The Sunday Mail
Entrepreneurship Matters
Dr Kudzanai Vere
Great entrepreneurs just like great boxers are made in the ring. Their ability to withstand the blows, dodge them and keep standing in the fight separates winners and losers both in boxing and entrepreneurship. Often times entrepreneurs are blown in their face with a myriad of challenges that they must learn to conquer.
The entrepreneurship journey is marred with adversities, rejections at times and ultimately low esteem that pushes others into quitting the pursuit. The ability to withstand the heat and bounce back defines seasoned entrepreneurs.
The secret to bouncing back from these challenges is developing resilience. Resilience is the ability to withstand adversities and keep pushing and pursuing your bigger picture. Entrepreneurs do not quit when faced with challenges. They rather develop a thick skin for they would have calculated the risks involved in their endeavour and the reward that comes out.
Struggles and setbacks are inevitable in entrepreneurship and the most important factor is how you deal with these. Some are left drilled in and drenched while the resilient handful resolves to soldier on and ultimately sail through to success.
For entrepreneurs, resilience is about rethinking and re-framing the way we see setbacks, and viewing them as growth catalysts, progressive and necessary business elements rather than seeing them as threats to our entrepreneurship efforts.
It is natural for humans to avoid hardships and seek pleasure, but entrepreneurs are a different specie altogether. They take risks when others choose to play it safe. They see opportunities where others are seeing chaos and despondence. Entrepreneurs challenges the conformity mentality. When everyone else is giving up, they fight on to the end.
Resilience is something that we can foster and strengthen and unfortunately, the only way we can do this is by going through those challenging times. The more we get into challenges the more our resilience muscle grows.
When face challenges, we move into flight or fight mode and this amplifies our anxiety, stress and emotions linked to our survival as individuals and business. When we move into this state we are never at our best. We then need to develop certain skills and a culture of both resilience and endurance.
Steps to developing entrepreneurial resilience
Most if not all of the renowned entrepreneurs that you see and have read about can share their own story of how they managed to develop resilience and emerge as noteworthy as they ultimately become. I will share some steps on how you too can develop resilience, a necessary and important factor in your entrepreneurship journey.
Start with the end in mind
Have your eyes focused on the desired end result. Your vision should be attractive enough to pull you forward even in the midst of adversities. You need to have a clearly defined mission and vision that you should never lose sight of.
Entrepreneurship is all about the innovative and unique application of self, resources, material and otherwise in the form of a business with the ultimate aim of solving people’s problems for a fee. This bigger picture is enough to drive you forward and the joy of achieving that which you have set to achieve.
Be purposeful
In the statement of Carlos, you should occupy your thoughts with purpose and you will be so busy pursuing a meaningful future there will be no time for doubt, chaos and disappointment.
Entrepreneurship is disruptive in nature that chaos are inevitable. What should keep you on track and in the playing ground is definiteness of purpose. Once you’re clear on what you want to do, no turbulent will dismount you from your pedestal.
Know yourself
In life and business in particular, you need to understand yourself in order to function well. When we speak about self-knowledge, we’re alluding to a particular kind of knowledge, generally of an emotional or psychological kind.
More often than not we don’t know ourselves, our capabilities, limitations and strengths. Once you do so, you will be able to know when to advance, overdrive, break and take a short break in your quest for entrepreneurship dominance. Those that ultimately dominate that space are the once who would have walked the journey to the end.
Decide to be brave
The inherent power of your vision and mission statement have a contribution into destroying fear replacing it with braveness. Being brave means ready to face and endure danger or pain.
This is an act of showing and exhibiting courage in your execution.
Your storyline should not end on deciding, you should indeed be seen to be brave in your entrepreneurship thrust by not giving in to any challenge that come your way.
Study and learn from other entrepreneur’s failures and misfortunes
The honest truth in life and business is that, whatever you’re learning now, others are now forgetting.
There is always a good number of people who have walked the journey that you are walking today. It is from these that you must learn from. Such kind of people have endured their fair share of losses, heartbreaks and heartaches and have a lot of stories to share which can bolster your resolve to move forward.
Once you know that failure, hurdles and humps are part of progress and success, you will be brave and resilient enough to painfully and purposefully brace on the struggle.
Be flexible
When a strong wind blows, those trees with a degree of flexibility remain intact while those too hard and brittle to flex will find some branches on the ground. If you fail to flex you’ll break.
The ability to flex in business especially in the midst of turmoil comes from continuous improvement. Learning makes you versatile and be able to tackle challenges from different angles.
Move on
Resilience is the ability to move on after all has happened in your face. We had a number of people who gave up after their businesses had crumbled. A number of businesses have failed but you just need to pick yourself up and move on. You have to fail forward.
Entrepreneurial resilience is key in the making of a successful entrepreneur. These seven steps are central and key in instilling some modicum of resilience in you as you navigate your entrepreneurship terrain
Determined to engage, inspire and transform generations in the field of entrepreneurship and business.
The writer, Dr. Kudzanai Vere is the founder of Kudfort, Transformational Mindset Institute, Premium Business Network International and the Institute of Entrepreneurs Zimbabwe. He is an entrepreneur, author and transformational speaker in the areas of entrepreneurship and personal development. The transformational speaker have trained more than 5000 entrepreneurs globally in the areas of innovation, organisation development, practical business management and ideation. You can contact him on +263719592232 or email [email protected]
