Branding Dazzle (my upcoming official jewellery brand)
So the other week I had a chat with The branding coach and within a few minutes of conversation she had basically summed up all the hindrances that I had never known or acknowledged were keeping me stuck and stagnant in chasing my dreams. (I still can’t quite figure out how she did it but I know that there is a God who speaks loudly even in silence and knows exactly who to tell what He needs you to hear and exactly what they should say to move you. Talk about a far reaching God, no matter where you run to if you are His he will find you even in the belly of the beast (fear) or the witch’s stewing pot.)
When I first saw the poster on Facebook about this branding coach with over twenty years of experience in the field I thought “Well here is an opportunity to finally make something of myself by connecting with someone who already has”, so I boldly sent her an e-mail saying how interested I was in her work and how well her concept of telling a (brand) story resonated so well with me.
I thought I was going to dazzle her with my brilliance but I left baffled by hers. She promptly responded to my e-mail and agreed to meet me saying how she looked forward to working with me. At the time I raised an eyebrow when I saw this and politely responded that I too was looking forward to working with her. It seemed at that very point I had missed what she really meant. I thought she was just sharing a nicety on e-mail but Thembe Khumalo means business and not just take your moni business but called-to-minister-through-branding business.
We made a provisional appointment but due to a seminar she was preparing to host that week and other business that serious business people actually get up to the meeting took a little bit longer to happen than expected and as expected communication was slow. So in a typical fashion that I picked up over the years I assumed that though she had initially agreed to meet me she was now using her busy schedule as an excuse to blow me off just like everyone else who was secretly out to get me. Let’s rewind a little bit here to give you some context.
The phantom prize
From a young age I’ve had people give their word when it’s convenient for them and then do complete 360’s come action time. I don’t know if it’s just me here but have you noticed how a growing number of “maZimba” treat each other particularly in business ventures or paying back zvikwereti. We promise the sun, moon and stars to someone either in service delivery or when we urgently need help then we follow up on them day and night until we get it and suddenly vacate the country even changing numbers when it comes time to honour our cosmic promise.
My earliest encounter with this sort of dishonour was in grade 6 at Kyle School when I earned the reputation of being a fanciful liar at age 11 because my then teacher had told me one afternoon that I had done so well that term that I was going to get a prize at prize giving for coming number 6 in class. Now if you have always sort of been an average kid who sometimes lacked the strength to do homework and hardly applied themself this was huge.
I remember rushing to tell my parents when they came home from work that evening and they were mildly excited (probably from all the times at open day when the teachers had this or that negative thing to say about my performance as a student). As the months progressed to prize giving day I waited patiently to be called for Prize giving rehearsals but to my surprise nothing happened right up until prize giving night when I had to stand in the audience putting on a strong face while another student took the prize which apparently was meant to be for me, listening to my parents question my credibility.
I didn’t ask the teacher and I didn’t talk about it or make a complaint to anyone because I knew it had to be my fault. For whatever reason my teacher had been irresponsible with the gullibility of a student in her formative years and from such a silly thing she had made a mental note that there was surely something wrong with me. This wasn’t the first thing that had caused me to make this conclusion by the way, it was chronic seemingly relentless bedwetting (where no matter what I did my bed was wet the next morning) I reasoned that these types of things could only happen because it was me and not for any other more logical reason.
I’m sure you can imagine the disasters that followed when I hit puberty and even until as recently as a week ago (In terms of my attitude and not the chronic issue). This among a gazillion other little disappointments was among the luggage that I was carrying and hadn’t ever thought about until five minutes into conversation with the branding coach.
She asked me a simple question and I could not answer it to her because I had not yet answered it to myself. So today in branding coach style I ask, what do YOU want to do? Before you come up with the answer that your mother, father, brother, sister or Bae would want to hear, let it simmer in your soul for a bit…cook it with prayerful consideration and see the table that God has set for you..be ready with your fork and knife because once you dig in you’ll wonder why you had always settled for crumbs under the table.
#Be your most Dazzling self (that’s my brand tag line). Special thanks to Thembe Khumalo, God bless you.
