Where we are going in 2024

My good friend York Zucchi has a saying: “Share what you are working on”

As a small business owner, this is a critical part of finding new opportunities and clients – and it’s something I believe has a lot of merit.

2023 was something of a watershed year for us as a business. Scratch that …. 2023 was madness. While I had this high-level vision of building an advisory business, what ultimately played out was building 4 separate business units and throwing in the SME.Tax Rosebank franchise.

In the last quarter of 2023, Ané-Sonet Bresler and I attended an excellent workshop run by Allon Raiz entitled: “Making Strategy Happen” and it highlighted how reactive we as a business were. Following this session, we were introduced to the “Flowcode” tool by Allon – essentially a tool for helping you digitse your strategy and see how you are tracking against it ** - ?and it has given us a bit of a platform and roadmap for 2024.

Decusatio Investor Communications - https://www.investorcomms.co.za

Under Ane’s guidance, this business has really narrowed down what it is good at: It is good at developing content in the Financial Services and healthcare sectors and we are really good at getting clients media coverage across various media platforms including TV and radio.

The media landscape is tough at the moment, but we believe we are a partner of choice for business to business communications across Owned, Earned and Bought media in 2024.

With the The Cape Town Stock Exchange gaining some momentum, the JSE Private Placement market showing some promise and some economic expansion on the horizon, we think there will be a lot to keep us busy in 2024.

If you would like to work with us, please engage Ane Bresler ([email protected] ) or follow the Decusatio Investor Relations and Communications LinkedIn Page.

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Decusatio Impact Investment Solutions - https://www.impactinvestmentsolutions.co.za

We want to help solve 3 of South Africa’s biggest challenges: Energy, Water and Healthcare.

You’ll note that we don’t mention Youth Employment (which is a key part of our work) – but rather we believe that if we can capacitate these 3 sectors, employment and employability will follow.

We have loved the work we have done with the team from Solana Energy in 2023 and seen the transformative impact of these projects and we are incredibly excited to be working with the team from KaacKai as we expand into water.

Further to this, we are exploring a project in the EV space that has some exciting potential.

If you would like to learn more, please connect with Emma Montocchio ([email protected] ) and follow the Decusatio Impact Investment Solutions LinkedIn page

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Decusatio Human Capital Solutions - https://www.humancap.co.za

Through our work with the Solana Energy training academy, we have built up some nice experience in the solar energy recruitment space and will look to further leverage this in 2024.

Nelly Mohale is passionate about developing and nurturing graduates and we are looking forward to working on projects developing young talent in Financial Services as well as Sales training.?

We needed a way to differentiate ourselves and we ended 2023 with 2 strategic partnerships. The first being with Higgo van Biljon and the team from FinMeUp to allow us to deliver digitized financial education solutions to businesses. The second partnership is with Ginen Moodley from Moodley Attorneys Incorporated which will allow us to deliver far more sophisticated outsourced Human Resource (HR) offerings.

Please engage with Nelly Mohale ([email protected] ) for more information and follow the Decusatio Human Capital Solutions LinkedIn page

?Decusatio Working Capital Solutions and SME.Tax Rosebank

We have clustered these 2 together as these businesses are to some degree inter-dependent. Raising capital for SME’s is tough – we believe that a lot of value can be added by introducing systems and digitizing accounting to allow business owners to focus on running their businesses.

?We also value our relationship with the team from Uzenzele and we believe that this is a partnership which could add significant value to our clients in 2024.

If you would like to discuss outsourcing your accounting, please connect with Babalwa Bam ([email protected] ) ?

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Partnerships, Advisory muscle and thinking bigger

One of the things we didn’t get right in 2023 was that we constantly viewed ourselves through the lens of a small business. While this had merit, we realised we were doing ourselves a disservice – there’s nothing wrong with a bit of ambition.

Apart from some of the partnerships mentioned above, we have started reaching out to some senior business executives to join us as part of an advisory board to make sure we take our offering to a new level and we look forward to their input in 2024.

Last – but not least – thanking those who trusted us

An unusual one to start with but a big “Thank you” to our first client who fired us in 2021 (You know who you are). You forced us to take a hard look at ourselves and the fact that our relationship is stronger [and more profitable] today means a lot.

To the YES team, it has been a real adventure and it has been great to work on some projects which have meaningfully changed the lives of thousands of young South Africans.

To Ahmed and the Solana Energy team – thank you for taking us with on this adventure with you.

?To Martin Smookler CA (SA) and the BEE123 / Skills123 team – thanks for all your guidance and support in 2023 and here’s to building some bigger projects in 2024.

To Tyronne Nel , Ken Brown and the rest of the SME.Tax team - here's to a bigger and better year!

To our other clients who we have engaged along the way – thank you for the opportunity to work with you.

To my team … I love watching you guys grow and fulfil your potential.

Last but not least to my wife Dr Paula Barnard-Ashton (PhD) for enabling this crazy adventure – thank you!

Looking forward to a year of growth and optimism - if you would like to connect on any of the above, please drop me a DM via LinkedIn or e-mail [email protected].

** If you would like a demo of the tool, then drop me a line – happy to share our experience