Vusi Thembekwayo

Can Lions Swim?

The hardest thing to admit to yourself is that you are on the wrong path or that what you are doing is frankly not what you were designed to do. For most people what makes this even harder or makes the introspection more difficult is in not understanding what the word “purpose” means. Contrary to popular belief, performance & aesthetic appeal are not how you measure your purpose. Its not about how good you look, or what others think about you… its not even about what you think of yourself.

Understanding your purpose is as simple as answering one question: with the least effort & minimal concentration, what is it that you do best? Earlier in my career I used to get on the stage and deliver an impromptu speech (one that I had prepared 5 minutes before) and would beat my competitors ho had prepared their speeches months before and had been practicing and perfecting them.

Understanding your purpose also has nothing to do with your age. I have just been reading about Farrah Gray (www.farrahgray.com), he just got an honorary doctorate and he is only 25 years old (so you understand that I am very jealous!).  To truly live your purpose you must ignore what the world has been telling about the conventional rules of success. It has nothing to do with time or desire. It’s all about what you were designed to do viz. you were born with the innate ability to perform well at that particular thing.

So I am 25 now and am the only African motivational speaker ranked in the top 10 in the world. Most of my fellow South African speakers hate me – they despise my success, my achievements and most importantly they hate the one thing that they can never take from me: the fact that this is what I was born to do. Most motivational speakers are 40+ years old and have never reached the levels of success that I have. They speak to local audiences and regurgitate the same messages that people have been hearing for the last 10 years.  I on the other hand speak in 4 of the 7 continents to over 250 000 people each year. I was even asked to speak in China with an interpreter standing next to me (definitely the funniest thing I have ever done on stage). I have created this level of demand without advertising, simply by being so good on the stage that people feel compelled to tell others about me and recommend to their friends and colleagues for bookings. So saying this is what I was born to is not arrogance, its fact!

I was recently talking to my friend Wandi Nzimande: the founder of Loxion Kulca (www.loxionkulca.co.za) arguably the most successful clothing brand to come out of South Africa, about purpose. We came up with interesting analogy: if you took a lion the fiercest creature in the jungle and threw in the middle of the Indian Ocean, it wouldn’t survive 3 minutes. Why? Because that’s not what it was created to do. Similarly if you took the great white shark, one of the most feared predators of the water-world and left it middle of the Kruger national park. It wouldn’t survive 3 minutes. Funny how the animals haven’t lost their appeal (looks), ferocity (desire) or functions (skills); they are simply not where they were intended (built) to be.

Now consider this in your own life. Are you where you were intended (built) to be? Are you living the life you were intended to live? Are you achieving what you born to achieve. Remember that each of us enters this world with a debt:  that debt is only fulfilled when we have the impact on the world we were built to have. After all, there is nothing noble about being mediocre to fit into the role the world assigns you. I am great, because that’s what I was born to be!

www.vusi.co.za

Motivational speaker are not trained, they are born.
When I was 15 years old I got on stage for the first time. I remember that tiny local school hall that had more than 1000 people in it. I was scared, mortified, sweaty. I was completely unprepared. I had scribbled my talk on 8 pages that had been folded, creased, dented, smeared and completely abused. I hadn’t even had the chance to rehearse my speech. My peers – all 1000 of the kids with whom I attended school – were in that hall waiting to hear me speak. There we 4 speakers on the roster. The 3 before me were seniors – they had been doing public speaking for 5 years. They had their queue cards perfectly numbered at the top of the corner, their blazers ironed just for this event, their shoes polished, their pants tied on the stomach with a black belt. They were clinical & prepared.

When they each got off the stage the entire school would roar with applause. When I took to the stage I had old dusty shoes, my shirt was un-tuck, my blazer was creased and the colours faded – BUT I DIDN’T CARE! I was on the stage. My eyes glittered with nerves and excitement. I had my first taste of the drug and I was hooked!
Motivational speaker are not trained they are born. My peers booed me halfway through my talk and it shattered me but I was resilient. The most important part of starting any journey is understanding along with the satisfaction and thrills will come a lot of heartache, failures and disapointments. The only way a journey is defined by a failure is if you stop pursuing it because of that failure.
Just keep moving: Twice a week after that day I was at school (afterschool) practicing my public speaking. I would compete in all the competitions, I would write speeches about anything, I would even write speeches about topics that were not on the competition topics. I simply wanted to perfect my art. At 17 I worn my first national championships & again at 18. A record I still hold today. Like an athlete who can feel his muscles twitch before the gun sounds for his sprint or a businessman who can feel his stomach flutter before closing a major deal my nerves have been the centre of my performances. My sweaty palms, dancing stomach and light headednes let me know that I am still the best in the business. I give my all when I am on that stage because that is were I belong. This is what I was born to do.

To be successful at whatever you do in life, you must be completely immersed in it. Your body & mind must be completely focused on that goal… and only that goal. To find your own greatness you must first find what it is that makes your palms sweat and your heart skip a beat. Find that & then become the best at it.
Hungry
When I first delivered a paying talk I was paid 35 rands by the event organizer. I charged them this because I wanted money to buy airtime so I could call more clients and secure more bookings. I was hungry! I would any accept booking. I didn’t have a car but I would take late night gigs and ask the client for a lift home. My pride was overcome by my hunger. Whatever the theme of the event I would develop a talk to suit it. The more bookings I secured the more talks I developed, the more talks I developed the more I refined my material, the more refined my material the better I became on stage. Hunger has been the cornerstone for my success. If you are not hungry for something (so hungry that will do whatever it takes to get it), you are wasting your time.
Before the wolf: When you are on a journey you will find the critics who will want to hold you down. Mine would present themselves as the old wise men who wanted to mentor me and as I engaged them it was clear they wanted simply to curb my enthusiasm, frustrate my hunger and fill me up with lies and promises. They would do this because in me they saw something extraordinary… they saw an unrelenting pursuit for dominance. I didn’t just want to be the best, I wanted to be the new standard of the best. When asked what my ultimate dream was I would say that I wanted to become to motivational speaking what Muhammad Ali was to boxing.
Mentorship is fantastic but never let the oldies dictate what you can and cannot achieve based on their life story. You are your own person with your own abilities and dreams, and so too your own destiny. You must pursue to deliver the best you can deliver all the time. Mediocrity is comfort only to the lazy.
Action, action, and action: Don’t speak about your ambitions; display them through your actions. How? You must always be present i.e. Never make a promise you will not keep & never make a commitment you cannot meet. To be present is the ultimate discipline. I’ve traveled 4 of the 7 continents engaging with some of the most prolific people of our time and without fail the common threads of their successes have been their hunger, their pursuit for dominance and their ability to be present. I call this principle a moment in time: in this moment at this time I am here. This has been critical in growing our business: I never think about another client while in the company of another, I never think about work while at home. To put it simply, I never think about the past while I’m in the present focusing on my future!
Do this and people will talk about the quality of your work and the quantum of your thoughts. This is how a reputation & a presence developed. It’s a simple equation; if you want to be more you must say less and do more.
Get it!

Motivational speakers are not trained, they are born!

I grew up walking to school, catching township taxis, hanging with the gusheshe’s and amagents. I could be found on-selling chappies and sweets in my Dickies sporti hat and i-All Star at the model C school because my white friends were willing to pay twice the price I had bought the stock for.

My father was a cleaner at General Electric at my age. My grandfather would have not known the life my father lived. He was security guard and he lived in Wattville. My grandfather did not believe that a young black man needed an education beyond standard six or grade 8. He never owned a car. My dad bought his first car at my age and was the first in his family.  

 Neither my grandfather nor my father were any less smart than I am, nor any less passionate or driven, but they had very different opportunities to me.

 What is this difference? Is it the “model C” education? Maybe. Is it the advent of BEE? No. Is it Jacob Zuma and his m’shini or Mbeki with his “I am an African”? Haibo. Surely not!

 The difference? The rate of change in our world, our country, our townships, our businesses goes beyond comprehension. Let’s relive this change – let’s take a journey through the township 10 years ago.

 Do you remember the shebeen operating right next to your local ZCC church or across the local school, young people filling up the street corners at the spaza’s, amagents gambling their weekly wages on the dusty streets of the township, omagogo playing “umchina” and the neighbourhood gathered at the cheezboys house to watch Zero Hour Zone because he had M-Net! The “good old days” as it were.

So what about now, where are we today? The spaza has been converted to a Pick n Pay – if you are in that suburb still classified as township called Soweto then it’s a whole Mall. Amagents gambling? Well, now they operate car washes at the old bus stops where you will get the best wash for only R35… vacuum cleaners not included! Those dusty streets have become tar-roads (if you are in Soweto, they even have traffic lights, or as we call it in the township “i-robot”). Omagogo don’t play u’mchina anymore, it’s now “tata-ma’ chance, tata-ma-millions”. Oh and the cheezboy who had the M-Net – well now half the street residents have DTSV.

 The point is simple. Times have changed – but you already know this. What has not changed are the fundamentals that drive personal development and success. The dot.com revolution has hit all corners of the earth with ‘omaVusana going from selling chappies at school to captains of commerce speaking to and interacting with some of the most dynamic and influential minds in the world today.

 As this rapid change occurs though, it is become more important for you to demand of yourself that you focus on where you are at this point in time. Don’t rush the success.

Some tips:

1. Focus on the task not the glory. Its not about who knows you, its about how much you know.

2. Don’t let pride stop you from getting what you want. You are not too good for any job, especially one that help you achieve your dreams.

3. Stick with the honey. Keep the company that will help you develop and grow.

I just read an interesting Harvard statistic that said that our Generation, that is the generation “Y” born after 1981 will have 3 careers and 1 failed business venture by the time we are 30. It went on say that we are a “value-generation”, i.e. we are the generation that is driven by adding value to others, our society and ourselves. Is this true?

I speak on Generation Y. My hit talk “Bhampa in the Boardroom” is all about how we can help corporates better understand, market to and cater for this generation – of which I am a part – so that they can retain us and grow us for their businesses. As I have evolved as a Generation Y myself, one of the things I cannot help but note is how we are the generation that above all says, “I want to be engaged”. The worst thing that my clients do is think that by virtue of the fact that they pay us a salary we are eternally loyal to them. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Almost 90% of my clients (and believe me, I work with an impressive bunch from mining to banking and even retail) do not recognize you may attract my talent on what you are paying but you keep my talent what you are “teaching”. So don’t exclude me, engage me. Don’t overlook me, develop me.

Over the past 4 years of my life I have seen 4 of my 6 closest friends leave the corporate world to start their own businesses. All of them, every single one of them have been “spectacular failures”. So why start these journeys? Well, because they have the need to fill their hunger, the hunger to be part of something significant. The hunger to be engaged. So here I am, 24… an internationally acclaimed speaker…sitting in my glass-panel office looking out and wondering… how many more Gen Y’s are there that have had these experiences? In addition, what must companies change to stop this trend.

The solution is 3-fold.

1.  hire for talent and develop for turnover.
Generation Y’s strength (and studies support this) is that we learn much faster than any other generation and are able to add bottom-line value far quicker. If Usain Bolt at the age of 22 can electrify the athletics world and outperform even seasoned athletes while Kenny Andam, at the age of 26 was Africa’s youngest self-made billionaire, then why can’t the 25 year-old call-centre agent manage your the inbound division? If developed he can.

2.  let me take the risk.
Managers must not be afraid to let their younger employees make mistakes. If the risk is correctly managed, the failure can truly be what failure is, a First Attempt In Learning. Part of what we do in our business is to assist managers to correctly identify the talent then create an environment where that talent can take the risk.

3. Focus on me.
As Gen Y, we need constantly to know where we are and where we are expected to be as well as what the organisation will do to help us get there. The key is to ensure that it is done clearly and consistently so that our expectations are managed. If, as a manager, you have to look at my performance contract to see my KPI or you have do 1-hour quarterly performance review with me then you and I are not adequately engaged. I must be a part of your world and you equally a part of mine.

This Generation is the brightest generation ever. With social networking, we live in a world that says, “I want it, and I want it now. If you won’t give to me, I will go and get it elsewhere”. What do we want? To be engaged.

So let us engage. Share your thoughts with me on this subject. Register and post your comment.