2020 could be your year of plenty – if you’re up for it

It’s big picture thinking for small business or, if you like, streetwise entrepreneurship for creative businesses. This September, Henley Business School Africa and Raizcorp will be offering the first ever CHE-Accredited and SAQA-Accredited Higher Certificate in Management Practice for Entrepreneurs.

“Raizcorp is recognised by The Economist as the only genuine business incubator in Africa,” says Henley Africa dean and director Jon Foster-Pedley, “and as we prepare to emerge from the COVID-19 lockdown, we need small and medium businesses now more than ever to create jobs and radically transform the economy.

“There’s no one better for us to partner with than Raizcorp founder, Allon Raiz, who has been breaking rules and breaking new ground for the last 20 years, developing entrepreneurs and graduating them in the school of life to even greater heights. In the process, Raizcorp has built a model that is practical, realistic and truly effective.”

Raiz is equally excited about the partnership: “Our philosophical approach to developing entrepreneurs has always been about taking a holistic and inclusive view of the entrepreneur and the business.

“A Henley–Raizcorp partnership brings the best of both worlds to anyone wanting to develop their entrepreneurial skills; a finely balanced combination of the theory and the practice of being an entrepreneur and building an entrepreneurial business.

“Successful entrepreneurs are highly responsive and relevant to their environments. Henley, a global and African business school, has always been incredibly relevant for the time and highly responsive to the market needs. Working with Henley is like working with a savvy entrepreneur.”

The year-long, part-time, course is designed for both the aspirant entrepreneur to turn their side hustle into a sustainable small business and for the existing entrepreneur to take their business to the next level in a post-COVID world. It’s an essential course for newcomers going into the family business, an incredible help for franchise owners and a vital aid for professionals taking that big step into the unknown world of self- employment.

Built around five distinct blocs with a total of 19 contact teaching days, the course will cover entrepreneurial development, personal mastery and resilience, business acumen and strategy, sales marketing and pitching, audience targeting and, critically, how to attract investment.

“This programme is the natural evolution of the SME webinars that we designed for small business owners during the initial phase of the lockdown that were such an incredible hit,” explains Foster-Pedley, “this brand-new programme takes that to the next level.

“It’s really about finding people who are looking for the confidence to build a logical and practical business case, to start their business, to persist through the challenges or to find the investment to scale it – and then giving that confidence to them.

“The kind of business they’re in isn’t important, only the level of their enthusiasm is.”

• If you would like to know more about this programme, contact Nisa Philander on nisap@henleysa.ac.za / 076 5198268 for further assistance.

Henley Business School Africa is a leading global business school with campuses in Europe, Asia and Africa. It holds elite triple international accreditation; has the number 1 business school alumni network in the world for potential to network (Economist 2017); and is the number 1 African-accredited and -campused business school in the world for executive education (FT 2018, 2020), as well as the number 1 MBA business school in South Africa as rated by corporate SA (PMR.Africa 2018, 2019, 2020).