January is when hope is high and plans are loud. But by week three, reality returns: customers don't pay on time, leads go quiet, suppliers want their money, and you're back to running the business from your WhatsApp inbox and your stress levels.
Schools are closed. Clients are already saying, "Let's pick this up in January." Your team is tired. You're tired. The temptation is to just push flat-out for another week, collapse, and promise yourself you'll "think about the business properly next year".
As a MarTech & AI consultancy serving South African SMEs, we're always looking for brand stories that translate into practical growth levers. Jessica Motaung's talk delivered a masterclass: build legacy through vision, turn fans into family, and make engagement your oxygen. Below is hyperLOOP's take—distilled into decisions you can execute this...
TLDR; Treat today's AI as Intelligent Assistance (IA), not artificial intelligence. Use it to scale speed, quality and consistency—then keep humans in charge of context, care and exception-handling. If you design for that split, you get "bionic" organisations: people-first, tech-powered.
Most SME owners don't have a "marketing problem"—they have a system problem. Work is busy, teams are stretched, and execution feels like pushing a boulder uphill. Grace Harding's talk at the MANCOSA Jacaranda FM Business Breakfast landed a simple truth: people perform when work has meaning, roles are clear, and feedback loops to purpose—not just to...
