Entreprenurial Nuggets

They say that the more you know, the less you fear. Perhaps that’s why so many entrepreneurs have a thirst for learning as they build their businesses. Often a fear of failure is at the heart of that desire to learn as it is often rooted in doubts about personal abilities or lack of practical business experience. Education, training and information seeking are a powerful antidote to such fears, and they can take many forms – it does not mean you have to return to a formal classroom. You might need to develop specific skills in business administration, it’s why some entrepreneurs choose to do a part-time MBA whilst they are building their businesses. I did my MBA in 2010 when my business was already successful and many people wondered I exerted myself on a very grueling schedule of classes, assignments, running 2 fairly large businesses, being involved in business member organization at leadership levels, and still being managing the social part well enough. Why, they asked, as they thought I had arrived and did not need to put myself through what I was going through. There is a need to implement more stringent quality controls around the products you are developing for your customers, and as a result, you need to undertake a specialist training programme. Whatever the need, a commitment to continual learning on your entrepreneur journey can help you to deal with the challenges and the unknowns you will face. Ultimately, it will help you to mitigate the fear of failure and give you self-actualization at the same time. 

Look at Obama, and you find Leadership + Character were his hallmarks hence he won the 2nd term when it looked almost impossible. Human nature is that people want to deal with people they trust hence a track record which is beyond reproach is essential.

From Series 1 one of this topic, I will share some of the practical nuggets on the practical building blocks that have also helped me on my journey as an entrepreneur and building in a harsh economic and social environment. Social as well as there are social aspects to it. Want to make more money??? Provide more value. Want to beat out your competition? Provide more value than they do. Want to make lots of money quickly? Provide lots of value quickly! So, the more value you provide, the more profitable you should become. My team and I always Think of all the ways we can currently help our customers and look for ways to do more. Try to get a better understanding of what their most pressing issues are and then help them with solutions is a sure way of winning their hearts. The costs can stifle and certainly can kill a good business. We chose to grow our business organically, with very little borrowing, retaining all profits into the business for the first 6 years of the business – no dividend – zero – as we had our eyes on the vision. Our policy on dividends is very conservative. I sold a house 2 years after I started the business, to create cheaper capital, and moved into a rented one with my sister with all our 8 kids, and took over 2 years to build a modest house that I live in now as we were not receiving any dividends as we reinvested the returns into the growing business. Not that the money was not there, but I know it was not my money yet. That takes serious discipline. Discipline is probably the most critical quality possessed by successful entrepreneurs. I chose to cut back on life style choices so that the capital could attain longevity. I Focused on creating the right mindset. I always try to Show up with an open mind and a positive demeanour. I am informal and try to have a sense of humour. That has an element of making anyone feel they belong and that is just magic. The connection with people and the business has helped in inspiring excitement and sets the scene for an execution culture in the company. When you come to our offices and interact with any of our team members or anywhere, they may be, you see this great sense of purpose in all of them. We call this a “rush to the scene of the crime” culture. That has given us the competitive advantage and are always ahead of the curve.

I will share with you 5 building blocks that are universal and share again another 5 blocks that I have lived practically to build the company I run. For me, as Steve Covey says, first things first: Dreaming big, thinking success is a sure way of going forwards. Vision, which is the function of the heart, provides hope and endurance in tribulation and can overcome all the obstacles. Tribulations will be the order of the day, colleagues. The business idea you form must be very clear in your mind where you want to take it to, how, why, when,  Brilliant ideas form every day in most of us as much as our own economic experts come up with the best blueprints to take Zimbabwe out of the quagmire, but, alas, there is one, one thing only that is lacking??? Execution, execution and execution – one of the most critical blocks to building a successful enterprise For me, Execution, simply put is – Bossidy & Charan.  “Leadership without the discipline of execution is incomplete and ineffective.  Without the ability to execute, all other attributes of leadership become hollow.”  We have all the answers, but we cannot implement. Wake up early, plan your work and work like hell. The MAGIC formula: right attitude + hard work = SUCCESS Lack of confidence, especially in women, inhibits us from risk taking, accepting new challenges, leaving the comfort zone, thereby limiting our contribution to the economy.  Low self-esteem results in people being less productive.

As we think about what projects (seeds) to plant, I’ve been reminded of the first basic leadership law: You harvest what you sow. To put it another way, to reap the benefits or achieve success, you must first sow. You must act and put your ideas into practice in order to reap the benefits. Those who seed and plant are the ones who reap. You must sow the seed to reap the harvest after taking care of it. After harvesting with care, you then use the harvest wisely. A second section of the law asserts that if you plant well, you will harvest well. If you sow bad seeds, you will reap bad results. This means you can’t sow bad and hope for the best. You can’t hope for flowers by planting weeds. Another aspect of the law of sowing and reaping to consider. You don’t always get back what you put in. That is critical to comprehend. You get far more than you put in. What good is an activity if you merely receive what you sow? But, it does not work well all the time. What is the farmer to do now? He must decide to repeat the process or not. “Should we try again the following season?” Even if the farmer lost everything in the previous harvest, I would advise him to plant again, even there being no assurance, but the odds can be in your favour. In business, the same principle applies. We must carefully choose what we want to sow, and then nurture the seed (project, business, enterprise, etc.) until it is ready to harvest. We will never get the advantages of the crop if we pluck up the seeds too early and abandon projects before they have had chance to establish themselves. This is something a lot of colleagues do. They abandon their aspirations just as the harvest season approaches. And, as the analogy goes, even with our best efforts, the crop (company or project) may still fail. And then what do you do? Like the farmer, I recommend picking yourself up and trying again. After all, the law of probability will almost certainly apply, reducing the chances of failure, given, of course, that you learn from your mistakes and do not repeat them. I have had my fair share of bad harvests before. I almost lost our home in 1995 when I had taken a second mortgage to finance a business that went bad. But I was never deterred to continue on chosen my entrepreneurial journey. So can you!!

We all go into business for various reasons, but I am certain most of us embark on the enterprise journey for primarily needing to give a better livelihood to our loved ones. How our enterprises eventually turn out is a function of many aspects. But the key issue being the MINDSET – which I will give a bit more detail in future episodes.