Dylan and I have regular board meetings with our Tuta-Me investors, where we update them on our progress and plans for the coming months.
Theyâre usually pretty standard, but at one of our most recent meetings, the investors asked us something rather out of the ordinary: âWhat are you guys going to do after Tuta-Me? Whatâs next on your path?â
I paused for a moment, trying to come up with an articulate answer, but before I could say anything Dylan responded: âAbed and I are entrepreneurs. We are going to spend the rest of our lives figuring out businesses, establishing start-ups, growing businesses and creating value.â He went on to compare us to a bird thatâs been caged, and that longs for the day it is released so that it can be free to fly and roam the skies. âBoth of us are out of the cage, and weâre going to do everything possible to remain outside.â
I couldnât have given a better answer. My truth is that Iâm so in love with business and its entire process. Building a business is one of the hardest things I have had to do in my life, but I would choose to do it all over again â and again â if given the chance. I quit my job five years ago so that I could dive into business and learn as much about it as I could, and instead I found myself embarking on a journey that taught me about life. My journey into business has been a journey of self-actualisation; a journey of discovery. I will never stop thinking, with wonder, about the impact the businesses we started have had on my family, friends, employees, communities and the other companies we work with.
Even though I agreed 200 per cent with Dylanâs answer, the question was a personal one, and I continued to reflect on it for weeks after that board meeting. To be quite honest, I think I will consider the question of âwhatâs next?â for the rest of my life. I donât have all the answers, and probably never will, but I do know that I will continue to do more of what I am doing now.
My hope and desire is that our businesses â Thamani, Silicon Maboneng and Tuta-Me â outlive us and continue to employ young people and create value for the communities and customers they serve. It requires an insurmountable amount of energy and effort to start a business, and an even greater effort and energy to sustain it, so Iâm not sure if I will be starting any new businesses anytime soon. That said, as I write this, I have ideas for three new start-ups â so who knows what the future holds?
I think the next stage in my journey can be summed up by three poems I learned in my matric English classes. Theyâre timeless in both their message and their meaning, and they hold special resonance for me.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
⌠I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I â
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The Road Not Taken â Robert Frost
This really encapsulates how I feel about the decision I took on 26 February 2014, my crown birthday, to leave employment and all its comforts â most of all, the SMS Iâd receive on the twenty-fifth of every month, telling me that I had just received my salary and that I could still pay my rent, my car and groceries, and the occasional night out with friends.
I was venturing into a space where there would be no stable salary (and certainly no reassuring SMS), and indeed I could be telling this story with a sigh â but the truth is that we have been very lucky. Things seem to be working out; we are carrying on, we are paying the bills.
Entrepreneurship is definitely the road less travelled. It is less grassy, it has thorns and potholes, but it also holds rich rewards for those who are prepared to take the risk and put up with the discomfort. I know that the choice I made was right for me (and I know that my business partners feel the same way) â even though Iâm equally certain that weâll encounter more forks on the road as we go further along our path. I know that weâll be confronted with more tough decisions, but Iâm confident that we will always choose the adventure over the predictable.
J
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms ...
Walden â Henry David Thoreau
They say that you should not test the depth of water with both feet. Well, thatâs exactly what I did. I jumped into entrepreneurship with both feet, without knowing what lay beneath the surface. I became an entrepreneur to learn about business, but the process has turned me into a scholar of people, love, patience, humanity and life. I have learned more about myself than I have learned about business.
Youâre probably already aware of Maslowâs Hierarchy, a pyramid of human needs which is topped by self-Âactualisation. This is defined as ârealising personal potential, self-fulfilment, seeking personal growth and peak experiencesâ. Itâs a desire âto become everything one is capable of becomingâ. I think that entrepreneurship has brought me closer to this state. I have grown, as a person, in leaps and bounds, and continue to grow every day.
I found lifeâs marrow in entrepreneurship, and I intend to keep sucking that marrow out of life, just as Thoreau did. Steve Jobs once said, âDeath is the single best invention of life ⌠It replaces the old with the new. Itâs a constant reminder that our time on earth is limited.â He was right: life is short, and I donât want to feel that I wasted my life because I didnât live out my dreams â and you shouldnât, either. You donât have to choose entrepreneurship, but you must choose happiness, whatever that means for you. Maybe it mean...