MSB Member Articles

Employment opportunities are few and far between these days, and those that are available rarely tick all the boxes. In response, South Africans of all shapes and colours are starting their own businesses – by all accounts, 97% of all local businesses are self-started small, medium and micro enterprises. While running...

Thinking of buying a franchise? Why not? Many people have the urge to start and run their own business. I am involved in career counselling and meet people who express this desire very frequently. The most common barrier that is raised is that people do not quite know what exactly...

Information Regarding Potential Franchises   By becoming a part of the franchise market you’ll be taking your first steps towards sound financial success. In this rather unstable economic environment, franchises offer consumers with low risk stakes while still providing budding businessman with the opportunity to run their own trade. Rather than...

There is a lot of talk about "Green" issues. For some the theory of climate change is a myth, for others it's the central theme to their lives. Regardless of which side of the fence you sit when it comes to this debate, Going Green has some very attractive business...

Responsible Tourism, one of those phrases often heard and thrown about, but seldom understood and effectively practiced in a South African context. What is responsible tourism? The South African White Paper on Development and Promotion of Tourism describes responsible tourism as: "Tourism that promotes responsibility to the environment through its sustainable...

If 2012 is the year you plan to start your own business, best be sure you have a good business plan in place before you get started. A comprehensive business plan can mean the difference between seeing your new business flourish and having it fail before it’s even really started. A...

I was more than a little annoyed to discover that a friend  of mine recently paid a “web developer” R600.00 ($75 or £45) to register his business’s domain – that’s EXCLUDING the hosting company’s domain registration fee. Ludicrous! R600.00 for something that probably took said developer about 5 minutes to...

Make 2012 the year that counts. Take charge of your personal finances. Begin your financial planning, by taking stock and working out your budget. Cut down on all the unnecessary expenses, and start working on a plan to settle all the expensive credit card loans etc. Review current portfolio and retirement plans....

We often hear the cliché, “Just be yourself.” What does it really mean to be “your authentic self” and why is it so important? Everyone, at some point in their lifetime, looks in the mirror and does not recognise the reflection. We realise that we are strangers to ourselves and begin...

South Africa has a highly sophisticated and economically critical hospitality industry, first-world levels of mobile phone penetration and world-beating cell phone services such as for banking and social media. And yet very few businesses have websites that work properly on a cell phone or even maps that show their location,...