“Did I know 1000 people?” is the first ludicrous question I asked myself. “How many could I sell to my friends?” the same school friends, mind you, who were sitting with the same task. But how on earth was I going to convince people to buy these chocolates?

Weeks went by, and I managed to sell some, but nothing to write home about. I lived in a strict household; I wasn’t really allowed to play in the street, and we’d moved to the suburbs at this point in my childhood, so I barely knew the kids on my street, let alone the adults who could afford to buy these chocolates.

A few kids in class, however, had managed to sell them, and every day I was feeling more demotivated; I took it as a personal failure, despite the reassurance from other kids that they too were struggling to sell theirs. It required a skill set I believed was beyond me.

Eventually my parents bought them from me, and although it gave me massive relief, I knew at that moment I was never going to be an entrepreneur.

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For many years after that I made my case that I was meant to be a 9-5er. I took instruction well, I enjoyed routine, and I enjoyed knowing that putting in Y was going to give me Z.

It was only in 2021, 21-22 years later, when that core belief was turned upside down. For a year and a half, I’d been dreaming about starting my own e-commerce activewear line, Slay with Kay Fitness.

At this point, I’d done all there really was to be done on the backend, from legalising the company to finding my suppliers, to nailing the creative campaign for our launch. All that was left to press was “publish” on Shopify, and we’d be in business baby, but I was terrified.

Weeks went by, and people had been anticipating the launch, but all I saw was 1000 chocolate bars. It took Sihle, a friend of mine, to knock some sense into me. “Summer will come eventually” is what she told me after I told her that I was selling summer activewear in peak winter. She could probably tell I was scared, but she knew I’d eventually get over it.

Knowing what I know now, I realise that more than launching my business, I was rewriting a narrative I had come to believe about myself. I was far more capable of being an entrepreneur than I gave myself credit for; in fact, my desire for structure and routine meant that I implemented systems and processes in my start-up far quicker than most founders. It made me plan ahead, consider the impact more growth could have on the business and how I could do something practical about it today.

And that’s exactly what you overlook in your own life too. There are things that you do remarkably well, that feel like breathing, and yet you often take them for granted or worse, believe them to only be applicable in certain areas in your life. But the truth is you are far more knowledgeable, disciplined and reliable than you give yourself credit for.

Of course, there were many things I had to learn when starting a business, but you can’t learn what you haven’t started. I couldn’t have possibly learned what it means to attract customers, get them to buy again and to spread the word if I hadn’t launched then. There are things that you simply must experience to learn, but trust yourself to know that you will survive what it is you must learn.

And the same applies to handling your finances. I get told so many times in my DMs, “I’m not a numbers person”, or “I don’t do well with money”. But are you though? You know how much things cost, you know when you’ve overindulged, and you know when you need to get your act together.

Personal finance is not rocket science, I promise. The most fundamental things I learned did not require a degree. They required me to start.

1. Purchase the shares.

2. Contribute to the Pension Fund.

3. Open the Tax-Free Savings Account.

I made a few mistakes along the way, but the upside has been tremendous. Nothing I learned couldn’t be resolved with a cool head.

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You’re sitting on so much evidence that you can do many things. You wake up to go to work (consistency), you pay your rent (discipline), and you know brown bread is cheaper than white (evaluation). And surprise, surprise, those are the same useful skill sets you can apply to many investment vehicles.

You are a finance person because you use money every day.

That’s the same voice that told me I wasn’t an entrepreneur, and it’s lying to you about this too. I want people to get someone else to do their finances, not because they can’t, but because they just don’t want to. Anything that happens to your money should be something you can understand and engage an advisor on.

It takes time, but I’m sure by now you know that time passes anyways, so you might as well get in the business of getting started.

Start scared, start uncertain, just start. You can overcome 1000 chocolate bars.

That was 2014 for me. I was a first-year on a KPMG audit, and a bunch of my co-workers had circled the one screen discussing derivatives. “Bruh, I made so much on this one, only to lose so much on this one,” one of the guys said as he flipped between tabs.

I knew what derivatives were; I’d spent 4 years in my undergrad and Honours year learning them, but I’d never actually seen one in action. I couldn’t even tell you how they were doing all of this, let alone for how much. I just nodded along throughout the conversation, hoping I wouldn’t get “caught out”.

I’d guess almost everyone has a version of that room. Different industry, different year, same particular quiet of pretending you’re following along. What’s crazy to me looking back at the moment was I didn’t have anything to be ashamed of. I was taught the theory of money but not what it meant in my particular life. So if anything, I had no business pretending to know a game I only watched on the bench.

That silence followed me quietly for years, sitting in the background while I kept doing the job I actually knew how to do. Then in 2017, in Washington D.C., I happened to work on a client with another South African, Denis, who had been helping his girlfriend, Katie, pay off $200k in debt.

Katie had so many questions for Denis that he thought to make it a podcast. And finally I could live through Katie. She motivated me to embrace being a beginner. I opened a trading account with Robinhood because it felt like everyone was talking about it and started investing in shares.

Those first few years were still awkward, in a way I don’t think people admit to often enough. I couldn’t ask my parents the way some people can, because this wasn’t something they understood either. Nobody was handing this down to me. Whatever I learned, I learned by doing it badly first.

And after enough misses, I started to be more candid with my co-workers; one of them was Anissa. Now one of my closest friends, Anissa was very open about her trades, what worked, what didn't. She shared this like she was sharing a new lip shade she found at Sephora. And I think being around someone who didn't have it all figured out, but knew a little more than me, gave me a lot of confidence to fail upwards.

That confidence is what finally got me automating things instead of agonizing over them, same shares, same amount, every month, so I never had to feel sure before I acted.

I think almost everyone is carrying some version of this, and it rarely stays confined to one subject. Maybe it’s the meeting where everyone nods along at a term you’ve never actually understood. Maybe it’s the mortgage conversation you’ve had a dozen times and still don’t really follow. Maybe it’s just money in general, and you’ve built an entire adult life around quietly avoiding the one conversation that would clear it up.

And I’ve come to learn that no experience is new. So if I went through this, it’s likely you’re going through it in some shape or form. You’re in a room, professionally or personally, where by every outward measure you should already know. And you don’t.

If anything, the more accomplished you look on paper, the heavier that quiet gets. I had the letters after my name that were supposed to mean I already knew. Maybe you have your own version of those letters, a degree, a title, a decade in the industry, whatever makes the not knowing feel like a contradiction instead of an ordinary gap.

There’s no shame in a thing nobody ever actually taught you. You’re not behind. You just haven’t been shown yet.

That’s the space I’m creating for you here, to be open to not knowing, and be ok with it. Some of us did not have that exposure growing up; that doesn’t mean we can’t put up our hands now and say “hey, teach me”. I’m always here to help. What’s been something that’s bothering you lately? Let me know, and let’s learn together.

I write about getting unstuck.

If you’re following this from one of my social media profiles, then it’s likely that you’ve interacted mainly with my personal finance content. As a Chartered Accountant (CA(SA)) who has had the opportunity to work at some really amazing companies, including KPMG in Johannesburg and Google in San Francisco, I always understood the importance of money and the power it has to change the wheel of fortune for anyone. However, I never quite got the same training from a personal finance standpoint, and so most of the things I’ve taught on IG and TikTok, I’ve first had to teach myself.

But if you’ve gotten to know me a little deeper in my stories, you’d know that money was not the point. The point I try to emphasise to people is that they need to have a bias for action. It’s the single biggest indicator of your “luck” in life. Most things people want don’t require significant capital (not in the beginning anyway); they simply require small meaningful actions, day in and day out. But I know it’s hard, especially if you have anxious thoughts like me. You spend more time overthinking, overanalyzing, and “perfecting” instead of just doing the damn thing.

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What am I going to do help you?

Well, we all know that nobody is coming to save you; only you can do that, but maybe I can be your Mufasa, reminding you, Simba, who you are. There are so many things you’ve already done, and yet it’s likely you don’t remember them, or worse, you underestimate them because you don’t think they hold value. When I started my first “how I saved a million rand before I turned 30” series, I thought it was stupid because I kept thinking “R1 million means nothing today’ and maybe to some it is, but the habits- those are STILL very valuable. They are what endure. And they are the same habits that got me a job at Google and an MBA with Honours in a top 5 institution in the world.

This isn’t a space for people who already have it all figured out. It’s for the ones who know what they should be doing (saving, investing, making the pivot, starting the thing) and still find themselves stuck at the starting line. If that’s you, you’re in the right place. Stuck is stuck, whatever it’s wearing, whether it’s your finances, your career, or the move you’ve been meaning to make.

What can you expect

Well, for now, we can start with money and career, but throughout this journey I want us to build out our confidence. Let this be a space where you can contemplate your own growth, a place of no judgment; literally ask me anything you want. So yes, let’s talk about money, but also about moving out of our hometowns, or starting a business or anything in between. Keep an eye out for my emails; new posts will land every Sunday

If you’re the kind of person who’d rather do something imperfect than keep thinking about it, welcome. Let’s go.