Tuesday, October 6, 2015

I wish you a safe journey (a WARNING to the hustlers)

An old woman once saved some money so that she could buy her grandchildren Xmas groceries. When Xmas approached, the old woman caught a taxi to the shopping complex in town. After a whole day of shopping, she then caught a taxi back with heavy plastic bags full of mouth-watering groceries for her grandkids, whom she wanted to surprise. When she got off the taxi, she needed to walk about 500m to her house. As she limped forward, some two boys offered to help her carry the heavy items home. Seeing that she knew these boys, she let them help her. In a blink of an eye the old woman realized that she was walking alone. She had been robbed and the cruel boys were nowhere to be seen. She only had one plastic bag left in her hands. Given the severity of the pain she felt for losing all her hard-earned efforts, she started feeling dizzy. It was all too much to bear. She had spent months planning to surprise her impoverished grandchildren. In one elderly heap of disappointment she collapsed and died.
I have seen such similar incidents occurring in our line of hustle. All hustlers know that having great ideas is useless if you have no one to help you turn them into cash. Unfortunately, most of the people who come to help us, bring their corporate guns to rob our asses blind once the ideas start flying, if they do. Sometimes you will only see your own idea on TV or read about it in a financial magazine. The greatest challenge for aspiring entrepreneurs is to find their own doors and keys to unlock their own futures. Those locks and doors are otherwise known as Information & Knowledge. If we don't get these keys, we will be robbed blind. Stress will kill our hustle and sup all our ambitions. I have been used in some business arrangements in the past 12 years or so. I have worked with people on some money-making projects only to hear from financial auditors that money long came in and was split among all of us, including me. I have signed deals worth more than a million Rands, but to this day I am still hustling. Chapter 11 of my book, 12 Types of People to Love... From a Distance, deals with the ruthlessness that comes with the hustling territory. I have come to know that it is not everyone who comes to help us nourish our ideas who has noble intentions. I have realized that most of the times, those who come to help us only come to eat. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. The scavengers only arrive for a killing. Get the right Information & Knowledge. Don't go around blindly brandishing your ideas to every Tom, Dick and Harry. Trust is a rare commodity within the business world. Once you find people you can trust, then you have scored big - you have found the gold that has eluded many of us.

I wish every aspiring entrepreneur a safe journey to business success.‪#‎GuardYourHustle‬

Wagago
Kgoshii Lerabela