Coaching and one-on-one training to help you and/or your personnel reach full potential

a) Entrepreneurial Business Coaching

In today’s marketplace, adding value is “key” to business success. Successful coaching adds value to employees, who then add value to their organizations by giving their best. Employees want to be happy, productive and innovative, and coaching creates the environment where this can happen.

Coaches at MBE (PTY) LTD have years of experience, backed by ample theoretical training that they bring to the table. They will help owners figure out what their goals are, and create a road map to reach them. Their perspective on the company can help owners see which items are just tasks and which are long term objectives.

A business coach will assist and guide the business owner in running a business by helping them clarify the vision of their business and how it fits in with their personal goals. Business coaching is a process used to take a business from where it is now to where the business owner wants it to be.

Whether you’re a first-time entrepreneur, a small business owner, or a corporate professional, you’d probably agree that sometimes, you need a little help. Other times, a lot of help.

But in our can’t-stop-won’t-stop work culture, if we see our marketing efforts slipping or our sales number plateauing, our first instinct is to look to ourselves and our immediate team to see what more we can do. Work longer hours? Launch more platforms? Send more newsletters?

What we don’t often do is take time to re-strategize, re-prioritize, and get to the root of what’s really going on. The business coach operates in the same way that a sports coach strategizes around building the best, most efficient team to win games, a business coach can help you look at your work, team, or company holistically—and suggest tools to be more efficient, productive, and successful.

b) Entrepreneurial ability development

Can our entrepreneurial abilities be developed by training? Can we all become Entrepreneurs/Intrapreneurs if we wish to do so? The answer to these questions is a clear-cut yes. However, the training course or program needed has to be special and have to address specific core abilities needed to become a successful entrepreneur. An entrepreneurial business development training program based on more than 20 years experience and research is developed to accomplish this.

Delivery Method: Weekly interactive workshops of about 2-3 hours in duration.

Duration: 6 weeks

Cost: Negotiable.

See below for more info on” how entrepreneurial ability development” could be achieved.

Entrepreneurial ability development through training:

From personal experience in “entrepreneurial ability development” the following six core competency “skills/abilities” will be taught:

• Business acumen and management skills
• Creativity and innovation
• Work passion (love what you do)
• A well developed intuition (“gut feel,”),
• A success attitude
• A proper understanding of the market economy.

Is it possible to teach the above skills/abilities as mentioned above? Let’s explore the possibilities.

1) Business acumen and management skills: It is clear that no person can start and run a successful and sustainable business without proper business management skills. This includes a number of areas such as financial management, production management, marketing management, project management, human resources management, strategic management, general management as the major disciplines. You will also need business acumen like selling and negotiating skills as well as the ability to conduct viability studies, understand the economy and the business environment. You will also need to be able to create a bankable business plan. Over the years, the amount of knowledge in these areas became enormous. The challenge however, is to empower the student to apply the relevant theory in practice. Business or entrepreneurial theory is often presented without application examples. In successful entrepreneurial education, theory should always be backed by real life examples. An effective example will create the needed frame of reference for the student to be able to apply the theory in practice. In the creation of successful entrepreneurial training material, the developer should in addition to business management knowledge, have 1^st hand experience regarding the application of the theory in a business and/or new business start-up.

I am sure we all agree that the 1st ability” Business acumen and management skills” can be taught if compliant to the above issues.

2) Creativity and innovation: All successful entrepreneurs are creative and innovative people: The question many people ask is: “Are we born creative, or can we develop creativity?” According to studies done by Dr. Cobus Neethling, a well known “creativity guru”, people are all born highly creative. As a matter of fact, during a research project they found that 98% of toddlers tested were superior in creativity, but sadly at the age of 22, only 2% of people still tested as such. The explanation for this, is the fact that the western education system only developed the so-called “left side of the brain”, i.e. the linguistic, mathematical and logical side. The right, or creative and intuitive side, is not that well developed. Therefore the left brain dominates the right and people lose their natural creative abilities. People like Edward de Bono, John Adair and Dr. Cobus Neethling have already addressed this problem and developed various exercises tore- activate our creative abilities. The ability to tap into and activate the right brain is the primary technique to master and is achievable by all of us. Creativity is therefore an ability we already have but which is only suppressed by the dominant left brain. In order to unleash our creative abilities we need to understand how the brain works and specifically how to get the right side of the brain active again. We also need to be introduced to techniques to re-develop our creative abilities.

I am sure we all agree that the 2^nd ability, “creativity and innovation,” can also be activated by utilising relevant knowledge.

3) “Passion”: The amount of passion for what a person does determine entrepreneurial success: The challenge here is to find one’s real passion in life and to choose a career synchronised with this love. Extensive research on the topic revealed various works, and out of these, a series of exercises have been developed that can help anybody to successfully identify his/her passion in life. This passion becomes an internal driving force that in the long run will take the entrepreneur to high levels of success. This passion will provide the needed focus and will enable you to see specific new related opportunities that others will not see. The ultimate test to establish “passion” for something is when you will be willing to pay in order to be able to do something. Performing these tasks must excite you it such a manner that you can’t wait in the mornings to go to work.

I am also confident that the 3rd ability can also be accomplished by utilising relevant knowledge regarding self discovery. We should however keep in mind that we also need to apply creative abilities and business management skills in achieving this 3rd ability.

4) Intuition: A well developed Intuition (gut feel) is a vital ability needed by the successful entrepreneur: The fast pace in the modern business world sometimes forces entrepreneurs to make important decisions based on sets of incomplete information. To do this, business leaders develop a very valuable ability, called “intuition” or “gut feel.”

The next challenge is therefore to develop this attribute called “gut feel” or “sixth sense”, to its maximum. In a quest to find answers, we have to move from traditional psychology to the disciplines of quantum-physics and meta-physics on to para-psychology. A study done by the researcher Allen Vaughn provides some interesting answers. Allen was a researcher at the Institute of Para-psychology in the United States, with a passionate interest in human intuition or sixth sense, or so-called gut feel. He proved that all people are born with intuitive abilities. These findings were later confirmed by numerous other studies.  (e.g. “Electrophysiological Evidence of Intuition” by McCarthy, Atkinson and Bradley.)

As with man’s creative abilities, this talent is also a right brain function. Allen, who was a dominant left-brain person, developed exercises that enabled him to utilise his natural talents. He applied these exercises to himself and later became known as someone with exceptional intuitive abilities. These exercises are uncomplicated and easy to use. Anybody can develop this valuable life skill called intuition or “gut feel”.

I am sure we all agree again that the 4th ability “intuition” which is similar to creativity, can also be activated and optimised by utilising relevant knowledge.

5) A success attitude is a further trait successful entrepreneurs share: The development of a success attitude is in itself a complicated process. It consists of developing a psychological profile of smaller traits, like self-confidence, perseverance, goal orientation, etc. The good news is that human beings can do much in developing such a positive set of traits leading to a success attitude. A person’s psychological profile is mainly a function of what has been programmed into his/her subconscious mind. The subconscious mind does not ask questions, it simply reacts to programmed instructions. Phobias are classic examples of how the subconscious mind functions. By the same token is self-confidence or the lack thereof, a programmed instruction in the subconscious mind. The wonderful news, however, is that people can actually re-program the subconscious mind and replace a negative instruction with a positive one. Man can therefore create any psychological profile of his choice, by simply following certain procedures and doing certain exercises. These techniques are also known as “Neuro-Linguistic Programming” (NLP)

I am sure we all have the same opinion that a “success attitude” can also be cultivated by utilising relevant knowledge.

6) Understand the mechanics of the market economy: The successful entrepreneur needs a crystal clear understanding of the foundational principles of demand and supply and other basic economic knowledge driving a market economy. This is analogous to understanding the dimensions of a playing field, and the applicable rules of any game a person may want to play. Before one can even develop the necessary skills and become a professional player in any given sport, it is necessary to understand the rules and dynamics of the game. A limited understanding of the market-driven economy will not only lead to wrong decision making, it could also block out and curb the vast number of business opportunities provided by the system.

 This last but not the least of abilities/skills “Understand the mechanics of the market economy” can without any doubt be taught.

Compiled by Mauritz Bekker (Honours in Agri-management and Masters in Business Leadership).