There is a question worth sitting with:
Why is it that the violence of the oppressor is called "order", and the violence of the oppressed is called "chaos"?
Why is the French king’s tax collector arriving with soldiers "governance", and the French peasant arriving with a pitchfork "terror"?
Why is the British army marching through Boston "maintaining the peace", and Paul Revere riding through the night "rebellion"?
Why is the plantation owner’s whip "discipline", and Nat Turner’s rebellion "savagery"?
The answer is not complicated.
The people who write history, at least the first draft, are the people who won.
And the people who won built the vocabulary before the war ended.
"Order" means: the arrangement that benefits us.
"Chaos" means: the arrangement we don’t control.
Study that vocabulary carefully.
It is still in use.
Put yourself in situations where you have too much at stake to waste time or resources - if you cannot afford to lose, you won’t.
Place yourself on “death ground,” where your back is against the wall and you have to fight like hell to get out alive.
Founders love the idea of hiring one magical person who takes all the chaos off their plate. A COO, an integrator, a rockstar operator.
It rarely works. You're trying to hire one person to do the job of five.
Past $2M, you need five leaders, each owning one lane:
Head of Marketing: traffic, leads, CAC
Head of Sales: conversion, close rate, revenue
Head of Fulfillment: retention, delivery, margin
Head of Finance: cash, budget, profit
An EA: your calendar and your time
Hire for one function at a time, starting with your biggest bottleneck. Stop looking for a hero. Build the team.
@Abramjee Let's be consistent in naming, shaming and publicising these people in this kawntry, only when it's the Maumelas are images shown, crime has no colour Yusuf
Economy in SA doent need "better" admin skills , entire system has to be overhauled for country to prosper.
No "structural reforms" bullshit is going help when almost 70% lives on less that R3k per month
WHO is going to buy goods and services?
Who is going to pay income taxes?
Our value in this world is not what we know but what we do with what we know.
This thought has been on my heart while mentoring capable people who feel stuck in their careers. Many respond by enrolling for another degree - an MBA or similar - hoping it will unlock the next level. Yet qualifications alone rarely address the real barriers to upward mobility.
Knowledge is valuable, but it only becomes powerful when we apply it differently. The breakthrough often lies not in accumulating more information, but in looking within and asking: What must I do differently? What habits, mindsets, or actions have I been avoiding?
I have seen that those who progress are the ones who turn insight into deliberate change - in how they show up, lead, communicate, and take ownership. Degrees can open doors, but it is what we do with what we already know that moves us forward.
What knowledge are you sitting on that is waiting for you to act on it differently today?
Let us be people of impact, not just additional certificates.
#WisdomInAction #ReflectAndAct
Being profitable is a discipline, not a phase.
The temptation once cash shows up is to hire staff you don't need, rent an office you won't fill, and slow down on the one thing that actually works.
The brands that last stay lean on purpose. Overhead is the enemy. Every dollar not spent acquiring a customer profitably is a dollar working against you.
you must believe you are special and then go so hard, for so long, with such violent refusal to accept any other ending, that reality itself starts running out of ways to tell you no. you must wage a war daily against the ordinary outcome, until the belief you invented out of nothing in a room by yourself has been hammered into the world so many times that it stops being a claim and becomes reality.
If you come across any special trait of meanness or stupidity…you must be careful not to let it annoy or distress you, but to look upon it merely as an addition to your knowledge—a new fact to be considered in studying the character of humanity. Your attitude towards it will be that of the mineralogist who stumbles upon a very characteristic specimen of a mineral. - Arthur Schopenhauer
SIX YEARS LATER, GROUP FIVE SURVIVES
Group Five has officially exited business rescue after six years, achieving one of South Africa’s most successful corporate recoveries.
The construction group, which entered business rescue in 2019 with around R7bn in debt and more than 2,300 creditors, has paid all creditors in full while preserving most jobs and completing the majority of its construction projects.
The outcome far exceeded expectations, with liquidation previously expected to leave creditors with only a fraction of what they were owed and shareholders with nothing.
Any remaining surplus could now be returned to shareholders, marking a remarkable turnaround for the once-struggling engineering giant.
Full story - https://t.co/iYVUFTdjjQ
There is a kind of poverty that is materially poor but rich in a lot of practical ways.
There are towns in rural Italy, where an old couple lives together in a stone house in the mountains. She has a flower garden, and he sits on the balcony to smoke and read in the morning.
That couple is poor by American standards. They shop at the local markets, eat eggs from their neighbour's chickens. Healthcare is covered by the state. Their church is not fancy. Their clothes are bought from the town market. 10 euro sandals.
But they own their house and did not have to spend 40 years being exploited by a bank paying for it several times with interest. They just bought it outright. They are loved by their neighbours. They can walk around their towns safely because its not packed full of 60IQ savages (for now).
The food they buy is not poisoned. The work the did when they were younger: teachers, nurses, engineers, was just real and normal work. They didn't feel the need to come up with elaborate schemes to become millionaires. Their grandchildren visit them every weekend.
This, too, is wealth.
The goal is not to make everyone Elon Musk. The goal is to make a system where this kind of nonna nonno wealth is achievable for more people.