Start2Finish: Fueling Discipline, Focus and the right mindset
Start2finish is about starting a journey towards achieving fulfilment and the guidance to travel through the voyage until reaching the shores of your goals and visions. The mission is reaching the finish line in whatever endeavours of your life. Many of us lose track of our goals or abandon ship due to situations surrounding us or we lose the will power to go on. Hence regularly reminding each other of what is at stake is key to keep us going
Start2Finish: Fueling Discipline, Focus and the right mindset
Wisdom Borrowed: The Power of Mentorship
Have you ever tried to navigate life's complex journey completely on your own? That's exactly what I did in my twenties—full of ambition but lacking direction, earning money without knowing how to save it, chasing trending careers without considering my true path. Looking back, I realize how much faster I could have grown with the right guidance.
The value of mentorship stands at the heart of personal development and success. Throughout this deeply personal conversation, I share my journey from stubborn independence to discovering the transformative power of having someone who genuinely invests in your growth. My breakthrough came unexpectedly, around a campfire after completing a solar installation project, where an elderly gentleman took interest in my life and business aspirations—a relationship that has profoundly shaped the last five years of my journey.
Today's rapidly changing world makes mentorship more crucial than ever. With AI reshaping industries and traditional career paths becoming less certain, we need guides who have navigated similar waters. Fortunately, finding mentorship has never been more accessible—through books, podcasts, online resources, and virtual relationships—though there remains something uniquely powerful about having someone physically present in your life who provides accountability and personalized guidance.
Whether you're just starting out or looking to reach new heights in your career and personal life, this conversation offers practical insights into finding mentors, the specific benefits they provide (from skill development to networking opportunities), and why accountability matters in achieving your goals. Don't wait until you've made avoidable mistakes. Your future self will thank you for seeking wisdom from those who've walked the path before you. Who's speaking into your journey today?
Fueling Discipline , focus and the right mindset!
It's important to have someone who speaks into your life, who directs your life, someone who gives you advice when you're veering.
Speaker 1:Off course, I wish I'd done this early on in life, you know, when I was young enough. But anyway, at the end of the day, it's never too late to have people in your life that are going to help you or give you direction to where you want to go, what you want to achieve. We all have visions and we have dreams. It's not easy doing it alone and in most cases, you can't do it on your own. You need people who are going to inspire you, people who are going to direct you, people who are going to guide you through it. All Everything that we are going through in our life today, right this moment, someone has gone through it, and if you know someone who has gone through the journey, why not align yourself with that group of people or with that individual, and continue to mature and grow in your journey through life? So in my 20s, I tried it alone. So is everyone. You know we're all naive at some point in our journey through life. We think we can do it on our own. We think no one has gone through what we are going through. So you just do it on your own, you wing it and it's hard to fail. Others fail and never get up, but others fail and learn from that mistake and then know I need someone in my corner who's going to speak something to me. Such is my story. So when I started off in business many, many, many years ago, in my 20s, I was so, so excited about business. I was naive, I think. I didn't want to learn. You know, I didn't want to commit myself to learning In that period. They say your 20s are your learning years. In my 20s, I think, I just finished my O level, I did my marketing diploma and from there I went on to work. From there I went on to work. I never maybe it's because I wasn't knowledgeable to have a mentor on my corner or someone who then is going to guide me through the journey of my life. I could have been advised to save money, but no one advised me to do that. I never learned to do it because I was working, I was earning, I was spending as much as I was working. You know, because I had no one advising me. You know what you need to learn to serve. You need to learn to make that money, continue to work for you. So in my 20s I made some money, but I never saved it. And in terms of career choices, you know, in most cases we are always looking at the thing that is working at that time. What is the thing most people are going for, and you forget everything else. Why it's important to know you know what the future is going to be like Like. Right now.
Speaker 1:There's so many changes in the world. You know education or getting a degree. It was fancy before, back in the day, when the job market was big and everyone would find a job and find a place where they place them. But right now there's so many things. Things are changing very fast. You have AI.
Speaker 1:There's a lot that is happening around us and sometimes you don't know how to navigate through it and there should be someone in your corner who you speak with and learn from them and get advice so that your journey becomes easy. Sometimes we complicate it for ourselves because we think we can do it by our own, and sometimes it's not a question of complicating. It's because there's ignorance. We don't have the knowledge to know that we need someone who speaks to us, someone who guides us. It has never been easy to have a mentor. It has never been easy to have someone mentor. It has never been easy to have someone who is able to guide you through life, like right now.
Speaker 1:I can read books. Back in the day it was difficult to get a book. It was expensive, to own a book of someone who you look forward to and you want to learn from them. Right now we are in the information age. It's easy. You can go on the internet, you know, just one click you're already in connection with your mentor. It was difficult to get even a DVD. It was expensive. Now it's so easy to get information, to get that mentorship. I have failed in business. I've made wrong decisions in my journey. I could have most probably scaled my business and grown it bigger and bigger, but because I had no mentorship, information was limited as I was growing up, but now it's available as I was growing up, but now it's available.
Speaker 1:So To those who are growing up in this time, in this era you are in your 20s, you are 15 years, you are finding your footing in life. You need a mentor. If you belong to a church, identify those people that you think you are able to relate and talk to and get advice from, and be ready to have the advice and apply it in your journey through life, because that becomes important somewhere throughout life. Just like we've been mentored by our parents, you know, growing up, being told to do these chores that we didn't want to do, being told to be where we didn't want to be, you know, and looking at years in life, you see that thing has shaped you. That thing has made you who you are. Good or bad, if someone grew up and said, hey, leave my kid alone. You know that's the only one that I have. And they grew up to be a menace to society. So it depends on how we were nurtured and growing up.
Speaker 1:And at some point, as you begin to make decisions for yourselves, did you find someone who mentored you For me? I think in Africa the system is a bit broken, you know, than the first world countries. Yes, why I'm saying that? In any school there is a guiding counselor, but begin the day they were guiding counselors in schools and there is always someone who is guiding you, who is directing you, and I remember growing up there were people who would talk to us, but it wasn't something that was clear-cut. You know that we get that sort of like foundational support and you notice we then have to make. We end up making bad choices, bad decisions because no one guided you. We need counseling, we need the support, we need to learn. But where do we learn from? You can only learn from those who have gone before you. You can only get advisory because you want it from those who have succeeded in business At some point.
Speaker 1:I remember in my journey I used to approach people and say can you please mentor me? I approached a couple of people and I was rejected. But I also regret not continuing to look for someone who can direct me, who can give some form of order to the activities that I was doing at that particular time in my journey. Yes, I've read some books along the way not a great reader, but I find to have someone, a mentor, someone who you talk to. You want to get married. You need someone who talk to you about marriage. You want to go to business? You need someone who talks to you about business. You need those people that begin to anchor you in every aspect of life so that it makes it easier for you to achieve the things that you want to achieve of life, so that it makes it easier for you To achieve the things that you want to achieve Through life, so that you get to avoid the mistakes that they have gone through, so that you get to learn and become a better human. So, if I say it, it has become very easy to become mentored. It has become very easy to find someone who then begin to speak to your life. How easy it has become. The internet happened. Now you can have mentorship virtually. You know someone that you think they can mentor you, they can give you the direction, continue pushing them, continue knocking on their doors until they said, yes, let me walk the journey with you. As much as we can learn from books, from videos, I truly believe that we need someone at foundational level who is physically there to speak to you, because there are days that you don't want to go on the internet or you don't want to go on that virtual call. But if you have someone who then becomes you know, that voice who you speak to regularly and sit down with and become accountable to you on the journey through life to where you want to get to Later on in life.
Speaker 1:I met this elderly gentleman as we were providing a service of solar. After many years of getting some rejection of mentorship, I met this man and he's been an amazing anchor in my life. He has so much interest in my life and very much well invested in my life for me to have a better life. How I met him is we provided a service of putting up solar at their rural home and this project was very urgent and was very dear to him. You know, to make sure it's done on time because they had some events, I think that the coming weekend, so we arrived at the site a few days early. We did the work, so by the time they arrived on site, everything was up and running and on that particular day we could not go home so we had to sleep over. So we sat around the fire and he took a very amazing interest in my life and what we were doing.
Speaker 1:At that time he started asking me questions is this your business? What are you targeting to achieve in life? You know where do you think this thing is going to go? Started asking me all these questions and to me that was like this is the guy I've been looking for all this while. So we started walking this journey and I, I continue draw, drawing from him. If a while goes before you know, sometimes you, things get busy and time goes by without communicating. He calls me hey, what's going on? Is everything okay? How's life, how's family? How's our business? Are you making strides on your commitments? And we start talking and we start sharing. I get empowered, I get enlightened and it makes life very, very easy for me.
Speaker 1:So having that anchor becomes very important, someone who's there. Not they want something, but they just want to believe in you, they want to give you the right direction to life. So it's important to allow ourselves to interact with as many people as we can find yourself in places where those people you believe they can, uh, mentor you, they can direct you. Find yourself in that place and interact with them, create, ask for them to mentor you, to direct you, and I remember during the journey of them knowing each other, I think after about a month or so, I then requested can you please help us with our business, can you please direct us to make sure we make whatever we're targeting to achieve great? And then the journey began, and this was over five years ago and I'm so blessed and grateful to have this man on my corner. I've connected to other relationships around him and began to learn from those relationships as well.
Speaker 1:So find a mentor early on in life, in In your 20s, earlier in life. You need someone who helps you, who guides you to navigate life, to navigate those things that you want to achieve. So you can be mentored virtually and you can read books of people that have gone before you. It has become easy to get books. You can have digital books, you can have physical books. It has become cheaper to get a book. Almost everyone is writing a book. Hopefully, soon I'll be writing one but all I'm saying is that you can get all this information and begin to learn from these people that you want, you would have wanted to learn from, and life changes, life is improved. You know. You learn one or two things that will help you to shape your business, to shape your life, so that you become better.
Speaker 1:Watch videos. I spend a lot of time podcast watching podcasts, watching videos on YouTube, learning new things, new ideas, because people have become liberal. They just want information to circulate. There are people who are literally recording every gen of their life just to bring it out, to say hey guys, this is how it's done. All you need to do is to allow yourself the time to learn, the time to go through their knowledge, which they are posting out there, and begin to grow and mature and become a better human. Belong to a community, a church, a church, his leaders, his elders, you know. Whatever community you belong to, it can allow you and afford you mentors that can shape your life so that you get to where you're supposed to get in life.
Speaker 1:Why? Why mentorship? The reason why? Because we don't know everything about life. We haven't lived our next five years, our next 10 years, our next 20 years. We don't know anything, and the only way if you don't know is to have knowledge. Hence why you need these mentors to guide you. And when you're mentored, you gain skills and knowledge development. You gain new skills and new knowledge from being mentored. When you're being mentored, you can tap into the network of that person as well. That's a benefit that we can experience Career advancement.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we, especially at a younger age you don't know which career to take. There are many people who started to be an engineer and did something else totally different. I know of a guy who started to be a doctor and ended up enjoyed the stock market so much that that's what he that had become his life. I know of a guy who started to be a physicist. No, I know of a guy who started this science degree but ended up being in business Something that is totally different to what they started for. Everything comes back to the career guidance. You need that advice and at the same time, once you are in that career, you need to advance. You need advice in terms of other skills, other courses, other things that will allow you to be better in life. And being mentored allow personal growth. Like I said, they've gone through it all, they've experienced it all. You can be advised hey, don't do this thing, it's not good for you. Focus on this one, because this is going to move you forward. So there's a lot of personal growth and maturity that you experience and you avoid the mistakes that others are making.
Speaker 1:Improve interpersonal skills. The whole idea of interaction, of talking to people, allows you to better your interpersonal skills, allows you to relate to people better. So why not do it? Why not get a mentor who guides you? You are in business Sometimes maybe your background is accounts and you need a mentor who knows interpersonal skills, who knows selling. Then you begin to learn from that mentor those skills. That is going to improve your business. If you have heard of what is called skill stacking, then you start stacking it up.
Speaker 1:Goal setting and accountability. When you are mentored, you become better at setting goals. Sometimes we set goals and reset goals and reset goals. But when you have someone who guides you, you know you set better goals, meaningful goals, realistic goals because you have an advisor. You set your goals and give your advisor can you check this out? Is it something that I can achieve? Then you have to explain yourself and your capacity and capability to achieve it. Then you get that support that you need and there's accountability to those goals. Now you've set the goals, they ask you how far have you gone with that goal? Set the goals? They ask you how far have you gone with that goal? Are we making progress? Show me how much progress you have made. Now there's a level of accountability because you have someone who's going to continuously watch over you. Hence why someone who is physical, someone who is there, someone who is able to watch over you, is needed in your journey of life.
Speaker 1:So hence my story, why it's important to have a mentor In your life. So it's imperative, if you don't have one now, as you're listening to this video, start thinking Of people that you believe can impact your life and start engaging them to be part of your journey so that you can accomplish your greatness. So this is a quick word that I just wanted to share with you, and I hope it's going to inspire you to find the right fit and the right person who is going to direct you in your life so that you accomplish amazing goals. Don't take this one for granted. It's important to have someone that walks with you in this journey of life. So, from us, it's start to finish. Peace out. Remember, this is a journey. You start something and you travel through that journey. So there's the beginning, the middle and the end, and in the middle you make the mistakes, you're in trouble. At least you want the risk to be lowered by having someone who helps you in this journey to achieving greatness.