Entrepreneurship is hard. Like, really hard! Let no one lie to you that it’s a bed of roses and a path to untold riches. I’ve been at it for close to twenty years and boy, it’s tough! Only very few of us are gifted by God to be truly thoroughbred entrepreneurs. The rest of us stumble, fall and get up repeatedly to make our dreams of entrepreneurial grandeur sputter into life. It’s a pickle, no doubt, but worth every moment when you finally rise to the occasion, under normal circumstances. The caveat is that we are currently are not in normal circumstances!

The reality is, more than ever, that for the past 5 months or so that the world has been locked down due to the COVID-19 pandemic, everything is anything but normal. Business in the new normal has become remarkably tough for any and all entrepreneurs, irrespective of whether or not they have sterling credentials to-date as tough as nails and diamond-sharp entrepreneurs. In the era of the COVID-19 pandemic, even the mighty fall.

What we are learning is that in times of extraordinary uncertainty as we are seeing now on a global basis, what used to be good enough to get by and succeed as entrepreneurs is no longer adequate. We are going through a violent paradigm shift that no one could have anticipated and therefore, to a large extent, no one was prepared for it. Every surefire playbook that you could have used as a successful entrepreneur in the past is now completely and hopelessly inadequate in the way of Murphy’s Law. As a close friend of mine likes to say, ‘there are times when you don’t know what you don’t know’.

This brings me to the whole point of this blog post. When you don’t know what you don’t know, and especially in a crisis, the only logical thing to do is to reach up, and not sideways, for help. This means going beyond your comfort zones and the assurance of past knowledge and experience to find new insights and methods that will enable you as an entrepreneur to see the world and your business from a different perspective. The objective of this approach is that you can finally know what you don’t know – get it?

The truth is many of us as entrepreneurs tend to get addicted to our ‘been there and done that’ mentality that stops us from trying new ways of doing things differently so that we can transform our businesses. Tunnel vision has often been the source of many a disrupted business, or industry, the ‘too big fail’ or ‘too successful to fail’ school of thought (just ask the likes of Nokia how this happens). In times of crisis, like the one we are going through at the moment, we need to rediscover the beginner’s mind and be open to learning and relearning new business things.

Sinapis has been training entrepreneurs in East Africa for over a decade and understood the challenges entrepreneurs are currently facing due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, they created a limited time and condensed version of their Entrepreneur Academy called the Sinapis Crisis Crash Course to give entrepreneurs access to tools that have transformed thousands of businesses in East Africa.

At the heart of what Sinapis does is to empower entrepreneurs professionally and spiritually using training and a global support network so they can grow to the next level and transform the world around them. Everything that Sinapis does is underpinned by Christian principles and as such may not be for everyone. However, as a Christian myself, I was stunned at how integral this is to all their training programs, including the Sinapis Crisis Crash Course that I am currently attending.

Sinapis’ Crisis Crash Course is a weekend online learning class that covers aspects of Customers, Financials, Operations, Human Resources, and Kingdom Business. A Kingdom Business is a business that is subject to and operates under the governance, ordinances, and principles of God. It is a business in which God’s nature and characteristics are intrinsically infused into the structure of the entrepreneurship venture. This aspect really resonated with me! In a nutshell, Sinapis’ Crisis Crash Course is an intense 4-week program that is designed to quickly get you as an entrepreneur the tools and knowledge you need to tackle these times of uncertainty with confidence. It will help you learn how to increase your profitability, re-think your customer strategy, work with leaner teams, pitch for funding, get ready for the future of work and become the leader your team needs.

I strongly recommend that any budding or seasoned entrepreneur who wants to thrive during these times of uncertainly to consider taking Sinapis‘ Crisis Crash Course. The next intake starts on the 15th of August 2020 and the investment required is only Kes. 6,000.00. Don’t leave anything to chance – sign-up here and all the best rising above the current business challenges due to the pandemic!