Life and business advice that I got from Muuza Chipsi

I graduated in 2018, December 15th and I, always looking for reasons to celebrate life, have been celebrating my ‘graduversary’ for two years now.

Yes, it’s a thing… lol!

For this year’s celebration, I went to eat my favorite Tanzanian street food, Chipsi Mayai, and found myself in conversation with Muuza Chipsi and he shared some life and business gems with me that I wish all recent graduates should hear.

He said:

Don’t put your value and self-worth on people’s perception of you.

First impression matters, especially when you go to interviews and stuffs. However most of us get our self-worth from how people see us, what we own and how people think of us.

What they think of us matters than what we think of ourselves, he said, ‘People are afraid to do certain types of jobs because they are graduates and they don’t want people to think less of them for doing those jobs, but remember even if you choma mahindi you can scale it and earn your income. If you decide to farm and sell, you can somehow use your university knowledge to differentiate yourself and hence attract customers, don’t live off of people’s perception of you, that won’t feed you’.

Sometimes it is not witchcraft, sometimes you are just bad at business

Take time to learn the nature of business you want to partake in. He said, ‘A lot of people complain about a lot of stuff, they be like ‘witchcraft this, witchcraft that, connection this, connection that’ however most times they have losses because they didn’t strategize well.

‘But people are so good at complaining rather than thinking of solutions, good at blaming rather than seeing things as opportunities.

‘What you need to ask yourself is, what can you do with what you have? Your knowledge, thoughts, creativity, skills and everything, how can you use what you already have?’

Years change and life goes by

You can sit down and wait for your life to start or see that it has already started, and decide to swim with the waves.

He said, ‘A lot of people are waiting for their lives to start, waiting for this, waiting for that but life has already started. Life is now, how you live now matters. Try things, take risks, right now you are young you can make mistakes, try new things, don’t be afraid to be seen trying’.

I can’t believe it’s been two years since I graduated, but here we are.

He was right, years change and life goes by.

So recent graduates: Don’t be afraid to take risks in life, it’s your life what people think of you shouldn’t hold that much weight as what you think of yourself.