I remember like it was yesterday (30 years ago), driving into Harare and seeing newspaper billboards saying, “Masiyiwa’s dream crumbles…”
Arriving to my office, my team of about 35 people was waiting to see my response.
A visitor was also waiting to see me. He said he was a recently arrived missionary from America, and was looking for a mobile phone service contract. I asked him if he had read that morning’s news.
He replied: “I don’t read newspapers. What’s in it?”
“I have no license yet to even offer service,” I explained.
“Well, the Lord told me you do, and that is why I’m here; so whose report will you believe?”
He then took out a bag full of money equivalent to a year’s phone service contract.
I called my colleague Zac Wazara and asked him to take the money. Then I left my office and went to examine a site where I wanted to put up a cell tower, having assigned each of my people work for the day.
I’m sure you’ve all heard of the book called “The Audacity of Hope”. When someday I write my own book about my improbable journey as an entrepreneur, I might call it “The Audacity of Faith”.
It is through faith that I have confronted every situation as an #Entrepreneur.
That situation decades ago in Zimbabwe was just one of many, many challenges I have faced and come through. There have been so many improbable challenges requiring faith that I just take it as a given.
Some of you cry that your government does not support you; Well, mine didn’t exactly like me at the time!
Some cry that they have no access to banks; most banks considered me too high a risk!
Some cry that they have no access to venture capital; they considered me too risky as well!
None of it matters to the person who is determined through faith to find a way forward.
You have heard me say before: “I would rather lose believing God was with me, than win knowing He was not with me. If you do something which is corrupt, cruel, or blatantly unfair; you know God is not in it.”
What would be the title of the book about your own journey?
Don’t let anyone or anything crumble your dreams.
