Let’s capitalise on networks to scale and grow
When you begin thinking about your new and exciting entrepreneurial venture, you may feel somewhat like the citizens of Key West did many years ago – isolated.
No matter which way you turn, you eventually come to the end of your limited community, and what you have is not enough.
For an entrepreneur, networking is finding and establishing relationships with business professionals with whom you can exchange information, ideas, and products. Networking is about building bridges not about collecting tolls.
You can either sit on the beach and dream about what could be or commence working on building personal and professional connections to broaden your scope and improve the depth of relationships with those individuals who will assist you in becoming a successful entrepreneur.
A lot of successful businesses have tied networking to their entrepreneurial success, demonstrating that networking is an important way to validate opportunities and access information.
Networking involves engaging with people by meeting and knowing them, with the potential to help you with ideas and opportunities on how to scale your business. Build your she-network and knowledge while any woman can, in theory, become an entrepreneur, not everyone is equipped to do so.
Being successful in business requires qualities and competencies, that are not necessarily acquired at school. Female entrepreneurs are often proof of this, exuding a strong personality that helps them overcome challenges and difficulties they face daily.
This is the very essence of the African woman: hope, courage and perseverance, values that are now making them an integral part of the economic, social and sustainable development of the continent.
According to the 2020/21 Women’s Entrepreneurship Report, in Africa more than 50 per cent of entrepreneurs are women with 70 per cent of them from the informal sector, with limited access to financial services. So how exactly have female business leaders managed to stay focused and determined to build their companies even when the odds seem stacked against them?
One of the outstanding basis for their continued success is banking on networks. Building these strong networks cannot only lead to business growth, but also increased confidence.
According to Harvard Business Review, focusing on a higher level of centrality and connecting with people who are connected to multiple networks should be vital in your business success strategy.
In entrepreneurship, you rarely succeed if you work alone. Sensitive ears and razor-sharp eyes to business opportunities take the day. Networking exposes you to opportunities you that you were unaware existed before. The opportunity can be a business idea or market for your goods and services. The wider your network, the higher the likelihood of hitting the right business opportunities to spur your growth.
It is against this background that Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) has unveiled an agenda for women entrepreneurs.
The KCB Female-Led and Made Enterprises – FLME is a Sh250 billion programme for women entrepreneurs, geared towards breaking the barriers to financial access and providing complementary services to women entrepreneurs who are considered better vision careers.
As an organisation, we have been intentional in ensuring diversity and inclusion by focusing on internal and external programmes, in this case to support women agenda in line with UN Global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), specifically Goals No 1, 8, 10 and 17 that focus on No Poverty, Decent Work and Economic Growth, Reduced Inequality and Partnerships respectively. We see these four as critical in fostering an enabling environment in which women can meaningfully participate and thrive in the economy.
— The writer is the chief executive, KCB Group
