The Sunday Mail
Entrepreneurship Matters
Dr Kudzanai Vere
Focusing on understanding, value addition and wisdom
Lack of understanding led to the Zambian nationals losing an entrepreneurship opportunity in one of their copper mines to foreigners who had an understanding of how things work.
If you lack understanding, you will always lose out. It is said that, these investors paid for the copper mine using proceeds from the same copper mines within no time.
Entrepreneurs are innovative beings inclined more into creativity through value addition. There is a certain degree of wisdom that resides within most entrepreneurs that is rarely found in the ordinary business person.
This article is going to look into Understanding, Value Addition and Wisdom as part of the A-Z of entrepreneurship.
Understanding
Your level of understanding in a certain area determines how well you will perform in that area. Entrepreneurs have a unique way of understanding business and how things work in general. It is this kind of understanding that makes them stand out in their entrepreneurial endeavours.
I am glad that understanding is something that can be worked upon until one gets it. King Solomon in the book of Proverbs talks of acquiring understanding “Get wisdom, get understanding: forget it not . . .” (Proverbs 4:5). We are not born with such a virtue. According to King Solomon, it’s something that can be acquired thus the use of the word “get” in the verse above.
Once you get understanding, your level of comprehending things will be upfront. Entrepreneurs become logical and systematic in their approach due to the understanding principle ingrained in their grey matter.
Entrepreneurs, though they are great risk takers, don’t just jump into things as other people think. They devote some time to studying and understanding facts before they decide to venture into business.
You can only perform better in the things that you have a grounded understanding of. So in entrepreneurship, understanding is a principle that you can only avoid at your own peril.
Value Addition
By definition, value addition is a process of increasing a product’s value by changing its shape, place and characteristics to those needed by the market. Real entrepreneurs are known for adding value to products. They are not famed for selling products in their raw state. That’s throwing value through the window.
Entrepreneurs have a mental disposition to utilise a disregarded lemon orchard by setting up a lemon juice processing plant for local and export markets.
In the agricultural sector value addition means converting a product from its raw or original state to its next level of processing for example, processing ground nuts to peanut butter.
Do you know that most of Zimbabwean retail shops are selling peanut butter imported from Harare and yet there are plenty plus groundnut farmers within their vicinity. These farmers also export unprocessed ground nuts to big processing plants in Harare or some other towns at a lower price.
They in turn import a finished product back at a value added price (higher price). It’s time that we wake up and industrialise our small towns and even rural areas. Some of these machines, for example, the one that processes peanut butter at a small scale is handy. If there is collective effort within a community that each household produces 200 bottles per day collectively that will amount to a 30T truck of butter or more ready for sale at the nearby shops and export surplus to nearby towns.
On the issue of value addition, we need a complete mental revolution. In mining it’s called beneficiation. Zimbabwe as a country was on record exporting raw Marange diamond to Belgium, countries with entrepreneurs who have developed a superior understanding of how things work. It gets processed there and we import jewellery at five to ten times the price of our raw diamond, the African mindset!
We have our mothers, sisters and brothers who are growing tobacco on a commercial scale in Karoi and other towns which is very good. The problem comes when they now allow the same product to leave their town in a raw state. Why can’t we just cut on transport costs of transporting it to Harare and have men and women who can build cigarette processing plants in those provinces and have airstrips where planes come and pick a final product for export market.
We need more people with an entrepreneurship mind-set, especially those inclined in value addition and beneficiation. The aspect of value addition and beneficiation in top shelf entrepreneurs are a non-negotiable attributes.
Wisdom
“How much better to get wisdom than gold, to get insight rather than silver!” Proverbs 16:16
Entrepreneurs need more wisdom than silver and gold. They need more wisdom than money. You have seen and know a number of your friends and relatives who got an opportunity to do business but lacked wisdom and are stony broke right now.
If you are wise, you understand the sequence of things and you are never confused. No entrepreneur builds a mansion before building a business empire. No entrepreneur drives the latest limo without strengthening their business venture first. Wisdom stimulates the logical person within, prompting them to be alive and active on issues of value.
Entrepreneurs are wise, which means they are characterised by deep understanding and some form of keen discernment. They exercise sound judgement in making decisions.
Even in the Bible wisdom and understanding works together very well.
They are also packed in the same shelf in most entrepreneurs’ minds. Activating one will automatically stimulate the waking up of the other.
They are almost twin brothers.
You have seen from my discussion above that understanding, value addition and wisdom are key elements in the making of a successful, relevant and productive entrepreneur. My next article will wind up the A-Z of entrepreneurship by looking into the X, Y and Z.
Dr Kudzanai Vere is an entrepreneur, author and transformational speaker. He’s the author of Becoming a person of impact: The Six Pack Approach, Exceed beyond the ordinary: A step by step guide to becoming a high voltage entrepreneur and Soul Food Volume One & Two. Dr. Vere is the entrepreneurship coach of the year 2020, Transformational coach of the year 2020 and 1st Runner Up Overall Coach of the year 2020. He can be contacted for business and personal development coaching sessions on +263 719 592232 or [email protected]
