#Pause: Give God something to amplify
__"Mighty things from small beginnings grow"... [John Dryden]
My mother once took me to a marketplace to sell second-hand furniture. Noticing that I was embarrassed, she said to me: “You must stoop to conquer; get rid of your pride, and let’s do what puts food and school fees on the table. When you have those fancy qualifications, then you can look for jobs in newspapers!”
Give God something to amplify: Start something small, and start today!
Unless you have the humility to start small, and forget about your degrees [other than the knowledge they give you], you will not do the things that build capital. Women like my mother worked the markets, saved every penny, and built themselves up until they sent people like me to study overseas. That is where you should draw your inspiration, and not on the hope of someone coming to save us, by whatever title.
If you wait for someone to create the “right environment, facilities, good policies…” you might be waiting a very, very long time.
I coined the phrase: “As entrepreneurs we fight to build our businesses and build our lives, in the conditions, not against the conditions we happen to find ourselves in.”
Once you get into the mindset that governments or donors must do something to make the conditions better, then you are paralyzed from taking any steps to solve problems.
Everything is also relative; someone in South Africa thinks the condition are terrible, but someone in Liberia would say what amazing opportunities they have!
If I start comparing conditions of America with conditions in Africa, all I will manage to do is organize a “self pity party”! And by evening, some of you will be planning to cross the Sahara Desert!
I believe that God allowed me to tackle some of the worst obstacles, so that I can one day say to you: “You can start and prosper even in the worst conditions. Even without a cent of capital to your name, you can start.”
So how to get started solving any problem [as an entrepreneur]?
#1. You need to actually understand the problem. Being able to see a problem, and even commenting about it, is not the level of understanding necessary to emerge with an entrepreneurial solution:
You read, you study, you look at what others have done, or are already doing, to try to solve it.
__Africa is so big, the likelihood that someone else out of 1,3bn people is also looking at it, is very high! That's okay. #Imagining solutions is one thing [and a good start] then you must take the next step of course, with the 3Ps in mind.
#2. Understand the solutions that are already being tried by others. See if you yourself can contribute to the SolutionThink!
#3. Start Small: Practical people are always those looking for a way to start small on a big problem! Even if you believe that God will use you to solve a big problem [as I do], then you will know from scripture that He likes you to pitch up with something in your hand, like the little boy with the fishes and bread that fed 5,000!
Now some of you have asked me here recently if I think schools should add "entrepreneurship" to the classroom curriculum as early as grade school. Why not? Ideally, of course, the answer is yes, but the sad fact is: there's already a shortage of science and maths teachers [and many other subjects, too]. Where would national education departments find enough excellent entrepreneurship teachers? It's food for thought and worth considering, but...
Why not first start at home? Without changing a school curriculum, introducing a #SolutionSeeking mindset can start very young. If you're a parent or teacher, for example: Talk to your kids [at whatever age] like my mom talked to me at that marketplace.
All of you here know what an #EntrepreneurIt mindset is by now. Even as our communities and nations struggle deeply to put this pandemic behind us, please urge your kids, BOTH boys and girl children, to look through to the other side of problems, to #Imagine solutions [even as children!] and never be too proud or too fearful to start very small right where they are, even while they may already be riding big unicorns in their dreams.
End.
#SolutionSeekers
#EntrepreneurIt
#MaskUp - We are not through this yet! Do your own part. This is urgent.
Image credit: @juliosacristan @eyesofchildrenaroundthe world. Ivory Coast
"I know for sure, what we dwell on is who we become". Oprah Winfrey
