Skip to main content

The high mortality rate of businesses in Uganda and how to avoid it-Passion


Uganda is considered number one in entrepreneurship, with the highest number of business startups in every single year according to research by international agencies. This is one side of the coin but on the other side of the coin, there is also a high mortality rate (death rate) for these small businesses in Uganda.
Last week we had a heated discussion about this issue on one of our whatsapp groups (young treps), am glad to share with you some nuggets from this discussion and my personal ideas on how to reduce on the mortality rate of business in Uganda.
Starting a business with one single idea of making money is all wrong. What if you don’t make the money, what happens? Can you hold on during tough times like the ones we are in today? So why would you start a business in the first place? If you don’t have any strong reason for starting a business chances are that you may not survive the first year in business. In this heated discussion the whole argument zeroed down to the biggest foundation of any business ‘passion of the entrepreneur’

Nuggets from the discussion
Business should always start with passion.  Any business that is built in foundations of passion and not just profit motive is likely to succeed. If only built on profit motive, the day it faces challenges, instead of facing them and gain experience to tackle issues, you just jump out and it collapses.
So passion should always be the first foundation upon which any entrepreneur should start a business.
After passion think how to turn your passion into money a money generating venture.
Then think how it can stand the times (short term and long term strategy)
Later think how to recruit people with the same passion but intellectually more creative than you, then set direction  as the C.E.O , groom them, involve them in manageable decision making, make them part of your passion, make them realize their potential then together build an empire.
After building an empire groom someone to replace you, then plant them in. Retire and start enjoying your fruits at an early age. Go for vacations, volunteer, give back to society and die a happily remembered man.
Everything starts with passion dear Young Treps.
                                                                                        ~Belguin Prosper Lumu~
                                                                                           C.E.O Young and free international

Passion can ignite the business engine am of the view that money is fuel. What will keep you in or out of business is the ignition (passion) and what keeps you on the road is the fuel (money)
                                                                                     ~Pius Wong~

Key issues to make your business immortal
1.       Have the passion
2.       Turn it into a money generating venture
3.       Make the right connections for advice
4.       Identify your market
5.       Identify the right characteristics of people to hire
6.       Identify where you want to be in the future
7.       Just start, where you are and with what you have-just do it.

The biggest reason why businesses fail is because they lack a firm foundation of passion, energy and integrity. Approximately 80% of businesses operating in Uganda are not registered, even for those registered a big percentage never have operating bank accounts and never even keep any records.
How do you expect clients, businesses, investors to trust your business, first they trust you then the business and that is how the business keeps moving?
Register your business, have all your records intact, have a running bank account for the business.

Don’t lose the passion, keep the energy flowing and always display the highest level of integrity, then watch your business grow to greater heights and it will be immortal.

                Ahabwe Collins is ,
             Sales executive at SUNSINE technologies
             Entrepreneur and business enthusiast.
             Find more at my personal blog
            www.ahabwecollins.blogspot.com

Location: Kampala, Uganda

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Starting a Business in Ugand PART 1-COMPANY REGISTRATION

Below is a detailed summary of the bureaucratic and legal hurdles faced by entrepreneurs wishing to incorporate and register a new firm in Uganda. It examines the procedures, time and cost involved in launching a commercial or industrial firm with between 10 and 50 employees and start-up capital of 10 times the economy's per-capita gross national income. This information was collected as part of the Doing Business project , which measures and compares regulations relevant to the life cycle of a small- to medium-sized domestic business in 190 economies. The most recent round of data collection was completed in June 2016. Standardized Company Legal form: Private Limited Company Paid-in minimum capital requirement: UGX 0 City: Kampala No. Procedure Time to Complete Associated Costs 1 Submit the Name Reservation Form to the assessment window of t...
Post a Comment
ahabwecollins.blogspot.com

The most successful African entrepreneurs of the future __Think beyond borders of all kinds.

By Dr Strive Masiyiwa Amongst the many things I wanted to achieve with this platform was to get young African entrepreneurs to reach out and start talking to each other, doing business deals, and partnering to find solutions to Africa's many other challenges. I'm not sure if you saw this comment I made during our discussion on partnerships a while back: "Afterthought: Here is a secret! The most successful Africans in future are those who master the ability to partner with Africans from other African countries... Shhhh! (Keep this secret to yourself, because there are many enemies out there who will try and stop you from believing this.)" As an entrepreneur, there are huge benefits for you if Africa can shift its economic narrative to what I sometimes refer to as "Africanization." We as Africans need to open up this continent to development by Africans. However, this should not be to the exclusion of working with partners from other parts of the worl...
Post a Comment
ahabwecollins.blogspot.com

10 Daily habits of most successful entrepreneurs.

“You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.” ~ John C Maxwell How many of these top 10 entrepreneur habits do you have today? What good habits can you start and what bad habits can you stop to change your results tomorrow? 1) Create a routine - Set a rhythm to connect to the big 5 P’s every day: Purpose (why?), Products (what?), People (who?), Processes (when?), Productivity (how?) 2) Keep the mornings for the toughest projects - Start with what’s most important, not what’s most urgent. Make yourself 80% proactive, 20% reactive. 3) Work out & meditate - Richard Branson says the #1 thing he does to improve his business success is exercise. The universe will only look after you as well as you look after yourself. 4) Give a head start to tomorrow today - Design each day ahead of time and ask the same question Steve Jobs asked: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want t...
Post a Comment
ahabwecollins.blogspot.com