You wouldn’t believe what they were preaching about in church this week.
Normally, these days you walk in expecting to be bombarded with Bible verses and the classic “tell your neighbour to tell their neighbour” routine. But guess what, my preacherman was on point. The whole sermon was about how to realise your full potential and grow your career.
And here’s the interesting part: it wasn’t aimed at the start-your-own-empire crowd. It was for the intrapreneurs, the people who’d rather climb high inside someone else’s company than run their own thing. If that’s you, this one’s for you.
So let me try to break it down in my own words, with a few of the insights I picked up from the preacherman (and a couple of my own).
Let’s begin. What is it that we actually need to do to discover ourselves and reach our full career potential?
1. Start Early
There’s a popular idea that life comes in four quarters:
- 0–25 — the learning phase
- 25–50 — the earning phase
- 50–75 — the serving / enjoying phase
- 75+ — the reflecting phase
(You’ll see different versions of this floating around, with different age bands; it’s a framing, not a law of physics, so take the exact numbers loosely.)
The first quarter is where the magic is supposed to happen. This is your discovery phase. You’re meant to learn as much as you can, try different things, fail, get back up, and try again. This is where you find out who you actually are.
If you spend this quarter as a couch potato, there’s a good chance you end up miserable and stuck in the wrong career. Your environment matters too. Get born in India, you’ll probably force yourself onto a cricket pitch, even if your real gift was on a tennis court; therefore, you have to force yourself into trying quite a number of things.
For the parents reading this: give your kids as much exposure as you possibly can. Let them join different clubs. Let them be around different kinds of people. Someone out there might spot a talent you never even knew your child had. A lot of parents push their kids toward being doctors because it sounds cool, but you have to let a child find their own thing.
Ben White plays for Arsenal today, but he comes from a family with zero interest in football; his dad reportedly can’t stand the game. He was basically discovered by accident. One of the people his mum used to cut hair for would come out into the garden, jump in goal, and let a young Ben boot the ball at her. That’s it. That’s the origin story of a Premier League defender.
Then there’s Harry Kane. He started playing at six years old. As a five-year-old, he wrote in a school project, “I want to play football.” But here’s the part people forget: Arsenal signed him young and then released him at eight for being too small and too slow. He didn’t quit. He got back up, kept playing, and became one of the best strikers in the world. Start early, and when you fail early, get up early too.
The other three quarters matter as well: the earning quarter is where all that early discovery gets cashed in, the serving quarter is where you give back (Become a mentor if you can) and enjoy the fruits, and the reflecting quarter is where you look back on the whole game. But everything downstream depends on how seriously you take the first one.
Once you have realised what you would like to do, go for it to gain experience.
2. Give It Your All
My father has always told me: “Whatever you do, Tawanda, do it wholeheartedly, whether you’re being paid enough or not paid at all.”
I hold onto another belief too: even when people don’t reward me properly, the Lord sees, and I’ll be rewarded eventually. Colossians 3:23–24 backs this up. Giving your all is simply how you squeeze the maximum out of your talent. When you do what you’re good at with your whole heart, you don’t just get good, you get exceptional.
Young people often lose sight of this. They start a job and immediately get carried away complaining. My preacherman put it perfectly: when you apply for a job, the pay looks like plenty, but the day you actually start, somehow it’s never enough. That mindset will hold you back.
Working hard has a hidden benefit: it builds you allies. People will quietly defend you, even on the days you slip up.
I learned this during my internship. I was saying yes to every single task thrown my way. Then one day something I was handling blew up into a complaint after I got overwhelmed. In the meeting that followed, every senior in the room lined up to blame me. But the CEO — a wise man — cut them off. He looked around and said the young man you are all blaming seems to be doing the very work you are supposed to be doing, carrying the load for you.
That stuck with me. When you’re genuinely good at what you do, you’ll be surprised how much people are willing to overlook. I’ve watched top employees get retained after messing up badly, purely because they were that good. I’m not saying being good is a licence to be reckless, but excellence buys you grace.
And remember: when you give it your all, you’re not doing your employer a favour. You’re helping yourself.
3. Get Certifications
Hard work isn’t enough. Being an expert isn’t enough. You need something to show for it.
HR does not care about your talk. HR wants to see the qualifications. So certify, certify, certify.
Every field has an accreditation body of some kind. Get accredited for your skills, and I mean every skill you’ve got. One day it will be asked for, and you’ll be glad you have it. Be patient with certifications, too. Some of them sit uselessly in a drawer for ten years until, out of nowhere, the exact one you thought you’d never need becomes the thing that gets you the role.
Think of it like keeping receipts. Nobody looks at a receipt for years, until the one day you desperately need to prove you paid.
4. Network Strategically
Hang around the right people.
Networking sometimes comes at a cost. It might mean moving out of the neighbourhood you’re comfortable in and paying double the rent to be somewhere new. Treat that as an investment, not an expense. It might mean buying lunch for influential people, and honestly, you should. You’re the one who wants to be in their circle, after all.
And when you network, be consistent. You can’t play golf with someone once, dust off your hands, and say “I tried.” You do it over and over again until you start speaking their language.
Let’s not get distracted, though: we’re networking with people in the right field, the field you’re in or the one you’re trying to break into. Don’t be the “I can do it myself” guy. That guy never wins. Nobody lives in isolation. You don’t really have to be a bootlicker.
I’d like to believe God himself sends helpers through people. Sure, manna sometimes falls from heaven, but you’re not Moses, and you’re not in a desert. Go build the relationships.
5. Learn the Business of Your Career
Here’s the twist.
Remember, this whole thing started as advice for the “I’d rather work for someone than start my own thing” crowd. But once you become a genuine expert in your area and you learn the business around it, you realise something uncomfortable: to reach the very top of your field, the millionaire or billionaire tier, you eventually have to become the boss anyway.
Look closely at any field, and you’ll find the business person standing right next to the talent:
- Artists have managers and record labels.
- Athletes have agents.
- Builders have contractors.
- Doctors have private surgeries.
Whatever your career path, there is always a business side of things. That’s usually where the real money lives.
But here’s the catch, and it ties everything together: to even recognise the business side of your field, you first have to become an expert in it. Which brings us right back to lesson one: start early, give it your all, get certified, network hard. Do the work, and the business will reveal itself.
That’s what I took from church this week. Not a single “tell your neighbour” in sight, just a genuinely good roadmap for realising your potential.
Now the real question: which quarter of the game are you in?
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