THE 8th edition Entrepreneurship Meet-Up session hosted by award-winning entrepreneur, Dr. Faith Nyamukapa, inspired entrepreneurs in different niches to build signature legacy brands that sell and adapt their businesses to suit the ever-changing volatile business environment in Zimbabwe.
Speakers included brand building coach and entrepreneur Tutsirai Jenje, who runs a medical centre in Borrowdale, Carling Meat Company co-founder and chief executive officer, Carl Magwaza, Tiny Tots World Wonder Zimbabwe founder Monica Mashavave, Delta Corporation General Manager (Corporate Affairs) Patricia kudzai Murambinda and Angus Shaw.
Speaking at the event, Jenje said entrepreneurs often made branding mistakes as the failed to narrow down their ideal clients and urged them to understand a brand and know their type of brand to avoid confusing customers.
“Identify your ideal clients by knowing where they spend their time and identify their pain points and solve them. Don’t speak to everyone because business is not for everyone. Have clear precise messages and a branding image,” she said.
“Know what you want to build, clarify what you want to be known for and be clear in business because if you are not clear of what you want, you are not going to get anywhere.”
Jenje encouraged entrepreneurs to identify their target audiences and fall in love with their problems. “As their problem changes, your brand changes with them. People have to know what you do clearly in order for you remain relevant in the market,” she said.
‘The Meat Man’ – as Magwaza is popularly known –helped entrepreneurs on how to adapt their businesses to suit the ever- changing volatile business environment in Zimbabwe.
He said as entrepreneurs, selling made them relevant, so they should not mislead customers by telling lies of about their products.
“Each time you get an opportunity to speak in front of people, make sure you speak of your brand. We are living in a world called the VUCA times, meaning volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous hence the more you adapt to the ever-changing times, the harder would you fall,” he said.
“In order to survive in a VUCA world, an organisation requires a clear vision of why they exist and where it wants to go. Whatever we do for us to remain relevant we have to be able to sell. Selling will keep us alive and if we do not sell, we become irrelevant and when you sell to somebody whatever you sell, please tell the truth. Sell it as it is.
There is no need to lie.” Magwaza said it was important for entrepreneurs to have a clear vision and an appreciation of their target market and the significance of their products and services.
“In whatever we are facing, one thing that has to help us as entrepreneurs is to make the vision clear and understand our market, or what our products are offering to the community so that we can adapt when the nation is changing,” he said.
“We need to change quickly without looking what is happening because once we are able to change and look at the problems that are being faced by the community and solve them, we remain relevant. Delta’s Murambinda urged entrepreneurs to be givers and not only takers as giving was a channel through which their businesses could become profitable as it defined their values, passion, love, enthusiasm and creativity.
“Shift from being a taker to a giver. The irony and the paradox is that when you give you will make more money, promotions, accolades, applause, happiness, energy and creativity because ultimately life wants you to win but you can’t win if you’re a taker,” she said.
Mashavave urged entrepreneurs to engage in the spiritual disciplines of prayer and fasting. “In business one also needs to be a person who fit in every situation and be honest, reliable and faithful,” she said.
