BILLIONAIRE STRIVE MASIYIWA RECOUNTS “HARD TIMES” AND BEING MOCKED ABOUT “FANCY DEGREE”
By Strive Masiyiwa
Some will laugh at you. Stay the course anyway.
One day I was at the bank waiting in line to see the bank manager. All I wanted was an appointment, which I ultimately did not get.
An old acquaintance who’d been a low-level guy at the place I had worked before I started my own business, breezed in with an entourage of hangers-on and personal body guards. He was dressed in what you guys would call “bling” today!
He did not ask for an appointment but just went in and saw the manager.
As he left the bank after a long time, and before I was turned away, he spotted me in the queue and called out loudly: “Strive! How are you?! I hear you have fallen on hard times, my friend! “ then laughed loudly.
“You were always a smart-talking dreamer, with your fancy degree. People like you are just there to work for the real business people like me. See, I started after you and now look at how much money I’m making?” he said with an even louder laugh.
Others in the room giggled quietly as everyone knew about my predicament trying to get a license for my mobile venture.
Looking back at incidents like this, I’m actually grateful there was no social media as I would have been slaughtered [so to speak] by people like him.
After I failed to get that bank appointment, I went home and slumped to my knees and prayed for strength. It was hard. But here is my point for some of you: “I have been young and now I’m old… I have seen such people who seem to flourish out of nowhere, and appear to have it all, spreading themselves like bay leaves on the surface of the water.”
“But then I looked and they had vanished just as suddenly …” [paraphrased from the Psalmist].
As an entrepreneur now trying to develop your business venture in the right way, you face one challenge I didn’t have back then… On platforms like Instagram you will be [or are] flooded with images of people who want to make you feel like you are a failure simply because you have an 8-to-5 job, or have an idea to start a venture that takes time, or you have had a failure [from which you will learn and grow eventually].
DON’T LET IT GET TO YOU!
There is nowhere it is written that you have to stay on those platforms, or even follow them so that they enter your feeds! I never see or read about any of them because I would never allow my algorithms to track and follow what they do.
Teach the algorithms on your social media to remove such influences or influencers who are not wholesome for you or add to your growth or learning. Your time, energy, and mental health are too precious.
Just remember: What you are doing is really important. How do I know this? Because you are one of my @LionCubs!
This week I’m in the United States where I was honoured a few days ago to be awarded an honorary doctorate from one of America’s and the world’s foremost universities, Princeton. Some of you will know Princeton was first made famous as the place where Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein taught physics and where the father of computer science, Alan Turing, earned his doctorate!
I’m deeply humbled by the honor and grateful to the university, and members of my family and friends, including my mentor Bishop Joseph Garlington who came as my “father” to witness this day.
To God be all honor and praise, in Jesus’ Name. #fblifestyle #motivation
