Blogs & Insights From Mama Gold
FROM STARTUP TO SUCCESSION
Startups require STAMINA
S stands for SIGNIFICANCE
Significance means a higher calling. A bigger mission. Many entrepreneurs focus on success. Significance is far deeper.
The Compounding Advantage
I never thought my story mattered, but now I do.
I used to compare myself as a founder to other companies, far larger, friends who employed 2000 people. Why would people want to listen to my story?
But then I realized it was not the size of the company we built, but the significance of the lessons we learned.
Last week I was interviewed by Leanne Manas as an entrepreneur at the book launch of "Compounding Advantage", a remarkable book that is both a mirror and a roadmap for businesses in South Africa.
The Jackets of our Lives
It was about five years ago, when I sat shyly at the dining room table of a well-known speaker named Nikki Bush, where she spoke about the jackets of her life and what they represented.
I had heard Nikki speak for the first time after her husband, Simon, had been brutally gunned down in their home in December 2017 in a home invasion.
Nikki stood in a church in Parktown, only 18 months after having lost her husband and told her story of the six seconds that changed her life. The same church where she had married her husband. The same church where her children had been christened.
Second Chances
So many people ask me, “Why don't you retire? Why are you still working? What are you trying to prove? You don't need to prove anything anymore.” And lately, I've had to question myself: Why do I work?
Why do I work?
I work because I'm living a second chance, I believe. A second chance at being a better wife, a better mother, a better leader.
Where do you go to?
Some people, when challenged or triggered, automatically fight back. It's all they knew. It's all they could do to survive back then. It's only when you unpack the anger that you get to the root of the pain. Sometimes fighting back saved our lives.
Taming The Barking Dog
Sometimes, when things are rough, it's easy to default to our old patterns of survival and coping. But when we find a new way forward, even in the depths of our valleys, even in the depths of our despair, we are saying, "I am going to live patterns that protect me, not patterns that might hold short-term comfort but that hold the seed of long-term annihilation."
