Business Law 101 September 27, 2013

As our politics of enterprise assignment is due today, I thought it would be quite fitting to talk around the concept of this course where law of business is particularity important in entrepreneurship.

For someone who has never take a single law course in my varsity career, it is extremely important to pay attention to this subject later on when I have my own business. The most practical thing for me to do having little knowledge around this area of expertise would be to have a specialist accompany me with startup. It may seem like a large short-term expense but doing this course has emphasized the trouble that could come about, so easily and so quickly for someone who has little idea.

Our Shareholders Agreement has been the only element of our group that has been law related this year where I think I underestimated the importance of knowing for myself, what I should be capable of in this area. I think for beginners such as myself, the important areas for new startups to look at are:

Your business entity. What form of ownership are you going to take on. If a partnership or a Close Corp, then look at the strengths and weaknesses in relation to WHO you are working with, WHAT you are working with (retail or service) and those who will be directly and indirectly affected by any actions of the business. It is here that I think its quite important to really think about who you re going into business with. Friends are great, until its business related and then… friends aren’t that great. This may not always be the case but this has been emphasized throughout the year by lecturers and board of directors, so I would rather take their word for it.

Another area that you should look at as a startup would be your contract law. You will ALWAYS have legal obligations with relationships in business, so best deal with them upfront in an ethical manner to avoid any problems later on.

Whether it be with your partners, sharholders, customers, suppliers, distributors. You need to keep check on all of these areas and make sure an agreement is made: this will be a binding contract. I think that this would also be a good way to experience ones attitude and commitment to the business. You will be able to see within their reaction if they are suitable business partners.

These are just two areas that are key, but a good start as a 101 of Business Law. My suggestion would be to do it soon, properly and have it checked by a expert.

Ernest Shackleton and leadership September 26, 2013

As part of our management theory in practice module we had to watch a film based around Ernest Shackleton who was a Polar explorer leading 3 expeditions in his lifetime. This particular film is based around his 2^nd expedition, where his ship landed up freezing into the ice and he lead 12 of his men to safety after months of being stranded. We particularly viewed his leadership styles, along with level-5 leaders: those who lead good to great.

Throughout this year I have been quite fascinated to find out the different types of leaders. Before this course I didn’t know what leadership really is. And although there isn’t one answer to this, I believe our group has a very good idea now of what a true leader looks like.

If you are loud, controlling and know what you are doing, it does not make you a good leader. If people look to you for answers, you are not particularity a leader. A leader is someone who praised in public and practices in private, someone who bring out the best in their team and everyone around them, someone who doesn’t always have the answer but have an ability to extract great things from others.

Ernest Shackleton was a man who was very good at showing his emotions. If he was anything like they portrayed him to be in the film then I would have thought he had everything under control. He had a vision, and nothing was going to get in the way of that. And most important to me, was his absolute indistinctive drive to protect his men.

He was not necessarily the most appraisable or friendly man, but he would do anything in his power to make sure those around him came first. This is a true leader. In his success, he praised those around him and where he showed heart, it was for a good reason to either motivate those around him, or build his men up to the strengths they needed to be.  Everything was done for a particular purpose.

We have 7 great leaders in our group who have grown and developed over the year. Each individual has their special talents and characteristics which we have come to realize of those around us, and of ourselves.  We have put ourselves in each others shoes in order to better understand each others and have never lost focus of our team goal. We pull each other back onto the path we want to be on, the path that will make us achieve.

I would definitely recommend this film in seeing how one great man lead his team back to safety, as we strive to be as great a leader as he was,

Pandacoustics- “We are leading to learn, and learning to lead”.

Heritage Day: Bread making elective September 25, 2013

Today is a public holiday!! Wooohooo but as we have learnt this year, public holidays are simple a day given to more time dedicated to work, or catching up on work.

I’m going to take the opportunity here to talk about creativity in business, and as Shani spoke of creative writing last week, I’ll full you in on the elective I did: bread making.

What on earth has bread making got to do with creativity in business? Yip, that what I asked myself too. it sounded fun, and I love food so it seemed an appropriate elective for me. So we met at Gardeners Cottage in Newlands where Jeremy and Kim from BreadRev took us through the process of making bread, the creativity behind it and just bakeries as business in general. We had a chance to bake our own bread as well as make our own dough to show ’em what we got.

It was quite interesting to hear the expenses behind baking and what it takeS to being a baker. Basically, Jeremy explained to us that there are three, only THREE, places in Cape Town that sell actual proper bread…when you read on Woolies Rye bread “100% Rye”, it’s actually a lie.  But the sad reality behind it is that it is just too expensive to make proper bread, the time, contents and electrical costs do not weigh up the benefit of trying to convince the nation that “this is the real bread”.

So Jeremy looked at these costs and decided to start a project of making  bread for cheaper. He realised that buy making his own ovens that are run on heat from firewood, he could get more for less. Besides from the creativity of making the bread and the freedom of what to put in, ingredients and the fun of making shape, patters and mixtures, this was the creativity that I was interested in. Jeremy and his wife Kim, have taken this project to the less privileged areas to show the ease behind it. These people live on bread as a staple diet, and if they are taught the ease behind it, they won;t just be saving money, but will have available fresh bread to full their stomaches every day.

I think its really incredible when people like this step back and bricolage with new ideas, and what makes it even better is their act towards the South African population. They are generating a new way of thinking, acting and eating which are key factors in the development of South Africa. Well done to the breadrev crew…and now I can make my own bread;)

Week 10/13…Genesis award what?? September 24, 2013

Where has the time gone?? Is it just me or are you all starting to get a strange feeling of being extremely excited to say “We’ve done it” and move on to great new beginnings, but at the same time look back and get a little sad that the best year is almost over.

I think what has triggered these feelings even more was the making of THE GENESIS AWARD video we did this weekend. I’ve written it like that as its a big deal, its a really big deal.

For those who do not know, the Genesis award is the prize given to the group that best meets the criteria of sustainability, innovation, academics and eco-friendly factors in which the course aims to extract from each group throughout the year. But the catch is that it doesn’t just go to the group that best meets this, they have to achieve this to a point where it is great. It has to be at a certain level, otherwise no one gets it. This is what happened last year…no group from 2012 won the Genesis award.

Now what entrepreneurs doesn’t like a challenge like this? The reality of it for our group, from my perspective, is that we really feel like we can do it. No words can really describe how badly we want to achieve this, for no other reason than to know that we did the best with what we had.

It has been an absolute privilege to be able to be part of this course and I don’t think anyone will quite understand unless they have been a part of it themselves. I didn’t even realise until we really got started with the year, what great things you are able to achieve with the course. So to prove our appreciation to being able to experience what we think is the best course one could do, we wanted to make the most of everything we did, put 100% into everything and come out saying “we tried our best, and stretched ourselves to the absolute maximum”, we wanted to take an opportunity presented to us, and squeeze every last bit out of it. Thats what we want to prove.

We want to prove how we listen to instruction, we did what was asked. By ticking the boxes on all the criteria asked of us:

storage: it stores your cellphone

student market. We then discovered it wasn’t just students who will be interested, but now big corporates too!!

sustainable: we provided jobs to many people but most importantly, we hired two South African’s to help us manufacture our Bamboombox’s. And will be passing the business on to them in 2014

eco-friendly: The Bamboombox is a 100% eco-friendly

innovative: We didn’t just add value to an already establish product, we created a new s-curve

100% markup. We did better- we made a simple thing look wonderful

South Africa has never seen this product before. People have to ask “what on earth is that”- and they are damn impressed with it.

Prove your academics excellence: Our groups systematic ways and cooperation with each individual was something we all know we are grateful for in our group. Other groups tease us and say we are “the organised group”, but I think its because we established a set of goals in the very beginning that we all adhere to as having a set agenda for the year.

We are passionate, we motivate each other, we have time for each other and we are grateful for what we have in our group and in the PDE course.

This is the video that sums it all up for us:

Hold fingers for us 🙂

Holding Thumbs September 20, 2013

We have a Genesis Award video due next week Monday. We are up against some tough competition, but we are enthusiastic and hopeful that we will be walking away with the award this year.

It has been our goal from the start, to direct all aspects of our business to meet all criteria in order to give us the best shot at winning this award. We too have put hard work into our academic hand-in and have delivered through and though to make this business a sustainable and efficiently driven business, incorporating what we have learnt and putting it into practice as well as applying practical knowledge and learning from our mistakes.

Amy is really putting in some tremendous efforts to deliver a solid video that shows our academic strength as a group, our ability to create jobs in South Africa, how GREEN and BROWN we are and most importantly the SUSTAINABILITY of our business as a whole.

Holding thumbs!

Music Elective September 19, 2013

Today was the last day for music elective and it has been a pretty stimulating journey. I have learnt a lot about basic music rhythms, polyrhythms and harmony’s but this elective was about much more that just the music element. It was relating all these components into our daily lives and learning to link them to business as well, connecting the right and left brain.

Being creative is a way of thinking. It is a way of viewing the world, some have it more than others, but the most important thing is that we all have it and we all have the power to access it. Through singing and harmonising we learn to access this creativity within. At times we were so scared to sing in front of one another and it can create a sort of awkward aura in the room, but why is that? Why are we so scared to sing in front of others, but we would happily sing in the shower or in the car on our way to varsity when no on is around to hear us? The same is true for voicing your opinion in a conversation.

The interesting thing I have learnt about conversations, that might encourage you to express your opinion the next time in conversation is that, conversations are a meeting of minds, it doesn’t change perspectives, but creates new one’s, by formulating a perspective using each persons view.

It is not always easy to express your opinion or sing in front of others, because of fear, but challenge yourself to find the courage, because YOUR THOUGHTS AND OPINIONS MATTER. This has been my journey to finding my voice.

The Future September 17, 2013

Meeting today and discussing future plans, has really just hit me, how fast this year has gone by, I can remember just the other day walking into our first orientation meeting alone not knowing anyone. So as the year draws to a near close, we need to make important decisions about how we as Pandacoustics’ will carry on into the future and if not how we will close our business and who will we be handing it over to.

After much thought and combining of everyone’s plans and reflecting on our shareholders agreement, it has not been an easy process to figure out how to equally dissolve the assets, profits and stock on hand, but a plan is in place.

Pandacoustics’ does not wish to just let this idea and business fade away. It has been our aim from the very beginning to create job creation and a better future for at least some lives. It is through this goal that even after we as young entrepreneurs move onto our next phase of life, we would hope to at least keep Pandacoustics’ alive and hand it over to our manufacturers and through this way we can enrich their lives and empower them to enrich other people too.

Pandacoustics’ have decided to extend our period of operations till November because of our on going contracts and to capitalise on the end of year period for corporate gifts.

Manufacturing and More Manufacturing September 13, 2013

Electives then all Downhill from there September 12, 2013

Meeting with Thrift September 11, 2013