Over the past 11 years we have built a solid infrastructure of well connected entrepreneurs in Zimbabwe. Our first challenge in the early days was to get entrepreneurs to share their experiences and network. Through persistence-we managed to develop a small well connected community and on a weekly basis we compile a newsletter for internal circulation.

Below we feature our latest newsletters. They are not perfect in terms of design and also include a lot of typos. However the content is good enough. If you are on our Whatsapp Forums, you should have a lot of copies.

One of our greatest contributions to Zimbabwe is championing the introductions of cruise ship jobs back in 2021. At the time there was solid rock resistance to the initiative. Even veteran members of the forum were not convinced that one could easily land a job in USA without much hussles.

Everything looked like a scam. If it is too good, then it obviously is a scam. His is the first rule of scams—and we perfectly passed the first test. And the more desperate we became in appealing to our members to participate—the more dubious the scheme became.

Lessons for business strategists—If it is too good, it will face strong resistance. If the price is zero—market dynamics could confuse you as demand could remain flat.

So 2026 here we are and millions of Zimbabweans now know about what we started—and thousands of Zimbabweans have benefited. So the trending topic is what sort of businesses can seafarers do when back home on vacation?

Here is our advice

1. Skills Enhancement: Learn new languages—French, Portuguese, Mandarin and others. This could help you in career development. In addition enrol for advanced courses in your career. Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Client Experience and more.
2. Learn Trades: The Polytechnic and other colleges have courses on trades. Look for courses of interest and learn. This could even help you in career development in additional to personal growth.
3. Entrepreneurship Workshops: Scan the environment for workshops on entrepreneurship and learn from experts.
4. Venturing into Business: Read as many books as possible and this also include being part of many business forums. You may want to start and complete a project such as poultry, fashion design, and others. Don’t expect huge profits but focus on  skills and experience acquired—which you could use in future.

So vacation is time for your to relax, recalibrate and also find something to do. Travel to new areas, volunteer to help. Even visit former schools and present your experiences on cruise ships. You could improve your public speaking skills or any area you have weaknesses on.

Meanwhile have you read all of our books? They are full of business ideas and including the content shared in this post. You could also join our Premium Chat and learn from others.

Joining ZBIN is only $10 per year and we have a hundreds of seafarers on the forum,

We also share a testimonial from one of our members below.

Hi Ntate how are you? I wanted to ask if I could come with a testimonial. I work for Carnival and have been home on leave.

So during this downtime have been trying to find something to do so that I can grow and have a secondary income. We had a data analytics session some weeks back and Dr Mugomo helped shape out the idea I had to use Data for customer service analytics and audits. I wanted to reach out so he can know that I took his lesson and started a consulting firm for that with some of my colleagues.

I wanted to thank him for the insight and push because that session helped me see that I was sitting on a gold mine that I could tap into. Thank you so much for providing this platform and I look forward to bringing more testimonials from all that I am learning.