UPDATED: 5 December 2025
If you, like me, grew up in an ordinary middle-class home, then things like shares, investments, and financial freedom weren’t exactly dinner-table topics. We come from a generation where you were told that if you didn’t go to varsity, you shut up, woke up, and went to work. You grafted for someone else, earned just enough to stay alive, and the idea of investing a third of your salary was about as foreign as skiing holidays and generational wealth.
The idea of owning shares in companies run by people like Elon Musk? In the ’80s or ’90s, that conversation would have ended with a parent saying, “Can you not? It’s been a long day.”
Not a calm lecture from a father explaining tax strategy and smart investing. No. You just got: “Get a job, behave yourself, and don’t embarrass us.”
So off we went — clueless teenagers with matric certificates that barely meant anything, shoved into the world with no plan, no roadmap, and no financial survival guide, just the vague promise that “hard work pays off.”
And sure, the hard times taught us grit. But they also robbed us of something far more expensive than money: time. Years lost. Opportunities missed. Decades gone in a blink, with nothing but exhaustion and beer-soaked weekends to show for it.
Most of us started at the bottom — door-to-door sales, dead-end jobs, insulting salaries — and somehow believed this suffering was preparation for a better life. Really, it was prepping us for burnout, debt, and the slow realisation that adulthood is just childhood with bills and worse sleep.
And then you get to that moment — the crossroads. A leather skinned, bags under the eyes version of yourself.
Where you either:
- Keep pretending this is fine, or
- Wake the hell up.
Because here’s the truth:
Most of us will never smell wealth unless it’s in the form of our boss’s holiday-home bathroom soap.
We’re the cogs. The consumers. The target market. The ones who buy cars we can’t afford because we want to look “successful” pulling into a friend’s driveway, even though we’re drowning in debt. We are the reason corporate cultures, quota clubs, and the motivational industry exist. We are the pray for better, but behave worse. Live for a better day, when all will be “perfect”, yet are doing less than zero to achieve this, nirvana.
We wear the shoes down to the bone. We drink and smoke away our anxiety. We think we’re “living” because we braai every weekend and post it online….idiots.
But we know better. Or at least — now we should.
Because there comes a point where you stop justifying your own misery and start looking for a different path. You learn that wealth isn’t magic — it’s knowledge, discipline, and time. All the stuff we were never taught because our parents didn’t know it themselves.
And yes, enter Elon — not as some hero or idol, but as proof of concept.
He’s simply the example of someone who didn’t accept the script handed to him. Someone who pushed, learned, failed, got up, and kept going. He showed that devoid of emotion and self justification, the most amazing goals can be achieved.
You don’t need an idol — you need evidence that change is possible and let’s face it, he is that evidence.
And that’s the point: If you want out, you have to become something different. Let me stress this, as “something different” sounds real simple. But, in reality, it is hell. You have to break and build yourself, not once or ten times, but however long it takes. Your character, fears and focus all need to rearrange into a state a Samurai would see has honorable.
Just remember, even though you want it, success is not for everyone. Because, before success comes sacrifice and pain, lots of pain.
You trade the Friday-night binge for further education.
You trade excuses for results.
You trade the illusion of “fun” for the reality of “freedom.”
In other words, you trade your old ways for everything that will benefit your goal. It is a mammoth, lonely journey.
You stop listening to Dave brag about getting kicked out of a strip club and start listening to people who have actually built something. You realise that half the “self-made” people you know were simply well-connected kids with a head start they never acknowledge.
Meanwhile, you’re building from nothing — which means you can’t afford the same level of stupidity or worse, man’s greatest weakness, arrogance.
You need to study money. It is a skill to make it.
You need to learn and appreciate investing
You need to understand compound interest.
You need to learn to produce instead of consume.
You have to remember that no one is coming to save you. There is no lottery win. There is no deity looking out for you. There is no one big deal that will get you to your goal. There is only you, your grit, and the choice to stop bullshitting yourself.
Pain is guaranteed.
Suffering is unavoidable.
But progress? That’s optional.
Trust me; if you use your pain as fuel, you’ll move forward.
If you use it as an excuse, just like the billions of losers, you’ll stay exactly where you are — complaining, exhausted, stuck, and pretending everything is fine.
The world is full of people who make noise, rambling about their soft little world.
Likewise, it is not short on people who hope, with no effort. But it most certainly is painfully short on people who act like our protagonist, Elon Musk.
I’ve fallen more times than I can count.
Walked holes in my shoes doing humiliating jobs and this was just the start.
Failed, rebuilt, failed again, rebuilt, failed again, rebuilt and still kept moving.
People wrote me off — family, friends, everyone gave up on me. I was gone in terms of the business world at one stage. Yet here I am. Better, stronger, and finally free from restraints of society’s ignorance.
Not because I’m special — but because I stopped outsourcing my future to luck.
So here’s the message:
You and I aren’t different. We’re just at different points on the same path.
And you can start moving — today — if you stop lying to yourself about how “hard” it is. No one cares.
Learn how money works.
Invest.
Study.
Commit.
And stop acting like the world owes you something. I am sorry to tell you, it doesn’t. No one owes you anything. Only beggars put their hands out, expecting something for nothing, have some pride.
I’m not selling hope or motivation here. I’m telling you what I learned the hardest possible way. Decades of mountains,hells and valleys.
Therefore, look at our hyper-successful human, Elon, study his business ethics, approach and thinking. Afterall, if business is a giant game of Monopoly, then this guy won the game. Don’t idolise him, don’t idolise anymore for that matter, but study his model and most importantly his work ethic. You think his companies and inventions are impressive, then you have not looked at the wealth of grit he possesses.
Be brave. Your family, friends (if you have any left in the end), will respect you, a very rare achievement in today’s world. See you on the other side — if you’re done making excuses. Elon, keep rocking, mate and never let the noise get you down. Haters goin hate.
On another note, my company will be an asset to your businesses, let’s do lunch?
Share your thoughts in the comment section below.
