The best advice I have ever received

 

I have been so blessed in my life to have many teachers. Often karmic teachings but also beautiful souls who have crossed my pathway and shed so much light on subjects without even trying.  Just dropped a nugget, painted in Hayley language, and left. Only for me to pick it up in wonder and marvel how I had never seen it before.

 

But if I had to choose one bit of advice that has served me every single day since the day I heard it, it is not to be a thief.

 

You see, I had it in my head that I needed to pick up everybody’s baggage. Everybody’s burdens. Everybodys troubles. And carry them on their behalf.

 

Until a teacher one day told me that I was stealing. I looked at her incredulously and asked what she meant. That I am a martyr if anything, definitely not a THIEF! And she looked at me and said Hayley, those are other people’s lessons. They are their blessings. They are their terrors.

 

Leave them be. Nobody can learn if somebody else takes them away. Put them down and let them learn their lessons. Support them. Love them. But let them be free to learn, to suffer, to grow, and to get to the next chapter in their books.

 

So my nugget would be – if its not yours, leave it be!

 

How’d you get started in your career? How did you get to where you are today?

All I wanted to be when I left school was a teacher. I wanted to do it better. Be more approachable. Change lives. Influence the impressionable. I had never had a safe space. I had been branded as naughty and that was it for me. I mean, it’s not as if I showed my teachers anything different…

 

Unfortunately/serendipitously, I messed about and did not get the marks I needed to go to Varsity and study teaching. And so my dad, who insisted I study, put me into a travel school where I did 6 months of a travel and tourism certification. I went to work in 2 tour operators thereafter and thoroughly enjoyed my period employed with these wonderful companies and under these amazing bosses.

 

In 2001 I needed to get a job closer to home as I had a one year old child that needed her mommy, and I was the breadwinner so could not afford to simply not work. I was leaving home before 6 AM and returning home after 6PM every day. My parents had started a management consultancy in 1996, and they needed some admin assistance. Historically our relationship was awful. So this was a short term agreement. In June, I will have been employed by VCA for 20 years.

 

I have been the sole shareholder for 3 years, having bought both my parents out. One in 2010, and one in 2018. This is the history. But what is the emotion?

 

The business at the beginning was a space where I had to learn, and fast. It was a world I had never heard of and a space I had never played in

 

I fell in love with the world of commerce and business really fast. It has ensued in a love affair that has spanned two decades. Involved me bringing my children up within these walls. Got a NDIP under my belt, a mini MBA bursary from GIBS, a bursary in business from Wits Business School, and 22 other short courses.

 

It has seen me train dozens of people in our trade, and enabled me to assist people to get their learners licences, their driving licences, cars, buy property – many the first in their families.

 

I have met with well over 10 000 small business owners over this time, in all of South Africa’s provinces, and through the Cheri Blair foundation, several overseas.

 

My career has been a labour of love. Of sweat. Of tears. Of pain and anguish and absolute joy. And I am by no means close to finishing. Thank you to my beautiful co-creation for holding me in bliss for so many years. Here’s to the next 20!