3....2.....1.........LIFTOFF !!!!!!!

Yes, it’s official…….’Horizon Consultancy has entered the vaults of Cyberspace’…….and as a start, let’s quote that lovely Gaelic Blessing (with a bit of a twist)

- May the road rise up to meet us.
- May a windfall from property be always paid in full.
- May the Taxman always agree on what we have lodged.
- May our Forex payments never be charged a fee.
- And may God hold us in the palm of his hand.
- Until we do business again.

John Lennon once said, Life is what happens when we’re too busy making other plans’. And believe me when I tell you, that I’ve been working on the launch of Horizon for many moons now, that I’ve forgotten to plan on what to do after the Launch……...Although it’s a bit of a relief to FINALLY have ‘A Face to which potential clients can be informed of your services’, I have a sneaking suspicion that the real work starts now !! Anyway, enough of the foreplay, let’s get down to business!!

In the coming weeks I will be reviewing the Investment Properties in the various countries that we have available for investment. My choice of country will be backed up by a Review of the Country, the Economic / Political situation, the Growth Prospects / Financial Analysis of any Development in question and a look at what the Future will hold for the Country.

Among others, the countries that will be reviewed in the coming weeks are:

Brazil

Cape Verde

France

Germany

Grenada, the Caribbean

Portugal

Spain

South Africa

Watch this space..............

Calm before the Storm......

There's an old adage that goes a little like this: Failing to plan, is planning to fail. And how this principle has haunted me for these past few weeks......

Now that we have a new logo, we can start building around the concept of 'What Horizon can do for it's customers'. But before we can even start with this, the infrastructure to deal with prospective clients need to be put in place. This is the fundamental mistake that many businesses make. You may have an amazing product, but if your service to provide that product is flawed, then how will you ever retain customers or provide new customers with the service required? Remember, that it's more expensive to generate new clients than to retain old ones :)

So the past few weeks we have been speaking to our Marketing Guru, Wilhelm Kruger on how to start out with launching our website. Discussions have been based on the content of the initial front page to the amount of pages needed behind this front page. And not to mention the information needed to populate these pages, in order to provide our clients the information needed. So this is what the initial front page would look like:


As you can see, our services will be devided into three categories: 1) Property Investment 2) Forex and 3) PAYE returns.

We have decided on including a 'motto' which I am currently working on and will then add this to the introduction which is found at the top left of the page. And of course, this blog will be mentioned in the bottom left hand corner......(with a somewhat 'cheesy' picture of myself included :)

Apart from the initial front page launch of Horizon, we have had meetings with our Website Optimization Guru, Colin Schabort. Colin is a Google specialist who assists companies with getting their websites at the top of the Google listings, either through something called a 'sponsored link' or through a 'generic technique' by which Google rates the website in question. We have brought Colin on board, to ensure that Horizon's services will be known when potential clients are in need of our services.

All in all, the preparation for the launch seems 'too long winded' for me, as all I want to do is to get stuck in and sell our services to clients !! But if I look back to the start of this post........then I remind myself to ensure that the infrastructure of Horizon is set up correctly.......otherwise it will never support the business, when we do eventually start.