In January 2019 my entire life changed on a dime. 

I moved out of my apartment, packed up all my belongings, placed them in storage and lived out of 2 bags as I traveled the world in search of meeting the talented Founders Live members and city leaders. 

Over the course of 400+ days I traveled more than 75,000 miles, visited 4 continents, met thousands of people, spent tens of thousands of dollars on Airbnb’s and made so many memories along the way. In fact, it was so good there just might be another Founders Live tour upon us in 2022 - more on that very soon! 

November 2019 was Africa month and I chose to visit Harare and the beautiful country of Zimbabwe.

Zimbabwe is a special place and the people are beautiful and very kind. I had the honor to attend a Founders Live Harare event at the Impact Hub Harare where (to my non-surprise) the event was pretty much the same three-hour experience as it is in so many of our other cities. Fun. Inspiring. Life changing for me and the Founders who were pitching. 

One of my most distinct memories of that event was the fact that at the time it had been less than a month since I lost my father to cancer and I was holding back all the deep emotions as I addressed the crowd. I don’t think the people of Harare knew how important this event was to me, and I knew my Dad was proud of my travels and was smiling upon us - what a special time. 

During my stay in Harare I had the opportunity to connect with so many people. Young entrepreneurs. Old entrepreneurs. All genders. All walks of life. Some people were transplants from other countries or other cities in Zimbabwe living in Harare which I thought was very cool.

One day a young entrepreneur sat down with me and simply asked “how do we become more like you?” The question took me somewhat aback. 

I wondered what he meant? It took me a minute but I realized he was asking in what way can he improve his chances of success to the levels those in the US have mostly by inherently just living in the United States.

Here’s What I learned and What I Told Him

We all are the same. Even if we have different skin colors we are all the same. 

We all are looking for purpose in our lives. Even if we speak different languages or dialects. We are all the same. 

No matter where we grew up or live now, we are all looking to create change in our world - which could be as small as impacting our own city, or as large as impacting millions of people across the entire globe. 

I realized we all have unique gifts and talents to put to work in creating products and services that improve the world.

We all want to have fun! And we all desire to belong to a community. 

I told him we all have potential, the difference is in how you utilize and put your potential to work, day in and day out, that makes the difference between.

I must admit, the 2019 world tour changed me and my views on humanity. I will never again allow anyone to tell me that all of us humans aren’t the same - inside and out - or that certain people don’t deserve the opportunity to move forward and be successful. 

Never. 

And with that ethos in mind we continue to expand Founders Live further and further into the corners and crevices around the world, because we believe in the human potential. We believe the Total Global Value of human potential has barely been tapped.

Curious about this potential? You will see it in action this week as Founders Live Harare is the centerpiece of this week’s Center Stage show.

Join us for our opening show, updates from the Founders Live ecosystem, and see and hear the talented people creating change and progress in the beautiful country of Zimbabwe.