YAMBUKA yearns for excellence.


Let's take a moment to recognize authentic talent: those who consistently deliver in the clutch.






Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr.; January 17, 1942) is a retired American boxer and three-time World Heavyweight Champion, who is widely considered one of the greatest heavyweight champions. As an amateur, he won a gold medal in the light heavyweight division at the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome. After turning professional, he went on to become the first boxer to win the lineal heavyweight championship three times. In 1999, Ali was crowned "Sportsman of the Century" by Sports Illustrated and "Sports Personality of the Century" by the BBC.



The GREAT Michael Jordan- Michael Jeffrey Jordan (born February 17, 1963) is a retired American professional basketball player and active businessman. His biography on the NBA website states, "By acclamation, Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player of all time."




Kobe Bean Bryant (born August 23, 1978) is an American shooting guard who plays for the Los Angeles Lakers in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Bryant enjoyed a successful high school basketball career and made instant headlines when he decided to go directly into the NBA upon graduation.




Lil Wayne; Tha Carter III was released on June 10, 2008, selling more than a million copies in its first week of release, the first to do so since 50 Cent's The Massacre in 2005. Lil Wayne is an American Grammy Award-winning rapper. Formerly a member of the rap group the Hot Boys, he joined the Cash Money Records collective as a teenager.





Eldrick Tont "Tiger" Woods (born December 30, 1975) is an American professional golfer whose achievements to date rank him among the most successful golfers of all time. Currently the World No. 1, he was the highest-paid professional athlete in 2008, having earned an estimated $110 million from winnings and endorsements.




Denzel Hayes Washington, Jr. (born December 28, 1954) is an American actor, screenwriter, director and film producer. He has garnered much critical acclaim for his work in film since the 1990s, including for his portrayals of real-life figures, such as Steve Biko, Malcolm X, Rubin Carter, Melvin B. Tolson, Frank Lucas and Herman Boone.




Edison Arantes do Nascimento ,(born, Três Corações, Minas Gerais, Brazil, 23 October 1940), best known by his nickname Pelé (Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation: [peˈlɛ], usual English pronunciation: /ˈpɛleɪ/) is a Brazilian football player. He was given the title "Athlete of the Century" by the International Olympic Committee.




Dr Dre Andre Romelle Young (born February 18, 1965), primarily known by his stage name Dr. Dre, is an American record producer, rapper, record executive, and actor. He is the founder and current CEO of Aftermath Entertainment and a former co-owner and artist of Death Row Records, also having produced albums for and overseeing the careers of many rappers signed to those record labels, such as Snoop Dogg and Eminem. As a producer he is credited as a key figure in the popularization of West Coast G-funk, a style of rap music characterized as synthesizer-based with slow, heavy beats.





Barack Hussein Obama II born August 4, 1961 is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office, as well as the first president born in Hawaii. Obama previously served as the junior United States Senator from Illinois from January 2005 until he resigned after his election to the presidency in November 2008.



Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he was the president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney in Chicago and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004.




Onwards. Upwards. Always!

Farai

I’ve discovered that I turn to Robert Nesta Marley whenever I’m on a philosophical journey.




The compilation album, Legend (1984), released three years after his death, is reggae's best-selling album, being 10 times Platinum (Diamond) in the U.S., and selling 20 million copies worldwide.


The classic collection is a soothing blend of enlightenment, inspiration, entertainment, rhythm and insight wrapped in a euphoric timeless and universal message. For me, the album is thematically relevant because it epitomizes emotional intelligence because each and every track has the essence of the YAMBUKA purpose, OVERCOME.



EI is the ability to perceive emotion, integrate emotion to facilitate thought, understand emotions and to regulate emotions to promote personal growth. This self-perceived ability, to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of one's self, of others, and of groups is a skill I am still learning to develop, but which Bob Marley was clearly at ease with.


Get Up, Stand Up.

Don't give up the fight! (Don't give it up, don't give it up!)



Exodus

Open your eyes and look within:
Are you satisfied with the life you're living?


No Woman, Nuh Cry

Everything's gonna be all right!




Satisfy My Soul

Every little action (satisfy my soul),
there's a reaction (satisfy my soul).



Redemption Song

We forward in this generation
Triumphantly.




One Love / People Get Ready

Give thanks and praise to the Lord and I will feel all right.



Stir It up

Now you are here (stir it, stir it, stir it together), I said,
it's so clear





Three Little Birds

'Don't worry about a thing,
'Cause every little thing gonna be all right.



Entrepreneurship requires solid interpersonal relationships; interpersonal relationships are relatively long-term association between two or more people.



Regular business interactions and many other types of social commitment require understanding and the ability to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of one's self, of others, and of groups. Bob Marley's legacy is founded on an emotional, universal and timeless message:

Onwards. Upwards. Always !

Farai

Today I’m fired up!

Last week was a WATERSHED: an important point of division or transition between two phases and conditions; a ridge or crest line dividing and parting who I was from who I am going to be.

I’m thinking of my life and my business as a bucket; a bucket with room to fill it up with specific selected experiences.

I’m trying to plan; when you go through life without planning, you run the risk of filling up your bucket with little pebbles and grains of sand. The CHALLENGE is that there will be no room for the big rocks.

The Big Rocks are the major things you want to get done in your life. These big rocks normally get pushed back from week to week because we never seem to have time, energy or money to do them — our days fill up too quickly, and before we know it, weeks have turned to years, years have passed and these big rocks are still sitting on the side- untouched, unfulfilled.

Big rocks (fist size) are the milestones in each person’s life (bucket) and the main goals we aim for. The pebbles are the issues that are important but may not be as urgent as the big rocks. The sand represents the day to day issues, smaller challenge sand weekly goals.

The trick is to put the big rocks in first, then the pebbles and then the sand. This will ensure that you hold everything. Only then can ALL things fit. If you put the sand in first, then the pebbles, you will not have room for the big rocks. The big rocks are the key. A full bucket is self actualization and true wealth, but you need the big rocks, the pebbles and sandy grains to fill the bucket.

Metaphors are powerful tools for understanding life concepts; social, political, philosophical and entrepreneurial. As I hunger for opportunity and thirst for growth (personal and business), I ponder on the above metaphor because it evokes a broad array of elements that affect my way of thinking. And it is with this, I can accomplish this evocation of understanding metaphors with a slight hint. It is with this slight hint of the simplest life elements that I develop a better understanding of my PURPOSE.

Onwards. Upwards. Always!

Farai

Today I’m taking a moment to reflect. Knowing ones limitations is the first step towards OVERCOMING them.

Its 3am and I’m drifting into “the ether”.

The entrepreneur’s curse; I’m alone in the office pondering on my ambiguous horizon.

The problem is choice.

There is an easy but cinematic feeling in here. Twenty ticks off the wall clock, silence, a swig, more ticks, more silence, and another swig, then a dramatic mosaic of non-sequiturs. I’m yearning for the answer.

The problem is choice.

Is real CHOICE a luxury only for the elite? When you have finite resources (manpower, machinery, capital, time, technology etc) do you ever have a choice?

Factoring in the scarcity of resources, YMBK’s main challenge has been trying to balance the key success factors: Time (168 hours in a week), Energy (creativity, social responsibility, supporting fellow projects) and Money (consumption, savings and investments).

Systemic logic dictates that at different phases of an entrepreneurial project, greater emphasis has to be placed on each of these different key success factors; at strategic times depending on the relevant business needs. Assuming a business model (100%) is a function of the equal distribution between the critical success factors (Time 33.3%, Energy 33.3% and Money 33.3%), the nightmare arises from the balancing-act that is reality.

Start-up and set-up, for example, are capital intensive and may require the Money factor, to take up over 80% of the project meaning Energy and Time would both have to make up the remaining 20%. The introductory stage, on the other had, is normally not as capital intensive but rather may be made up mostly of the Energy factor with Money and Time both taking up less than 40%.

And so goes the story arch, everything is relative. Furious dexterity (factoring in this scarcity of resources), can reduce the apparent cost but the opportunity cost (unbeknown to me before the YMBK project) is ridiculously high. Entrepreneurship takes a huge toll on friendships and relationships.

I lack Shakespearean lyricism, but I will try to drive my point home.

Most small business’s highlight that defining the line, that demarcates the owner of the project from the entrepreneurial project itself as a major source of concern and difficulty. Legally, financially and philosophically, I’ve successfully managed to separate myself from the company because the YMBK brand is based on collective consciousness. Many people have helped make the YMBK brand a competitive force. YAMBUKA is bigger than Farai. Like most successful incumbent businesses the goal is to supplement deficiencies’ in capital by investing more Time and Energy into the project.

The dilemma is the high opportunity cost. I have had little Time and Energy to spare and this has caused me much pain because this takes away value from other personal growth opportunities.

The problem is choice. Change is the only constant, but failure is not an option. It is overwhelmingly difficult to re-direct my Time and Energy towards family and friends, not to the scale of neglect but just being there for others. It’s an area for improvement for me. It is heartbreaking not to be able to spend quality time with loved ones and to make sacrifices that are not guaranteed to give you back a return on investment.

What makes CHOICE a colossal and nightmarish quagmire for me, is that, I do not believe I have a choice. CHOICE is absent due to a combination of factors: my humble background, BRAND competition is gruesome, the window of opportunity is ever narrowing, popular - culture is forever changing, fashion is dynamic, the global recession is far from over, direct and indirect threats are consistent, true opportunities’ for wealth are rare, the free enterprise system is increasingly cut-throat and unforgiving and because of the uncertainty of the future.

Que Sera Sera.

We are all here to do what we are all here to do. We all have freewill, I acknowledge this, I am also aware that the opportunity cost (for the value I have to fore-go) is pricelessly high, but my conceptual trouble is compounded by the lack of CHOICE.

Upwards. Onwards. Always!

Farai

Synergy (from the Greek syn-ergos, συνεργός meaning working together) is the term used to describe a situation where different entities cooperate advantageously for a final outcome.
Simply defined, it means that the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. Although the whole will be greater than each individual part, this is not the concept of synergy.
If used in a business application it means that teamwork will produce an overall better result than if each person was working toward the same goal individually.

Here are some pics of some of the great moments we have had thus far.