From time immemorial, I have always wondered why many of our businesses, especially shops, behave like printed books whose contents hardly change once published and put on shelves.

In our major cities, it is a familiar experience to see shops opening around 8am or 9am before closing shop, ostensibly for lunch, around midday and reopen again at 1.30pm or even 2pm until 5pm when they call it a day.

Ironically, most working people, who are among customers of such businesses, have “free” time during the times their shops are closed! This trend has often raised the question of who is the target customers for such shops.

Credit should go to supermarkets which have gone an extra mile to give customers more convenience in terms of opening hours. There are some such shops which open as early as 6am and close around 10pm. This is no mean gesture, especially considering the security risk they expose themselves to in the wake of rising cases of insecurity in the country.

In most of our city townships, shops owned by indigenous Malawians close much earlier, sometimes for flimsy reasons, whereas those run by Burundian nationals, ‘MaBurundi’ as they are mostly known locally, open till late, offering buyers convenience. And we wonder why ‘foreigners’ beat us at our own game?

The road to success in business is long and bumpy, demanding from the entrepreneur the willingness to spend long hours learning and applying new strategies to be a step ahead of their competitors.

Sadly, though, in many cases, many of our Malawian brothers and sisters would rather close their business premises, cash cows, earlier simply to have fun with friends and family or indeed attend a wedding reception of a friend or relation.

To be a step ahead in business, one needs to think outside the box. You need to have a different approach, including conceptualising problems differently, conducting consumer research to find out what the customers would prefer you do and what they would want you to stop doing.

One Blantyre-based entrepreneur, who runs a successful entertainment joint told me of how he struggled to break into the market dominated by his competitor around their business complex. He said one day he decided to install a television set and beamed live football matches of an African Cup of Nations tournament in 1998 or thereabouts. Many people, including his competitors and their patrons, laughed at him, saying people cannot go to a pub and watch football or TV in general, suggesting that he was wasting his time.

With time, however, people were excited at the idea of a bar showing football live on TV. Mind you, that was the time pay TV was just new in Malawi. Eventually, he won a niche market and the competitors followed suit, invested in TV sets! This is one example of a person thinking outside the box to get a fair market share.

One thing I have learnt from motivational speaker and social commentator Henry Kachaje, during his sessions I have attended, is that very often “beliefs and values” are the core of human behaviour as they form our values and determine the level of success in our lives.

Essentially, what holds many people, including businesspersons, from soaring high is not necessarily lack of capabilities, but their beliefs. If one believes something cannot be done, naturally their achievement in such an endeavour will be limited.

What I am driving at is that the fact that our forefathers opened their shops at 8am and went home for lunch, then reopened at 3pm after a good meal and siesta, does not mean we should follow the same trend. The world is changing.

If it is the question of security, surely, businesses can invest in the same. For example, I have always wondered why some major shops at secure premises such as the many shopping centres we have in Blantyre and Lilongwe close shop as early as 6pm, rendering such premises “lifeless”.

We need to rethink our business mindset. Learn from the Holy Bible in Proverbs 20 verse 13: “Do not love sleep, or you will become poor; Open your eyes, and you will be satisfied with [a]food.”