Who are you?

Before I continue, if you had to introduce yourself to a random person who was willing to help you succeed, how would you introduce yourself?

If you lack ideas on points, here are some:

• What’s your name?
• Where are you from?
• How has your environment (your background) affected you?
• What have these problems caused you to achieve?
• What have been some lessons you’ve learned?
• How can this person trust you?

In reality, there will be (almost) no instance where anyone will meet you and require you to introduce yourself this way and then go ahead to give you a million dollars. However, such encounters will mostly happen through referrals. A friend or family member talks to someone about you (somewhat casually) and then initiates an introduction — but then, your referee must have spoken too much about you.

Unfortunately, this is the case for a lot of us: there’s really nothing any of our friends can say to others — in the sense of good faith. There isn’t enough we can even say about ourselves. Fortunately, this is not because there’s nothing going on for us — devoid of experiences and expectations. No! Rather, we are not conscious about any of them and how we can leverage them.

Let’s start with a name. Your name.

This is one thing that is typically taken for granted. Besides being used to identify ourselves, we don’t really care much about our names. In the TV series Game of Thrones, I was keenly interested in the Lannister name. What was said about the name?

“A Lannister always pays his debt”

Obviously, we can’t just take their word for it — but the family was already known for being wealthy.

If one of the Lannisters said “I always pay my debt”, it would mean nothing especially if you don’t know him/her personally. But “A Lannister always pays his debt” has more grandeur to it.

You could say that’s fictional and doesn’t hold. Then, do names like Obama, Trump, Oprah mean anything? A name is like a cover of a book. That’s the first thing you see or know before its contents. Knowing this, you start to become more conscious of what story this book should tell. The meaning and weight of a name is what you give it — we’ll talk about how shortly.

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On the other hand, I, for one, have been very conscious of my name since I was old enough to become aware of it. My name places so much expectation on me. In fact, if I have to introduce myself and mention my name, people just think it’s my nickname. At a glance, what’s so great about me? Each of those moments is a reminder why I can’t stoop any low.

In a way, this same name also gives me an advantage. When people understand it’s my real name, they automatically trust me with bigger responsibilities — a presumption that I will live up to my name. Before I digress any further, all I’m trying to say is, it’s different for me. Expectations are already set by my name.

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What is your story?

How will people tell it? How would you want to hear it? These answers lie in:

• Where are you from?
• How has your environment (your background) affected you?
• What have these problems caused you to achieve?
• What have been some lessons you’ve learned?

Up until now, these are things most of us haven’t really thought about or had discussions on. We live on autopilot, hoping that things will fall into place by themselves. In an attempt to start new ventures and ultimately failing at all of them, I’ve tried to work with people. My mistake when hiring was not to have asked about their story. I come to know this now because, having integrated into the university environment, all I see are people hovering in the direction of the wind, doing what everyone does without a personal clue as to why.

Some time ago, this felt very confusing to me: why don’t people, the vast majority, have an idea of their place in the universe? But to most people, I rather sound/appear confusing because why am I speaking like this or doing what I do?

There’s really a lot to learn from people by letting them tell their story or others telling their story.

But what makes a great story? Let’s look at some examples:

A: Kanye was raised by a single mom in Chicago. He was inspired by one of the local legends in Chicago who also taught him how to produce music. But up until 2002, he was known to be just a producer. Producing songs for people like Jay-Z, but Kanye had bigger ambitions to become a rapper. Just that no industry executive took him seriously. They just thought he could just be a producer. In 2002, he had an accident that caused him to break his jaw. But while recovering, he recorded “Through the Wire” — you should listen to this song. This was the defining moment; the moment people started to pay attention to Kanye. The rest is history.

B: Elon Musk was born to a wealthy family from South Africa. At a young age of 12, he built a game and sold it for $500. He went on to build PayPal, sold it for a lot of money, then acquired Tesla and started SpaceX. Elon Musk has gained so much success since then, allowing him to even buy Twitter for over $40 billion and changing its name to X.

Though these two have varying levels of success, we can choose with any of their successes and live with it. But the story that makes us feel connected to the person and learn that they’ve been through some friction in life but that didn’t stop them, is that of Kanye. His story sounds like one that, regardless of where you’re from or how wealthy your family is, you could be in such a situation.

In fact, Elon Musk’s story is simplified here to allow for some contrast. Between all those wins are some fights he had to win. Some of which he lost too. Building PayPal, for example, isn’t a walk in the park. Neither is running Tesla: having to deal with jurisdictional laws and standards is not an easy thing.

This is not to say coming from a wealthy background makes a bad story. Neither does failing at all your endeavors. In a person’s lifetime are so many episodes of stories to tell. The lessons, how inspiring they can be, are the key takeaways. It’s about you (the person) and the character embodied when having these experiences. How did you overcome challenges? Who did you get through the challenges with? What did you learn from others? What did you learn from the situation?

These are worth showing off and these are what I will call [our] superpowers.

So from today, start with your name and think about what a good story you can tell with your life: the choices you make and the lessons you or other people can learn from.