“The sustainability revolution will, hopefully, be the third major social and economic turning point in human history, following the Neolithic Revolution – moving from hunter-gathering to farming – and the Industrial Revolution.”
By Prince Charles A question is asked on what happened to those great entrepreneurial endeavors that we grew up seeing? The fleet of buses, flourishing shops at our rural growth points as well as some products that no longer exist in the market. They failed the sustainability test. Sustainability is key to everything in life.
It doesn’t make any personal, business or economic sense to start something that lasts only for a season. Cameron Sinclair says, “It angers me when sustainability gets used as a buzzword. For 90 percent of the world, sustainability is a matter of survival.” Don’t you want to start an enterprise that goes beyond mere survival, an enterprise that transcends generations? So what’s the way forward?
Peter Druker once said, “The best way to predict the future is to make it.” In our entrepreneurship endeavors, we have to build in ourselves and our businesses sustainability marks that will take our businesses into the future.
“A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman of the next generation.”
James Freeman Clarke Mentorship
The entrepreneurship journey requires patience and persistence. But more importantly, as someone who is starting you need the right support and network around you.
Many start-up founders make the mistake of pursuing their ideas alone without sharing their intentions with anyone.
Sharing your business idea with someone is not bad. What differentiates everything is execution. How many washing powders do we have in the whole world? Even before you think of your idea, someone else already has it somewhere. The execution brings that distinction.
Mentors are people who have travelled an almost similar journey with the one you have embarked on. John C. Maxwell once said, “One of the greatest values of mentors is the ability to see ahead what others cannot see and to help them navigate a course to their destination.”
By getting a mentor, we don’t mean you’re going to do exactly as they did, or become like them. The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image but giving them the opportunity to create themselves. Steven Spielberg
Innovation
The purpose of innovation is to continuously renew and grow an enterprise with new or better products and services, more efficient processes, or enhanced business models – Walter.
Indeed, an entrepreneur is someone who is willing and able to transform an invention into an innovation.
Innovation comes in several steps. First, there is the idea. This might come as a brilliant flash and it provides the foundation for the innovation. Then, there is a solution. This is how the idea comes to fruition. Finally, there is a transformation. This is when the solution transforms a business or industry.
We lack innovation
because we fail to tacitly define the root cause of the challenges before us.
Albert Einstein once said, “If I had 20 days to solve a problem, I would
spend 19 days to define it.”
Innovation makes the current irrelevant. You never change things by fighting
the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the
existing model obsolete – By R. Buckminster Fuller.
Knowledge Economy
Sustainability anywhere thrives best in knowledge. It is an economy in which growth is dependent on the quantity, quality, and accessibility of the information available, rather than the means of production.
Our ancestors and esteemed fathers and mothers were overtaken by events in rural areas. They suffered from info-deficiency. They could not embrace the new ways of doing business simply because they didn’t have the quality of information and where to access it.
Nowadays information is everywhere. You can google better ways of improving your business (even in Binga) and embrace that. The knowledge economy is key. Let’s build on knowledge for the sustainability of our enterprises.
Financial Literacy
In my business life, I have met a number of businesspeople regretting how they missed numbers at school. They are now being haunted by the numbers ghost. You need to know the figures in business.
Financial literacy is the education and understanding of knowing how money is made, spent and saved, as well as the skills and ability to use financial resources to make decisions. These decisions include how to generate, invest, spend, and save money.
You surely need to have the ability to understand how money works, how someone makes, manages and invests it, and also expends it.
Research studies across countries on financial literacy have shown that most individuals (including entrepreneurs) don’t understand the concept of compound interest and some consumers don’t actively seek out financial information before making financial decisions.
This kind of lack of figures has brought a number of startups down to ground zero. It is as important as running the business to be financially literate.
Attitude
You cannot control what happens to you, but you can control your attitude toward what happens to you, and in that, you will be mastering change rather than allowing it to master you.
Brian Tracy It is often said your attitude determines your altitude. The statement is true for entrepreneurs. Those that survive in the entrepreneurship jungle have what it takes, a positive attitude.
Quality performance starts with a positive attitude.
Jeffrey Gitomer A positive attitude will lead to positive outcomes. It gives you power over your circumstances instead of your circumstances having power over you. You are able to freely tune into any channel.
A strong and positive attitude creates more miracles than any other thing because life is 10% how you make it, and 90% how you take it.
“Ability is what you’re capable of doing. Motivation determines what you do. Attitude determines how well you do it.”
Lou Holtz Character
The Ability makes you get to the top, but character keeps you there.
John Wooden The character of a person consists of all the qualities they have that make them distinct from other people. That unique you are your character. It is the translation of your personality into a unique business that entails sustainability. Bringing the real you out of yourself is what your business and the world is waiting for.
On character, Helen Keller once said, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired and success achieved.
Entrepreneurship sustainability is not only in the resources that one marshal but equally in every other factor that makes entrepreneurship wholesome.
Engage | Inspire | Transform
