𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐬𝐮𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐠𝐫𝐢𝐭, 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐮𝐫𝐞, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐩𝐮𝐫𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐞
You’ve just finished matric. After twelve years of tests, timetables, colours, badges, and report cards, the pressure has shifted. Now comes the bigger question: What are you going to do with your life?

For many young people, the expected answer is familiar. Choose a degree. Choose quickly. Start immediately. Don’t waste time. Don’t fall behind. And don’t choose a path that looks uncertain.

Entrepreneurship, if it’s mentioned at all, is usually framed as risky, unstable, or irresponsible. It’s the road paved with failure, rejection, and stress. It requires resilience, grit, patience, and a tolerance for uncertainty, skills that are rarely taught or rewarded during twelve years of schooling.

And for students who never felt like top achievers, those who didn’t collect A’s and academic colours, the future can feel even more daunting. When school was hard, when comparison was constant, and when the academic route doesn’t feel like a natural fit, it’s easy to assume that success simply isn’t meant for you.

But that assumption is wrong.
Some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs were not top students. Many didn’t find their path early. Some found it late. Others stumbled into it almost by accident.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐌𝐲𝐭𝐡 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 “𝐒𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐭” 𝐊𝐢𝐝
Let’s dismantle the idea that academic success predicts life success.

Take Barbara Corcoran. Today, we know her as the shark in the tailored suit on Shark Tank, a real estate tycoon with a net worth in the hundreds of millions. But in her teens Barbara was considered a “dumb kid.”

That wasn’t just her internal monologue; it was a label plastered on her by a school system that didn’t understand undiagnosed dyslexia. She was a straight-D student. She didn’t have a clear path after graduation. By the time she was 23, she had held twenty jobs. She was a waitress, a receptionist, a flower arranger. You name it, she quit it or got fired from it.
She didn’t start her real estate empire because she was a genius with an MBA. She started it with a $1,000 loan from a boyfriend, who, by the way, later dumped her and explicitly told her, “You’ll never succeed without me.”

School measures memory, compliance, and the ability to follow instructions. Entrepreneurship measures grit, street smarts, and the ability to hear the word “no” and keep moving. Corcoran proves that “drifting” isn’t bad if you are learning something from every stop along the way. Those twenty menial jobs taught her people skills, negotiation, and hustle that a university lecture hall never could.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝟓,𝟏𝟐𝟔 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐒𝐮𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬
The problem with our education system is that it teaches us to aspire to perfection. An exam with red pen marks is a heartbreak. A project that doesn’t work is a failure. We are embedding a fear of error in our children.

Real life, however, is not a multiple-choice test.

Consider James Dyson. We all know the vacuum cleaner; it’s a status symbol of domestic efficiency. But we forget the 15 years of misery that preceded it. James Dyson didn’t get it right the first time. He didn’t get it right the hundredth time.

He built 5,126 failed prototypes.

Pause for a moment and really think about that number. 5,126. Imagine the crushing weight of that. Imagine the debt, rejections, Imagine the “concerned” friends at dinner parties telling him to stop playing inventor and “just get a real job.” He spent his savings. He mortgaged his house. He was on the brink of total ruin.

It wasn’t until prototype number 5,127 that he finally cracked the bagless vacuum technology.

What entrepreneurship teaches us is that failure isn’t the opposite of success; it is the cost of success. Dyson reframed failure as “data.” Every time a prototype failed, he didn’t say, “I’m a failure.” He said, “Now I know one more way this doesn’t work.” That is the essence of resilience.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 $𝟒𝟎 𝐌𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐝 𝐇𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐲𝐰𝐨𝐨𝐝
If you need proof that frustration is the mother of invention, look at Reed Hastings.

In 1997, Hastings rented a copy of Apollo 13 from his local Blockbuster. He misplaced the cassette (a relic of the past, for our younger readers) and returned it six weeks late. He received a bill for a $40 late fee. He was furious!

That $40 fine was the spark for Netflix.

Hastings didn’t become an overnight billionaire. He spent years almost losing the business. He tried to sell Netflix to Blockbuster for $50 million in 2000, and they laughed him out of the room. Today, Blockbuster is a memory, and Netflix is a dominant global force that reshaped how humanity consumes stories, forcing giants like Warner Bros and Disney to scramble just to keep up.
Entrepreneurship is just a fancy word for problem-solving. It’s about being proactive enough to fix something that frustrates you.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐡 𝐀𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐑𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲: 𝐒𝐮𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐥, 𝐍𝐨𝐭 𝐒𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐨𝐧 𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐲
However, we must be careful not to just copy-paste American success stories onto our reality. We are not in Silicon Valley. We are in South Africa.

Here, the stakes are different. In the US, entrepreneurship is often a pursuit of passion. In South Africa, it is often a pursuit of survival. But it is also a place where mentorship can bridge the gap between a wild idea and a sustainable business.

Consider Karen Schneid, the founder of Ooh La La Confectionery.
Karen did everything “right” by traditional standards. She became a lawyer. She had the degree, the title, and the safety. But the courtroom wasn’t her calling; the kitchen was. She started experimenting with French confectionery, making pebbles and marshmallows from her home.

It sounded crazy to leave a secure legal career to sell sweets. But she had the grit. What she needed was the business strategy to match her culinary talent.

She joined ORT Jet, a mentorship initiative by ORT SA that pairs entrepreneurs with business professionals. The ORT Jet program helped her refine her business model, understand her numbers, and position her brand. Today, Ooh La La is an award-winning brand found on the shelves of Woolworths and high-end retailers. Karen didn’t need to stay in a box she didn’t fit in. She built a new one.

At ORT Jet’s 20-year celebration in December 2025, Karen Schneid, was awarded Business of the 𝐁𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐘𝐞𝐚𝐫 for turning a lifelong passion into an “internationally acclaimed artisanal brand”.
This is the real face of entrepreneurship in South Africa: taking a skill, adding business acumen, and creating value where there was none before.

This is the real face of entrepreneurship in South Africa: taking a skill, adding business acumen, and creating value where there was none before.

𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 “𝐉𝐨𝐛 𝐒𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐞𝐫” 𝐭𝐨 “𝐕𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐞 𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫”
Within this struggle lies opportunity. Entrepreneurship is one of the few pathways that puts agency back in the hands of individuals. But to unlock it, we need a massive mindset shift: from ‘job seeker’ to ‘value creator’.

That shift must start in our schools.
For decades, our education system has trained learners to be employees. We teach them to sit still, listen, and repeat. But the future demands the opposite. It demands problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, and adaptability.

Organisations like ORT SA are working directly with schools to help learners build these skills. We are teaching them to innovate, to experiment, and to see challenges as opportunities, not roadblocks. Coding, financial literacy, and digital competency cannot be optional extras anymore; they must be the oxygen of the curriculum.

𝐀 𝐌𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬
And finally, a word to the parents, the grandparents, the mentors.

We need to stop telling our youth to “go find a job.” Instead, we could be asking, “What problem can you solve?” If you can solve a problem for one person, by saving them time, making their life easier, or meeting a real need, you have the beginnings of a business.
Start with one customer, not a fifty-page business plan.
Nowhere is this more relevant than in South Africa.

Take Nohlonolo. She started with nothing but an idea and a desire to work, joined the ORT New Business Venture Program, and built a line of branded handbags using 100% recyclable materials. She didn’t wait for a venture capitalist to give her permission. She just started making bags. Today, her products are stocked in boutique shops in Stellenbosch. That is proof that small ideas, nurtured with grit, can grow into powerful stories of change.

𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐈𝐦𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐥𝐲
To the matriculant reading this, wondering if you have a future thinking that success belongs only to prodigies, geniuses, or those who had everything figured out at eighteen. You do

To the parent worrying that their child is “drifting”: Let them drift, as long as they are learning.

Don’t wait for perfect conditions. They will never come. Start small. Start imperfect. But start. Because the future won’t be built by those waiting for opportunities to be handed to them; it will be built by those brave enough to create them.

Forget Bezos. He’s already made it. The future could be you.

Bezos started in a garage. You can start with a click. Turn that spark into a strategy at www.ortsa.org.za or www.ortjet.org.za.