Happy 2025

First Up, Hope you all had a great festive season, and all the best for a kickass 2025.

Getting Called Out

My buddy @zakludick runs a programme called the Busy Bees, and in the most recent report I was (rightly so) called out for being a "sleepy bee" - https://inleo.io/@zakludick/sleeping-bees-those-that-can

So as a 1st order of business in 2025, gonna try stay off the non-sleepy/lazy bee list for the rest of 2025. Technically I SHOULD be able to post every single day. Braaing every day affords me enough content to post (and I used to with my #DailyFlame promo as I've often got time to kill while I wait for the coals to ready), but the mobile experience on @leofinance is just not up to scratch yet, and by the time I get back to my PC, it's too much of a mission to upload pics from my phone and then write a post #LazyBee
... any chance of a mobile app sometime soon? PRETTY PLEASE @khaleelkazi and Co ;-)

Daily Posting aside, all I need to do to stay on the Busy-Bee list is post once a week... that's just 52 posts ... Come on BraaiBoy, you Can Do That! Let's see ;-)

Anyway... get in touch with @zakludick him if you'd like to get on the list and let him track your stats for you too.

What else is BraaiBoy gonna get up up to in 2025?

Maybe if I type it out and make my goals public, then I'll feel guilty and hold myself accountable? Hmmm, this feels a little heavy on the Déjà vu, but THIS time it's gonna be different, right? 😛

So without further ado, these are the things I'm currently working on to be completed and working "sometime in 2025":

1) 🔥🔥 Online Braai Shop 🔥🔥

Technically the Braai Shop has been running since ~2010, but I've put in near 0 effort to promote it and more importantly my website as a whole needs a complete facelift. "Spoeg en Plak" edits over the years have left my site looking like bit of a dog's breakfast. So while everything is "working 100%", it's not making my visitors feel comfortable enough to shop there.
GOAL -> 1 or 2 sales a week needs to 100X before the end of 2025.

P.S. Any graphic/web designers keen to help with "making it pretty" please get in touch.

2) 📽️📽️ BraaiBoyTV 📽️📽️

Another project that's technically been around since 2010, but died off during LockDown. I've got 2 new sponsors onboard, and we start filming mid-January... expect the 1st episodes out on YouTube (and @threespeak) from February.
GOAL -> Weekly Episodes of #BraaiBoyTV from February.

3) 🧑‍🏫🔥 BBQ Training School 🧑‍🏫🔥

Sometime around Aug/Sept last year we bumped into a legislative speedbump with our live cooking events. Turns out the City of Tshwane would no longer grant us COAs for our events if we didn't undergo their "Basic Food Handling" training. No matter that most of us in the group are either qualified chefs or have been cooking for years and years. CoT insisted that we spend 600 bucks and a whole day sitting through a lecture/presentation/snooze-fest on how to wash our hands, and how it's important that we bathe every day. I'm not even shitting you. That's literally the only takeaway from that whole day.

Anyway, I'm rambling on about the back-story too much because I was/still am angry!
... so angry that towards the end of last year I decided to get myself qualified and started the process of registering and accrediting a (government approved) training college.

The very 1st class my school is going to offer is the "Basic Food Handling" course... and I'm tempted to make it FREE. The classes are going to be online so if I have 1 student or 1, 000 it's going to take up the same amount of effort to set up the curriculum (like 10 minutes work) and a 'test' (maybe another 10 minutes)... but again, that's just me being salty about the whole money-grab mentality of our government.

Of course, doing so is likely going to get me onto the government shit-list radar and they'll make things difficult for me... so I'm toying with the idea of charging each student the same 600 bucks, but then giving them a free HIVE account with 600 bucks worth of HIVE in it... hmmmm.

Anyway, our greedy government has forced me into starting something REALLY COOL. The school will eventually offer basic cooking courses and eventually both online and offline QCTO accredited cooking courses (and BBQ Smoking specifically) giving students credits to their National NQF levels.
🔥🔥🔥EXCITING TIMES AHEAD! 🔥🔥🔥

GOAL -> Launch "BBQ Training School" in March/April ... and maybe come up with a name for it before the end of Jan when I need to submit the application papers ;-)

4) 📖📖 Children's Books 📖📖

SAY WHAT? That's right... From Salty to Sweet: This degenerate/child at heart has created a series of children's books... it's a "fictional back story" to my braai (i.e. BBQ) life and journey. The stories themselves are done, and I'm chatting to someone that's keen to help me with the illustrations.

GOAL -> (Self)Publish "The Adventures of Little Braai Boy" by mid-2025 ... and again maybe come up with a name for the series before then ;-)

💻💻 5 - 501) STUFF 💻💻

Oh yes... I've got a whole HOST of projects (online and 'real-world' related) that were started over the years (think $BRAAIB for example) but then abandoned / half-assed. Many of them were conceptualised around a fire with beer in hand (and abandoned, with good reason, when the beer goggles came off the next day). However, many of them have legit viability, and they've been and remain on my TODO list until implemented... and I'll be putting some serious effort into these as well over the next year or 3 and turn that 501 into a 200 😛

🔥 - 🔥 - 🔥 - 🔥 - 🔥 - 🔥 - 🔥 - 🔥 - 🔥 - 🔥 - 🔥 - 🔥
P.S. Keep an eye on my website https://braaiboy.co.za/

...and please also connect with me elsewhere on Social
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BraaiBoy
Twitter / X: https://twitter.com/braaiboy
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/braaiboy
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@braaiboysa
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@BraaiBoy

Posted Using INLEO