Act 1: Scene 7- The Middle of the End

"Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed" - Winston Churchill

I once read that suicide bombers are able to rationalize the momentary discomfort of martyrdom by focusing on the eternal pleasures of being serviced by 72 virgins in the afterlife. This is precisely the sort of faith-based logic that I chose to embrace before making the great leap out of banking. My high school economics teacher referred to purgatory (this period without income) as 'dis-saving'. Dis-saving was the most terrifying prospect I had ever considered in my adult life. I could foresee a future of budgeting, coupon collections and requests for handouts. Naturally, this was akin to committing career suicide. The most rational decision, in my opinion, was to postpone this eventuality and 'lay the ground work'. In other words, laying the ground work was simply making plans to contain the damage from the implosion of my bank account. In order to accomplish this, I tried my hand at 3 different business concepts which ended up schooling me in real world economics.

Say good bye to the good life, say good bye to consistent income

Economics 101: Product Differentiation ( i.e. no one is doing what I am doing)

Anyone who lives in a 3rd world country knows that the best business to own is one where you get paid in 1st world currency. My first attempt at laying the ground work was to launch an export trading company. My market research was limited to one ethos: go where no one is going. That simple strategy somehow led to me to avocados. Yes, avocados. I liked eating them and I thought that other countries should enjoy eating them too.

The versatile avocado: you can eat it or wear it on your face

A trip to my local Japanese restaurant confirmed one fact: an awful amount of avocado is used in the creation of sushi. I resolved that I would export avocados to the number one specialist consumer country: Japan. If you are wondering how I thought it possible to earn a fat margin exporting the proverbial ice to Eskimos with a minimal operating budget- then perhaps I should provide a brief lesson on the chutzpah of banking. Bankers (and traders in particular) are skilled in the art of convincing one party to readily give up money for a token return while simultaneously lending out the same money at a premium rate to another party. Occasionally, the bankers lend out more money than they should have, burn their fingers and then use tax payer funds to pay themselves annual bonuses. This is banking 101.

Using a derivative of banking 101, I decided to follow a simpler equation to worldly wealth:

1. Find a Japanese supermarket who was looking for novelty premium supplies: i.e. buying each avocado at $10
2. Find an African farmer who was looking for a naive buyer: i.e. a banker who would buy each avocado at $2
3. Find a sympathetic European who would brand my avocados as "Certified Organic"
4. Find an unsuspecting African child (complete with Colgate smile) to act as the face of my product
5. Find myself on the cover of Forbes Africa as the new face of humane agri-business (while banking a gross margin of $8 per avocado)

Suffice to say, I was quickly schooled in yet another economic principle referred to as: comparative advantage. My smiling African baby avocados were no match for cheap and cheerful Filipino avocados.

Economics 102: Black Market (i.e. go where few in their right mind would go)

One central principle I learned from my high net worth clients and the philosopher rapper Meek Mill is: "scared money don't make no money". Occasionally, tremendous opportunities are found where few would dare to wander. This risk taking appetite led me to a war-torn territory known as the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.C). I was attracted to the D.R.C for three reasons:

A. All business is transacted in US dollars
B. The tax regime is best described as optional
C. I watched a movie called Viva la Riva (and apparently there are women like her in Kinshasa)

Beyonce has family in Kinshasa

 I decided to form a joint venture with another bright eyed millionaire-in-the-making who lived in the D.R.C. This venture would certainly not be certified organic by any sympathetic, tree-hugging, croissant-munching European liberal. Our path to profit would be lined by mercenary timber trading. In simple English, we would cut down forests and make money*.

*Disclaimer: This was possibly the lowest point of my moral consciousness. My sister had once predicted that I would grow up to become one of those people who sell forests in Africa to drive a Range Rover. I was simply fulfilling the prophecy after a detour in white collar banking.

The operational logistics of this joint venture were certainly more complex than selling organic produce. The strategy I pursued is summarized below:

1. Find an Asian furniture maker and source an order book for timber
2. Call in the order to my D.R.C counterpart who would speak to a 'friend'
3. A Friend would place a call to a guy who lived in a rain forest
4. A guy who lived in a rain forest would hire more guys to find specific type of wood and cut it
5. Wood would be placed on a truck en route to the port
6. Cash would be available to pay off soldiers and rebels located between the rain forest and port
7. Find a bank willing to fund this crazy scheme (based on a legitimate back to back letter of credit structure)
8. Drink Moet and party with pretty girls while our minions labored in the rain forest

It was pure evil genius. Alas, the Gods above saw to it that my plans were frustrated by an unanticipated country-specific obstacle. The D.R.C is located in a part of Africa that most people would characterize as francophone Africa. Francophone Africa is known for excellent restaurants, exotic women and music videos shot against the backdrop of the Eiffel Tower. Francophone Africa is, unfortunately, not known for work ethic. The business failed to take off because my partner couldn't marshal his friend and rain forest guy to respond in a time frame that would be considered internationally competitive.

Economics 103: White label (i.e. pay someone else to do most of the work)

I was distraught by the two still born ventures that I had launched and it appeared that I would never be liberated out of banking. That was until a chance meeting with a prospect bank client who directed my clandestine efforts into new age business. He suggested that I consider exporting a white labelled finished product**.

**White labelled finished product: the corporate version of passing off someone else's homework as your own

I decided to white label my own brand of tea.

Dude...have you lost your mind?!

This decision caused a fair amount of confusion among those who knew me. Precisely because I was going to attempt to create a brand of tea in spite of the fact that I didn't even drink tea. Perhaps I had taken the advice to not get high on your own supply a bit too literally.

In a series of events which can only be considered miraculous I managed to achieve the following milestones in the creation of my tea brand:

A. I convinced the largest private tea company in Africa to buy, blend and package my tea for export
B. I hired a team of professional consultants to create a market entry strategy for the export focused tea brand
C. I begun to experiment with different blends of tea
D. I invented an (admittedly dubious) name for my brand of tea- teabutea (sounds like Tea Booty)

I was weeks away from shipping my sample of tea to various importers in Pakistan and Brazil, when a random e-mail from a bank co-worker changed the course of my entrepreneurial efforts. She introduced me to a guy (whose name sounded vaguely familiar) and requested that I listen to a business concept that he was in the process of planning. As I have often said, a single conversation can change everything.

Next & Final Blog Post: Act 1: Scene 8: The End of the End


      

Act 1: Scene 6 - The beginning of the end

"The hottest love has the coldest end." - Socrates

A single conversation can change everything. Similar to the beginning of my romance with banking, the end of the affair was preceded by a seemingly normal chat with an unusually wise man. I was now 28 years old and battle hardened with almost 6 years of banking experience. The discussion proceeded as follows:

Wise Man: So what brings you to this country?

Tendo: I am here to attend two weddings

Wise Man: When will you get married?

Tendo: Perhaps when I finally make Managing Director (MD) at the bank 

Wise Man: Why do you want to make MD?

Tendo: So that I can be rich

Wise Man: What makes you think that making MD is the best return on investment for all the money that your parents put into your education?

Tendo: (Stunned silence)

In the simple Q&A that followed, the wise man broke down my previously held assumptions about employment, wealth creation and purpose. In essence, he cut through the fat of the illusion to reveal the muscle of truth.

The illusion of banking (and perhaps employment in general) is that life gets better as we rise through the ranks. The truth of the matter is that, if you enter a career with the sole intention of arriving at a particular destination (i.e. becoming rich), the journey itself will kill you before you enter the promised land. However, as I later came to realize, if you enter a career for the love of the journey, you will be open to multiple destinations and have a higher probability of fulfillment.

Question: Is money an important thing in your career?
Answer: FALSE! (It is everything)

For those of you who have similar stirrings in your soul, you will probably be familiar with my line of response during this dialogue with the wise man..

Wise Man: Have you ever thought of starting your own business?

Tendo: Yes, but the problem is that I have no ideas.

Wise Man: What do you mean?

Tendo: I don't know what business to start. However I think I would be good at executing someone else's business idea

Wise Man: Well then, you should team up with my son. He is all ideas and no execution.

All ideas and no execution. I think that phrase sums up the reason behind the still born nature of most corporate escape plans. In the 8 years that I worked within banking, I heard many of my peers talk about business plans that they almost did/were about to do/are currently working on/could potentially be launched. The similarity behind all these states of quasi-activity is that very few if any of these ideas actually took place. Perhaps it was fear that held them back from launching.

Once I make a million dollar bonus, I will be free. Wait...maybe 10 million dollars.

It reminds me of a quote I once read about going out to pursue your dreams and having to leave a place of familiarity:

Behind the glory everyone wants to attain is a degree of discomfort nearly everyone wants to avoid.

Ideas sound great until the reality of executing upon such an idea hits you. I loved the idea of leaving the bank to become my own boss until I started hearing horror stories about entrepreneurs who couldn't pay their rent. As I used to tell my friends: "broke isn't a good color on me".

So I began to hatch a grand escape plan that would simultaneously free me from the micro-management hell of employment and also grant me a six figure US dollar income. Of course, I would later learn that there is virtually no start up that you can self fund and also derive a six figure income within the first 1-3 months. Unless of course you launch a recreational pharmaceutical manufacturing plant.

Drugs are one hell of a business

Given that I had no special aptitude for the sciences, I decided to brain storm business concepts that I could launch while still working for the bank. The first thing I did once I returned home was to register a company whose specific focus would be: general trading. It sounded all-inclusive enough for me to explore just about every idea I could conceive. The greatest challenge I faced was devising some business which would operate as  follows:

Morning Hours:
5 am - 8 am

Afternoon Hours:
5 pm - 8 pm

These hours would of course work perfectly for the following professions:

A. Celebrity fitness consultant
B. Traffic policeman
C. School bus driver

I was back to square one. I had the execution capabilities but lacked the ideas. Just when I was about to give up I remembered one of my favorite clients from my stint in the tropical west African country. He too had once been a corporate slave but had managed to open his own trading company. He seemed as smart as I thought I was, and his business appeared to be simple enough. After all, just how difficult could it be importing crude oil from the Middle East and selling it locally at a premium? Ignoring the $20 million start up capital that he had managed to raise, I decided that I would emulate this man. Thus began the adventures of Tendo: banker by day and trader by night.

It was a short lived and humorous adventure.

Next week: Act 1: Scene 7 - The middle of the end

You are (not) what you do

"To be or not to be, that is the question." - Hamlet, Shakespeare

I recently went through a 'fish out of water experience' when a new acquaintance asked me a routine question: "So, what do you do?". I froze in silence. All I could mutter was: "I am a former banker". I felt like a combat veteran reduced to fighting high cholesterol. Just how did I reach this pitiful position in which I equated the loss of my staff pass to the loss of military security clearance. I can distinctly trace three stages in the evolution of my personal identity.

Pre-Banking:

These were the days of my schooling. Education is what I did, but it certainly wasn't what I was. One of the benefits of youth was that questions of identity (asked by adults) were centered on your future career ambitions.

However, questions of identity (asked by my peers) were primarily defined by my quirky personality and bizarre interests.

If I recall correctly my bizarre interests included the following:

1. Being the greatest ever piano-playing/ classical-music-composing, kick-ass investment banker
2. If number 1 didn't work out, I would settle for being the greatest ever piano-playing/ classical-music-composing, corporate lawyer
3. Failing numbers 1 & 2, I would settle for simply being the greatest ever piano-playing/ classical-music-composing, President of the republic

I had a precocious understanding of the fact that the sound of money is music to the ears of struggling artists.

Despite my corporate/political leanings, I never thought my future ambitions defined my present identity. This was largely because my career plans were liable to change on the whim. This was until I met the investment banker who changed everything. Suddenly, I had a concise response to all the adult interrogations of future identity.

The earliest peek into identity-as-defined-by-occupation occurred at the tender age of 19 years old when I purchased the following shirt:

  
  My mentor shook his head worryingly and warned me against dressing like a banker while I was still a teenager. I took this as the highest complement.

In Banking

I didn't notice the loss of my personality-driven identity when I first entered the brotherhood of banking. Instead I quickly learned that those who describe bankers as one generic type, are akin to those who think of Africa as a country. This is because bankers are a loosely knit collection of tribes with subtle distinctions. I present to you an example of 4 unique identity traits of bankers:

A banker is identified by their job role:

Cash Management Specialist (version African)

Cash Management Specialist (version American)

A banker is identified by their employer:

Rural Frontier Markets Focused

Urban Emerging Markets Focused

A banker is identified by their car:

Recent bank-hired former college student still on probation

Recently promoted former college hire now on bank staff loan

A banker is identified by their primary residence:

Expatriate Banker in 3rd world hardship country

Expatriate Banker in 1st world home country

Post Banking

Once outside of the bank, I faced a short-lived existential crisis. If I wasn't a banker, did that mean that I lacked an identity? I had spent years defining myself by my employer, my corporate title and my lifestyle. It often felt that society as a whole enjoyed mental shortcuts which pigeonholed individual identity to career choice, and I willingly went along for the ride.

In a most remarkable coincidence, life has come full circle. My identity is once again defined by who I am and not what I do.

Recent counter-intuitive life choices are perhaps best understood as the result of my quirky personality and bizarre interests.

Finally I am free to just be the greatest ever piano-playing/ classical-music-composing/blog writing former banker.   

Act 1: Scene 5: Helping rich people get richer

'Its like the more money we come across, the more problems we see'

- Notorious B.I.G & Diddy (aka P. Diddy, aka Puff Daddy, aka Sean "Puffy" Combs)

Africa is a continent of contradictions; the birthplace of mankind and the play ground of disease and despair. Tens of thousands of humanitarian workers have given up the material trappings of an ordinary Western corporate life in order to improve the lives of helpless Africans. Whether through churches, celebrity baby adoptions or luxury tented safaris, almost everyone has played a part to alleviate poverty. Everyone, that is, except me. I chose the path less taken and dedicated two years of my life to helping the unlikeliest of Africans in despair. I chose to help the 0.000001% of Africans who needed a wealth manager to ease the pain of being of an ultra high net worth individual.

                                                                         So what should I do with the other $10 million?

As a result of my time volunteering with the mass affluent, I learned many valuable lessons. It is with great pleasure I present to you three secret gems of wisdom acquired from this era:

1. Rich people don't share secrets gems of wisdom 

I believe the only reason I became a wealth manager was to expose myself to whatever infection made rich people get  richer by just breathing. This may be puzzling to hear as I imagine my earlier identification as a wealth manager may have led you to believe that I was the reason my clients became rich. Not quite. I was only the reason my clients were able to monitor, in real time, just how rich they were. In order to understand the puzzle, you first have to understand how the majority of third world ultra high net worth individuals came to be:

A. Friend of the President
Rich because you are the only person legally allowed to do whatever you do in the country

B. Enemy of the state
Rich because you serve the state and pay yourself by robbing your employer

C. Prince-ling
Rich because your ancestors fall into category A or B

As you can tell, it didn't take a genius to uncover the secret behind campaign contributions. However it certainly required wealth management expertise to create the most tax efficient structure to shelter the windfall.

                                                                       Friends with benefits: I will make you into a titan of industry


2. Suit yourself: why rich people sometimes dress like the help and vice versa

Whenever I identified myself as a wealth manager, I often saw a twinkle in the eye of the employed masses who somehow thought I possessed the keys to the kingdom of Forbes 400. Cocktail events were never the same as all conversations would invariably follow this pattern:

Cocktail Guest: So what do you do in Mega Bank Corp?
Tendo Money: I am a wealth manager
Cocktail Guest: Let's be friends

I imagined that it was the tailored suits and fitted shirts that helped me acquire numerous 'friends' and expand my networking circles. Conventional wisdom in our profession recommended that a wealth manager should dress like money. The dodgy rationale being that if we looked like we didn't personally need money, then the moneyed prospects would trust us like one of their own. In truth, we resembled impeccably dressed butlers serving care-free masters. This lesson was imparted to me by a client whom I chose to call the Maverick. The Maverick openly expressed his distrust for slick, sugar-tongued banker types. As a self-made millionaire who never went to university, he had no time for suits. Literally. He made it a point to wear paint-stained jeans to every meeting we organized and the only time he wore a suit was on the occasion of his son's graduation. The day before the ceremony he went to a good Samaritan thrift store and bought a $20 suit. Like a savvy investor, after the ceremony he returned the suit to the store and promptly picked up his cash. He knew better than to waste good money wearing a bad suit.

                                                                                I dress better than you- why won't you call me friend?

3.  Its all in the approach: what chasing hot girls taught me about acquiring rich clients

Hot girls: Young and gorgeous- men worship the ground they walk on

Rich people: Middle aged and pot bellied- men worship the ground they walk on

If you have ever seen a hot girl being pursued, you will always notice a herd of suitors trying variations around the same themed approach. This approach will primarily involve a level of attention that would puzzle a stalker.

If you ever pitch a rich person for his business, he will tell you that he has 5 other banks who have promised him even better rates, lower costs and heightened levels of personal service.

What is the commonality here? Hot girls and rich people always go for those who pay them little to no attention. I am not a psychologist but reverse psychology works like a charm. I called it the non-pitch pitch. I would meet a prospect and talk about anything and everything other than what I did for a living. Befuddled by this indirect approach, the rich prospect would ask me what I did for Mega Bank Corp, I would tell them I was a wealth manager and then proceed to talk about golf/weather/politics. The conversation would end as follows:

Rich prospect: Listen Tendo, lets meet up another time and you can tell me what you can do for me as a wealth manager
Tendo Money: Yeah, sure. Whatever
Rich prospect: Call me, maybe

Like a teenage romance, its totally not cool to lose your calm even when all you desire is right in front of you. Hot girls and rich people always fall for that.