In Conversation with: Modibe Matsepane

MODIBE MATSEPANE

Modibe Matsepane is a gentleman from the Limpopo province who made his way to Johannesburg after having completed his high school studies to pursue a degree in environment and geological studies. In that process he discovered a passion for other interests such as business and understanding money. In pursuit of this passion he then started a business supplying graduation regalia but it did not do well, in no time they had to shut it down. Although the first business failed he was determined and continued learning about money, business and wealth. As the story of a true entrepreneur goes he also got involved in bitcoin and stopped, started a business and stopped, all these detours in the entrepreneurial journey did not stand in his way of persevering through it all. As it stands he successfully runs a coffee business, Mopet coffee based in the University of Johannesburg. He is also involved in crypto-currency education with a company called Paxful. He works as the Africa coordinator, essentially he facilitates a way for people to meet and buy bitcoins.

In my conversation with him below we engaged on why it is important to create wealth, building a financial system for yourself, managing and getting out of debt, building generational wealth and why it is important and finally having a better relationship with money.

Creating wealth for ourselves is important because, from what we know and how we grew up most of us are living hand to mouth, it is like we are in a rat race we do very similar things. If you build a series of streams of income the way things happen are less enslaving. You become empowered to do things at a comfortable pace, not that you become an anarchist but it becomes easier to decide whether you want to work 8/ 10 hours or less in creating wealth and stimulating the economy. The economy needs people who are more independent in that they generate money and pay tax, eventually resulting in employment creation. As black people we come from a painful history to break that we then have to create wealth, without this we don’t have control over how our kids in the future are raised in terms of the kind of education they are exposed to.

As the culture amongst young people these days goes they have moved from a job mindset to entrepreneurship. Most of them have businesses they started. It then becomes important to have a sustainable financial system, a good looking financial profile but all this is difficult if you are starting from nothing. Modibe had this to say concerning the highlighted difficulty; to start out you must understand what you want to do and know what it will demand of you, break it down to what exactly it will require you to do.

If you want to build rockets, it has been done before so find the research do it and see how you can make it better, in most cases solutions do not need to be new its simply finding a gap ad trying to exploit it. If people are trying to find ways to travel safer you do not need to purchase new cars you can learn from lean business models and they are becoming more popular by the day observe Uber, AirBnB, Amazon all these business models are quite innovative. They are providing existing solutions and they simply found a niche within the existing solution. Therefore, look for what you can do and understand what it will take to achieve greatness in that.

Funds are not always a problem, contrary to the common narrative, the truth is you need to commit to what you want to do and if it offers real value it will produce money. If you do what people need, you will come right. It is important to learn and then start.

I believe from the above he had to say it is clear that success comes from offering real value, people pay for value not necessarily new things but when you find a gap exploit and offer real value through that. Success will not be far from you in this case.

In my talks with most young people especially the ones between 25-35, most of them are in debt. Maybe because of education, or a failed business venture, or that one time they made a bad decision to please someone’s son or daughter. Debt is a terrible thing especially if you want to progress. Kanye West has taught us that you can go from millions in debt to billions in riches however it will take commitment as Modibe highlights in the following paragraph.

If you are in debt, he also has been there and found way to get around it. He stopped spending more and started spending less it can be such a task, may not be easy but it’s in your best interest. Firstly, cut down on spending and find more means of generating an income, you cannot rely on one income stream, if you have only one income stream that is probably why you are in debt in the first place. Use portions of the money to settle the debt.  It must be planned and cannot be done in one go. Practically if you have a debt of about R2000 then try to reduce your spending by R600, in each a month, then you would be able to settle the debt in about 3 months. Paying off the whole amount can seem like a huge leap so instead it may be better to break down the amount into different parts and focus on paying off one part at a time, then you will be able to settle it.

With money we generally behave as if we are in a rat race we do something now and come back and do it again tomorrow. That is why there is credit cards, loan sharks and other, this is because we spend what we do not have as a way to try pay off our debt. We are not making more but we are in a circle that we cannot exactly come out off because we are not earning more money yet we somewhat always have a surplus which is not even ours, it belongs to the bank.

Hence for you to not return to the same predicament you need to make a decision and commit to it. One way is for you to find a way to earn passive income. If you want moderate returns or low risk investments, you can look into shares, crypto currency or trade in forex. You can also start a small business something you can do to fund your hobbies. You need to take time to learn how whatever you decide on works.

In essence what Modibe is saying is that, do not get into crypto currency, or buy shares if you do not understand how exactly it works, when you will get your returns etc. The same applies to a small businesses, never simply start, do some research first, it will save you money and time. The worst that could happen is ending up in debt when trying to create passive income to pay off debts.

As we are on this path to wealth, having dealt with our debts we need to focus on building generational wealth. A good man leaves wealth for generations but an evil man leaves debt. Which one will you be? This is what Modibe had to say about building generational wealth; we must remember we will not be on earth forever there are those who will come after us. Observe people such as the Motsepes, Maponyas, Ruperts, Suzukis, Bezos, they have worked very hard in their youthful days, even now they are still working they aren’t relaxed. It then is important to see how you will build your generational wealth, you get to live well, contribute to the betterment of people’s lives and give into the economy instead of simply taking which is what most of us do nowadays we are takers. Securing generational wealth allows you to get involved in philanthropic endeavors.

How exactly we build generational wealth is through building structures that are sustainable, investment is great but build a business which has systems in place that go beyond you, such that even if cofounders have left, the systems sustain the vision. This is one of the best ways of securing generational wealth, a business is not like a job, but it is a legacy.

It is not a hidden fact that most people’s relationship with money is abasolutely strange, some do not wat to ever talk about money, some do not want to ever publicly display money, some do not want anyone to know if they have or do not have money. Our relationship should neither be grounded on fear nor love but a rational understanding that money is a tool, a resource in your hands.

Modibe had this to say; Observe society, look at Africans, Christians etc, the beliefs most have about money are not healthy. To have a good relationship with money will save you, some go as far as believing that if you do not have money you cannot go to church, or if you do not have money you cannot support your family, you cannot buy a car.

Money is a beautiful thing that needs to be understood and then you can go after it. There is a prevalent perspective amongst some people and most people in society that money is evil, it causes people to have evil hearts and the like yet that is not the case. If we look in the Bible at people like Abraham, Job, and others, they were all wealthy, they understood what money really was. If you can understand what money is and work hard, you can also definitely get it. It is important to do awareness for people to understand what money is. People go to work for money, that is the motivating factor. The trend is simple people earn and then they spend again and again, they earn and spend. You find that if most people lost their jobs they would not survive beyond six months, this is unfortunate.

For you to practically become better at managing money you need to create before you spend it, say for example you want to buy a sneaker and it costs about R2500, instead of buying it in one go and going broke, a solution would be investing in something that will yield profits for you to create that R2500. Say the returns of your investment are 20%, that is R500 p/m and in 5 months you would have created the R2500 to buy the sneaker. Money is a very important resource however the perspective people have of it affects how they handle it.

The investment you look to make might not be a sneaker, it might be something a bit more serious like starting a new business. I personally started my first business with zero income, I engaged clients, and suppliers and became a middle-woman with only intellectual property to go on. I made my first profit through that one transaction and re-invested it into the business and kept it going.

Lessons we have learnt from Modibe today include creating a structure that allows you to generate passive income in order to come out of debt and stay out of it, build a sustainable enterprise that has systems allowing it to supersede your existence, building a better relationship with money and much more. In our next conversation we will look into practical ways of how to make money, keep money and investment opportunities.