St. Lucia Simply Beautiful

(3) Profitability is a necessary condition for a sustainable business. Profitability is rooted in revenue generation. Revenue generation is a derivative from aggressive and persistent sales activity. A late colleague of mine used to say: “Give me a business with revenue and leave it to me to generate profits – give me a business with no revenue and I shall not be able to perform magic.” All of the businesses to which I have been assigned as a shepherd have nice thick well dressed business plans because that is the culture.

(5) The CBET Shepherding Model is an innovation which addresses the selection of enterprises with the “DNA of an Elephant”, the mitigation of the business failure rate for start-ups and how to establish a quick response seed/equity fund to meet the investment finance needs for new businesses. This model is under consideration in Barbados and Trinidad.

(3) “The WICB knew something was brewing, but instead of being proactive in quieting concerns they defaulted into arrogant aloof positions of old. I believe the two Jamaicans in question conspired on an exclusive mutually beneficial deal without the full knowledge of many of the players on the Indian tour. That alone is scandalous. The West Indies captain is equally to blame for his immature approach to the situation. If he didn’t agree with the terms and conditions, he still should have completed the tour because apart from West Indian fans, potentially 1 billion Indian fans had an interest in the series.

(2) Caribbean governments which try to execute business programmes within a ministry. These programmes should be more appropriately executed on their behalf by a private sector trust. The role of government is to perform regulatory and service functions and the civil service rules, inherited from our colonial past, are well designed to support this role.

As the country grows older and we look down the winding staircase, yes, the country covers the ground covered before but unfortunately at the same level. The action is repetitious but not progressive since we have few places where we were but no longer are. In some cases we have regressed. We go around spending much energy and resources but remain stagnant. The result is disappointing rates of economic growth if any at all.

What I was told and to a lesser extent what I observed about Uncle Fred over this period was that he was a free spirit who was able to circumvent the boundaries of discipline imposed by his father, often aided and abetted by his siblings, to express himself fully and indeed to enjoy life as he perceived it.

Our vision is to respond not only to the needs of global food entrepreneurs who are seeking a favourable entrepreneurial development climate, but also to inculcate in the minds of the youngest residents the potential for food entrepreneurial pursuits as an alternative to the traditional avenues of economic activity.

Sir Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, stated: “No matter how smart you are, or how brilliant or disruptive your business concept might be, every entrepreneur needs a good mentor. Someone, somewhere who has already gone through what you are experiencing right now and who has come out the other side armed with invaluable insights.”

May all governments revisit their development paradigm and stop just paying lip service to enterprise development and regarding it as a solely government initiative.

In conducting the due diligence exercise on the idea, the shepherd makes an assessment of the idea in terms of the potential for growth. It may be that an idea, that is initially not attractive, after some reorientation, may display the potential to be an interesting prospect.