GetSmarter Blog

By Corine Van Dyk

Everybody was waiting for millions of visitors to come to South Africa for the World Cup; in the end, far fewer visited our beautiful country. People saw moneymaking opportunities everywhere – every second home became a B&B, guest house or privately rented accommodation. Little did they realise that the cost of running such a business is high and that travellers expect certain standards and features.

GetSmarter, in conjunction with the University of Cape Town, is pleased to present the exciting new UCT Start and Manage a Small Business course. The 9-week part-time course, which starts on 27 September 2010, is presented entirely online through GetSmarter’s innovative internet training platform.

GetSmarter, in conjunction with the University of Cape Town, is pleased to announce the exciting first presentation of the UCT Basics of Financial Management course. The 9-week part-time course, which starts on 16 August 2010, is presented entirely online through GetSmarter’s innovative internet training platform. The course is suitable for all businesspeople in the corporate world who want to learn about financial management.

By Gareth Cotten

If the three words that define property are “location, location, location”, then the three terms that apply to business would be “cash flow, cash flow, cash flow”. How many times have we seen a business doing extraordinarily well – booming sales, staff growth, fat profits – and then vanishing three months later? Ninety-nine percent of the time, it’s a cash flow problem.

By the Newsletter Team

Gareth Cotten, the Course Convener for two brand new GetSmarter courses, lives an extremely busy life. When he isn’t teaching GetSmarter students in the University of Cape Town Basics of Financial Management and University of Cape Town Start and Manage a Small Business courses, he’s coaching, consulting, running businesses, keeping fit and developing his linguistic skills. Describing what he does isn’t possible in one word: Gareth says he is a “businessman, maverick, accountant, manager, consultant and coach (not to mention lover and fighter).”