Hirsch’s webinars a great help for entrepreneurs

With many businesses coming out of limbo that has been the norm over the last three months, the weekly Hirsch’s Entrepreneurs Workshop was hosted by Margaret Hirsch, Executive Director at Hirsch’s, and ActionCOACH’S Marlene Powell.

Margaret and Marlene have set up these workshops to help entrepreneurs, and small and medium businesses throughout South Africa during this difficult time. Top speakers are invited every week to address the audience, in webinar format,  on various subjects related to business.

The session held on Friday, 21 June, centred on moving forward and cutting out the procrastination factor. The guest speakers included Brenda Wilkinson from Rio Largo Estate – who has been exporting her olive oil products during lockdown, and Tim Goodenough from Beyond The Gap, a high-performance coach and best-selling author.

Despite having no retail or sales experience Brenda has managed to market her products around the world. She said with a strong work ethic and getting out of procrastination mode helped her enormously with her endeavours.

Tim has worked with Olympic athletes, pro golfers, and professional rugby and hockey players for many years, training sportsmen to let go of their self-limiting beliefs. He explained that there were several types of procrastination that include finding ways to let go of our ‘hand brakes’; associating something with unpleasantness (accounts for instance); not putting deadlines in place; fearing our incompetence; thinking that we should be perfectionists; and fretting about our own self-worth.

Tim explained that a simple tool to overcome procrastination is the five-second rule – counting down from five and then getting on with the task in hand. It also helps to simply breathe into the heart – positive, strong breaths – and breathing out the worry to lighten the load. The next webinar will be hosted on Friday, 26 June and will be focusing on finances. Marlene, who as well as being a top business coach (in the top 100 in the world) has a strong financial background, will be in the role of guest speaker alongside Darlene Menzies, the founder and CEO of Finfind, which is considered to be South Africa’s leading online SME access to finance solutions.

Darlene has raised more than R40m in early-stage funding from multiple venture capital companies to develop and commercialise disruptive innovations that address SME market gaps in Africa. She has won a South African Innovation Entrepreneur award, the Country Award for Best Business Product at the 2013 World Summit Awards, and Nokia’s Global Judges’ Choice Award (top 10, from 85 countries and 1 700 systems).

Zurich-based STARS Group has identified her as a future Global Leader. She is a public speaker, media spokesperson and recognised expert on the SME sector. She is quoted in the national press on matters of entrepreneurship, small business development and innovation.

To book your place on the Webinar that will take place between 11am and noon, click on the following link.