The Sunday Mail
Entrepreneurship Matters
Dr Kudzanai Vere
As of September 2021, the world’s population stood at 7,9 billion and this is according to the recent United Nations estimates as elaborated by Worldometer. With such a huge market, you would see one confining their marketing efforts to their township and dream of conquering the world one day.
Technology has broken boundaries that you don’t even need a passport to transact with every corner of the world. You just need to be strategic in your approach and make sure that your quality and standards speaks the language of your customers.
Such a huge population lives undoubtedly on the works of entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship makes the world go round. It is imperative to make sure that whatever entrepreneurship activity or exploit that you are undertaking wherever is exposed for the benefit of the masses.
If you are an entrepreneurship fanatic, you would understand that, there are numerous definitions of entrepreneurship and even to date people are still trying to define it. Arthur Harrison Cole (1959) defines entrepreneurship as a purposeful activity of an individual or a group of associated individuals, undertaking to initiate, maintain or aggrandise profit by production or distribution of economic goods and services.
A.H Cole recognises entrepreneurship as a deliberate human activity for earning profit through economic activities or production and or distribution of goods and services. From this definition, it is evident that whatever goods or services produced or secured, it must be made known to the intended beneficiaries and effort being made to market and expose them.
I like Jesus’s statement in St Mark chapter 4 verse 21, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under a bushel, or under a bed, and not on a stand? Entrepreneurship is disruptive in nature. You can only light a lamp to solve a darkness challenge without which there is no reason to do so. Once you light your lamp in the form of your new product or service, position it in such a way that everyone benefits from it.
The major reason behind entrepreneurship is answering to social and economic challenges. One should therefore make a deliberate effort to expose their exploits to the market in a pristine manner. Position your product, organisation, business or merchandise so visible in the market that everyone would want to associate with it. On the same issue, Jesus almost responded to his earlier question in the book of St Luke chapter 11 verse 33, “No one after lighting a lamp puts it in a cellar or under a bushel, but on a stand, that those who enter may see the light.”
Entrepreneurs are known of their unique and innovative touch on products, services and processes. Entrepreneurship revolves around these three key issues, product, service and process innovation. How are you exposing your company, products and services to the market? What innovation or what difference are you embedding in that whole process?
You have to be with them but never play at their level. Your way of doing things must always be a shoulder above them to be impactful.
Non compromisable factors as you expose your brand, product or service
- Quality
Your products, services and process must exude quality. They should have a mouth that speaks of who they are. The quality that’s embedded in all you do must do the talking. In as much as packaging should be spot on, customers don’t eat those covers, they use the contents inside. Do not compromise on quality for it will hamper your marketing and sales efforts.
Peter Drucker once said, “A product is not quality because it is difficult to make and cost a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence, customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality. Quality is not usually what you put in a product or a service, but what customers gets out of it.
Once you incorporate quality as a habit within your organisation. You put less effort in exposing your wares to the market. In fact, customers scramble for them since they have a pulling effort (quality) on them.
- Originality
In your effort to make known what you do to the market, try to be original. We know people can be subjected to the same literature on how to market and the various channels available to distribute your products and services, have your own way of implementing these. You are unique in your own way. The copy paste mentality and syndrome will always give you similar results. You would rather fail in originality than succeed in imitation.
Even as you process your website, flyers, banners and business cards, do not be mistaken for the business next door because of copying. Have executional originality. If you copy a concept, do the copy edit and paste. Add your own identity.
Innovation is the godfather of originality. Stretch your imagination and bring out that which is unique into your spaces. The usual way of doing things will always give you usual and average performance. Innovation means being unusual. Be unpredictable in the market. You must be difficult to figure out. The power of innovation can only achieve this.
The growth of any business lies in innovation. Julia Eileen Gillard an Australian politician who served as leader of the Australian Labour Party and as prime minister had this to say, “Our future growth relies on competitiveness and innovation, skills and productivity . . . and these in turn rely on the education of our people.” Innovation stimulates organisational growth as you will always be standing out in terms of your operations and market approach.
Creativity is thinking up new things while innovation is actually doing things on the ground. You can always find your own unique way of doing things. Business is not having a lot of stocks packed in shelves, it lies in the successful conversion of these into money.
- Relevance
Customers only buy that which gives them the best utility. No matter how much you try pushing your cools in winter, you’ll always face resistance. Your timing in business makes you relevant or not.
You would rather ask yourself this question, “Is my product or service solving a current or emergent challenge?” If your answer to this question is no, then you need to change your strategy and approach.
If you continue to apply century old solutions to current challenges, then your level of absurdity needs to be toned down a bit. There are certain distribution channels which people have long since forgotten and which they do not expect anyone to be using. Do not surprise customers with such, thinking it’s innovation. We don’t innovate going backwards. We innovate forward. Be current and relevant in your approach to business.
- Consistency
Most people stand guilty and charged on this one. Organisations are failing and falling due to lack of consistency. After reading a marketing book or after attending this powerful seminar, flyers and messages will be send on groups and even some cold calling done on customers. After a week or so, the steam naturally dies and you go back to your default mode.
I’ve learned from experience that if you work harder at it, and apply more energy and time to it, and more consistency, you get a better result. It comes from the work. Getting and sustaining an audience is hard. It demands consistency of thought, purpose, and action over a long period of time.
Consistency will in the long run bring in the much craved for numbers. Tom Seaver spoke into this, “In baseball, my theory is to strive for consistency, not to worry about the numbers. If you dwell on statistics you get shortsighted, if you aim for consistency, the numbers will be there at the end.” The stick to it-iveness ideology works in business. Do not be sidetracked. Even the hardest rock gets weathered by tiny consistent raindrops in the end.
You will definitely grow and sustain your business if you are disruptive enough in your approach. Be unpredictable and win the game. Quality, originality, innovation, relevance and consistency are the major ingredients in your quest to expose your brand, products and services to the market.
Determined to engage, inspire and transform generations.
The writer Dr Kudzanai Vere, the founder of Kudfort, Tengesa Online, Premium Business Network International and the Institute of Entrepreneurs Zimbabwe is an entrepreneur, author and transformational speaker in the areas of entrepreneurship and personal development. Dr Vere has trained more than 5 000 entrepreneurs globally in the areas of innovation, organisation development, practical business management and ideation. You can contact him on +263719592232 or email [email protected]
