Emily Parker spoke with author Richard Higginson about his new book 'A Voice to be Heard', and what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur.

Kina Robertshaw

But I would also recommend that they find a mentor, somebody older and wiser, with experience, to give them some advice.

But I think it's a great thing to do. I've actually got two sons who are entrepreneurs. Not that I've made a special effort to encourage them to go into that, but that's what they have done. One of them is a filmmaker and the other is a carpenter; in fact the one who's a carpenter features in the book.

I also want to mention the person I wrote the book with, Kina Robertshaw, who's a remarkable person. She comes from Zambia in Africa and as a young woman she was a retail entrepreneur. She set up the first department store in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, and also set up a store in Johannesburg in South Africa as well.

The book owes a lot to her inspiration and enthusiasm. She's actually the person who conducted the 50 interviews with Christian entrepreneurs on whom the book is based. I did most of the writing, but the two of us have worked closely together all the way.

Emily: How did you meet and decide to write this book?

Richard: Kina's early life was in Zambia. She then married a white man and came to this country and decided she wanted to study theology. She already had a Christian faith, but she wanted to go deeper with her faith. She found out about Ridley Hall, which is an Anglican theological college in Cambridge where I teach, so she came here to study theology.

I run a project called 'Faith in Business' at Ridley Hall, which is all about encouraging Christians in business to be faithful disciples. So naturally she got involved in that. She actually wrote a dissertation on entrepreneurship under my supervision and then she wanted to go a stage further. She decided she'd like to find some real live Christian entrepreneurs to interview, so we backed her in this project. We encouraged her, and over a two year period she interviewed these entrepreneurs. Then the two of us got down and analysed the material and decided that we thought there could be a book that could come out of this and so that's what happened.

Emily: If anybody wants to get hold of a copy, how can they do so?

Richard: They can get it on Amazon, that's perhaps the most obvious way, but hopefully most good Christian bookshops will be selling it, or you could directly contact the publisher IVP. Or you could even contact me, Richard Higginson, at Ridley Hall, because I've got lots of copies.