Yesterday, I sat in an audience and found myself fighting tears.
A young man stood to share his story — and something about his honesty, his composure, his journey… broke me.
He wasn’t crying.
But I was.
He spoke about how, at just 21 years old, he had already reached what many only dream of.
An executive position.
A beautiful company house.
A paycheck that made things move.
He married well. His children were in great schools. Life was flowing in the right direction — until 2024.
He said it so calmly, but it hit hard:
“The company just shut down. No memo. No warning. No consultation. Just… closed.”
In a matter of weeks, everything he had built began to unravel.
He went from driving a Range Rover to riding a bicycle every day to Mbudzi to sell whatever he could — as a vendor.
Can we pause there?
Many never recover from that kind of fall.
The kind where your pride is bruised, your lifestyle is stripped, and the very image you held of yourself begins to blur.
But he didn’t stop at that.
He told us that what lifted him again — what gave him another chance — was a digital skill.
Yes. A digital skill.
That one thing gave him a second life. It opened doors, helped him earn again, and eventually got him back on his feet — not in the same way, but in a stronger one.
I sat there quietly and asked myself:
How many of us have tied our entire identity to one job, one company, one paycheck?
How many of us feel safe… but we haven’t upskilled?
This young man’s story reminded me of something urgent:
In this economy, skills are not just a nice-to-have — they are survival tools.
And it reminded me of this sobering truth:
Sometimes the person earning $50 a month is saving more, stewarding better, and thinking farther ahead than the one earning $5,000.
It’s not just about how much you earn — it’s about what you’re building beneath it.
The ground can shift at any time.
But if you have a skill in your hand, especially a digital one, you may bend — but you won’t break.
You may cry — but you’ll rise again.
So let me ask you gently:
Do you have something in your hands that can help you stand if the unexpected happens?
That story made me cry.
But it also made me think.
And I hope it makes you prepare.
