Leading Others vs. Leading Yourself The ACTUAL Difference

Summary

Podcast Summary: Ideas That Matter with Vusi Thembekwayo

Episode Title: "Leading Others vs. Leading Yourself: The ACTUAL Difference"

Release Date: August 11, 2025
Host: Vusi Thembekwayo

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Episode Overview

In this thought-provoking episode, Vusi Thembekwayo explores the nuanced realities of leadership—specifically, the often overlooked and more challenging task of leading oneself versus leading others. Through testimonials, expert discussion, and dynamic exchanges, Vusi unpacks the distinctions, practical challenges, and transformative opportunities in personal and organizational leadership. The episode is enriched by community voice notes and a candid, wide-ranging conversation with guests Fred and Ruthie George, spanning from policy to entrepreneurship.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Community Reflections: The Power and Pain of Self-Leadership

(00:04 – 04:28)

• Monalisa Liabunya (Malawi) shares her struggle with self-kindness, reflecting on the ease of motivating others versus affirming oneself.
  • Quote: "Sometimes you have to be kind to yourself... we're kinder to the world and we're unkind to ourselves." (00:09, Monalisa)
• She resolves: "I guess that's what I'm going to be telling myself... I am enough. I am going to make it. I am loved. I am beautiful." (01:41, Monalisa)
• Ruthie George (Zambia) expresses gratitude for the podcast’s impact and requests a sequel to past episodes, acknowledging the role Vusi's work has played in shaping her mindset.

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2. Contemporary Leadership: Youth, Policy, and Economic Realities

(04:50 – 08:13)

• Vusi and Fred discuss his return to the Youth Class Festival and the evolving entrepreneurial landscape in Africa.
• Emergence of new challenges due to global venture capital contraction, and the resilience of African entrepreneurs.
  • Quote: "I'm very excited to meet with entrepreneurs who are building in this environment and to talk to them about...what's working, what's not working, how are you solutioning around the opportunities?" (05:30, Vusi)
• Policy-making in Africa is often top-down and disconnected from those impacted:
  • "We have to get to a place where we say nothing for us, without us... we end up with regulatory frameworks... that put strain on us, but we weren't consulted when they were constructed." (06:42, Vusi)

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3. The Essence of Leadership: Leading Self Before Others

(08:13 – 14:51)

• Vusi identifies four tiers of leadership: self, others, business, society.
  • "Leading self is the hardest because it requires of you to look in the mirror and to do the work of knowing where you're strong and where you're weak." (08:44, Vusi)
• Danger of ego in leadership — the constant negotiation between self-preservation and mission.
  • "If my position is informed by either self preservation and/or self expression, it's probably going to be an ego decision." (09:50, Vusi)
  • Mantra: "Always mission before man, always." (10:31, Vusi)
• Generational shifts: Modern leadership success demands rapid feedback and adaptability.
  • Leaders must now go on "listening tours, not just speaking tours." (12:48, Vusi)
  • "The protests happened because a generation that's used to speaking was trying to dictate to a generation that's used to being listened to." (13:33, Vusi)
• The challenge of defining and uniting around a shared national or organizational mission.
  • "Because we lack a uniform understanding of the thing we're aiming for... we are more driven by the thing we aspire for than the thing we're aiming for." (14:51, Vusi)

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4. Success vs. Significance & Internal vs. External Validation

(18:39 – 21:24)

• Fred prompts a discussion on growth versus success.
  • He frames growth as "internal validation" and success as "external validation." (18:52, Fred)
• Vusi reframes it as “success and significance”:
  • "Success frames itself in a period of time... Significance is not. Are you leaving people better than you found them?" (19:21, Vusi)
• He shares personal stories about measuring significance, particularly through his children’s eyes.

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5. The Distinction Between Choice and Options in Leadership

(21:24 – 26:21)

• Vusi challenges the “once is a mistake, twice is a choice” adage with a deeper look at the nature of power.
  • "One of the ways of understanding power is knowing that choice and option is not the same thing...” (21:40, Vusi)
• Leaders’ role is to expand options, not just offer choices.
  • "A leader's job today isn't to frame choices. It's to expand your options. That's what it is." (22:33, Vusi)
• Practical examples in business and policy are explored to illustrate how most operate at the "choice" level rather than the higher-leverage "options" level.

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6. The Founder, Entrepreneur, and CEO: Distinct Leadership Archetypes

(26:27 – 31:06)

• Fred and Vusi break down why transitioning from founder to CEO is tough.
  • Founders: create from nothing, rally resources.
    • "The role of founders is to create. That's what they do." (28:28, Vusi)
  • Entrepreneurs: intuitive, aggressive, willing to play by their own rules to outmaneuver larger competitors.
    • "Being an entrepreneur is about having the...ability to intuit... They'll have a cutthroat, ruthless nature about them, which is necessary to succeed." (28:32, Vusi)
  • CEOs: professionalize, institutionalize, scale, or prepare for exit.
    • "Then comes in the CEO at a later date whose role it is to...scale it or ready it for exit. These are three different periods in a business and...very rare" to be good at all of them. (29:33, Vusi)
• Myth-busting the idea that all great leaders are outliers:
  • "Many of the books speak about outlier founders, and so non outlier people wonder why they're not getting outlier results. But you're not an outlier person...You are in the real world." (31:06, Vusi)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Self-Leadership:
  • “Leading self is the hardest because it requires of you to look in the mirror and to do the work...” (08:44, Vusi)
• On Ego in Leadership:
  • “If my position is informed by either self preservation and/or self expression, it's probably going to be an ego decision...” (09:50, Vusi)
• On Generational Change:
  • "Leaders today have to go on listening tours, not just speaking tours." (12:48, Vusi)
  • "A generation that's used to speaking was trying to dictate to a generation that's used to being listened to." (13:33, Vusi)
• On Mission:
  • "Always mission before man, always." (10:31, Vusi)
• On Significance:
  • "Are you leaving the world a better place than you found it?... are you leaving people better than you found them?" (19:21, Vusi)
• On Choice vs. Option:
  • "A leader's job today isn't to frame choices. It's to expand your options." (22:33, Vusi)
• On Founders/Entrepreneurs/CEOs:
  • "The role of founders is to create. That's what they do... Many founders aren't entrepreneurs though." (28:28, Vusi)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Community Reflections: 00:04 – 04:28
• Entrepreneurship and Policy: 04:50 – 08:13
• Essence of Leadership: 08:13 – 14:51
• Success vs. Significance: 18:39 – 21:24
• Choice vs. Options in Leadership: 21:24 – 26:21
• Founder / Entrepreneur / CEO: 26:27 – 31:06

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Takeaways

• True leadership begins with leading self—a process fraught with self-honesty and personal growth.
• Effective leaders prioritize "mission before man" and recognize the difference between options (what's possible) and choices (what's available).
• Much of leadership is about expanding options for others, not just deciding between pre-selected choices.
• Don't be seduced by outlier stories; most leaders thrive by playing to their unique strengths and situational realities.

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For those who missed the episode, this summary delivers the episode’s core wisdom and humanity: Leadership is as much about listening and self-mastery as it is about strategy and outward influence.

Transcript

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Foreign.

[Monalisa Liabunya]

I hope you're doing good. My name is Monalisa Liabunya. I am from Malawi. And right now I just finished listening to your podcast, above and Beyond. And what I really like about it is when you say that sometimes you have to be kind to yourself or the fact that as human beings, sometimes we're kinder to the world and we're unkind to ourselves. And that made me think a lot about myself and everything else around me. And I started thinking about how even sometimes, I'm able to be kind to people. I'm able to say, actually, words of affirmation to people. I'm able to motivate other people. But when it comes to me, for me to believe that, okay, to believe that I can be great, to believe that I am. I am enough to believe that I matter and stuff, it's actually hard. But when it comes to me telling other people that, oh, you matter or you're great, stuff like that, sometimes it's just hard. But when it comes to other people, it's just easy. It. It flows easily in me. And right now I started thinking about it, like, okay, why is it that it's hard for me to want the best for me? Like, it's hard for me to sacrifice certain habits, to sacrifice certain people, to sacrifice certain, like, traumas? Yes, I went through this. Yes, in a way, it kind of tore me apart. It kind of broke me and stuff. But why is it so hard for me to let it go and focus on what's important? Because I feel like what's important is actually me telling myself that, you know what? You matter. You know that you're enough. You know what? You can be better. Like, you don't have to let your experiences define you. You don't have to let people define you. You just have to work hard and become better. So after listening to your podcast, I guess that's what I'm going to be telling myself. Like, I am enough. I am going to make it. I am. I am. Like, I am loved. I am beautiful.

[Ruthie George]

I am.

[Monalisa Liabunya]

I deserve it all. And I have to put in the effort to become better. Because becoming better, it means that I have to let go of certain parts of myself. I have to unbecome certain habits, certain traumas, certain excuses. Yeah, I don't know. That's what I have decided right now. And I'm going to work hard to become great. To be above. No, below.

[Ruthie George]

Hello, family. And the BT podcast. Family. Ideas that matter. Ideas really, really do matter. We appreciate your effort, your works. You are doing. And in making sure that you're changing the world and making it a better place than we actually found it, like you always put it, these podcasts are making a huge difference in our lives. Thank you so much for always being there for us out there. Two of the podcasts that stood out for me, really, number one is the Science of Money and second one is Foreign Heroes. Wow. The Fallen Heroes really resonated well with me. I listened to it at the stage where when I actually badly needed it and it really shaped my life and I looked at things in a more different and mature manner. After listening to your podcast, the Fallen Heroes, a challenge to you vocally. I'm looking out for season two or part two of that. Hey, when? When is part two of the Fallen Heroes coming out? Yeah. Looking out for that. If you can please just add something to it. Let's go a step further and do the fallen Heroes Part 2 or Season 2 and WOW. The science of Money.

[Fred]

Wow.

[Ruthie George]

Thanks, Ruthie George here from Zambia. Carry on with the good works. Much appreciated. Cheers.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

It's time to take your seat at the table. Find out how with Vusi Tembegwayo as we discuss ideas that matter. A catalyst for bold action.

[Fred]

Vusi, how's it been being back at the youth class festival for the second time in a row?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yeah. Hey, Fred, look. Great. Great to be back. I'm excited to be back. We had a great time in our last solja. Was it last year or the year before?

[Fred]

The year before.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

I can't believe it's been that long already. Yeah, but yeah, 2023. We had a great time and in fact, I think we did something in the similar space circa 23 and now we're back. I did try and dress like youth, but I didn't get the memo. So I'll try and do better a

[Fred]

bit tomorrow as we go for the keynotes that will be taking place on the 1st of March. What are you looking forward to the most?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

One of the things I really enjoyed the year before last was the exhibition stores you had of the businesses and entrepreneurs that are showcasing. I love talking to the actual founders of businesses, the entrepreneurs of businesses, the actual builders, the innovators. As you know, we are hugely challenged, both in small business finance, but also in venture finance in the continent. Today, a number of the moves that are happening in the US pulling back of funding is beginning to affect the ecosystem. And so just this week we've heard about one of the large venture studios based even here in Nairobi shutting down. So I'M very excited to meet with entrepreneurs who are building in this environment and to talk to them about, what are you doing, what's working, what's not working, how are you solutioning around the opportunities? That's the first. And then the second. I'm very excited to talk about policies and how we can get our economies to construct policy frameworks that would enable us to build businesses of value in the modern day. I'm excited by this.

[Fred]

Yeah. Speaking of policy, do you feel like it's a conversation that isn't had often enough, or is it that it's hard, but the depth isn't quite where it needs to be?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

It probably is all. It probably would be all three. First, the frequency of the conversation is not sufficient. Second, the depth of the conversation is not sufficient. But third, the people having the conversation just don't have enough material, they don't have enough knowledge themselves to be driving this conversation. And so, you know, I think first as youth, I'm sadly no longer youth. I turn 40 in two weeks or so. But first as youth and then as entrepreneurs and builders, we have to get to a place where we say nothing for us, without us. And I don't think we have embraced that thinking. And as a consequence, we end up with regulatory frameworks, rules, laws, legislations, policies that put strain on us, but we weren't consulted when they were constructed.

[Fred]

So it's the idea of a policy that looks great on paper, but in execution serves no purpose, serves no constituency.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

I mean, without getting into the details, if I think about just the very. And I must tell you, from an outsider's perspective, the very inspirational action we saw the young people of Kenya take last year is a mark of this. It's a generation that stands up and says, we don't know who's writing these rules and for what purpose it is, but what we do know is it doesn't serve our generational agenda. So we need to rethink this. And I think, first, if the rest of the continent can take that, it'd be a long way. It'd be a great win for us. But second, if all of us in the ecosystem of building businesses can do that, it'll also be a big win for us.

[Fred]

I think bringing up what happened last year in Kenya, what comes to mind for me is leadership. Leadership of the generation, leadership of certain figures who stood out among the crowd.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yeah.

[Fred]

And so my question to you on leadership is between leading others and leading self, which one is more difficult?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Leading self for sure. Yeah, Leading self for sure. So when we work with entrepreneurs and help them build businesses, we have these four tiers of leadership. So it's leading self, leading others, leading business, leading society.

[Fred]

Right.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

And leading self is the hardest because it's where everything starts. And if you haven't dealt with your own demons, you become a terrible leader and a manager of other people. There's sufficient examples of that. You'll find a person who's in a leadership role or a managerial role, who doesn't have the breadth of self confidence to allow people who are as capable, if not more capable, to be in the same room with them because they haven't dealt with their own demons. So leading self is the hardest because it requires of you to look in the mirror and to do the work of knowing where you're strong and where you're weak, and knowing where you need to develop and being comfortable in owning both your strengths as well as your deficiencies.

[Fred]

That does require setting aside ego. How do you differentiate between confidence that's gone, maybe aligned too far, stretched too far, and confidence that's just the right balance. Because I think the difference perhaps is how you, how you approach ego and how you look at ego.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

The sense I can tell you about personally, how I kind of navigate that, I try to ask myself what, what is? Which part of me is making that decision? So say for instance, you and I have to make a particular decision and you asked me for my position. If my position is informed by either self preservation and or self expression, it's probably going to be an ego decision because it means that I'm trying to get you or whatever the situation is to move in the direction that best suits me, right?

[Ruthie George]

Yeah.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

But if the decision is about, or rather if my approach in making the decision is what is it that best serves the mission, not the man, then it's a different conversation piece. So we often have this conversation in our own firm. Always mission before man, always. And that's at the lowest tiers of the organization and the highest tiers of the organization. So even the team, when they hold me accountable, if there is something I've either not done well, could have done better, or I'm not paying attention to the conversation is this is the mission and we have to place the mission ahead of you, the person, even if you are amongst the people who have crafted this mission, the mission becomes bigger than the man. And I think for a lot of us who struggle, for a lot of people who struggle with egos because they think man is bigger than mission, then

[Fred]

have we maybe even as a Generation, have we misunderstood what leadership is in essence?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

I don't know if you've misunderstood it as perhaps we haven't thought about what does its complexities insofar as leading in our day to day. Right. The world today is just not what it was 100 years ago. 2025 is not 1925, 2025 is not 1975. So if you think about 1925, 1975 and 2025, these kind of three generations, we are markedly different as generations. The 1975 generation didn't have mobile telephony, they didn't have the Internet, they didn't have satellite tv. Today, something happens in the Middle east and before you leave home, you know about it, you know the casualties, you know exactly what's happened. Right. And, and that level of information and connectivity changes the pressures you and I face in leading. And so whereas a generation ago, 50 years ago, you could have an idea and a vision and, and as you're executing that vision, the feedback mechanism, that loop took a particular period of time. Today that loop is diminished. You know this to be true.

[Ruthie George]

Yeah.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

You put out something in the marketplace about the festival and before the end of the day, you know, if people want that speaker or not, you know if they want that agenda or not. Right. So as the reduction of that feedback loop has meant that leaders today have to go on listening tours, not just speaking tours.

[Fred]

Right.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

But the 1975 generation, you see them today in politics. What do they do when they go on rallies? They speak, they stand in front of an audience and they give us their policy positions. How many go on a listening tour and say, I'm coming to all of these regions and I'm not going to say anything. I'm going to sit in the middle of a town square and all of you citizens, you come and tell me what the issues are and I'm just going to listen right now. Intuitively, venture builders and entrepreneurs understand this. We know because we understand that route to market, product, market fit can be accelerated and the timeline diminished substantially if I just listen. So for us, it's a survival mechanism. But insofar as leading in society, leading community and leading in government goes, they haven't got that memo yet.

[Fred]

Right.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

And I think it's a big part of why even the protests here that happened, happened. The protests, it didn't happen because there was a misunderstanding. The protests happened because there was a speaking and not hearing. That's why the protests happened. The protests happened because a generation that's used to speaking was trying to dictate to a generation that's used to being listened to. And that clash had the generation that's used to being listened to saying, well, if you won't listen, we'll make you listen. And I think today, if you are a leader anywhere in the world, the most effective thing you can do is the Ellen Leadership. Shut up and listen. Just listen.

[Fred]

But that requires putting the mission before the man.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

100%. Yeah, 100%. Now, the hard thing about this mission before man thing is you'd be surprised how many leaders don't even know what the mission is.

[Fred]

Wow. But they're leaders, so why are they in leadership?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Well, because they have found a way to articulate people's aspirations. I can articulate your aspirations, but still not know what the mission is. Let me ask you the question. If I went out today to the streets of Nairobi and I stopped 10 young people say, and I said to them, what do you think is the mission of Kenya for the next 10 years? I'm willing to bet I'd get 10 different answers. So there you go.

[Ruthie George]

Yeah.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

And by the way, that's not a casting. An aspersion would be the same in my country. Right. So because we lack a uniform understanding of the thing we're aiming for, it means that when somebody comes to us and speaks to us, what we aspire for, we are more driven by the thing we aspire for than the thing we're aiming for. In other words, I aspire for a good life, a comfortable life. I want to live well. I want my kids to live well. I want to be safe. I want to be happy. But you know what the mission might be? The mission might be an equal society where the economy is growing, where there's opportunity for small businesses. And anybody, regardless of where they come from, of the sweat of their brow and the sweat on their back, can make a life for themselves. That might be the mission. So the mission is different to the outcome. But when a leader is able to articulate the aspirational outcome people want, people will gravitate towards them without necessarily asking, but does he get what the mission is?

[Fred]

Does that mean then that whether in business or in society, consensus is essential for not just leadership to thrive, but then also the direction to be correct and accurate?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Sure. I mean, I think consensus is one of the models you can use to do this. But you're a student, so you would know this better than me. Some of the most effective leaders in driving a society towards a mission have not led by consensus. They have forced society into a we're going to focus on these set of things, right? So sometimes being a leader leading a mission requires that you drive for consensus. Others it requires, sometimes it requires that you are more forceful in your approach. The latter often controversial, very difficult to do. And let me just say one last thing. Most leaders will be criticized and misunderstood in their time. And that's okay. That really is okay. So if you're a leader who's focused on the mission, you shouldn't be focused on being popular. You should be focused on the mission and beyond your times. History will judge you the way it judges you.

[Fred]

Right. That's powerful.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Hey, family. I just wanted to say thank you to the 1.7 million of you who are returning viewers on our channel. When the team shared that with me, I swear I almost fell off my chair. I was like 1.7 million people who returned to watch the content on the channel. That's just unbelievable. I'm so humbled that you find the content we share virtually valuable. And I promise we're going to do the best we can to keep bringing you content of value. I do have an ask, though. 66.4% of you that watch the channel have yet to subscribe. You know what really, really, really helped me? I've got a running bet with the team and we want to see if we can get that to below 60%. I need a favor. I need you to scroll down the video. You're going to see that bell icon and I need you to press it because then you're going to subscribe and you're going to help me meet my metric. We have some exciting guests we've got planned for you, some incredible guests we've already shot. You would have met Kasim for our first ideas that matter, plus video format of the content podcast, and it's already gone viral. We literally hit 30,000 views within the first day of posting it. No. No advertising, no marketing. We just put up a link and I said to the team, I think we're onto something here. One of the things I'm very passionate about is making sure we leave the world better than we found it and that we leave our community better than we found them. So hit the subscribe button and I look forward to sharing more content with you, more insights, more motivation, and just generally helping the world be become a better place using this medium. All right, family, we'll talk soon. Cheers.

[Fred]

Speaking on growth, between success and growth, how should we prioritize the two? Should we place one before the other? Does one result in the other? Is There a difference?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Ask me more about this. Maybe say more.

[Fred]

Growth to me implies internal validation, whereas success requires external validation. I'm not successful if I'm not getting awards or I'm not getting a round of applause at the end of every sentence I make. So between the external and the internal, and that battle between staying true to who you are, but also needing that support, or the idea of support, or the perception of support, how do we prioritize the two?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

So the way that I think about this, you call it success and growth. I call it success and significance. In other words, success is the thing that society can look at and measure. You were successful as a CEO because you delivered 3x revenue growth over a period of 18 months. Say you were successful as a executive in a business because your line function met all of its KPIs. You were successful as a professional because you delivered on all your kpas and you got your bonus, you got your promotion. But ask your kids what success is and, and what you begin to realize is they don't judge you on the things that you measure as success. They judge you on the things that matter. So, for instance, for my children, success is whether or not dad made the basketball game on Saturday. That's what my son's after. Plays junior NBA. He's incredibly talented. He just wants me there when he's shooting the hoop or when he's playing defense. Right. He wants me there when he's doing his Steph Curry three pointer. How do you measure that? You can't, but his heart knows. So this is the fundamental difference between aiming for success versus aiming for significance. Success frames itself in a period of time. It's driven by a set of things which are typically quantitatively available to be measured. Significance is not. This is the generation of brave Kenyans who fought the, you know, the British colonizers and freed your country. How do you measure that generation? How do you measure. You can't. What would you, what would you give them? You. You can't, but you know the impact that they've had. And so I, I think again, in the world we're in today, it's about a balance of these two things. It's about not just are you being successful, but are you leaving the world a better place than you found it? If you're a leader, are you leaving people better than you found them? And, and to the extent to which you're driven not only by success, but by significance and balancing these, that's going to be the true test of leaders in this era.

[Fred]

Sounds like that requires a lot of awareness, awareness of what choice means. And with choice comes the element of mistakes. If I said to you, once is a mistake, twice is a choice, would you agree?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I have a very controversial point of view on this, which I'll share with you in a moment. But before we talk about your thing around mistake and choice, a friend of mine said to me the other day, he said, one of the ways of understanding power is knowing that choice and option is not the same thing. And so I said to him, explain this to me. He says, if you go to the ballot on voting day, say, and you arrive and there are five candidates, you have the power of choice. Would you agree? Yes, sure. But who's more powerful than you are? The people who made. Who had the option to put the five people on the ballot. In other words, you weren't consulted in the final list of five. You just got the list of five. But there were a few people who started with a list of 5,000 and funneled it down to five. Make sense? They had the options. You have the choice. A leader's job today isn't to frame choices. It's to expand your options. That's what it is. And this is, by the way, what Covid did. Think about what Covid did for large organizations, even for small businesses. For us, we're a good example of this. We were locked into a country. We had a very specific strategy for a very specific country answering a very specific problem. Then Covid hit, and suddenly we realized that the sovereign risk attached to our business is just way too high. If the government says, we're locked down for 12 months, I can't trade. But there are other parts of the world where. Where people can trade. And so I recognized as a leader that even though my executives have choices that they can make to navigate this period, my job is to give them options. And amongst those options is to say, which geography do you want to trade in? So the more geographies I put on the table, I frame options. How they act in each of those geographies is how they exercise choice.

[Fred]

Wow. I don't think I've ever looked at it that way. I don't think I've ever looked at choice and options in that manner before.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

So you might want to think, for instance, about, you know, Youth plus as the platform. One of the things you were telling me two years ago, which excited me about what you were doing, was you were thinking about the option set, you know, so you were thinking about, if we were to build it as a platform for it to go online, if we were to plug in artificial intelligence, if we were to make it a trading platform or platform of platforms, what would that look like? All of those are option sets. In each of those options are a series of choices about how you might want to compete. But you were naturally thinking at the option level. The challenge for most of us today is we are led by leaders who think at choice level, not at options level.

[Fred]

How do we tap into that within ourselves? Or rather, how do we recognize? So we may be doing it sort of innately or unaware that we're actually looking at or thinking at the option level. How do we sort of break that barrier from thinking at the choice level?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Well, amongst the first things probably is to just be aware. Just be aware. You and I were having the conversation yesterday about. So last week I'm on the phone. And in preparation for this, what I tend to do when I prepare to go into a country is I'll spend about a week, an hour a day reading news from that country just to know what's going on. Capture the zeitgeist. So I'm reading, and I read somewhere that that rubbish was dumped at a particular public office. I thought, this is very interesting. And then I learned that the authority that dumped the rubbish was also a government entity. So a government entity is dumping rubbish at the office of a government entity. I thought, this is fascinating. And I would have loved to be in the room of the people who thought that was a good decision. Because what would have happened is for them to make that decision. They would have had two, three choices. Right. They were operating at choice level.

[Fred]

Right.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Operating at an options level would have required them to leave the problem and maybe elevate it to a level higher.

[Fred]

What kind of options to solutions do we have?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Well, exactly. So one of the options, for instance, might have been before, I presume. Why don't I reach out?

[Fred]

Hmm. Pick up the phone.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Pick up the phone. We don't know if this did or didn't happen, but something tells me by the time you're dropping rubbish off at your neighbor's house, you probably didn't phone them. You were just upset and you dropped the rubbish off. Right. So, so, so, so for me, it's really about calling your leaders to operate at higher.

[Fred]

And that includes also leaders within a business setting.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Almost always. Almost always the functional role. If you look at large organizations, people in the C suite, typically the issues that they deal with, that they frame as strategic Issues is around framing the option set, right?

[Fred]

Yeah.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

But the middle management and below, they're around the choices within those set of options.

[Fred]

Is that why it's difficult to transition from founder to CEO?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Oh yeah. Say more.

[Fred]

Because I don't call myself the CEO of Youth Plus. I'm the founder of Youth plus to mean I started it. And I believe that's separate from being the substantive CEO. A CEO requires more, I may argue, than a founder does. And also a founder has a certain limit, a certain expiration dates. You can't have your kids in the house until they're 35, so to speak. You need to at some point hand over the nurturing of that baby.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

A few things to say to that. It's the difference between the founder, the entrepreneur and the CEO. So the founder will craft the vision, he will rally the troops, he will muster resources, he will find a way to create resources that aren't there. I love founders. I'll tell you why. Let's say you and I today start a business. You know, Vossi and Fred, we start a business, VNF Enterprise llc.

[Fred]

Sounds great.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

I like it too. And we register in Delaware and we come up with a 25 page deck, pitch deck, and we do a. And we say, you know, our business is going to tackle a fintech space. We're going to do X, Y and Z and we're raising capital on a pre money valuation million dollars. Okay, Think about what we've just done. We sat down and had a thought. We took that thought, gave it a name and we took that name, gave it an identity. We took that identity and gave it a vision. And we took that vision and gave it a problem to solve. And having done that, we registered it. And out of nowhere, with just yours and my thinking, we have now created a million dollars worth of value. Value that didn't exist yesterday. It exists now. Does that make sense? So the role of founders is to create. That's what they do.

[Fred]

Yeah.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Many founders aren't entrepreneurs though.

[Fred]

How?

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Because being an entrepreneur is about having the. It's not a skill thing, it's a gut thing. A good entrepreneur will have the, the, the, the ability to intuit. Of the three products that you think will succeed, this is the one that'll work. They'll have the aggressive nature to drive into a market because they're operating a small entity, often against much bigger competitors. They will have a cutthroat, ruthless nature about them, which is necessary to succeed because if they play fair, then they're not going to succeed. Because the marketplace isn't fair to them. Does that make sense? If I'm a small company challenging bigger companies, I can't play fair. If David went up to Goliath and faced him wearing a sword, he would have lost. He didn't do this. He played his game, not Goliath's game. So the role of the entrepreneur is to figure out how do I gain my unfair share. That takes a particular kind of person and you either have that or you don't. Most founders, because they are vision led, society led, don't have that. And so when you hear people talk about co founders, usually it's because there's the person who's like the vision and the driver, and then beneath them, you'll find them deployed in the, in the operations role of the finance role is the cutthroat person who's about get it done now. And here are the terms and conditions. Then comes in the CEO at a later date whose role it is to take all of this, professionalize it, institutionalize it, and then either scale it or ready it for exit. These are three different periods in a

[Fred]

business and it sounds like each of those look at competition differently.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

For sure, for the founder, it's can I create value when none existed? Because you and I just created this thing. But if we're going to innovate and create value where none exists, what do you think the incumbents are going to do?

[Fred]

Definitely not sit back.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

Yeah, they're not going to sit back. They're going to fight us. Right. So what you and I then need to is the cutthroat person who goes, oh, you want to fight, let's fight. Do you get it right? And then once we've earned our place in society and we've guarded ourselves and we've built the necessary guardrails and we've got a strong organization, some decent capital, now what do we need? We need the guy who's going to institutionalize it ready for exit or scale. These are three very different periods. There are some people who have the ability to be all three. But to be clear, they are very rare.

[Ruthie George]

Very rare.

[Vusi Thembekwayo]

And so one of the challenges with reading books about founders, particularly Western centric American books, is they tell us about the people who are all three. But that's like, it would be like reading a book, Football for Dummies, but they use Pele as the reference. How many of us are going to be Pele? How many of us are going to be Messi? How many of us are going to be Ronaldo? It's just these are statistical improbabilities, right? So if you are going to write a book, Football for Dummies, you might just want to use the guy who played, you know, college soccer and then became a dad coach. Because if he can understand the book, then the rest of society can understand the book. There is a. I can't remember who it was, but there was a professor who spoke about this, about the incorrect statistical averaging, about the story of founders and what it takes to win. And the point they were making was that many of the books speak about outlier founders and so non outlier people wonder why they're not getting outlier results. But you're not an outlier person. You didn't get a 4.0 GPA. You weren't on the track field or the football team. You didn't get a scholarship at Yale or Harvard and an elect to drop out. You just, you know, you come from Karen, you know, you did fairly well, you went to a decent school and you've got a great business that you want to start. But you are in the real world. And so most people just aren't all three. This podcast was proudly brought to you by my growth fund in partnership with Sound and Sounds Media.