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entrants are advised to stay focused and concentrate on their goals.
Musicians, for instance, are associated with the “marombe” cliché and this has been with them since they ventured onto the scene.
Shaking off the tag has taken the likes of Oliver Mtukudzi to tell the world that music can indeed be a viable business option and his achievements are there for all to see.
Most millionaires are self-made and are the result of a sustained effort to arrive where they are now.
The overriding principle is that you should be the person that you want to be and all this emanates from your vision, which should be your strategic focus.
The myths about entrepreneurship are generated from a worldview, rightly or otherwise, which perceives entrepreneurs as wannabes without any track record.
Here’s a list of some of the myths:
l Entrepreneur is a gambler
l Entrepreneur is always an inventor
l Entrepreneur is only born, not made
l Entrepreneur is a rigid high profiler
l Entrepreneur is a an extreme risk taker
l Entrepreneur is a money squanderer
l Entrepreneur is non-calculative luck
l Entrepreneur is thinker and non-doer
l Entrepreneur is social misfits and academic
l Entrepreneur is non-futuristic when money is concerned.
It is evident that from the list above, the odds are against the entrepreneur that they have to prove to the world that they are for real.
The myths can also be extended to what are now referred to in a derogatory term as “indigenous” businesses. Needless to say, such people have a Herculean task to convince a business associate that they can deliver if they enter into any transaction.
Changing worldviews concerning a particular perception can be a lifelong challenge, but you cannot take away anything from a good substance.
They say milk does not require seasoning, it’s just a good substance.
Against this background, it is incumbent upon entrepreneurs to demonstrate that they are indeed men or women of integrity and demonstrate their capabilities to the fullest.
Within the web of entrepreneurs, they can be classified as basic survivalists, pre-entrepreneurs and subsistence entrepreneurs depending on their sophistication.
Basic survivalists are those with no economic independence and have little involvement with other entrepreneurs within the social network.
They are isolated from the market and are equally unaware of their own potential.
These self-centred individuals are usually illiterate and are involved in only a few income-generating activities.
Because they are operating in isolation, this group is not exposed to other opportunities opening up in the market.
Pre-entrepreneurs, unlike basic survivalists, follow the group initiative.
They are welfare oriented and their ventures are not expected to be self-sustaining and training is thus needed in entrepreneurial competency.
Subsistence entrepreneurs are those self-employed independent individuals who are involved in sizeable income-generating projects.
They may have a market stall or a stand at Siyaso and they make a living out of the operation.
This group, however, is inexperienced in terms of business management and tends to be not forward looking.
They are content with what they have, which raises the need for training.
Providing the much-needed general support and training in technical and management skills will help the viability of the business and prospects for growth.
A paradigm shift from this “kiya kiya” mentality is desirable here if we are going to take this level of entrepreneurship to the next level.
Commenting on the myths about entrepreneurship Scott Shane, a professor of entrepreneurial studies at Case Western University, had this to say:
“We have a belief that entrepreneurship is good because it’s associated with things that we like to believe about: Being independent, doing your own thing and going your own way.
“The other part of it is that paradoxically, there is one really, really good thing about entrepreneurship that people don’t talk about, which is dominant and we have lots of evidence to support: People who run their own businesses have greater job satisfaction than people who don’t.
“I think part of it is that we’re trying to make sense of this paradox – that we really like it, but financially it isn’t so great.
“So we create a myth that says because we like it and it makes us happy, it must also make financial sense, because otherwise there’s a kind of conflict we can’t resolve.”
As always let’s make money.
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