Help, Guidance and Services to Small Businesses

Assistance we Provide

What You Get

Someone who really LISTENS

We dedicate time to understand your goals, challenges and aspirations.
This sound-boarding process helps you to find your own solutions for what YOU do.
There are no quick fixes and “one size fits all” answers.

The South African Perspective

We walk the walk therefore we can talk the talk – the “Safrican” way!!
Things that work overseas seldom apply to South Africa.
Things that work for big concerns do not translate to small businesses.
The Social and Digital world changes continuously – often monthly!!
The “tried and trusted” things in starting/promoting a business have radically changed.
Getting yourself on the map in 2024 is a huge challenge for all – gain from our experience.

Practical Business Analysis

A great idea on its own is not enough – it is Step One only.
Test and re-test your idea with critical analysis. Is it really viable?
Really understand your own business model. People often don’t and then fail – don’t be one of them!
Refine the structures and sound principles that need to be in place for you to end up making money.
One hour of a critical conversation can save you a few years of wasted effort and resources.

Affordable Consultation

Most businesses start out of a necessity to survive.
Start-ups and small businesses often cannot afford the exorbitant fees charged for consultation mostly
Various free assistance platforms are available for small businesses but they often lack practical insight or are very niche related.
Get affordable assistance based on the size/phase of your business.
Contact us to learn more about our services and costs and how we can help YOU!

Book your Free 30 minute session NOW!

Then you can decide if our input is worth your time and money.

Client Feedback

Meet Theus from “Thephotoandvideo-guy.com“

After having reached stability in his photography business after years of hard work . . .

Theus found himself at a ceiling with the need of wanting to go to the next level but not sure how or even what that was. After a relaxed yet intensive conversation, he started connecting the dots between his long term dreams, his natural ability as a story teller and his skill as a photographer. He simply morphed into his own unique “next level” with a new vision and amazing energy – a privilege to witness!! Follow the below links to see his work:

thephotoandvideoguy.com

theusbadenhorst.co.za

Meet Elize from Feel Things Handmade Jewellery

Building on my experience running a wholesale bead and craft accessories business years ago . . .

My partner and I recently ventured into a business dealing in handcrafted jewellery and fashion accessories and eventual online selling. Despite our combined business experience, we faced a significant learning curve. Moving away from a traditional stock-based mindset to a streamlined manufacturing process from raw materials to finished products, was daunting. With limited resources and a need to manage everything from production to website store ourselves, the challenge seemed immense.

As the primary creative force behind my part of the venture, I found myself juggling multiple roles, from crafting to product photography with little insight in how to turn that into sellable stock items afterwards!! It was a complex dance, one that required precise coordination to ensure efficiency and success. That’s where Lourens from SMME Consulting stepped in, guiding us through the intricacies of this new business model.

Lourens helped us understand the critical sequence of steps, from production bench to online storefront and provided invaluable insights into managing operations: Product naming, categorizing, stock tracking, website building and maintenance there-of to name a few. With his guidance, we are in process of streamlining our processes, making uploading and updating products on our website a breeze.

One of the most significant lessons we learned was the importance of efficiency especially on a small scale like ours. Lourens introduced us to the concept of ‘chasing seconds’, highlighting the need to critically look at optimizing every aspect of our operation to avoid wasting time and resources. His outside perspective is helping us stay focused on what truly matters for our business’s growth – being authentically creative with our actual products.

Thanks to Lourens and his expertise we are busy overcoming the initial challenges of building our business and is busy setting a solid foundation for our future success.

Soon: Link to the online store!

Meet Rienkies from Feel Things Handmade Jewellery

After my regular shop closed because of a change in our town . . .

My new business partner and I started making jewellery to promote and sell online. But figuring out how to move from a fixed outlet to marketing and selling online was a bigger challenge than we anticipated. There are so many social media platforms and ways to market that we didn’t know where to start – even less which options stand a better chance to work for us.

We knew that if we just jumped into advertising without a plan, we might end up wasting our time and money on stuff that doesn’t work. We decided to get help from Lourens at SMME Consulting. He’d been through similar struggles during the last few years.

In our meeting, Lourens helped us figure out what we currently have available to build on – we quickly realised the best option is to use my previous customer list to get our new business going. Instead of trying to be everywhere online, Lourens suggested we focus on having a well constructed online store as base for marketing directly to my existing customers for a start. Thereafter we can do parallel marketing on social media. Lourens is currently also assisting us in setting up the online store and it really helps having someone who actually understands the core of our business to assist with that – another thing we need not worry about.

So, for now we can focus on building up stock and make use of what we already have in place. Feeding social media creatively is a business venture all on its own – something we simply do not have the time or energy for at this stage. Having someone look in objectively from outside our operation, is a very valuable asset to us during this start-up phase!

Soon: Link to the online store!

Our Main Services

An Overview

General Business/Personal Soundboarding

Structure Your Ideas

The value of explaining your brilliant idea/big problem to a “curious bystander” can never be underestimated. In your inner circle you do get feedback but it is often biased and very narrow unless you are one of the lucky people living with a business/life expert – but oh the friction that often creates!!! One of the best investments you can ever make towards converting your idea into a business success, is to buy an hour of critical conversation. If you do have all the boxes ticked already, it will be another bit of evidence that you are on the right track. If you suddenly realise you do not have any boxes ticked, this can make all the difference to ensure your road to success or allow you to understand you need to search for another great idea…

Whether starting up or growing to the next level: Come talk to us!

Business Services

All those loose ends

Getting the idea for a business is often the easy thing. Creating the structures to sell your idea and make it accessible to potential buyers is a massive challenge. Using different service suppliers each on their own mission towards what they think you need can create a very confusing and haphazard structure – and that is not good for business as the potential clients sense the lack of cohesion. And with you not being in the graphic design market and using various cheap/not-so-cheap online services is not a good recipe to get that cohesive thing going. Websites and other marketing channels have a massive amount of things you need to create and get together to be able to come over as successful. And this is apart from using big online sales channels and building product catalogs and all those things… When will you sleep???

Find cohesion and get the loose ends tied together: Come talk to us!

Software Solutions

Maintain Control

Time is one of the most valuable assets a business can have. Wasting time on doing work that a system can do for you far more efficiently, is stupid. But it does come at a price. Traditional Cloud Software development cost is often the core issue holding businesses back. We cater for Low Code and No Code (LC/NC) solutions that take the development stranglehold out of the way and allow businesses to develop their own systems at even as low 10% of the normal cost and in much less time. One of the most dangerous options today is to buy into rented online software that can quickly become a continuous cost along with many hidden costs that nobody told you about. And it never really fully delivers on your requirement – and after a year or so you need to start from scratch on something else altogether – or your business changes and systems cannot adapt…

Find YOUR IT answers: Come talk to us!

My Story

Click Here for the long version

My entrepreneurial career spans 40 years and is still going strong.

I was qualified with an Honors degree in Food Science and worked in dairy research for Department of Agriculture in the mid 80’s. After starting my entrepreneurial career with a tractor ploughing virgin soil in barren yards in Rooihuiskraal outside Pretoria, I moved on to managing a small dairy factory for about a year. After another year in the dairy industry I left and framed pictures for a few months before ending up as night club owner/manager for 13 years. In that time I learned to program business applications using Microsoft Access and in there found my hidden passion!

When the club died its eventual death, I kept myself alive with building and maintaining small business systems for e.g. trade unions, distance learning and several others. I also certified as a Microsoft ERP consultant in Logistics and soon after our first installation, I joined forces with a business contact in the SAAS (Software as a Service) industry and gained valuable experience in Business Analysis, Business Intelligence and thus a very deep exposure to many different business models spanning engineering, pharmaceuticals, medical, marketing, sales, logistics, trade unions, mining, services, manufacturing, etc. I also worked very closely with systems programmers and also assisted with systems design for a number of applications in the bigger world of SQL based applications.

After Covid changed our whole economic landscape along with massive changes to social media and how marketing used to work, I went on my own again and went through a three year on-the-ground crash course in small business survival – and have the scars to show for it! This “book” is not finished yet but the chapters written so far is of incalculable value to anybody trying to survive in SA in 2024 and beyond.

Come tap into this – it is available to you NOW!

Talk to Me!