About me
I have always had a head for making deals. Even as a youngster playing monopoly, I had less interest in throwing the dice and landing on blocks, than actually playing the bank. Yes you read right ... I played the bank .. and I would use mortgages, loans etc to help guys stay in the game. We actually had great fun as this gave another dimension to the game, but it also satisfied my need to create.
As others create software, paintings or songs, I create business. It really is just a way of looking at things, and just like I look at great developers as magicians or mystical creatures, I know many of them feel the same about people that do business.
And so I started, at the young age of 8, my first business selling my brothers art (paint by the numbers of a 6 year old) on the pavement in Camps Bay, Cape Town. Not because I needed food or a house to live in. No, simply because it was fun .... you could say it called me. Later, after walking the normal path of school and a degree (in accounting) I ended up working for a living. And that is where the trouble started.
The Early Battles
It did not take me long to start realising all is not well in the corporate world (more later on my thinking on the type of leaders or so called leaders that is drawn to money and power). I started as a junior clerk, doing manual bank reconciliations for 40 branches (this was 1991, and the national retailer I worked for only had a basic point of sale with mostly manual processes). Within 6 months of joining the accountant , my immediate boss and the financial manager left and well ... the place was in a mess. For me it was a great initiation. There was so much we did not know and I had no one to show me. So I learnt, took initiative and on a pitiful small salary, worked 12 hour days to sort out the mess. Just as we got some wins, the then CEO decided he had to step in. Now it is fair to say that he was a direct reason why the place was a mess, that a cloud of corruption hung over his head and that the finance team left because he "pushed" them. A nice situation for an independently minded, overly righteous young man with a degree and lots of energy. How I kept my job is still unclear.
As this is not about me and the story only serves as a background on my formative years, I will not elaborate beyond the fact that due to my position I got clear proof of corruption, and if my career was important I should have just kept quiet ... I did not. I could not stand by and watch corporate managers (cannot call them leaders) kill a great business. As Kennedy quoted (he was not the original author) "the only thing necessary for the triumph of evils is that good men do nothing."
(picture from John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)
I left the business deciding to pursue a career in IT management rather than finance. The new CEO finally took decline and made it death, through a series of poor decisions that even a young clerk like I could see is complete idiocy. A market leader that no longer exists. Neither of these where entrepreneurs, and neither ended up having what I believe the basic traits of a great entrepreneur is.
From this clearly and frustrating business I moved to another market leader, Rutherford's Joinery. A great family business, run by a great guy, that took it over from his dad. Unfortunately he also was no great entrepreneur. His lack of basic business acumen and a pack of vultures he called family, closed this business doors a few years after I left as well. Now you may be excused to ask the question, sorry Robert, two jobs and two failed businesses ... is there a trend. I can assure you that I believe that they failed despite my brilliant contribution. Anyway that is what I tell myself.