Dear young friend, one of the most important and frequent questions you will ever have to answer in life is the question, who are you? Please don’t make the mistake that this is a question about your name. As important as your name is, it is not who you are, it is merely a label

The question who are you or whose son or daughter are you? is a question about your very essence, history or your people. It is also a question about the makeup of the person standing in front of the enquirer. ‘The Who’, is very different from ‘The What’. So if I say who are you?

Please don’t tell me your name. That is the what. That’s why you never ask “who is your name”. ‘The What’ is a thing, and ‘The Who’ is a person; it is much deeper. It speaks to your personality, what makes you, you. The challenge about swapping “The Who” with “The What” is that

When you discribe ‘The What’, after 10 seconds, you start to sound very boring. Whenever you say “may name is X, I am from Y, I was born on Z”, most people lose interest. But when you describe yourself with ‘The Who’, people pay keen attention. Let me tell you a short story...

In 2017, Strive Masiyiwa came to Lagos. My wife and I were honoured to have been invited by his team to join the conversation. He wanted to know a lot of the young people in the room and so he impromptly asked that the mic should be passed around for people to say who they were.

From one person to another, “my name is blah blah blah”, it went on and on, until this moment that I and I am sure everyone else will never forget. A young man picked up the mic and said,

“my name is not important, but who I am is. I have spent the last 10 years of my life helping prisoners escape prison”. I kid you not, the entire room of over 200 people (400 eyes) turned to look at this guy. Strive said, “wait, you are who? And you do what”, he said it again.

Now everyone became interested. To cut the long story short, he got the floor for 5mins+, to about how he “helps prisoners get out of the prison of the mind, after they’ve been incarcerated for so long, through rehabilitation”. That day, he walked away with an investment of $100k

And a lifetime support of his social enterprise, by Strive and his foundation in Zimbabwe.

The moral of this thread as I read @Aminatsule_’s thread is, knowing WHO you are and answering the question who, accurately opens lifetime doors. Learn it, master it and deliver it well!