About

The Full Story

The aim of this site, besides being a personal goal of mine, is to provide a resource for entrepreneurs to utilize. Business owners are always looking for encouragement and refreshers along the way, and will find a lot of useful information here. There are many hurdles entrepreneurs face when starting out, be it because they have been working a regular 9 to 5 and must adjust to this new crazy world or be it to work through decisions important to the future of their company. In today’s day and age more and more people are leaving their careers with not enough money to retire, or due to economic pressures and downsizing finding themselves unemployed and many of us just want a way to earn money by doing something we love. In these and many other scenarios, becoming an entrepreneur / small business owner is the best way forward. This is an exciting and challenging time in many ways, and for many people it is something they don’t feel capable of doing. Have you ever heard the saying, “Work like you don’t need the money!” – A great saying but is it realistic? I believe it is possible and in fact much more possible if you work for yourself.

With ABT I am expressing my passion for small business and the heart and mind of the entrepreneur. The resources contained on this site will predominantly come from me in the form of articles (blogs) and eventually some videos. As I am always consulting with some small business owners I will be using some case studies and am hoping to even structure a course around a real-life case study – watch this space! If anything, I want to create a space of learning and encouragement for you the business owner to use as you navigate through a myriad of decisions and tasks. Although many of these steps will vary from business to business I truly believe that the best you can do for your venture is be prepared as much as possible. Having looked at small businesses that have succeeded, often you will find the business owner has failed one or more times in the past. The trick is to learn from those mistakes and by continuously learning from others you can avoid most mistakes.

In many ways that is my number one tip… Never give up trying!

This site is privately funded with the hope that it would generate its own income at some point. The content will never be charged for, but you can expect advertisements and software products for sale in the future.

If you enjoy my content please bookmark this site, subscribe to newsletters, like the Facebook page and keep coming back. With any luck this will become a community of entrepreneurs just like you!

My Story:

I have always been an entrepreneur at heart. As a school boy I turned the game of marbles into a business and built it up to a point where I sold all my stock to help buy a new bicycle. This was also the first time I pooled resources with friends and formed a joint venture. With the bicycle I could get a paper route and delivered newspapers to earn money. I was always finding ways to make a bit of money and the love of a deal and selling things is what makes me realize I am an entrepreneur at heart.

 After school I achieved a diploma in Marketing and Business Management and went on to get a BCom Bachelor’s degree in Information Management, which is the study of System Analysis, Design and Integration. The degree’s appeal of working with Technology and applying to Business practices really resonated with me. When applying various technology solutions into a business you can quite logically access the complete business process. A business’ process is always directly related to the computers, telephones etc used day to day.

Since varsity I have been involved in a few ventures like an IT Service and Support business, an Importing and wholesale business, Electrical Contracting Business and more recently in a purely wholesale business. The first helped me hone customer service and sales as well as an introduction to contracting. The Importing wholesale business was a great way to learn about how red tape and tax procedures can be used to your benefit or demise. Electrical contracting was one of my proudest and longest achievements. Together with my partner we built a successful business employing nearly 50 people at one stage. Since this experience I have developed a real passion for contracting. The challenge of selling a nontangible item like time is really challenging, unless you are a lawyer, accountant or doctor of course. Together with skilled staffing challenges as well as unique marketing opportunities in this day and age contracting is a great business. Nowadays I work for a manufacturer in a new turnkey business opportunity for them. I get to work on new business ideas all the while not taking any personal risks.

My dream is to help entrepreneurs run their businesses successfully as well as ethically. I believe there is a right way and a wrong way to do just about everything and I might not always be doing things right, but I will always try!

My parting thought:

I like that life is difficult, it should be. You should work hard to make your business a success, just like you should work hard to put food on the table. It is the hard work that makes the victory sweeter, it is what makes it worthwhile. I do think that it should just be a little easier. Just enough that it does not discourage people from continuing and persevering. If I achieve nothing else in this website, my only hope is that it makes it a little easier for you, the business owner to take that leap of faith and succeed.