SELL ME THE COW, SO THAT I CAN MILK IT MYSELF

SELL ME THE COW, SO THAT I CAN MILK IT MYSELF: How you assist another person speaks volumes to the kind of person you are. In my early 40’s I was on a roll charting new paths at supersonic speed. There was a sense of urgency. As a person who had given up on doctors finding out what was wrong with me, I thought I was going to die in my 40’s and therefore I wanted to accomplish so many things, in the shortest possible time. I have always understood the power of investment property, so I got myself three (3) mortgages/bonds. I was lecturing at Wits Business School and my salary could not cover payments for three bonds. But there were abundant consultancy assignments literally walking in, through the gate of the school and I was lucky, that some of that work, was parceled out to me. That was before I started opening my mouth, complaining about discrimination and exclusion (a long story for another day). At one time proceeds from the consulting assignments alone, were four (4) times the size of my monthly salary. That is why the Banks agreed to give me three (3) bonds. I had left my family in Zimbabwe, so I had all the time in the world, to burn the midnight oil, juggling lecturing, consulting assignments via Wits and other assignments I secured on my own. Although it was a time of abundance, it was also a time of scarcity, because I spread myself too thin, setting up consortiums and spearheading the set-up of the second black-owned Bureau de Change, Global Foreign Exchange (GFE). I think I made more than a dozen trips to the South African Reserve Bank, Foreign Exchange Dept in Pretoria, over a two (2) year period before we secured our provisional license to operate our first bureau, which was located at the Oriental Plaza in Fordsburg, Johannesburg. GFE has been operating at OR International Airport for more than ten (10) years now. I sold our 55% shareholding in this operation some time back, but this narration represents the context under which I was operating. In a nutshell I was overstretched and highly strung. I made money, but I spent it too, not in conspicuous consumption, but perhaps, in primitive accumulation. I am not sure whether having three (3) bonds funding the acquisition of investment properties can be referred to as primitive accumulation. For starters, the house you live in, is not an investment. The other two (2) bonds were for investment properties. There was this lady whom I thought I was building a strong business and social relationship with. She was a Zimbabwean woman married to a Tswana guy from Botswana. We had met at a consulting assignment with the same client. As our friendship grew, we agreed that in seasons of scarcity, when consulting assignments were few and far between, the other would give business to the one going through scarcity, business. It just so happened that when I was going through consulting assignments’ abundance, she was going through scarcity and vice versa. So, I would parcel out some of my assignments to her and she would take over the clients. We both had MBAs and our areas of competency and skill sets were more or less the same. Be that as it may, I started to notice a pattern. When I was going through a season of scarcity, she never gave me business. She would advance me bridging finance and made me sign an ‘I OWE YOU’. It started bothering me because when I assessed our track record, I had given her 4 clients and she had given me none, but she had given me bridging finance twice. She was breaking the essence of our verbal agreement. By doing that, she was giving me milk, not showing me where the cow is, so that I could milk as much as I would like from it myself. So I decided to exit the relationship without letting her know. She then called me when I was in Maputo on a consulting assignment. When I picked up the phone, she realized from my tone of voice that something was up. She enquired. I apologized to her for not telling her that I had decided, without her consent that, I was going to reduce our so-called friendship, to the size of a bonsai. When we started, I thought it would grow into a baobab but given what has been happening over the past three years, the bonsai level was even more generous. She started weeping on the phone and said, she did not realize that she was breaking our verbal agreement. She asked for forgiveness. To which I advised her that, the last time I checked, it was God and not me, in the forgiveness business. I am no forgiveness expert and it was better that she go to church and be forgiven by the Father of the Catholic Church, because she was a Catholic. That was the end of that friendship. What I took away from that interaction was the following: 1. TRANSACT BASED ON SHARED VALUES: When you do not share the same values, agreements, written or verbal, are never respected. 2. NEVER SELL YOUR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY CHEAP There are always early warning signs, of trouble ahead. One ignores the tell-tell signs at their own peril. My so-called friend, never saw the value of my intellectual property, yet she would come to my house with her computer and whilst she was sharing her marital problems, cleverly slip in business questions, open her computer and type whilst I dictated billable knowledge. I never did that with her. Her behavior was that of a leech and a fraud. All she needed to do was ask of help and I would have gladly provided it to her for free, since we were on an-enabling-each-other journey together. 3. IN BUSINESS MENTAL GAMES ARE A WASTE OF TIME Those who take from you, underestimate your ability to gauge what is going on as they think they are cleverly creating the impression that the value of your intellectual property is negligible and therefore, they must have it for free. 4. SOCIALIZATION NOT EDUCATION, DETERMINES HOW YOU SHOW UP IN BUSINESS Socialization is key. How you are socialized growing up, largely determines how you show up in the world of business. I believed her when she said, she did not realize that, that is what she was doing. Eventually, I had to choose my myself first, by refusing to be the intensive care unit, of an inadequately raised person. 5. PATRIARCHAL WOMEN AND MEN ARE PROBLEMATIC IN BUSINESS My experience has been that women are more problematic both socially and in business transactional relationships. I have found that they have failed to evolve and that leads them getting personal very quickly. Their reactions to other women in business, is markedly different to when they are responding to men in business. Men are affirmed and feared and women are disparaged and judged. There are men who personalize things too, when dealing with women, but the prevalence of this behavior is widespread amongst women. Whether these behaviors are attributed to women or men, this means that education as we know it, has failed to completely transform, some from amongst us, who continue to behave in inappropriate ways, to the detriment of what could have grown to be lasting business relationships.