An SMS notification woke me up. I was living in Carlswald North Estate & running my food service business from home. A great way to save costs by the way. I advise every entrepreneur to “do the home office thing as long as you can”.
Don’t rush to pay rentals.
The time is 7:14 am. My blackberry phone pings. It’s an SMS notification. The dividend that I had paid into my personal account just cleared. The amount was just over R1.2 million.
By this time of the day I was usually up. It was one of those hot and sticky mornings when JHB was unusually humid.
So I reluctantly opened my left eye with the right-hand side of my face pinned against the pillow. My head felt as heavy as cement. I hadn’t been drinking the night before. This was my body signaling how long the year had been. The phone screen lit. I saw the text & read the zeros.
My grandpas’ house was the classical Apartheid house with the small windows, the stoep all the way around the house, the well kept gravel yard & low mesh wire fence. My grandfather had this deep voice that shook the walls every time he spoke. His name was David, he was just as wise as a King.
Most of us are running.
Running away from poverty.
Running away from where we come from.
Poverty is an incredible assault on the human spirit. It destroys even the most ardent of minds. It shows & reinforces a belief system of self-doubt, self-hate & self-resistance.
You become your own worst enemy by mentally arguing & destroying yourself into nothing.
What is interesting, is that the brain seeks evidence to support what it believes.
If you believe that you are worthless then your brain will find the evidence for it. If you believe that all black wealth is through theft or scams, you will find the evidence for it.
This is why I pity people that spend their data & time destroying other people on social media.
They are too blind to see that they are simply destroying themselves.
Ever notice how when a black person succeeds, we (black people) start looking for the scam.
Ever notice when someone loses weight drastically, people start looking for a loophole, cheat, surgery or a magic diet.
This is the belief that “they don’t deserve it because I don’t deserve it”. So if they did it, they simply found the “cheat sheet”.
If we spent as much time & energy working on our own goals as we do working to destroy the goals of others, we would achieve even more than we thought possible.
But, alas, we live in a world were self-hate is in-vogue & destruction is called woke.
Back to that morning.
My dad started a business when I was around 7 years old. As my mother tells it, he worked for FABCOS. Funny story, I worked with FABCOS many years later. 
the world truly is round.
I don’t have the details but the business deal went sour & he lost everything.
My dad had secured bank funding using our home as collateral.
The drive for me was money. I had experienced suffering as a child & was dead-sure I was never going to do that to my kids. At the time, I only had my son.
It’s amazing how those Apartheid styled matchbox houses became homes that incubated so many dreams. So many of us today formed our first dreams in those houses.
Back to the story (Vusi stop digressing)
I had always had the idea that I would be financially free of the wolves (those sharks that came to collect my parents’ house & car) when I had an encumbered million rand in free cash in my personal account.
I was 25. I had done it.
When I woke up, I got into my BMW 645ci and drove it to see Chris.
Patrick, a dear friend of mine who ran a plastics business & was one of the best salespeople I knew, had introduced me to Chris.
Chris was a salesperson at Porsche SA.
I had promised myself that I would come visit when I had a bar in cash.
I arrived at the Porsche dealership & was greeted with a cup of cappuccino styled with a 911 on top.
Chris told me all about the brand & heritage.
Patrick had the V8 GTS. The violent purr of that engine made my hair stand on its ends.
I told Chris I wanted the car but not for me. For the Mrs.
We did the deal, signed the papers & came to collect it 2 days later.
I was really proud of that buy.
I had wanted to be members of the Stuttgart family since I saw the opening sequence of Bad Boyz 1, where Martin & Will are arguing of the way the cup didn’t have cupholders.
The dreams you have are valid.
They are yours.
When you stop dreaming you stop living.
Keep them. Write them down. Visualise them & then believe in your ability to attain them.
Patrick is an important part of this story. Some of us have the right dream but have the wrong people around us.
Patrick had the brand & knew the right people.
Having him tell me that I could do it & keeping him around me was the fertilizer to my potential.
Don’t expect flashing lights from people that live in darkness.
You need a Patrick in your life. Whatever you’re dreaming, seek and keep people that are living it. It comes so much closer to you.
One of my best friends today never flies commercial, owns businesses in 4 continents, is under 50 & has a car collection that makes mine look like a bakery in Lusikisi. By the way, I love Lusikisi (before I get fetched).
After we collected the car, we drove straight to my mother to show it to her.
It happened to be my second cousins’ wedding. I remember how proud my mom was.
Follow your dreams.
Keep the right company.
Never forget home.
VT