This afternoon I attended my business partners sons 18th birthday party which was an informal event for close family members. He said he could not advertise this to the entire family as he would have had over 200 attending and it moves from informal to formal very quickly.
The plan was always to invite me knowing his brother would be attending as we have been trying to meet up for the last 6 months. His brother is a successful businessman who spends more time out the country than at home. The connections he has can open many doors and is a major sponsor of the government. For me it is kind of weird the younger brother does not ask for help and I am the one doing the asking so I suppose this way he is not the one asking.
What was good to know is that everyone has already heard of me as I have known by business partner for close to 20 years now. We trust each other implicitly and we speak highly of each other because there is mutual respect.
I am not sure if it is an act of saving face or a respect type thing or just someone who is stubborn and will not asl his brother for help knowing full well he can. When I chatted with the brother he was only too willing to offer any help wherever he can and we will touch base in two weeks time back in Johannesburg.
His son is in a professional football team academy in Europe doing his final year pf schooling at the same time. They bought a house so that he could be separate from the other boys in the evenings so he could concentrate on his school work. The family members take turns in staying at the house for a month at a time so there is always family around. The sacrifices we do for our kids so they have the best opportunities available springs to mind as this must cost a fortune and there will be one more year of this next year.
The other part of today is we have loads to get done on Monday and have managed to set aside two hours in the morning to check our cross over clients which we have many. This should have been done two years ago already and were held back due to lack of raw materials. We have 150 tons to play with now so we have enough to supply everyone.
We know our Durban customers have branches in Johannesburg and vice versa so there is so much more business just by dealing with the same companies we already do. My business partner rattled off seven or eight big clients off the top of his head and I have a couple from Johannesburg.
The brother will help us tap into other areas like the Port Of Gauteng which is only starting construction next year. The government is getting more involved in logistics with one eye fixing the rail infrastructure through private business assistance. We as a company would like to be on the ground floor here and this is where we need the brothers contacts to make this happen. You need to be in the loop in order to know what is going on and we have some ideas to make this happen. In the meantime we can pick up any other lead from the brother and see where this all ends up.