The Sunday Mail
Entrepreneurship Matters
Dr Kudzanai Vere
By wisdom, a house is built, and through understanding, it is established. Through knowledge, its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures. — Proverbs 24:3-4
I like how the Bible speaks into our daily life. To live a successful and sustainable life, personal and business, you need these three — wisdom, understanding and knowledge.
King Solomon is very clear here that, by wisdom a house or business is built, but it takes understanding to establish it, and through knowledge, its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures. Not everyone can become an entrepreneur because we are differently wired. Our way of perceiving things are different. We have some who are forever comfortable in Laban’s field and another group that is adventurous.
They want to explore and become independent. These are the ones with the ability and capacity to build their own enterprises. For this last group, the three keys in Proverbs must be on their dashboards. These three pillars equally apply in business. Businesses are built by wisdom. You have to be wise enough to see opportunities and be able to build a business around them.
Wisdom
We have in this scripture one important aspect that drives the desire and ability to establish a business, and that is wisdom. Without wisdom, you will never start anything. For those who have managed to start something, the move is a sign of the wisdom that resides within them. The Cambridge dictionary defines wisdom as the ability to use your knowledge and experience to make good decisions and judgments. The word wisdom has a Greek root sophia or sophos, which means wise, skill, experience or expertise.
For you to build a business, you need to have that inner ability to discern things. We have many who will remain content with the pay cheque while others will have the tenacity to build their own enterprises, graduating from pay to profit. I once talked about the word PAY as an acronym for Provisional Amount Yet insufficient. Yes, it has to be insufficient for you to continuously go to work for another pay cheque. But for others, the insufficiency will force them to think outside the box and explore other avenues.
Understanding
The issue of getting the business established calls for the next key, which is understanding. If you do not understand what you have built, it will be very difficult for it to be established.
Establishment, in this case, means getting it going, having all its interrelated parts working together in harmony. It means every stakeholder is connected in a bid to achieve the organisation’s overall objective.
Through understanding, a business is established. We have a number of businesses that started very well but dismally failed on the establishment part. Akatadza kusimuka.
Lack of understanding is costly to the organisation.
A business has a number of areas that must be understood for the business to be firmly established. A business must have some internal controls embedded in it to safeguard its assets. If one does not understand all these, then the organisations’ resources can be siphoned out through some well-orchestrated hookups.
An understanding of strategy, structure and systems are fundamental in the establishment of a business. The word business has three Ss, which stand for strategy, structure and systems. Without these important factors in business, it loses its meaning.
Knowledge
King Solomon, in the book of Proverbs, asserts that, through knowledge its (house or business) rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures. It is through knowledge that you can have rare (unique) solutions to the socio-economic problems people face. Customers are attracted by what you offer them.
Knowledge, by definition, is the understanding or skill gained by experience. So, for you to master the art of business and get to a stage of enjoying its fruitage, you need to have gained some experience in the trade.
Business experiences can be both good and bad but the beauty of it is that in both cases, there are crucial lessons to be learnt.
Experience in business teaches you to be different from others. You just have to be in your own league in order to fill that house or business with treasures. Go beyond the ordinary. Be with them but do not operate at their level.
If you have not been in business, then you are far from having business knowledge. This is evidence of practical experience. Knowledge ranks higher than wisdom and understanding.
Building blocks
The first two are building blocks for knowledge.
If you want to be unique and in a position to accumulate treasures in your business, King Solomon hinted in Proverbs 24:3-4 that you need wisdom, understanding and knowledge without which nothing strong and lasting can be built.
These are building blocks in coming up with any project you might think of – be it business, house or anything else.
◆ Dr Kudzanai Vere is the founder and CEO of Kudfort Zimbabwe, a fast growing accounting and business advisory firm that has assisted individuals and organisations start, support, sustain and succeed in their businesses through company registration, establishment of standard operating procedures, basic bookkeeping, accounting, auditing, forensic accounting, PRAZ registration, business health check-ups and business advisory services. Dr Vere authored a number of business and personal development books that have transformed minds. He recently developed an application called Zimotoka, which enables anyone driving to easily and quickly locate a service provider within a 50km radius in the event of a breakdown. You can contact Dr Vere on +263 719 592232 or [email protected]
