Tim Holmes By Tim Holmes Even with the greatest ideas from the greatest minds, businesses face a startlingly high risk of failure to survive for more than three years. “Locally, the Department of Trade and Industry records that currently only two out of every seven new businesses survive their first year of trading and only one out of five make it past year three,” says Tim Holmes, Managing Director and Governance Manager of Sirdar South Africa . “Often people think their great idea is enough on its own merit, and fail to seek sound advice from the experts that complements their business strategy and enables them to implement a robust process and structure from the word go.” The stats do not bode well for prospective new business owners. Holmes iterates that if the vast majority of failed start-ups in South Africa had started life on day one with a board meeting, either they wouldn’t have started at all, or they would have survived for a lot longer.  Most businesses, in fact, s...

Staying in the zone The power of momentum in business. By Carl Bates On our trip up Kilimanjaro our Tanzanian guides kept on repeating their most important advice: pole-pole. Translated from Swahili this means ‘slowly-slowly’ and as you ascend this majestic mountain you soon realise that this advice may just save your life. We saw many climbers who had rushed up the mountain, only to be carried down on stretchers in a race to reach the hospital in time. I have witnessed the same scenario in business – go too fast and you run the risk of fatal injury, proceed too slowly and you may never reach your goal. In The Law of Rhythm, one of the laws in my book The Laws of Extreme Business Success , I speak about the critical role of momentum and ‘right timing’. Achieving the right balance of timing and rhythm can be very challenging, but when you do, you create a wave of momentum on which you and your team can ride. Having momentum in your business enables you to do so much more. If ...