← Ideas That Matter Podcast by Vusi Thembekwayo
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- [00:00]
Listener from KwaZulu Natal
Foreign.
- [00:07]
Elvis from Ghana
A very good day to you, sir. And this is from KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, of course. I actually started listening to your podcast around 2021. Then eventually I stopped listening to it. No bad reasons behind it. But this year when I got employed to one of the law firms as a candidate attorney, each and every morning I got to work, I had this theme of greeting my employees by saying hello. And it just picked up their energy. And one day one of them asked me, where do you get this? And then it struck me when I was sitting down with myself thinking, actually I've heard this before. And it was from the VT podcast somewhere around 2021 and 2022. And so I had to go back. When I got back, I had this, the coming of age episode that was really powerful together with the glass ceiling episode. It just speaks directly to our individual experiences, regardless of how different they are. And it just connects everything into one piece because lets face it, the world needs better people to make it a better world. And someone has to take the red pill. I like that. I like that analogy. Someone has to take the red pill to make this a better place. And if you don't fear that, then you can put the change you have in your mind into action. Thank you so much, Fousi. I'm back to it and let's get it. Thank you so much.
- [01:47]
Listener from KwaZulu Natal
Hello, Vusi. My name is Elvis. I'm a Ghanaian, currently based in England, practicing as a mental health nurse. I first chanced on your video on Facebook when you were talking about Toyota and Lexus and I felt really, really connected. So I searched you on social media and I got in touch with your podcast. So I subscribed to your ideas that matter and I've been following, I've been listening every day, every morning, and I felt there was something moderate for me. Yes, I've been practicing mental health for the past 16 years and. But then there is that feeling, always that, look, guy, you, you were made for something more than this. That there is that unease feeling for me. It's like this is not where you're supposed to be. Yes, you're doing this, you're doing well there, but you made for something. I enjoy public speaking. I've been a pastor when I was in Ghana for one of the biggest churches and preaching, teaching, leading people, encouraging people, directing people. And I felt that what you do is exactly what I feel I'm meant to do. And my question is, where do you start from? And I feel that you're going to be a great mentor. For me and I thought that I should connect to to you. I'm looking forward to hear from you and also connect to you more properly and get to learn what to do and see how the Lordly leads me from here. Thank you.
- [03:18]
Vusi Themba Mbegwayo
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. Hello, family. And I wanted to say to you on this podcast that it's time to look up. What does that even mean? One of the things that happens, especially for those of us who are entrepreneurs, business owners, who are building and scaling our businesses, is you look down so much and you're so focused on what you're doing, what you're building and fixing the small minutiae of detail, which by the way, is very necessary, that sometimes we lose a sense of perspective, we lose a sense of context. We don't look up. And so I just come from doing some work all over, actually. I did an incredible conference in Tanzania. We had like 2,000 people there. Then I just did Nigeria, Lagos, about as near as makes no difference, the same number of people. And then we just did Cape Town. 2000 people there too. And in between that, I had like several corporate sessions, executive sessions, which I thought were very interesting. One of the things that happened is I heard this unbelievable speaker. She really is so, so good. She used to be, I believe, the vice chancellor, or the dean, rather, at Africa Leadership University Alu, and now she's the dean at the University of Cape Town's Graduate School of Business. Her name is Catherine Dugan. Incredible speaker. So Catherine was speaking after me, which, to be clear, for for most speakers is an invidious position. And she just took it on and gone onto the stage with such an unbelievable amount of energy. And she opens up her presentation and she starts talking about building weak links. She says that there are strong links. Strong links are the families, rather the relationships we have which anchor our lives. These are typically familial relationships. It's relationships with people you've grown up with. It's your best friends. It's really deep relationships that you've had for a very long time. She then says that there is now scientific evidence and literature to prove that actually a big part of how you build and scale your business is not on strong relationships or rather strong links, but rather on weak links. Weak links, you might imagine, are relationships that are cordial, civil, but tend to be surface level. It's what we do when we talk about building networks These would be, for instance, relationships with people who you know of but you don't know altogether that well. You might not know their children's names or where they went to school. You might not know their deepest fears or what religion they are of. You might not know what issues they're struggling with at a point in time. But you know the person at a surface level. Her argument was that those are the relationships that tend to accelerate the networks that we build. And I was sat on the plane yesterday thinking about this, and I think she's absolutely on the mark. I really, really do. I was thinking about some of the opportunities I have had and opportunities that have taken me very, very far in life. And those opportunities have tended to come from weak links. Now, it's not to say that my strong link relationships aren't of value, the inverse, actually. They're very, very valuable and very, very important. But it is to say that the weak links relationship tend to be a little bit more viral and they tend to expand your network at an exponential rate. Think about it this way. You can only have so many really, really good friends. You can only have a few best friends. You can only have so many day ones. And so by the construct of how we think about strong links, by definition, those relationships tend to be finite and growing. That network itself is not going to grow at an exponential rate because you neither have the bandwidth nor the time, the memory or the energy to be honest and true to those relationships. The extent to which it would require weak links relationship. However, though you can. These are relationships, for instance, where you might want to set up your CRM to remind you of a particular person's birthday, right? Or remembering an important event in someone's life, or reaching out to someone at a time when they need you. Now, this is something I've been trying fairly recently, and I think that's why what she said spoke to me. So one of the things I've been trying fairly recently is I now have a day in the week where I just do relationships. By the way, we're shooting this on Friday, which is encroaching on my relationship day, because that's the day when I just do relationships. And what I've done is I've written on a piece of paper names of people who are important but who I don't get to talk to all the time. And just wanting to touch base. Now, I'm not sure if it's just me, but, you know, it's like very awkward when you forgot somebody's birthday and then you just Reach out like a year later you say, hey, how you doing? Right. So one of the things Katherine said, and I didn't realize I was doing that until she said it, so what I do is I think about where the other person is or might be and who I can connect them with and then I just help make the connection. So I'll give you a fairly good example of this. A good acquaintance of mine, a very good acquaintance of mine has just been nominated and made CEO designate of one of the fastest growing banks in the world, and one of the challenger banks in South Africa specifically, you know the bank I'm talking about, and they've got a digital first kind of strategy. And he and I met many years ago when he was still building his own business, which was a lending business for businesses that got bought by the bank. And now he's become CEO designate of the bank. And so he and I chat, but not all together that often. We might talk twice, maybe three times in a year. And he has an incredible ability to manage relationships because I've noticed about him every time I will WhatsApp him, he'll like respond within the hour, which given how busy he is, is, I must tell you, one hell of an achievement. So he's on the one end and on the other I've got this young lady who booked me years ago when she was working for an energy business, a French owned energy business. And the fact that I've said that you'll know what the name of the energy business is. She used to work for Total at the time and she booked me to speak at their event and her and I talk every so often. She might comment on one of my WhatsApp statuses or I on hers, but we're not at like best friends level. I don't know her birthday, say, I don't know the name of her husband or the name of her kids, or you know, kind of like important milestones. In fact, she even left the company she worked for, changed careers, to change careers, change industries, change companies, change jobs. And I was completely unaware. So that's kind of like the distance of the relationship. Both of these though relationships I would like still to keep and maintain. So the other day she goes on her WhatsApp and she says, I'm looking for somebody from this bank to come and speak to our executive team about their strategy for growth. Anybody in my contact list who can introduce me, please help. And I happen to be acquaintances, strong acquaintances with a guy who's just been made CEO designate. So I reach out And I say, dude, this is happening. Do I have your permission to give your context to this person? Which, by the way, I must tell you, is an absolute must when you're building weak link relationships. One of the things I hate is when I have trusted you with my details and you share them with somebody without telling me. Don't do this. I hate people reaching out, saying, vosi, I got your details from George and George didn't tell me he was gonna be handing out my details. If I trust you with my number, I trusted you, not you and your universe. So I reach out to my strong acquaintance and I say, I've got this person who's looking for somebody from your company. I know you've just been made co designate. By the way, congratulations. I saw once the Saab, the bank regulator in South Africa had approved, so congratulations on all the best and anything I can do to help, please reach out. But do I have your permission to connect you? He says, sure, absolutely. Reach out to her, make the connection. So to her, I'm honouring our relationship as I do to him. That was the first step. The second step though, was before I even reached out to him, I said to her, I actually know the guy who's just been made CEO designate, but I need to get his permission to give his details to you. Let me reach out, give me the night. Let's see if he comes back and if he's open to it. She said, absolutely, no problem. So by the time I'd made the connection, I had both her understanding that the context and relationship she'd given me with. She can trust me with them because I won't just hand them out. And I had acted in a manner that honoured my relationship with him. Two weeks later he contacts me and he says, hey, I've got a session for my executive team. It's a quick session. It's happening in Cape Town. If you're in Cape Town, I would love for you to pop into the session and maybe speak to the team for 15 minutes. If not, we can even do something on a teams or like a zoom link. It really would be great. I'd love for my team to hear from you and get some of the global perspectives that you share when you're speaking all over the world. This is my core business, this is what I do. Ordinarily, I would take the and send them through to my team. There'd be a commercial process that would start, there'd be contracting a whole host of things, but because it was him, I said, absolutely, consider it Done. That was it. So that body of relationships gets honored by how I show up to those relationships. But notice he's not going to be upset about the fact that I might have not remembered his birthday. And she's not going to be upset about the fact that I might not know she changed careers because I didn't show up at that level. I showed up at the level of what value can I bring? Which is something Kathryn said in her keynote. And it's what I wanted to tell you in terms of looking up. Looking up and building relationships is often not about what you can gain, and it's also not about what you can offer to people. It's actually often about how two people in your networks, once they're connected through you, what they can offer each other. And so I really want to encourage you to think about the relationships you have and how you show up for those relationships. I want to encourage you to not just focus on working in, but also on your business. And I want to encourage you to recognize that as important as it is to get the right product, right price, right locations, and all of those mechanistic things we do to build our businesses, it's just as important to make sure that you have the right relationships with the right people at the right places. Let me end with this quick story. So many years ago, I got to meet a particular young lady, Unbelievable young lady, a chartered accountant by training. And at the time when we met, she was working for a particular finance institution. And her and I met and had a conversation. And the conversation was about the work she was doing and whether or not there might have been opportunity and potential for us to do some deals together. We eventually didn't. It never kind of the wheel didn't complete itself. But we kept in touch, kept talking, kept the relationship open. And once in a while, I would meet somebody who was an entrepreneur that had the right kind of business for her mandate, looking for the right kind of funding for her funding instruments. And all I would do is I would reach out and say, hey, I've got this entrepreneur. They're looking for X. It's not the kind of deals we do. Do you mind if I connect you with this entrepreneur? And she'd say, absolutely. And so over the past few years, I've been like sending her a flurry of activity, businesses and opportunities. Now she's changed jobs, she's moved to a different institution, much larger, with much larger pockets of capital. And she reaches out to me and says, hey, this is where I'm at. I would love for us to have a coffee and let's talk a bit about where it is you're at, what you're doing, where I'm at and what I'm doing. And if there is an opportunity to collaborate and work together, I mention this only to say I could talk to that institution through the, you know, like the fixed channels, I could phone the reception and get the response link and send through the documentation. Or I could build relationships with people and they would build the relationships for me. And those relationships I could leverage to get the same thing. Weak links was Kathryn's thesis and it's what I wanted to share with you here today are the true unlock of exponential value for your business. And so I want to encourage you to not just look down and look into what you're building, but also to look up and think around how do you build? How do you scale? How do you take your business to next? Most importantly, how do you build strong weak link relationships that allow you to scale and unlock your next all right, family, that's our podcast for this week. 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 so you can send us a WhatsApp voice note about your thoughts on our podcasts on 278-1505-7667. That's 278-1505-7667. We look forward to hearing from you. This podcast was proudly brought to you by my growth fund in partnership with Sound and Sounds Media. Sam.