as any entrepreneur knows, that fuzzy feeling lasts a...
Diaries of a Barefoot Businessman Chapter 23: Deal with the Devil
Narcissists. Bullies. Sociopaths. These are just a few of the charming personality types you’re likely to encounter on your entrepreneurial path. For some reason, the people who rise to the pinnacle of the business world always seem to have shaken a few screws loose...
Diaries of a Barefoot Businessman Chapter 22: Man on a Mission
Over the years I’ve written many a mission statement, extolling the virtues of hard work, goal setting and various other corporate platitudes favoured by HR departments the world over. Yet at some point this week, whilst absent-mindedly scanning through a corporate...
Diaries of a Barefoot Businessman Chapter 20: Expecting the unexpected
I’m often told by experts and entrepreneurial sages that planning is the key to building a functional business empire. Yet as I sit here with the Monday dawn about to break, I can safely say I have not the faintest clue what the day – let alone the week – will hold....