Is Your Self-Identity Limiting Your Potential? | Vusi Thembekwayo on Impact Theory

Everybody, welcome to another episode of Impact Theory. I am here with somebody who I think you guys are going to have your minds blown by Vusi Thembekwayo. Vusi, welcome to the show, man. I am beyond excited to spend this time with you. Robert Villia, this is incredible. It's a dream come true. Thanks for having me. Dude, for sure. So, in researching you, man, I really had my mind blown. I am very impressed with your ability to generate success even in a system that you could argue is pretty problematic, possibly even broken, and yet you've had this extraordinary level of success. Watching your father killed in front of you when you were 13, um having to drop out of college at one point because you couldn't afford it, um growing up and starting a business as a black man in recently just out of apartheid South Africa. I mean, these are pretty hardcore circumstances, and yet you sit here as somebody who has had extraordinary success. So, given that people often reach for that excuse of the world's against me, you know, the system is set up to see me fail. What is it about you or the way that you think that has allowed you to be successful despite all of that madness? I think um so, I live by two core principles, right? The first is that everything everyone knows, they learned. And I don't accept that I'm less intelligent than the next person, which means I can learn it, too, right? Um the second is that every single excuse I have is valid. But that's still not going to give me the results that I want. And so, we do live in this really uh uh PC culture today. Um um where people are looking for the excuse. And the truth is, the excuse is completely valid. Yes, you are a young black person growing up in democratic South Africa for the past 26 years, but for hundreds of years before that, it wasn't built for you to succeed. Right? Yes, you're living in one of the most difficult credit capital markets in the world, so it's hard to get access to funding to start a business. Yeah, all of that stuff's true. But that's still not going to change your circumstance. So so the test is not whether or not you know the the reasons for not succeeding. The test is whether or not you're willing to do whatever it takes to get to that next level. And a big part of the whatever it takes actually is just remain teachable. Just just be a student. Student of the game, a student of life, a student of those who've achieved. Um and I've found that those two things have really stood me in good stead. Dude, what you said about excuses being valid, I think that's really important for people to understand. I've always said that the most sinister thing about excuses is that they're real. Like you really do have reasons not to be successful, but now what? Like now what? Now what are you going to do? Like um I remember I was giving a talk um at Google and one of the guys happened to be African-American and he said, "Tom, do you think it's harder for me as a black person in America to succeed?" And I said, "It seems patently self-evident. Even even just accepting that humans tend to gravitate towards those that look like them, what I call the school of fish phenomenon, you always see the same kind of fish with the same kind of fish. So being a minority just by definition is going to make things harder. But now what? Like now you can take that excuse and give yourself an out to not try, to not get started, which is something you talk a lot about, or you can say, "Regardless of that, I'm going to do whatever it takes to get where I want to go." Now, how do you how have you, Vusi, cultivated that mentality? When your father was killed, easy moment to give up, to turn to violence, to be angry, to be bitter. When you had to drop out of school, a reason again to just be angry, to be bitter. What what are you telling yourself that allows you to go, "Okay, cool. This is my circumstance, but I know what I want."? So, first just to make the admission that I do get pissed, and I'm very real and raw at that emotion, right? So, I I I I recognize the imbalance that the world we live in has. But, I also recognize that those imbalances are man-made, Tom. And they were they were created by people who precede us, who had a particular view of the world, and um and my role is to shift people's views and perspective, right? So, that's literally what I do when I'm on a platform. I'm just there to help you see the world differently than how you've seen it before. That's it. What are What are some of the the key attributes to that? So, you gave us one, which is "Excuses are valid, so what?" What are some other core tenets? Yeah, so the first one is you Excuses are valid. The second one is Your reality is your reality. So, you're not imagining it. You're not imagining that you're poor. You're not imagining that you're left out because you live in a third world country. You're not imagining that you're not getting the right quality of education to make you globally competitive. You're not imagining that. That shit's real. Right? Okay. But, now that you've got it, you can live in the emotion, and sometimes I do. I get really, really mad and really, really upset. But, then the following morning comes and you realize that you've moved not an inch of distance, yet you've expanded all of this time in this emotion. I mean, right now, if you think about the world we live in, just think about how much hatred there is. Think about how much anger there is. And yet we're not moving. So, I What really pulls me out of it, and it's an honest conversation with me, is I go, "Do you want the emotion, or do you want progress?" Cuz you can't have both. Oh, [ __ ] Right? Go Go deeper on that. That's crazy. You just gave me the chills. I'll give you an example. You're at the gym, right? You're curling. You're rep eight, and your body starts to fire off those signals in your brain, and it goes, "Stop. It hurts." If you stop, you get the emotion, you don't get the progress. So, if you talk to any decent athlete, they'll tell you that where the pain start starts is when the work starts, right? Talk to any decent entrepreneur that's built a large-scale business, they'll tell you the [ __ ] they had to go through. So, you either get the emotion, or you get the progress, but you can't have both, right? We're living in this world today where everybody is just so deeply embedded in the emotion. I want to be angry at Tom because he's X, Y, and Z, and I want to be angry at Vusi because Yeah. Yet, you make no progress. So, yours and my challenge, I think, as a generation is how do we give the world progress? And And finally, you asked me, so the question around, so how do you get over that, right? So, here's the final bit is I recognize that my generation has it the easiest. Like, I think we forget, actually, that our generation probably has it the easiest in the history of Homo sapiens on this little rock called planet Earth. In my generation's, Tom, if I say something that's politically incorrect, I might trend on Twitter. If my grandfather said something politically incorrect, he would have been killed or landed up in jail. So, so sometimes we we we've lost a sense of perspective, right? Around it's not easy, but damn, it's much easier than it's ever been. And And you have a responsibility to own your progress. You can either own the emotional progress, but you don't get both. Dude, so if I am willing to take up that mantle with you and say that our obligation is to help people progress. Um this is exactly why when Lisa and I um exited our last company, we didn't just retire. We wanted to double down um and do something that that mattered, and a lot of I'll I'll say the the very animus, the thing that animates me and keeps me going is having worked in the inner cities and seeing that there were these extraordinary people um meaning meaning that they they could become extraordinary, right? They had all the raw materials, but they were never going to because they didn't know how to progress to use your language. And so we thought, okay, this really is teachable, going back to your point about this stuff is man-made. So, if if we can make this world, then we can certainly make a different world. If I'm prepared to take up that mantle, what is it that I actually need to do? What is it I need to convince people of? What are the actions I need to take? Um I know that you're really focused on education, but what are you actually trying to teach? Like how do people make progress? So, woo. See, this is why I'm a fan of the show is because the questions you ask is just like, damn, how'd he come go there? So, um the hardest thing to do is to is to enable people to see themselves as they are. Not as they hoped they were, not as they've been taught they are, but as they actually are. It's the single hardest thing to do, and I'll tell you why. Because we're all embedded in this construct of a thing called identity, right? And so, and what people forget is identity by its very nature, one is man-made and two is exclusive. What that means is the minute I say I'm male, it means I'm not female. I say I'm black, it means I'm not white. If I say I'm African, it means I'm not American. If I say I am, you know, educated, it means I'm not illiterate. So, all the little words we use to construct identity put us in a box, they don't free us, right? And it's something people I think don't think about because people today have assumed an identity for who they are. And it's it's all over, right? It's in the media, it's on social media, it's on TV, it's in the newspapers, it's in in music videos. All you're being sold is an identity. This is what you should be based on where you come from and based on how you've been socialized. Very early on, my father taught me that I didn't have to be what society told me, right? That I could be different if I wanted to. to I want to put that in context and see if I'm understanding what you're saying. So, um I read Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom. It [ __ ] with me, dude. That book is so good. I I like when every second I think I'm a badass and then I remember that the man faced 27 years in prison and refused to compromise his principles. I'm just not that hardcore. And like so that that [ __ ] is phenomenal. And I remember him saying in the book, he was like, "This this is Nelson Mandela talking. He said I got on an airplane and the pilot was black and for a minute I was scared because I didn't think black people could fly a plane." And he was like, "What the [ __ ] Like how do I think that?" And he said, "If that had seeped into my mind identity, right? Then how many other people had accepted something less than who they were because of what society had told them? Is that what you mean? That we're sort of subtly taking on these I can'ts I can'ts I can'ts?" Exactly. So, here's a great example. I'm short, therefore I can't model. Okay? I mean, it's not it's not established that short people should model, but whether you should or whether you can are very different tests, right? Um and by the way, I approach every little thing in my life like that. Like all the [ __ ] I do, I go, "I shouldn't, but it doesn't mean I can't." There's a big [ __ ] difference. So, if you're telling me I shouldn't be in the room, you may be correct. It doesn't mean I don't have the capacity to be in the room. I want to force my way in. And I'm going to get to change your mind. So, this thing about identity I think is so powerful because in today's world where we've, you know, we're no longer demographics, we're a psychographic now. There's a kid living in Kuala Lumpur who's never been out of Kuala Lumpur who sounds like a kid in Brooklyn, New York because he's watching Jay-Z on on YouTube. But he So, he's completely immersed in that culture and he's never left his small little village, right? And that's exactly the point is everything you've been taught you are, somebody taught you that's what you are. Now, you can keep that identity, but again, you can't get the progress. And so, what a lot of people do is they hang on to it, right? In South Africa, it um it's often about gender. Sometimes it's about tribe, right? So, what tribe you come from. There's a big generation issue. So, it's I'm part of it this generation. Yeah, all those things are true. But do you want the identity or do you want the progress? Because you can't have both. Um I'll tell you just quickly a story. So, my dad was the sensei in the dojo, right? And I used to train with my dad in the dojo. And so, I asked him one time, I was like, "How come we get to change belts? Like I mean, couldn't you teach the methodology without the belt system?" He said two things. He said, "First, human beings are incentive-based, so you need something to aim for." But he said the second thing is the reason we give you a belt is because it assigns an identity. Now, it doesn't mean that if you're orange belt, you can't take on a brown belt. It's just you embed that in your mind and you go, "Well, he's senior, then therefore." And so, one of the things he said to me, "One of the things you're going to have to learn is that real life doesn't have a belt system. So, everything we know and have learned about identity is given to us. It's a It's a template that somebody has given you and you can just choose to run that script of macros or not. Man, identity is, I think, the the linchpin. So, I'm going to put my finger on the most inflammatory thing I've ever heard you say and we're we're just going to go straight there because I think if people can go past the emotion and get to what you're saying, there's a breakthrough that applies to everybody. But the the most inflammatory thing I ever heard you say is that and I'm assuming actually I think you were talking worldwide. You will correct me. But you said black people were not ready for freedom. And I was like, "Oh shit." And Shell There's a guy in America his name is Shelby Steele who said the same thing and I remember I almost like coughed I I could not believe that he was saying that. And your initial reaction is like, "What the [ __ ] What are you talking about?" Yeah. So, what were you talking about? What do you mean? Cuz I know dude you were coming from a beautiful place. But I have to imagine when people hear you say that they freak out. What do you mean? Yeah, I mean I I got to tell you so there was That's such an incredible That was such an important moment and statement because so there was a context within which I said it and I was giving a master class as I do and and I made that statement and it was probably out on YouTube for 2 years. As these things are, they just there kind of bubbling and simmering along. And then somebody went and found it on YouTube, clipped that video and put it on Twitter and it just exploded, right? So, I think the language is important here. I'm not saying black people don't deserve freedom. I think that's an important point to make. First of all, freedom isn't something you deserve. It's a God-given right. It's like breathing, right? So, you shouldn't have to justify why you deserve to be free. And often people that approach that conversation heard me to say black people don't deserve freedom. And I'm going, "No, no, no, no, no." The idea that you deserve it means there's something you have to do to earn it, which by itself is fallacious. There is nothing you have to do to earn the right as Tom Bilyeu to self-determine. You get to self-determine. That's your human right, right? That said, if you accept and we all do that there have been hundreds of years of structural um uh exclusion and oppression, not only of the black body, but of the black mind, most importantly the black mind. Nelson Mandela sitting on the plane going, "Holy [ __ ] there's a black pilot, right?" This is the father of our democracy himself being caught in that trap. But he had to be wise enough and smart enough to step out of that comment in his head and see that comment in the context of the moment. So when I'm saying we weren't ready for freedom, what I mean is we got it, but we haven't freed our minds, right? So what we're doing is we're defaulting to the reasons and excuses we had pre-freedom for why we're not doing the [ __ ] we should be doing in freedom now. So the oldest the oldest most independent country in Africa, I think is Ghana. I think. And it's probably been independent for over 60 years, right? But if you track the trajectory of where that country has gone, if you go to a Haiti, and of course there several structural issues around the relationship Haiti has with Europe and with France, but if you go to a Haiti, and if you go to Zimbabwe, just north of here, so who's Zimbabwe going to blame? That's really a question, because what happens is we've put these people in positions of power and leadership whose mindset was not in disentangled from the way things used to be. So they bring an oppressed mind into a freedom construct, then they act like oppressed people, and we wonder why the results are the way they are. KRS-One said it the most beautiful way. In one of his raps he said, he said as black people we need to be free people, not freed people. [ __ ] And the And the point there is the point of departure is that when you're free, you don't find the need to explain your freedom, you just are, right? Um, and so that's where that comment was coming from was And it was a reflection. It was, okay, so we got it. But were we ready for it? Are we using it to the best of its ability, this incredible freedom that we enjoy? Are we really being transformative? Are we being imaginative? Are we doing new, great, and powerful things? Are we being a generation that our children's children will look at and go, those guys had the right template. They got it right. Right? Or not. And it's a question we have to answer every single day. Yes, it is interesting. So, because of my experience, I think of the same problem, but I don't think of it along racial lines. I think of it along um economic is probably the closest thing. So, work working in the inner cities, I realized white, Hispanic, black, didn't matter. People have been told things like, I remember one kid coming to me, had to be Hispanic, and he said, my mom told me that the world does not want to see me succeed. And I thought, what the [ __ ] Like, I actually understand why she's saying that. She's trying to say, look, this is going to be hard for you. Um there there are difficulties you will face that other people will not face. And so, I know where she was trying to go. It was like trying to sort of soothe him for the difficult road ahead. But what it told him was, you don't belong in that room, so don't bother, don't even try. And so, I began to obsess with this notion of this is this is a mindset problem. So, generational poverty, to me, is not really a question of money. It will manifest as money, but it is a question of mindset. It's a question of how to think. So, there are minimum requirements. Anybody watching me that has any bit of sense is going to go, this guy is so [ __ ] eloquent, for sure his verbal ability has helped him in life. 100% I I think there beyond a doubt. But, if somebody has that latent ability that doesn't get it trained, they're not going to end up being able to leverage it as a skill set. There's a guy named Geoffrey Canada, and he was looking at basically how do you give people the right mindset to be successful? He grown up in Harlem at like the height of the crack epidemic, and he's just like, "Fuck, this is atrocious." And what he realized looking at the data was what mattered was the number of words you heard by the age of five, and the ratio of positive words to negative words because of what it did to the language centers of your brain, and how you spoke in a job interview, or in trying to communicate to other people. And so he's like, this is a very complicated problem that has a very simple like linchpin that if you address that, then everything else tumbles from that. And I'll say that one of those things isn't just language, it's just how you think about your place in the world, your identity, and everything sort of keeps coming back to that. Do you agree that the statement that you made about being able to make the most of your freedom centers around how you conceptualize yourself in the world, pointedly identity? 100 100% which is why I think the work of our generation today really is around forcing us to cons- to reconstruct these very identities we have. If you think about it, we live in a world today where almost all identities are assumed, right? So, the idea for instance of masculinity is assumed. All right? Um the idea of being a strong Zulu man is assumed. There is a There is a script. There is a a book somebody wrote that says, "These are the ways you've got to be this thing, right?" And And I didn't get to do the edit. I just got the PDF version, right? But I'm saying, if I'm living in a world that is complex and changing, I can't take this PDF script into a new environment. It ain't going to work. So, I either get to keep the tradition and the emotion, or I get progress, but I can't do both, right? And you know, for me, I really used to resent this because I would get chastised, I'd get mocked, I would get attacked. Then I realized that actually I was giving others the permission to be themselves, too, right? So, and that's the most empowering thing that you can do. When you choose to step into no man's land. Meaning saying the things that you're saying? The the sort of inflammatory things? A hun- Well, so so not only saying the things that you're saying, but allowing yourself to um to be ventilated. Allowing those thoughts to be discussed and ventilated by people, right? Um one of the things I had to learn was as I did it it was incredible how many other people came out and said, "Shoot. Glad you said it cuz I've been thinking it, but I couldn't say it cuz you know they'd lynch me." And I was like, "Wow, man. So so so you're we're all aware that the script doesn't work, but none of us are willing to say it because they're going to throw us in the proverbial social media concentration camp? Well, ad nauseam, right? I mean, that's not progress, right? Final thing just for you to think about, which is this. What's the worst that can happen? Well, the worst that can happen is you're wrong. Then you're educated, which goes back to where we started at the very beginning, right? Remain teachable. So, the worst thing that can happen is you say something, you're wrong, somebody picks up the phone, you're educated, you grow up, and you mature. Um but I think it's really important I think this idea of identity is just so powerful. When somebody asks the question, "Who are you?" How do you answer that question, right? Are you Are you the job you have? Are you the place you come from? Are you the lineage of your of your ancestors? Are you the qualifications? Are you your geography? Who are you? Right? And I think a lot of us don't really bother to give that enough thought. I want to go back to this idea of getting started. I think that um to your point about you get educated. You're wrong, but you figure out that you're wrong and now you can take a step towards being right. It seems to me that one of the most incredible things about your journey was just a willingness to fail in the beginning, which of course you did. Why is it you're so hardcore about that notion of just get started? Because the single most important part of the momentum equation is movement. Right? So I'll give you an example. Here's how I explain this to people. So if you're driving your car and for some other strange reason, you know, the car stalls and you're stuck. Right? You have one of two things you can do, right? And let's imagine you're in a you know you know cell phone black zone, you can't phone anybody. You have one of two things you can do. Sit in the car, switch on your hazards and pray somebody's going to come past you. That's what we call the charity approach. Hi, I'm here. I grew up poor. I didn't get a good education. Help. It completely gives the power to the person on the other side of the equation. Which is the I feel like I want to help and here's how much I'm willing to help with. Right? Flash the hazards. The alternative is you open the driver's door. You drop the the the you drop the your handbrake. You put your shoulder behind the chassis. And you push. Now when you start pushing, the hardest part is going to be that initial meter because the car is completely still. It's got no momentum. So you start pushing. And what happens is 5 m down the line, 10 m down the line, assuming the road is flat of course, all of a sudden you're not pushing as hard as you were, you're just maintaining momentum. So the reason I always say to people start is because the hardest part is the beginning. My dad used to say to me you will always be the worst at something the first time you do it. So the results you get the first time you do it are not the true results. That was the worst version of you doing that thing. That's first time you're singing, first time doing public speaking, you know, first time you try to do a comedy set. First time you do anything is the worst time because you don't have the skill set. But as you do it, what happens is you mature, you get better, and you learn, right? So, that's what I mean by that is is the reason it's important to start is because all of those stories, that self-narrative that you've been saying and toiling in your head, the excuses are valid, the world isn't fair, and but guess what? At the beginning it is going to be tough, but the the only way out of it is to start. There is no other way out of it. You can't negotiate with it, right? It's um Let me Let me just one last thing for you to think about. So, I said this to an entrepreneur literally today who came to see me about this very thing. And uh she was saying to me, "Look, you know, business, it's COVID, it's been a tough time, yada yada." And I said to her, "So, you know, if you went to imagine, you know, the Empire State Buildings." So, I said to her, "If you went to the top of the building and uh stood at the ledge, prayed to whichever god you praise, God, Buddha, Allah, and told them that you don't believe in gravity, and jumped, you'd find that gravity believes in you, right? So, so I was saying to her, "The environment in the moment we're in is gravity. You can't negotiate your way out of it, right? What you can do is you can get started with who you need to be to survive this moment. And what she was doing, which is what I think a lot of people do, is they they hang on to who they used to be, right? So, I used to be the Well, that's not working anymore. So, who do you need to be and get started on that journey? I really honestly firmly believe in the school of starting. Starting, I think is often more important in the entire momentum construct than everything that comes after that." Dude, your obsession with what works is a shared obsession. I I you and I think so much alike that it's scary. You may be the closest person in terms of saying things that like I've never heard anybody else say that I have either said or have had rattling around in my head for a very long time. Um and that that idea like the thing I want to scream at people is for your own sake do what works. Do what works. Like I'm not saying it cuz I get anything out of the equation. I'm just saying do what works. Look at the data. It's what I call the physics of progress. The physics of progress is basically the scientific method recontextualized for business. You're you have an informed hypothesis based on your life, then test that [ __ ] hypothesis by running an experiment doing something, but then look at the data. Did this actually move me towards what I want? Yes or no? And you know what? I actually think I wrote this down. Let me pull this up. Um you said, and I quote, this is Vusi, everybody. Don't give me something out of pity. I don't want pity. Give me something because I'm the best at what I do. Man, talk about pushing the car. Now, what's interesting is as you were saying it, I thought, okay, what people are going to say is, well, Vusi, the the road isn't flat. This is an uphill battle. And I would say that actually isn't true. And the road is malleable. And the road may actually start uphill, but the more you push, even if the car rolls back, you're going to learn something. And now the road flattens. Then you're going to learn something more, and now the road is going downhill. And all of the sudden, you [ __ ] almost can't even keep up. There's so much happening. And it's like, I have the chills. I want people to understand that. Getting good is what matters. Get good. But people people take that excuse and they don't even start pushing the car, which is the thing that freaks me out. Talk to me about martial arts. You're going to be worse when you first start. What is it about martial arts that drew you in and kept you going? Cuz you've said that you you use martial arts a lot even now. Yeah. I mean, you know, my So my my my dad my dad did a style of martial arts called Kyokushinkai. And um and I suppose as a little boy trying to get close to dad, I was like, "Well, if he's doing it, I'm going to join him." So, my dad and I shared this incredible passion of martial arts and cars, right? Um So, I kind of get started, you know, with my father, then he gets gunned down when I'm 13 years old. And I went through like a year of just nothing. I just I couldn't show up at the dojo. I didn't have it in me. And I did all the things we're talking about. The excuses. At the time, South Africa had a a particularly high crime problem. And I was like, "You know, what's the point? You know, here's a first-degree black belt who gets attacked. He get takes nine bullets and he's dead anyway. Why am I going to this thing called the dojo, right?" Again, excuse is valid. It really is. But, there's no progress. So, a year, nothing. And then and then I was like, "I actually miss it." So, I went back. And what's interesting when I went back, it wasn't the same. I wasn't doing the kata to impress the senseis anymore. I was doing the kata because I wanted every single movement to be as close to flawless as I could get it. It changed my entire perspective. So, and one of the things that happened, you're going to love this. I'm literally getting chills thinking about it. One of the things that happened is time just expanded. So, right cuz we have a very finite con- construct of time. I'm going to be at the dojo for an hour. But, what happened was that hour be felt like 5 hours and sometimes 30 minutes felt like five. All of a sudden, this fixed construct of time, you know, it started to change because my relationship with what I was doing changed. So, it wasn't just a punch. It wasn't just the kata. I wasn't just I wasn't just showing up for the emotion. I was embedded in every single part of the process. I was looking for growth, for progress, right? I have to tell you that changed my entire life. So, anytime I find myself stuck now, I'm I recognize that the often the reason I'm stuck is because I'm focusing on the output and I'm not focusing on my input, right? So, output, I've got to raise 100 million rand for my business. Output, I've got to get 300% growth for, you know, in customers. Output, I've got to get 25 Yeah, that's all output. But, what you got to focus on is input. What are the things I've got to do and how do I do those things intentionally, deliberately, and try to get better every single time, every meeting, every impact conversation with one of my staff members, every engagement with a client or a potential client. Every single one of those things, how do I focus on that moment? Because actually, the output is a sum total of how those things come about. So, when you when you are at the dojo and you are being graded and you are going through the process of trying to attain your black belt or your brown belt, that's what everybody sees is the output, but what actually went in was that malleable construct of time where you were trying to perfect every single movement, right? Do you remember what happened that made you switch over to now I'm going to do this and try to get perfect? Yeah, I do. Um Yeah, so my So, my um my my sensei then at the time, um who's also a Sifu because he did a he did Wing Chun. Sifu Claude, uh we were kind of, you know, having the conversation and I was like, you know, I want to come back, yada yada, fish paste. And um he started giving me Chinese philosophy to read. And I've never read philosophy before. Do you remember what books he gave you? I can't remember the book, but he would actually He gave me the first one he gave me was a was like a poem. It was like a literally an A4 page. And he said to me, "This is this is you know, first bit of philosophy I'm going to give you. Go read this." And then he said and just stick it on your wall for like 3 months. And the opening line says, "There can be no denying kung fu is hard work." Then it says, "But as with everything in life, you get out of it exactly what you put in." That's that line is still entrenched in my head even today, right? So he gave me that and for 3 months I just if I didn't feel like going in, I just read it over and over over and over over and over and then you wake up and you go. And then he started maturing me into philosophy. So then he'd give me Nietzsche or give me somebody else. And what I recognized was that the masters didn't actually focus on output. They focused on mastery. Right? So Beethoven didn't focus on how does he write the greatest symphony of all time? He just worried about the next note. Just that next note and making sure that it was it was melodic, harmonic, and it worked, right? If you talk to any performer, Boys II Men is my favorite boy band of all time. But if you listen to a decent Boys II Men album, I can tell you for free that they're not focusing on the next song. It's just how do we make this next note in this next harmony work? Right? So in today's world I think of Instagram and the World Wide Web and the pressure of Jeff Bezos being worth $200 billion and now every single entrepreneur is going, "Well, I want to be worth $200 billion." Is we forget that he's he's just at a very different stage of his momentum journey, right? And so you're you're not you know, you're literally to the power of a thousand away from where he is. And so you got to focus on where you are in that next part of that journey. And that for me was probably what was the most incredible part of that part of learning in my life. Man, that that line is great. I know in your school, you obviously have some sort of curriculum. Is there like a a basics that you run people through? For me, it's mindset 101. I want people to know how to think and how to think about themselves. What are your sort of core basics? Strategy, sales, leadership. And I start first with leadership. And particularly self-leadership, because that's a big part of the curriculum nobody talks about. So, we always think about leadership, we think about the general um in the army, right? The guy who marshals the troops, the master tactician, um you know, and I use the word guy very deliberately, because that's the that's the iconography. If I say general, go back to this construct of identity, there's been a picture sold to us of who a general is, right? So, we've got this alpha male, um you know, kind of square-cut hair, um you know, marine-looking fella who's like, "I'm the general and I'm and I'm I'm the boss. I've got all this." So, that's what people think about. But, I'm more interested in what was that guy thinking the morning he woke up knowing he's about to send a hundred thousand young men and women into the field of battle and they might not go home to their families. I'm more interested in that conversation. I'm not interested in how does he show up? I'm interested in what is he telling himself? Because how does he show up is again outcome, it's output. We're seeing him standing on the stage, right? But, what what what led to that? How does he have so much self-belief and how does he have so much courage? Even in the face of adversity, how is this guy still believing we can win the war? So, we focus a lot on leadership, self-leadership, breaking down narratives. Man, I cannot tell you how many stories have people have in their heads that are deeply embedded that they're not even aware the story is there. They're not aware that the script is playing every single day. And so they're living their lives in autopilot, right? Um I'll tell you a big one and I work in the venture space. So a particularly big one in the venture space, particularly in the continent of Africa, is the idea that to get a business started, I need somebody to fund me first. So the first thing I say to entrepreneurs is why? Why do you need a funder? Well, you know, because I go no, you don't need a funder, you need a customer. Get off your ass, make something, go sell it. See, get started. Now you go I got the little thing, I go out and I sell it, somebody pays me a dollar. Oh, okay, great. Can I do it again? Sure. Iterate and iterate and iterate and before you know it, I've got a thousand dollars in my bank. So did you need money or did you need a Did you need a customer? Right? But it's narrative. It's these stories that people have told themselves. So you know, the question was how's the curriculum structured? First, leadership. Self-leadership, personal leadership. How do you show up to your family? How do you show up to your friends? Um How do you show up to yourself in the mirror? Because, you know, that moment will come too, right? Where you do something that you know is wrong or you fail or you're not proud of yourself. When you look at you in the mirror, what do you say? Right? Do you give people words that would be effective? No. No, so what we do is we actually do an exercise called so what. So Hey Tom, you're on Impact Theory. What would What would your life look like if you lost the business? You go, well, you know, it would look like X, Y, and Z. And I go, and if that's where you were, so what? You go, well, then I'd be And I go, if that's where you were, so what? And what happens is seven or eight so what's later, people get to what is their actual fear. So what? So I'd be poor again and I don't want that. I I that. I remember going to bed hungry. I don't want to be poor again. Oh, okay. So, actually the reason you work like a dog and you don't see your kids and you you've completely no balance and you're completely overweight is cuz you're scared of poverty. Just face it. Now you can look it in the face and say, "Poverty, I'm scared." And there's nothing wrong with admitting that you haven't conquered that fear. Just be aware of it. Right? It can be an incredible motivator, but you have to know that it's there. Um So, we focus a lot in the so what technique and I I've seen people break down and cry. Um you know, we had a I'll never forget a young lady in one of our classes and the whole conversation was, "So, how's you know, how are things going?" And she's And it starts off with, "Yeah, you know, everybody wears the mask, right? Oh, everything is great. Business is good. Na na na na." And I said, "So, what's keeping you up at night?" "Well, you know, I've got this small little worry." Uh-huh. And if that happens, so what? And if that happens, so what? And if that happened, so what? And what it actually came down to was she was a mother of three. She'd conceived children very late in her life and in a marital life. It was a second marriage. And she grew up without parents. And she didn't want to be the mom who would abandon her kids, right? Cuz she knows what that was like. So, that was for her an incredibly scary thing. And she's like, "I I can't I can't have that. I can't do that." But what she didn't realize it was it was holding her back. So, she wasn't growing her business. She wasn't going to the next stage because it would demand more of her and she didn't want to give that up because of this hidden fear. So, strategy up Leadership for me is important and then strategy. You just can't operate in a world and not understand how to play a chess game. It doesn't work that way. Um and you always have to think three steps ahead of your competitors. You've got to think three steps ahead of your market. And you've got to do scenario planning. What happens if scenario A happens, scenario B, and scenario C? How will I react then? And then, as I think this is the most important skill for any human being to learn, it's the ability to sell. And I I don't know why the ability to sell, um for some of the strange reason, became like a bad thing. You know, we started talking about these used car salesmen. But I was just like, well, you know, you're selling yourself every day anyway. You've got to sell yourself to your partner about why they should stay married or in a relationship with you. You've got to sell yourself to you every morning about why you're a kick-ass person, right? Otherwise, you really going to be grumpy cuz you don't like yourself. You're selling every every day anyway. So, how do we develop a curriculum that teaches you how to sell in a manner that is true, authentic, and enables you to have an impact in the world, right? Um and so and so those are the kind of the three tenets of what we do. No, man, I love that. I love that. Um you have a pact with your mom, or you did growing up, that I I think is um I'm going to imagine is is part of the cornerstone of your success, which is if you're going to do anything, be the best. Uh which is certainly my obsession. Tell me about that. Uh that's In terms of things that I say that that piss people off, that is one of them. When I talk about competing not just with yourself, but like to actually be the best. Um how has that served you? Why Why did you make that pact with your mom? So, so for context, so my my father dies, I'm 13 years old, my father gets gunned down. And um my dad was like the uh he was the main income earner in the house. So, that immediately affected our um how do I say it? It just It affected us, right? And um we So, the path of South Africa is we'd come from apartheid. And um Nelson Mandela becomes the president, the country gets democratized, and then those of us, myself included, black people have a world of opportunities now opened up to us that we hadn't had previously. And one of those was the ability to go to school that had white kids in them because that wasn't allowed, right? And one of the things the government had done is it had given a far better quality of education at the white schools and that had like this terrible level of education at the black schools because they wanted a black majority that was not educated so it would work in the factories to create cheap labor, right? Anyway, so all of a sudden we can all go to these white schools now, certainly if your parents can afford it. And um dad's still alive, I get into the white school cuz mom and dad can kind of afford it. Dad passes away, I can't we can't afford it now. So mom and I sitting having the conversation like, so you know, what are we going to do? And my mom said to me, she said, "Look, I will raise hell if they kick you out of the school. But you got to meet me halfway." She said, "Your part is you got to make sure that you give me sufficient grades that when I go into the principal's office it's not even a debate." So I was like, "Okay, that's doable." Then she said, "No, but not just that." She said, "Everything you do, you've got to be number one." And there was a reason for that, too. So when we were doing extracurricular activities, you had to you have to like buy the kit. You can imagine if you play baseball, you can't just show up in jeans, right? There's a kit to wear. And I'm coming from a household, single mother, five kids. There is no money for the kit. So my mom went, "If you are going to do it, make sure that you're number one at it, otherwise you're literally taking food away from the table. This is money we could spend buying food and you said, 'Vusi, you want to play the violin,' which I do. I'm going to buy you the violin, but recognize that that's that means no meat for the next 3 months now, right? You say you want to do karate? Absolutely. Well, now recognize that if I buy you a gi, that means no bread for the next week, right? So there was always this very real real life sacrifice. It wasn't just, you know, so when the other kids are showing up to just do the extra uh curricular activity, I'm like, "Hang on. I've got to suck every single second out of this because, you know, this is we've sacrificed a lot for this." So, that was my pact, Mom and I. You do it number one. I can't tell you how many times, if I came number two, it became a discussion for the whole [ __ ] week, man. Like, "God, I heard you. I came number two. It was a mistake." She says, "Nah, you came number two at the public speaking thing. You better make sure you're coming number one at the next one, right?" So, you know, my mom would be at work. She'd come home and I'm in the in the room studying and she's like, "Have you done your kata?" Yeah, Mom, I've done my kata. All right, how many hours you putting into the study? Oh, I've got one more hour to go. All right, when you go out, you doing your public speaking thing? Cool. Oh, and by the way, have you done your chores? Have you washed the dishes? Have you ironed your shirt? Have you polished your shoes? So, it was just like this like narrow focus on small minor tasks, but it was always such a meticulous focus. So, my mom wasn't polish your shoes, it was how the other shoes shine. It wasn't just iron your shirt, it was make sure that it's crisp and the color is nicely ironed in. So, I learned this amazing thing about detail. It's like, and love the process, man. You're writing a 60-page business plan, enjoy page four. Like, you're going to get to page 65, you know, or page 55. Just enjoy page four. You're building a business, enjoy month one. You'll get to year five, but just enjoy month one, right? Um that pact changed my life. By the way, she still does it to me today. If I lose something or Now, I don't even tell her cuz she's just like, you know, just don't tell me cuz I'm going to tell you about it. Do you resent your mom at all? Cuz I I think when I hear that story, it fills me with so much joy and excitement, uh but I think a lot of people will hear that and think that it sounds tyrannical or cruel. Um so, what what is your emotional relationship like with your mom? Remember though that her approach is um, her approach is a mental and an institutional reverence for my skill. It's not a reprimand. There's a big difference. So she's not saying you're not competent. She's saying, "Do you know how competent you are? Why are you only this?" Does that make sense? Oh, yes. It's a big difference somebody going, "Well, you got 90. You suck." And somebody going, "You got 90, but you're capable of a 95. Where's the other 5%?" Right? Okay. Well, here are the things you need to do. Get me the other 5%. So then it's a it's a it's a Oh, you believe in me. Oh, wow. Like Oh, wow, that's cool. Right? So I got to tell my venture firm, we just won the 2020 best impact investment firm in Africa. Congratulations. deal. I know. Like 55 different countries. And and I'm just like, "Wait. What?" I remember when I first got into the space 8 9 years ago. First as an angel investor. Again, conversation, right? People are going, "Aren't you that speaker guy? Why are you doing deals? Why are you investing in stuff? Why are you You shouldn't even be in this room." And then, you know, then all of a sudden you start talking about shareholders' agreements and term sheets and people go, "Oh, okay. So you understand a bit of the lingo now. Oh, okay. But aren't you that speaker guy?" Yeah, cuz there's a frame and you've put me in that frame, right? The only way out of that was me constantly reminding myself that if I don't win at whatever I'm doing next, I'm going to have to have a hell of a conversation with my mom. So this year when we win the award, I went I went to mom and I was like, "Check this out, Mom. You know, now number one in the continent." Right? So it's a I think it's an incredible gift to have somebody that believes in you, especially when you don't believe in yourself. Yeah, church on that one, man. Tell me about Mandela. I know you met him a few times. Um Yeah. What what was he like? It like when you're right there with him? Man. Woah. There are some people who have the ability to bend the laws of physics. Now, I don't mean that thematically. I mean literally bend the laws of physics, right? Nelson Mandela had this most incredible ability. If he walked into the room, the temperature changed by 3° C. It just dropped. Your skin all of a sudden, you know, like just broke out into like chicken skin and you were just like, "Oh my What What is going on?" And you could feel the hairs at the back of your of your neck stand up. So, I'm 17. I've just won the world championship in public speaking. We get a letter from the foundation inviting me to go and meet him. So, I get to the office, right? And his assistant comes to meet me at reception, takes me to his study. And she offers me something to drink. And my mother said, "If you get there and they offer you something to drink, ask them for tea, not coffee." I was like, "Well, that's odd." So, I was like, "Why?" She said, "Well, because tea is high tea. Coffee is common." I was like, "Yeah, yeah." "Tea is for the bourgeois people." I was like, "Oh, okay, cool, Mom." So, I get there and she asks me for something to drink and I I ask her for some tea. She brings me this tea. And I'm sitting to drink my cup, right? But every time I pick it up and tilt it, my hand is shaking. So, it spills a little bit on the saucer. I was like, "Man." I put the cup down and every time I pick up the cup, it keeps spilling and then spilling on my shirt. I'm like, "Well, this doesn't work." So, I stopped picking the cup up and I started leaning in to like drink it, right? And I'm hoping he doesn't walk in whilst I'm like leaning in like a kid trying to steal, you know, milk from the fridge or something. And it's like I'm hoping. So, I'm sitting drinking and then I heard a "Where is he?" I was like, "Oh my god." And my skin starts to burn. I'm like, "Oh man, that's him. That's him." And he walks to the study. He opens the door. He takes two steps forward, Tom. Opens up his arms like this and he says, "My son, come here." And um nobody had called me my son since the death of my father. I can feel like these tears are just about to start running down my throat my my eyes. I jump up, give him a big hug, and we sit down. I'm a fairly big guy. I'm 6'2. I weigh 108 kg. I'm not sure what that is in pounds, right? So, I'm a fairly big guy. I can hold my own, right? But next to him I was a dwarf cuz he was like 6'4, 6'5. Wow. I'm a size I'm a size 11 shoe. He was a size 14. He was a tank. Yeah, like most people actually don't talk about this side of Nelson Mandela. He was a physical giant, right? So, we're sitting down and we're chatting. And all I'm doing is I'm just asking questions, asking questions, asking questions. And we get to like 55 minutes into what is an hour meeting and he looks at me and he says, "You're now They said that you're not a speaker." And I said uh "Yebo Tata." Which is a Xhosa word for granddad. And he goes, "But man, you have not spoken." So, you know, your question was so how was he? Um He had this incredible ability to make you feel welcome. But you always knew that you were in the company of greatness. I've met him twice and both times you just always knew you were in the company of greatness. There was just no doubt in your mind about it. But for me, what came out of that meeting was I remember he said I I said to him I said to him, "So, what's your dream for like mankind? What's your dream for humanity, right?" Towards the end of the meeting and he looks at me and he says, "What we need is a little bit of faith." So, I was like, "Faith?" Such a strange thing to say. I was like, "What what what what is faith? I asked him like what's faith? And he said faith is the ability to see the invisible, believe in the impossible, and trust in the unknown. So I just like wow, gobsmacked. And it's only as I've grown older that I realize what he was actually saying, which is it's the ability to make manifest that which is not yet. And I think a lot of us are living in a world today where unless we can see it, touch it, or feel it, we don't believe it to be. And we forget that everything you can see, touch, taste was imagined by someone, created by someone who had to have faith that it would find resonance with mankind. I think it's we have a duty today to understand the power of what that means. Man, you just gave me the chills again. Yeah, that what he did and represents is so extraordinary. I heard you say something that I found really interesting. So you said given what Mandela had done for us, it's given us this belief in that there's someone coming to save us. And you said there there is no Messiah. Nobody's coming to save you. Um and we have to do it ourselves. Talk to me a little bit about that. I think that that's powerful. There's there's both that like I have that same pull towards somebody like Mandela where, you know, you just want that big bear hug from somebody who really seems to have [ __ ] figured out. Um Yeah. and then the fact that I have to save myself. So so I think it's you know, it's part of the course of the universe that once in a couple of generations a Nelson Mandela is born, right? I mean it's you know, Nelson Mandela, MLK, um these incredible people who step up. But one of the things you learn as you study the history is that they were human. They had hopes and dreams just like you and I. They had doubts, too, right? And the minute you figure that out, you then understand that actually nothing separates them from you but for the fact that you're waiting for someone like them to show up. And so the question I always ask is so if we're all waiting for the Messiah who is it? Cuz it we can't all wait. Somebody has to step up. And then the recognition that actually if you read history um communities generally save themselves. Right? There's no single person that does it. So we talk about Nelson Mandela, but the truth is Nelson Mandela led a collective of people who fought for the liberation of my country, right? He was He was the halo, right? That was evangelized so we could create a single narrative about freeing black people in South Africa. But actually there were millions like him who made others even an ultimate sacrifice with their lives, right? And so when once you start realizing that, you go, "Oh, but hold on. This was actually a collective effort." Which means you and me have a duty to become a part of the collective effort of whatever freedom that we're seeking. So if you're waiting for someone to save you you're it. You are the savior. You are And And by the way you don't have to have it figured out. So, you know, most people go, "Well, let me figure it out first, right?" Is what I call the MBA approach. Then you go to school, get an MBA, then I'll start a business. No, just as you go, you will figure it out. And you've got to trust the universe. It'll meet you halfway. It'll teach you what you need to learn. It'll bring into your world an intersection of people, knowledge, spaces where you can grow your own competence and ability. You don't have to be ready for where you're going. You just have to be ready for what's next and and the universe will meet you halfway. That's what I mean by there's no Messiah. We all kind of go, well, we need the perfect person so we can create the perfect future. But what you're learning is there is no perfect person for the perfect future. There's the person who's just working on next step. That's all it is. Just next step. The Wright brothers only figured out the next step. Steve Jobs only figured out the next step. So once you get that right, you go, "Okay." So I actually don't need the perfect person to come and save me. I can do it myself. Brother, I love the way you think, man. I love it. Where can people find out more about you? I think they need to to spend time with you and your ideas. Full love, man. @vusitembwayo, the full word on all the social medias. I'm on IG, I'm on LinkedIn, uh Twitter, and of course on YouTube. I publish a lot of my material there. And I I love this like this current stage of my life. I feel like I It's so interesting. I feel like the grandmaster who's a student. Do you Do you know what that means? So I'm just like, "Oh, wow. I know so much." And then I'd read something and I'd go, "Oh, WOW. I KNOW NOTHING." AND THEN YOU'RE YOU KNOW, YOU'RE JUST like next stage, next phase. And and every time I'm interacting with what I know, I'm educated even more because I think collective intelligence is so much more powerful. So yeah, I'm on all of the socials. Hit me up. I'd love to chat. Love it, man. All right, guys. This is definitely somebody that you're going to want to follow. This man is amazing. Uh and speaking of amazing things, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends. Be legendary. Take care. And enough people have said yes now, you know, to to now impact 8 1/2 million lives. But boy, I If I could count the nos, I mean, there's tens of thousands of nos that we've all heard over the last decade.