Tuesday 1 October 2013

Hello The genesis year is drawing to a close and I have to admit as excited as I am to finish exams and graduate, a part of me is a little sad it’s all over so soon. Time really fly’s when you are working hard and having fun! In true Genesis style, I will wrap this up by sharing some of the many things I will never forget after this experience. Networking is the key to everything Plan backwards from a deadline as soon as you know it exists Write everything down, including minutes at meetings The most important aspect of any business...

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Monday 30 September 2013

Hello It’s taken me by surprise how the final few weeks of student life are upon us and with that of course multiple deadlines to meet. I’ve been reflecting on the process we have taken on the journey known as genesis and of with the current situation a big part of that has been the importance of planning in advance or being ahead of the curve. We are facing the reality of closing our business with minimal sales and a large amount of inventory back into the production line after faults in production. We are not without stock, but have not...

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Sunday 29 September 2013

It just hit me that this is going to be my last blog of the year with you. But fear not, as mentioned earlier you can catch me on my blog….originsofhouse.wordpress.com How does one say goodbye………I cant even tell you about the lesson I learnt, cause a recap that would write a textbook. Wouldn’t want to bombard you with all that information…lol..Plus I take it you’ve been hearing it from the rest of my group members. Guess all I can say was this has been a life changing experienced, way beyond my wildest imagination when I first entered this course,...

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Saturday 28 September 2013

The whole day spent in the library, this has become the story of my life. I don’t even sweat it anymore. You tend to realise the value of hard work when you are constantly being pressurised to work under pressure. This had led me to think of a life in quadrant two. This is where you are dealing with important things which are not urgent. This is the ideal quadrant to live your life in. As much as I’m tired at the moment, I know I have covered all the important things due on Monday, this leaves me with time to tomorrow to do other things...

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Friday 27 September 2013

Yet another week has come to an end. I keep asking myself where this year has gone, seems like yesterday when I was still attending Networks sessions trying to get to know members of the class. Now nearly 10 months later, I find myself looking back at what I could have done better or differently. It’s only human nature that we critically analyse ourselves, failing to see what good we have accomplished. When we started this course my goals where never to make money, but to learn as much as I can. The money  would have been a nice added...

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Thursday 26 September 2013

What to talk about? Today I think im gonna a bit off topic, I will share with you one of my passions. This being house music. I recently started a blog on the origins of house music. One of the lessons that I learnt this year is to follow ones passion. The link for the blog is originsofhouse@wordpress.com One of the recent articles I wrote was on the birth of house music in South Africa. As much as we need to pay homage to Chicago for being the architect for the house that Jack built, they had no idea that their music was fueling the...

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Wednesday 25 September 2013

Been yet another long day at the office, sometimes I forget that I have to blog. This is due to the amount of work that one has been faced with during this year. Today we were given the breakdown of our final close of business report, and I must say it’s a daunting prospect. But on second thoughts, what hasn’t been this year, however somehow we managed to get through. Sometimes when I look back I cant believe what we have achieved this year. It actually makes me wonder what Im capable of achieving in my life time. Exciting times ahead I tell...

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Tuesday 24 September 2013 Heritage Day

Woke up this morning to a public holiday.. I’ve actually come to appreciate public holidays this year. Instead of going out and enjoying with friends and family. I’ve found that I use these days to catch up on the work that has been piling up.  As you can imagine this year has taken a tall on all of us, with the amount of work that keeps springing up from no where This day was spent just as any other holiday, catching up on work that has fallen behind. The amount of group work which has crept up during the course of this semester has...

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Monday 23 September - Reflection on the year gone by

Considering that this will be my last week blogging. It would just like open off my blog by reflecting on what i have gained during the course of the year. As an individual the education that has been instilled on me by courses such as Entrepreneurial Strategies, Business in Context and Genesis just to name a few has been the best available. As these courses and the program as a whole has helped me shape my values, values that I know will guide me for the rest of my life. The growth that one has achieved as an individual cannot be summed...

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Sunday 22nd September 2013- The end

So today is my official last bog for the year What can i say, i cant believe that the year has gone by sooo fast, it feels like just yesterday that i was blogging about trying to make capital for our product. The key things i learnt this year that i will take away with me are:- 1) being pro active 2) the importance of keeping in touch with and having networks 3) the importance of communication within businesses 4) the importance of marketing 5) the importance of knowing the seasonality of your product 6) having a clear target market 7)...

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Saturday 21st of September- Leadership

Good day everyone Yesterday we watched Shakelton, a story about a great leader who set out on a British Imperial Trans Arctic Expedition from 1914-1916. It was remarkable even for an era and region that already has far more than its fair share of incredible tales of heroism and fortitude in the face of appalling hardships. The intention was to cross the Antarctic continent from one coast to the other via the South Pole. In the event, the expedition never set foot on continental Antarctica. The expedition managed to survive the loss...

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Friday 20th September- Networks

Hello everyone Hope you had a good week In our Genesis session with our Genesis lecturer, on Wednesday we had a session where we drew out our group networks on a network map. We drew this network map for different areas of the business, such as production and idea generation. Red lines were drawn to indicate the close relationships with networks and blue lines were drawn to indicate connections made through other mediums such as the Internet, or through some of our networks. Through drawing this diagram it became very apparent that those...

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Thursday 19th September- Sell Sell Sell

Good afternoon everybody So our business that we have been working towards and created is slowly but surely coming to an end. Our closure of business occurs on the 4th of October, which is just over a month away. We have however incurred a few bumps along the way with our production. Initially we were meant to produce only 150 units as that was the amount we could produce with the capital that we had raised. However we got "overexcited" and went and took a loan and increased our first run of production to 300 units. Azura went into production...

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Wednesday 18th September- Our First Review

Good Afternoon all So the past two days have been rainy and dull, and sales have been on a low. However today the sun came out, and with the sun coming out came a great achievement for our business. Azura received its first review online and this was a very positive review. The review speaks about our product and how the product came to be. The link for the review can be found at http://wp.me/p2EqJl-1Xy This has taught me that after cloudy days there is always sunshine. The review helped me realise that even though sales may not be going...

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Tuesday 17th September 2013- Rainy Days

Hey guys, so its me again :) So today is a rainy day, filled with lots of rain. Two of our business partners are down with a flu, and its not looking like a good day for sales for our product the"Anywear". Since the product is mainly a summer garment trying to convince potential customers to purchase one on a day when its pouring with rain and all people can think about is wanting to be in their warm bed at home.  Since the launch of our product, we have been unfortunate to have organized our days of sale on days when the weather has been...

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Monday 16th September 2013- When everything seems like nothing

Hi its me again Hope you missed me as much as I missed you. So this is my last set of blogs for the year, hope you enjoy them. starting a business, running it, meeting deadlines and making a profit is something I had underestimated coming into this course. It all looks very easy from the outside, as all one has to do is pick a product, produce it, sell it and pocket the profit right? WRONG. Choosing what product to sell is always the hardest as you never know what impact it has on the market. Market research should...

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Sunday September 15th - A Final Parting

The time has come... my final and last blog post. Don't cry. I'm sure I'll blog again on other blogs. It'll be okay. We've come a long way together. We've shared many a story and an insight. You've watched us grow. And dare I say it... We're like family. Anyway. On this rainy Sunday, I'm looking back at where we've come from, and looking forward to what awaits, and a couple things strike me. First, in relation to this blogging thing... it's actually not that bad. It takes some time to get into, but after a while can be quite fun. Second,...

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Saturday September 14th - Bluebird Market Vibez!

We went to market! Pretty cool. We set up shop at the Bluebird Garage food and goods market in Muizenberg. It was a little quiet, probably due to the cold, but it was an awesome vibe. Live music, wine tasting, great food. I'm definitely going to take the girlfriend! :) It was impressive how well we set up on such short notice. The past experiences of having done two cake sales on campus, and then doing our official launch in August has definitely prepared us as a team and individuals to mentally map out how our stall needs to operate. It's...

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Friday September 13th - Entrepreneurial Outsiders

Another day of funky topics at uni! We got to watch a movie in class called Shackleton, and then had a presentation on the commonalities among great artists. I'll start by telling you about the artists. There's this trend among great artists to be regarded as outsiders. They aren't usually accepted by the mainstream players in their industry and were quite often picked on during their school days. The upside to being an outsider means that their thinking hasn't been constrained by conventional thought patterns and therefore they're...

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Thursday September 12th - Success and Neuroplasticity

In my last post I spoke about the underlying factors related to studying entrepreneurship versus just going ahead and being an entrepreneur, and how they might contribute to issues in accountability and conflict avoidance. Most of the time when we brainstorm solutions to issues in accountability and conflict, we often take the position of the leader or proactive person trying to motivate their team members. While this approach has its merits, I feel that there is another approach. The alternative approach is different in the same way that the...

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Wednesday September 11th - Are We Entrepreneurs?

Today we had a very interesting meeting with another Genesis group and our course convener Stewart. Both groups shared their top three failures and top three successes. The purpose of this exercise was to reveal how each group experienced more or less similar themes, despite having different personalities and different products. The common theme we identified was of the challenge in holding people accountable to their roles and tasks, and avoidance towards getting into conflict. Stewart asked us, "what advice would you give to future Genesis...

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Tuesday September 10th - Putting the Emotion in Marketing

An interesting theme we're looking at in our marketing lectures is the topic of brand positioning and viral online content. Both seem to come down to establishing a strong emotional connection. When consumers think about a brand, they're essentially recalling an association between the brand image and the aggregate of all their interactions with the brand. These interaction can also be understood, in the words of Professor John Simpson, as 'moments of truth'. A moment of truth occurs every time you have an encounter with a brand representative....

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Monday September 9th - Fuzz in the Fourth Quarter

Yo yo yo! This be me, Blogg'a Craig, back in action, reporting for me last blog duty. #Tear. After a short week vac, we're back for the final quarter of the year. But with only three weeks left until closure of business, it feels like time is racing by. I must say, this vac was a week of reflection on where my life-journey is headed. Especially with catching a cold, I spent considerable time thinking about next year and writing in my girly little diary (it's got a green butterfly cover). For me, it seems like there are three options: continue...

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September 8th back to Uni this week

So our second sales report is coming up as well as our next directors meeting. As to the sales report, we don’t have a great deal to report on at the moment. Since the first report we have made perhaps two or three sales. Our production has been badly held up by continuing problems with chording of our garments as well as other quality control issues with our CMT. We have had to replace all the chord we bought initially. Then we had to go through...

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September 7th The Home Stretch

Looking to the future We now have less than a month to go in the Genesis Project. That is quite a sobering thought, considering we are still very far from the goals we had hoped to reach on the sales front. I guess that those were perhaps a bit too ambitious when we set them. Perhaps if our CMT had proven a little more reliable we might say, but we were warned that CMT's can be difficult. At the end of the day we can’t blame everything on the CMT, sure they lets us down but we should have had a plan B waiting in the wings. I’m sure that in future...

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September 6th an exercise in free writting

Today I’m using some of the stuff we have been learning about in our creativity in business section to write this post so it may get a bit confusing and disappear at a variety of tangents at any moment, please bare with me. Every morning on waking up I am supposed to be taking 30 minutes to just write. There is no pattern definite goal of this writing, it’s writing for writings sake to try and get into ‘the flow’, as writers call it, when you are simply a conduit for the story to get onto the page. It is supposed to feel as if the story is telling...

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September 5th Learnings Coming to Life

An entrepreneurs motivation is one of their most powerful assets. Their core principals from which they build a vision and that gives them great strength of will to continue working when problems seem insurmountable because in their hearts they know that they are doing important work. That all sounded great when Stu told us all about it last semester. It’s great in theory up on a power point slide with a video clip of someone famous achieving the impossible. This semester I’m starting to get a better grasp of just what that means in the...

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September 4th Mindfulness and Missed Opportunities

We are currently on our half term break so this is a nice opportunity to look back at what we have been doing in course so far this semester and to examine what we have learnt. I think that one of the most unusual sections we have done this semester has been the mindfulness exercises we have been through in the Creativity In Business course. It has been a section that many people have laughed off or not taken seriously. I think this is understandable...

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September 3rd Talks with Citymob

Last week I spoke to City Mob an online retailer/ group buying site about showcasing the Azura on their site. They were very interested in the Azura. It’s always exciting to see how the idea behind our product really appeals to people. They can see the value in the idea, it definitely has a real wow factor to it. I sometimes wonder if we really get that across effectively. Citymob really like the Azura because they see it as really cool and...

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September 2nd where we stand and where we dance

Hi it’s Dave again and this is my first post for the week. Well things have been moving slowly for us pretty much since the exhibition. There has still been plenty to do but we haven’t had any product to sell so it has felt like nothing has really been going on. These are the times when you need something to keep you motivated. It’s hard to keep slugging away at the coal face when there doesn't seem to be any great reward at the end of the day....

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Sunday 1st September: What I learned this week

The last week of school was filled with many challenges that tested us as a group. As I reflect on what I learned, I am reminded of the fact that entrepreneurship is a journey of continuous learning, failing and improvement. Here are my top 3 lessons of the week: 1. Quantity vs. Quality: Some times we get trapped into thinking that being busy=being productive but that is not always true. This week has shown me that quality is so much more important...

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Saturday August 31st: Vacation Time

The weekend is finally here and it's officially the first day of our vacation. After all that hard work, its important to have some relaxing "me-time".  I spent the day attending an awesome conference for women leaders in management, complete with massages and catered food. Other than that, there's not much to blog about today so i'll end here. Later...

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Friday August 30th: OMG Last day of School

OMG im going to be super happy when this day is over. Yesterday, was insane! I spent the entire day and night at the commerce labs working on a class project with my POM group. We got absolutely no sleep and literally typed the night away, editing and adding finishing touches to our paper. Even though I missed my bed last night, I was comforted by the fact that this would all be over in a few hours...vacation time yaaay!  The day began...

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Thursday August 29th: PCU Orals Part Two

The day we had all been waiting for was finally here. We all agreed to wear black pants and smart white tops for our presentation today. Since we were reporting on a toy company, we also decided to be creative and wear playful accessories like polka dot ties, multicolored scarves, bright bow ties and a mickey mouse head piece. As the first group presenting, we were told to arrive early to set up our power point slides. However upon arrival at...

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