Curiosity did not kill me; it got my business though.

Getting out of high school was a tad tough for me. I had lived on using the I’m in school excuse to tame my experimental curiosity with different products and business ideas. Mind while I did not have any spare capital to play around with, I did have a running business that was cashflow positive and running itself most of the time.

The end of 2019 marked a divide for me, I thought I would really make it in the next 2 years or fall hard into the depths of business failure. I got both. Well to be honest I would not say I now know the true depths of business failure but I am getting pretty close. Covid 19 came about when I was doing legal research for a variety of law firms based in the United States, all these firms had cases in Southern Africa and for some reason wanted an aspiring law kid to do the book work for them. The interesting part in all this was the fact that they seemingly never used the research in any case nor out of court situation. Yet they always came back around asking for more research on certain cases and yesteryear studies.

The Legal Fallout.

I’m embarrassed to say this now but around 70% of my savings came from those 3 months of legal research. When Cyril closed shop in S.A and Zimbabwe followed suit my newly found stream also dried up. Firms simply were not pursuing the quest for research in African case studies as they used to. Round about the same time I also lost passion in the legal profession, simply put I realised that the series Suits was a far from realistic take into the legal man’s day to day. In addition, Zimbabwe did not seem, still doesn’t at the time of writing, to have space for pure corporate lawyers. Most lawyers seemingly mix and dice while waiting for their specialty cases.

Years of misusing cashflows also caught up with me. The side hustle that had managed to accumulate a revenue of $11k by 2019 ran out of mileage. The mining rubble obtained from nearby mines from which I VAT leached some left-over gold ran out. Most guys in the area where now running plants that were crazy similar to mine in the way they had set them up. I had changed a few bits here and there to simplify the process. Great start Ntando, bad execution though, I treated the project too passively and lost out to new developments by competition and the clients themselves.

The Third Mistake.

This is where curiosity came into play. The VAT project still had space to wiggle around and get back on the winning team but my fascination in the world of e-commerce was at a high at that time. I changed priority. The idea was, as all ideas are, simple and had a short path to glory *chuckles*. An e-commerce store centred in the world of art, be it abstract, realism you name it the site would have it. I signed various artists on to the site and waited….

This was a bit unusual I thought, I spent money and it wasn’t coming back. Nobody really was visiting the site; I was getting charged relatively exorbitantly on a monthly by my vendor and was still burning money in order to bring artists into the fold. I burned so much money so quickly and so erratically. This experience, looking back at it now, has convinced me that I need financial discipline training.

Late one night reading random articles on Google, I found my answer. No marketing. It took me the simple introspective question “How do these sites get found by their audience and how does Google shuffle these articles?” *facepalm* I had forgotten about awareness and distribution but as soon as I started doing research and going it alone (need to fix this habit) curiosity wound up its fists again. I now wanted an advertising agency and a tech company.

Time Management between school and work illustrated.

The Difference Now.

Fast forward a few weeks and I’m learning how to code, watching ads all day and taking notes. Well fast forward a few months and this is where I still am. There’s a difference now, I want to change. I want to focus on one agenda and go at it as hard as I can. No distractions no more going at it alone but it’s not easy. Already as it stands, I am juggling varsity, working in the construction industry and trying to establish any sort of income.

Maybe my first YouTube video will talk about this in more detail. To self-diagnose, I believe the problem here has been the ease by which I can switch into a different activity and get moderate if not impressive success. Now getting used to that also means that when you face anything remotely difficult, you almost certainly drop it, in search for something easier. Playing the life game on casual and not realistic, so to speak. Either that or simply I lack the commitment to stick to one passion, one activity until I see it through to the end. In light of all other bright and shiny ideas that keep coming by.

The biggest trials I’ll have to face in 2022 and the next few years after are personal. Being committed to the job and sticking by myself through the hard patches. Adding some financial discipline along the way would not hurt for sure. For now, this is all that holds me back. This is the wall we destroy.

I am disappointed by my progress the last 3 years but feel that at the age of 21 I still have some time to relaunch. I will be cutting back on the “becoming a full stack developer” journey and focusing on advertising. At least this will be my trajectory until it either fails or succeeds enough to run itself. The blog will still be up to document and share progress.

Before I log off. YES. The YouTube channel is still in the works, we have not forgotten about it. The name of the channel is Ntandoyenkosi Mahonde. I’ve just been cleaning up house, stay tuned. To go back to Home, click here.

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