Nur Ahmad Furlong

Category: Entrepreneurial

Co-Working Spaces Hit Cape Town at TheiPlex.co.za
Having designed the website for TheiPlex.co.za recently, and being a solo artist working from home, coffee shops etc, I decided to give their co-working spaces a bash out of desperation to find a space to concentrate better on work.
TheiPlex is situated in the newly developed Boulevard Complex in Woodstock just outside of the CBD in Cape Town. Woodstock has become somewhat of a buzz in the last few years with creative, tech and corporates moving out of the city centre.
A Business Idea much needed in “Silicon Cape”
I really love what TheiPlex have gone about setting up and blogged about something of this nature way back in 2007. That was just before I decided to go solo and what a roller coaster it’s been since then. I’ve never fully mastered the art of confining myself to my work space at home and to be honest I doubt I ever will, so having the chance to catch some quiet time in a clean, clear workspace was really refreshing.
I called them up in a frantic rush, with deadlines hanging over my head and anxiety boiling up from the need to get things done.
TheIplex has been designed to set an atmosphere conducive to creative work and innovation. You’ll see form the get go colorful backdrops, themed meeting rooms & clean workspaces.
The Reception Area
Jts outside the building you’ll find a nice little Vida Cafe, one of my favorite coffee shops in Cape Town, though they are a little pricy. The iPlex offers some pretty decent coffee themselves at quite a good price and you can give the reception/concierge team a buzz when you need some caffeine to keep the engines firing.
The Workspaces
I Grabbed a spot in the corner near the window and plugged in. Wifi on tap and coffee a few meters away got me in the mode to get some serious work done.
Later on after feeling a little more relaxed i decided to poke around a bit and check out some of the meeting Rooms. My favorite one was the war room, which comes with whiteboard style wall paint so you can brainstorm directly onto the wall surface, take some pics when you’re done, if I’m not mistaken they take snaps of your ideas for you as well. I was alone so would probably have been a bit strange to test it out on my own, really looking forward to the change to brainstorm with a team in a space like that.
The War room is fitted out with netting and camouflage hang in from the ceiling, color coded seating and some really great little army figures running about to get you into combat mode.
After a couple of days of driving into Woodstock I needed to take a break from driving, LOL. But the cool thing is it’s flexible so if you buy some hours you can choose when to make use of them.
Some other meetings rooms and pics form the rest of the space below. I’v been planning on running my WordPress theme Dev course here as well, it’s a great venue and caters for events as well with a largish events room.
October 27, 2011
Getting the most out of What We Do
Last night I had a highly insightful chat on gtalk with @naeem who runs a number of successful online businesses and interest sites out of Johannesburg, South Africa. Naeem is someone I admire for being able to see a business opportunity around almost every corner, you can tell he’s been doing what he does for quite a while.
He passed on a really great online business idea
It was Something really simple and with potential to make some good dosh online, which got me thinking about the way I have been approaching my career. I’m not about to share his idea with the world to run off and make it irrelevant to me, but after coming across the following post written by Bud Caddell on whatconsumesme.com, I also re-thought whether just any good business idea would do for me.
This Venn diagram gave me some serious food for thought in terms of how to go about sticking to what I do well, what I love doing and still making a decent living out of it. The post is entitled “How to be Happy in Business“. Apart from being a really well designed piece of informaton design, the concepts really hit me hard and also made me think back to my business ideas convo with @naeem. Would it do to get into just any type of business just to make money?
Budd lists the 3 problems highlighted by the diagram:
- We can’t determine how to make enough money from the things we want to do, and do really well.
- We’ve found things we want to do, and can be paid for, but we’re not the best game in town.
- We’ve come across things people want us to do, that we do well (or at least better than the competition) that we really don’t want to do.
I’m the type of person that generally comes up with business ideas connected to a direct need I have, and also most times relating to something which I’m really interested in, which helps me get my head fully inside the whole development process. Ok so I haven’t really succeeded with any of my crazy business ideas yet, LOL, nor have I even progressed to prototyping phase with some of the more serious ones, but this means that something disconnected to what I love doesn’t stand a snowball’s chance of even featuring. Then comes the problem of monetizing what I’m really truely passionate about.
Me gots lots to think about regarding this diagram!
On the same little stroll around the interwebs, I also found a really great way of identifying my own special business model, and applying my efforts in that direction. Gina Trapini, “software and self improvement junkie” wrote a piece on Freelance Switch where she says,
“While I do plan to make money as a freelancer, my ultimate goal is to generate satisfaction.”
(While money is a part of that, so is learning, service, and creativity, so we’ll just use the umbrella term “satisfaction.”)
She shares her personal “business model” in plain & simple terms, What’s important to her is more than just paying the bills while doing what she specializes in.
This particular concept highlights the importance of consantly tracking your activities based on what’s most important to you. Of course knowing what’s most important is step 1, having a plan to engage more in those areas comes next. I found in the last 2 months, tracking my activities in detail has given me huge insight in where the problem areas are. I’ve started taking a few steps in a new direction and these 2 posts/diagrams has helped wrap my head around the way forward.
June 6, 2009
Heavy Chef does Rob Stokes on e-marketing
The Quirk e-marketing textbook has been doing it’s rounds locally and internationally. The textbook is jam packed with years of knowledge and experience and takes the reader through from the very beginning to more advanced strategies in online marketing.
This month’s Heavy Chef session will see Rob Stokes, author of the e-marketing textbook and founder & CEO of Quirk e-marketing, giving an introduction to e-marketing.
Heavy Chef sessions are run by the guys at World Wide Creative on a monthly basis. They’ve been hosting top events for the last 1.5 years. I missed the last one which focused on e-commerce but definitely don’t want to miss this one.
Here are the details:
Aug 31 (Cape Town), 5.30pm – 7.30pm:introduction to eMarketing
Speaker: Rob Stokes, CEO of Quirk eMarketing
Want to attend? Email Rowan to enquire about booking your seat.
Seeya’ll there!
August 15, 2008
What I learnt about networking from Shane Dryden
Shane the “Maven” of Ideate tipped us off on this excellent list of tips for surviving networking events. In fact I have first hand experience connected with Shane who recently rescued from feeling like the odd one out at a recent SA Bog Awards ceremony. Shane quickly introduced himself and started a conversation which sparked some interesting thought and lead to the 2 of us having coffee recently.
Saying Hi makes all the difference
One of the lessons I learnt from Shane is that adding some meaningful value by being genuinely involved leads to meaningful developments, while being superficial and just chatting to be cool really gets you nowhere. Bloggers who should really be great at genuine dialogue, are guilty quite often of just being chatty for the cameras.
Add value and become a star
Due to that little step of Shane saying Hi and sharing some thoughts, led to us meeting and chatting about a business idea I have been working on and getting some great advice from him. It also lead to me finding out about the Heavy Chef Session run by World Wide Creative and attending their User Experience Design presentation. A whole series of events which I have benefited from. Shane probably has no idea how saying hi has affected me and place him in my list of respected individuals. He’s someone who walks his talk.
Here’s his post on Ten Excellent Networking Tips, which was inspired by the original post Ten Excellent Networking Tips.
May 6, 2008
VeloCITI session #3 – An introduction to Finance
Instalment 3 of the VeloCITI business incubation program dealt with Finance, an area many entrepreneurs need lots of help with. Knowing that we might all be intimidated with this session looming ahead of us, Tony Mallam of cape Venture Partners assured us he’d ease us into the subject.
The Finance module is an optional one, though most of the companies involved in VeloCITI saw the need to attend and with good reason. Getting the numbers right in business can be a matter of life or death, for the business that is.
We started out with an introduction of what the Finance module will cover in the next few months and I was completely overwhelmed by the amount of business concepts I have either never heard of or never been directly exposed to. It’s all well and good to be a master of your own art, but when you’re an entrepreneur and running your own show you need to be a jack of all trades and a master of a few as well.
So we started out with a few definitions of what Accounting is all about. I found this one interesting, using the word "Art"
“the art of recording, classifying and summarizing in a considerable manner and in terms of money, business transactions, activities and events, which are part of a financial character and later on interpreting the results of the reports”
Keeping Financial Records – Some of the benefits
Keeping financial records is most definitely an art. Having a clear, logical system, one which can be easily analysed later, and from which certain insights can be gained is a skill which must be developed as a necessity. This is a serious weak point for me having always been an employee and not needing to worry about overheads and that type of thing.
Budgeting & Tax Records
Keeping good records helps you budget correctly, helps you easily spot areas you can streamline and keeps things in order for when the taxman inevitably comes knocking at least once a year. Keeping clear financial records is most importantly done for SARS(the South African Taxman) without which you could land yourself and your business in some trouble with the Law. This is an activity which has to be done on a monthly basis. You’ll know when you’re spending too much on entertainment and when and how you might have saved on your telephone budget as well.
Tracking your businesses health
Knowing when money comes in and when it goes out gives you a clear idea of how you’re doing, whether you’re making profit or operating at a loss at any given time. Having the figures on a timeline can also allow you to track if any activities engaged in have resulted in significant gains or losses.
This timeline can be inspected will help should you need to review any inconsistencies in your cash flow as well.
Investors want to see the money
Should you be looking to bring partners on board or to apply for investment, loans etc, having a clear financial history in black & white helps make a case for your business.
How I currently do it
Currently my accounting procedure involves keeping any and every slip, including coffee at Vida which happens quite regularly for meetings. That’s a business expense by the way. My lovely wife then helps me with a beautifully structured excel document she has created which keeps a nice record of our financial activities broken down into personal and business and allows us to create calculations for each type of expense. This has helped in a few instances for me to determine when an invoice was paid or when I topped up my last data bundle for example, so it serves many other functions as well.
Petty Cash
One of the simplest systems you can use to manage your daily expenses is the petty cash float. basically you start out with a box, hopefully one which has a lock. based on your budget for these types of expenses you put some cash in and each time anyone needs to use the petty cash they need to give you a slip of paper with their name, signature, purpose of the cash and amount taken. When they return they hand over the slip and any change. Once all the cash is gone the total amounts from all the IOU’s and the slips should equal the original cash amount.
Accounting Software
My process for keeping records is not sophisticated at all and leaves much to be desired, though it’s a starting point and with the help of VeloCITI I hope to take a step up into the world of Quickbooks or Pastel accounting packages pretty soon. I’ve also been investigating a few open source accounting packages though with the little knowledge I have right now it’s a tough decision to make.
If you’re interested in open source accounting Cubit(made in SA) & Compiere seem like pretty powerful packages for more than just accounting. For now excel is my friend, it will make the transition into an accounting package a little easier than written notes I would imagine. Be sure to back up though.
I’ve got a long way to go in the area of finance and appreciate every little bit of advice I receive along the way. veloCITI 2008 rocks!!!
April 28, 2008
The benefits of a free wordpress.com website for startups
Whether you are a small business just starting out, or an organisation which does not currently have the funds to develop or host your own website, you’re probably still investigating ways of getting online in some way or another. It’s a fact of life for most businesses in this modern age, that being online is no longer a luxury but a necessity for anyone wanting to get a message out to a large audience.
A free customizable website just a few clicks away
Don’t fret, there are many ways you can get your hands on a free website which you can customize to suite your needs. WordPress.com is one of the easiest ways, in my experience, and provides you with a platform from where you can eventually launch your own, fully customized website on your own domain, when you are ready to do so.
All you need to do is go to wordpress.com, sign up for a free wordpress.com account and follow the quick, step by step process. In a matter of seconds you can be online for free and speaking to an international audience. Your new web address will however have wordpress.com attached to it at the end. Once you have some cash in your pocket, registering your own domain(web address) and installing WordPress is not too much of a mission. You can then export all the content from your freely hosted website and upload it to you new site very easily. Not many other solutions provide this feature.
VeloCITI Cape Town startups using WordPress
On the VeloCITI business development program I have introduced a few of my collegues starting their businesses to WordPress. They’re now online and communicating with their markets quicker than they thought they would. Visit them online:
http://rainbowitgen.wordpress.com
http://digitaldocuments.wordpress.com
http://bluerayoutdoor.wordpress.com
Sometimes it’s just a matter of working with what is available as many companies unnecessarily hold themselves back due to lack of budget.
I personally started out blogging in the same way and eventually migrated to my own domain using a freely available theme. I then started modifying the theme to suite my needs and eventually ended up where I am now a few months down the line with some regular daily traffic and over 100 posts to date.
The other nice thing about WordPress is it’s constantly being improved and upgrading is quite easy. Changing your theme is even easier and adding functionality through freely available plugins makes it a user friendly yet powerful option for many companies big and small.
A few simple benefits of using wordpress:
- WordPress sites are known to rank high on google searches
- RSS feeds come built in
- Tons of freely available themes with which to change your site’s look & feel
- Free functional widgets available to plugin to your site
- Site contents can be exported and imported easily
- Adding and changing content is just about as simple as writing a word document and saving
- WordPress sites are more sociable and helps develop important conversations with you target audience
- WordPress is constantly being updated and upgrades are published for free
- There is a huge community which publishes tutorials, tips, tools and advice and can provide free support on just about any issue related to your WordPress site
- WordPress is one of the most user friendly web publishing platforms available today.
So what’s holding you back, if you’re ready to get online quickly and start publishing or promoting yourself, your ideas, your business or your organisation check out wordpress.com right now.
If you have any questions I’ll be happy to answer them or point you in the right direction. If you’re excited about what wordpress has to offer we’re having a wordpress meetup on 28 May 2008 at the Bandwidth Barn in Cape Town which you are welcome to attend. We’ll even help you set up a quick & easy free site if you want to test it out. Visit www.wordpress.org.za for more details on the meetup.
Have a look at a recent client project I just completed where I helped my Praxia Technologies design a self manageable wordpress website. View it at www.praxia.co.za.
I offer wordpress customization, as well as custom wordpress design and development and am a wordpress enthusiast. For more information or a quote contact me on [email protected].
April 27, 2008