← Ideas That Matter Podcast by Vusi Thembekwayo
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- [00:00]
Vusi Thembekwayo
Foreign.
- [00:06]
Wale
My name is Wale and I have been a huge fan of your podcast since days when I used to stay in South Africa. I'm back in Nigeria now and the founder and CEO of Fast Rider Ride. Any business in Nigeria, presently in Leves and Abuja. And I must tell you, your podcast has been huge in where we've been today. Everything I've navigated through this journey, 60% came from your podcast and I'll keep doing that every blessed day. There is no passing day that I don't listen to your postcards. Like I say, Fast Ride is a right dealing business and you know the space we are in. But because of creative ideas and disruptive mind, I have the determination, the endurance to continue this journey. We're going to be everywhere in Nigeria, everywhere in Africa and everywhere in the world. But 60% of the credit goes to you because everything you spoke about on your podcast, I've applied everything. And I must say we are on the path of greatness. And thank you for what you've been doing.
- [01:22]
Vuyo
Hello family. Hi Woozy. You're speaking to Vuyo from the east of Joburg where you come from. Actually I was just listening to an episode called Spiritual Jet Lag. So the conversation and what you said was very inspiring and very interesting. And guess what? Right after another episode came in and it's called Spiritual Darkness and the lady was speaking about how she was listening to Spiritual Jet Lag and right after I found myself listening to Spiritual Darkness Spiritual. So what I'm trying to say, and my point is things don't happen at the time we want them to happen. Things happen at God's timing, at the universe, timing, at whatever you believe in timing. It could be ancestors, it could be the, could be God, it could be the universe. So my point exactly also is I'm slowly teaching myself to wait. I am holding on, I am strong. And I just want to say the VT podcast is keeping me so sober minded, so inspired and so goal driven. So I just, I just hope that the Lord blesses you and the family goes very, very far. Thank you Vousi. Thank you.
- [03:19]
Kumbiraj Paza
Hi Vusi, how are you? My name is Kumbiraj Paza. I'm a Zimbabwean based in Germany. I listened to VT podcast and last week I listened to what to do when you're feeling stuck. When you say the Lord humbles you so that he can exalt you, you can be reduced so that you can be increased. Earlier this year I got into debt. I was in troubles with my last startup that I had in that period. I was also transitioning into a new startup, whereby now I can happily say that we got an investment of seven figures and I'm into mining technology. I followed you for quite a while and I would like to say that your podcasts not only inspire me, but they guide me. You might not know me, but you are my mentor. And through your teachings, I also mentor others. Keep at it. Thanks a lot. Cheers.
- [04:17]
Podcast Host/Announcer
It's time to take your seat at the table. Find out how with vositembegwayo as we discuss Ideas that matter, a catalyst for bold action.
- [04:33]
Vusi Thembekwayo
Hello, family. Hello, family, and welcome to this another VT podcast. And here we talk about ideas that matter. I was sat the other day thinking about what I was going to share with you all, and then I had, like this spark of inspiration and here's what it is I wanted to share with you here today. My podcast topic today is all the lessons I've learned from my mentors. Now, there might be some of you watching this who are first surprised that I have mentors. And I must tell you that that's going to be one of my lessons, the things that I've learned from my mentors. So I do. I have mentors. I have kind of people who fit in three spaces. You've heard me share it with you if you've listened to my podcast before. Coaches, mentors and sponsors. I wanted to focus today, though, specifically on what it is that I've learned over the years from having mentors, different mentors, and at different stages of my life, helping and assisting me through different things. The first thing I've learned from my mentors has been the power of continuous learning, that you are going to be a perpetual student of life, and that you'd better be, because if you're not, you're finished. If you ever get to a point where you think you know everything, that's the beginning of the end. It's that old expression, how pride comes before the fall. So I'm very eager to submit myself to the wisdom, the knowledge of somebody who has been to a place I'm trying to go and to allow them to coach me on how to get there. The thing about continuous learning, though, and being trained and coached into a different place, often a higher place than where you are operating, is that you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. You have to be comfortable learning new skills. That's the easy part, I found. The hard part is you have to be comfortable unlearning the old skills. That's really the difficult part. Right. Because if you think about it, in anything you do in life, typically how we work as human beings, is you find something that you're little bit good at and then you just hone down on that thing and become incredibly efficient at it. The problem is you do get to a stage in your life where the thing you are good at is good for where you come from, but not good for where you are going. And so it's about, how do I unlearn certain skills I'm going to give you guys. For me, this is, for me, what was, what has been one of my hardest things to unlearn. Okay, now, if you followed me for years, you're not allowed to laugh, but you will immediately identify this to be true. So one of the skills I learned early on, I suppose, just as a function of being a professional orator, somebody who communicates for a living, was the skill of candor, the ability to just call things as they are and say things as they are early on in your life. It gets you really, really far because when you're candid, people like that, people are like, oh, that's cool. You know that guy, he exactly what it was, exactly the way it was, right? Especially when you are not yet somebody of influence, especially when you don't yet have a lot of soft societal power. Being candid is something people welcome. This is why people love children, because children don't lie. That's why there's that show. Kids say the darndest things. You remember the show, right? It's because kids will say things as they are, but they can say things as they are because they're children. They have no societal power or no influence. However, as I got more influential, more powerful, as I started moving in quarters of power and influence, candor didn't work because first, powerful people don't like to be told things they don't want to hear. And you might be saying the truth, but the truth, if it's sour and offensive, can lock you out of the opportunities that you want. And so I've had to unlearn how to be immediately candid. And now what I'm having to learn is how to select the moment to be candid and first, how to build a relationship with a person so that I can be candid and can be honest and not just shoot it off in my mouth because I'm. I'm thinking it. So, right? So that skill that very early on in my career got me very, very far. Like, I would get invited to rooms, spaces, conversations, because people knew that If I said it, I meant it. Now I will say something because I genuinely mean it and offend somebody I have never even met because, albeit true, it's still offensive. I did a video. In fact, I did a. I posted a tweet. I think it was last year. I think it was early last year. And in the tweet, I said something like, apartheid was a crime against humanity. True. And then I said apartheid was very effective for the people who were running it. Both of those things are true. Both of them. We can spend the next 30 years arguing, and you will not convince me otherwise. They're both true. Now, notice I didn't say apartheid was good. I said it was effective. I can't remember, but it was like, in the order of millions, the number of people who lost their minds because I said it and who couldn't believe that I would dare say that. Like, who were like, how could this guy say this? And I remember being sent videos of people who went on TikTok and YouTube and all sorts of places saying, vusi said apartheid is good. I never said apartheid was good. I said it was effective. There is a big difference between being effective and being good. A bullet is effective at killing people. Killing people isn't good. Doom is effective at killing insects. Like, something can be effective and not good. I'll give you a funny example. Bebeto was a very effective striker. He still broke South Africa's hearts. You remember when we lost 32 to Brazil after we led them 2 nil going into the. Into halftime. This would be a generational reference. If you were born in the late 90s or early 2000s, you won't know what I'm talking about, but there is even a particular scissor kick we used to do in the township. We called it Isbebeto because he made that kick famous. Now, he was an effective striker, but he wasn't good for South Africans. All I said was it was effective. People don't believe me. I'll challenge you. Over the past week, how many roads have you driven on that were built during apartheid? I'm willing to bet the bank you bank with was probably built during apartheid. I could keep going on and on and on. Now, I'm not saying apartheid was morally good. It was reprehensible. That's why I opened my statement by saying it was a crime against humanity, but it was effective. That truth alone got me into so much hot water. So I say this only to make the point that I've had to unlearn ruthless candor and having to learn this new skill of tactful candor, being candid in the right places, in the right rooms, with the right people, but most importantly, at the right time. And there are some of you watching this. You are talking yourself out of the right opportunities for your life because you don't know how to choose the moment. And so you say the right thing at the wrong time, or you say the right thing the wrong way, or worse, the right thing at the wrong time, the wrong way to the wrong people, then you're finished. So one of the lessons I've been learning from my mentors has been how to hold my peace and be quiet even when something is happening and I know it's wrong and it shouldn't be happening. And I have the capacity to speak out against it. But I also have so much influence that if I speak out at the wrong time, I will work against the agenda of what we're trying to achieve. And so one of my mentors often says to me, he reminds me often, he says, remember the end goal, remember the agenda. What are we trying to achieve here? See, some of us are out of the world of followers and likes, right? Like, I don't need more followers on Twitter. I don't need people to like my stuff. That's kind of not the world I live in. I live in the world of real influence. And in the world of real influence, the room are small, the lights are dark, and the seats around the table are very few. But that's where decisions get made. You don't get invited to that room unless you have the ability to be tactful at the right time. So that's the first lesson I've learned from my mentors. The second lesson I've learned from my mentors has been how to truly be resilient. Now, I've always thought I was resilient, right? Like, it's just growing up. I think when you grow up in struggle, you being resilient is a part of how you do life. But I watch some of the things my mentors put up with, battles that they fight in private. And for me, this has really been my number one learning, has been being gracious during a period of difficulty, that that's a part of your resilience, so that you will go through life, but it's not immediately apparent to somebody watching you what you're going through. The people, I'm going to tell you this for free. The people you look at and you admire, the people who those Instagram posts and stories are posted about how much money they're making. The people who Forbes write the articles about their net worth, those people are involved in more fights than you can imagine. Than you can imagine. They're involved in more litigation than you can ever, ever imagine. But that's a part of it is they have learned to be resilient in spite of what's happening in their lives. It's this thing that took me forever to learn this, and I wish I knew this in 2020. I would have approached life differently in that time of my life. But one of the things one has learned has been that if God is going to bless you, and that blessing is going to come at a time of turbulence as well. And so for those of us who are believers, what the enemy does is as the blessing comes, he throws turbulence. Now, if you're not aware you're going to turn all of your attention to the turbulence, you're going to miss the blessing. And so what I've learned from my mentors is being resilient isn't just about, like, sticking it out and having grit. It's also about having the tenacity of focus, to focus on the right thing when the noise is over here, because the blessing is there, but you'll miss it if you just focus on the noise. Second thing I've learned from my mentors, the third thing I've learned from my mentors has been the power of relationships. Let me tell you how it goes. Early on in your life and your career, you progress because of what you know. As you grow in your career, you progress because of how you can enable others to work. As you go even further, it has nothing to do with what you can enable others to do or how good you are. It has everything to do with who is willing to back you and with whom you've built relationships. So there's somebody watching this. I'm telling you now, you're stuck. Not because you're not technically good at what you do, or you don't know how to motivate, lead, and inspire people, or you're good at both of those things. But where you're very poor is having relationships with people who have influence. Where you are absent. These are people who have access to rooms, quarters, spaces, where you have no residency, you have no room, you have no voice. But they have access to those rooms, and they can bring you in. But you've got to learn to build relationships with them. The reason this is hard is because it goes back to the first thing, the thing about first candor, right? If you are somebody who's very good at their job. Sometimes you think because you are always right, that you always have the right to be the alpha. Building relationships with people of influence has taught me that sometimes it's okay to subdue yourself and to be submissive and to come in at a servant level, not at a leader level, not at a manager level, not at a dominant level, come at a contributor level. Just get access to the room. There's a conference I was just recently invited to, and I arrived at the conference and very fast realized who was sat around the table. And so whereas there was long kind of like. There was a lot of, like, posturing at the conference and people thumping up their chests about how big they are and what they've done and who's who and how big I was just like, I'm here. Thank you very much for the invitation. Thank you to the conference organizers for bringing me here. I would love to know how my presence here can help all of you in this room better achieve and amplify what you are trying to do. And that changed the tone not only of the conference for me, but it actually changed the tone of the conversations around the table. Because once I did it, it was like. It was almost like a domino. Once I did it, every other person in the room was like, okay, well, I'm also here to help. And then the next person was like, okay, I'll do my part. And then suddenly, the person who'd convened the conference, unbelievable young man, by the way, who's a Nigerian young man living in London, and he pulls together conferences of influential Africans around the world. The person who'd convened the conference was like, dude, thank you so much. You got these people to stop trying to be important to each other and to actually just start trying to be important to the cause. Learning how to be subservient at the right time, submissive at the right time. Learning how to pull back from what your agenda is and to amplify the agenda of the conversation. Learning how to take the spotlight away from you and put the spotlight on the body of work that has built me more relationships than you can begin to imagine. And so I want to encourage you as you're watching this video, if you don't have a mentor to try and get one, if you. But for those of you who do, I would love to hear from you in the comments section about what it is that you have learned from your mentor and how what you've learned from your mentor has helped you become a better version of yourself that's it friends. That's our podcast for this week. I look forward to seeing you soon. Sayonora hello family. We love to hear from you here at the VT Podcast, and we've made it even easier for you to do so you can see. Send us a WhatsApp voice note about your thoughts on our podcasts on 2781-505-7667. That's 278-1505-7667.
- [20:13]
Podcast Host/Announcer
This podcast was proudly brought to you by my Growth fund in partnership with Sound and Sounds Media.
- [20:24]
Vusi Thembekwayo
Sam.