Close, but no...

Today I realised that total success and abject failure are a millimetre apart. This is my explanation for the existence of so many ordinary people/ideas/things. Subconsciously, most people know that in order to achieve great success they must risk catastrophic failure and it is this risk that prevents them from ever being anything other than ordinary. The ordinary folk huddle together and find comfort in knowing they aren't the only normal ones. The special few break free and soar.

If you want to achieve success you have to risk it - stare failure dead in the eye and smile, more often than not your arrogance will be enough to see you through.

Executive coaching

Today I met with an interesting gent who talked to me about the concepts of executive coaching. Coming to a definition of executive coaching is not that easy and he left it quite open to my own personal interpretation. It isn't a business seminar, it isn't clinical psychology, and it isn't a dummies guide to living the high life. My best effort would be to describe it as assisted self realisation. I love that that is a contradiction!

Many corporate business people, CEO's, and entrepreneurs (like myself) get incredibly wrapped up in work and actually become mentally bound to the office. We lose sight of what we truely want and begin to believe that what we want is same as what the company wants. As a business owner it is crucial that I succeed as a whole person and not just a business person. If I fail my family, my friends, and myself in order to make the company a success then I will die a lonely unhappy person - and the company will likely fail as well.

So executive coaching is assisted self realisation. A trained coach will help me find myself, identify my core values, and help me to become a whole person. The side effects of this will be that I am able to focus more clearly on my business and create balance.

I really had fun today meeting the coach and I plan on exploring more with him in future. I've only taken one of many steps to come, and already I feel empowered. Here's to finding out more about coaching, what it is that I really want, and going after it with passion!

SAA wake up!

Irritation washed over me as I read the automated response to my complaint to SAA. I wrote them a comprehensive and impressively rational letter regarding the appaling treatment I had received on my flight to London recently. It didn't take long for an "out of the office" response to jump into my inbox. SAA is out of the office? Surely not! Out of their minds maybe, but has the whole of SAA left?

Thankfully the email explains that it is an acknowledgement of receipt and not an out of office notice, and goes on to thank me for writing to them. Then it said something that completely shocked me: "We will investigate and revert to you shortly. This will take longer than normal due to the high volume of incoming correspondence."

Did they just openly admit that they receive lots of complaints? I mean, this is from the customer complaints department, so even though they politely use the word 'correspondence' they actually mean complaints.

It really isn't wise to notify customers that they are receiving a higher than average number of complaints. We are used to it from Telkom because we all know they don't care a damn, but from a company that faces stiff competition - scary!

What's worse is that it is a week since I sent through my letter and I still haven't heard anything else. Guess they're still pretty busy then!

Media 24 up for Sale

So I noticed last night while watching TV that Media24 are selling a certain percentage of their shares to the public. The advert, which jumps from person person, all saying that they own Media24, states that only black South Africans are eligable to buy these shares.

As a white South African, I was rather upset by how blatantly whites were excluded from the offer. Do these companies not realise how racist they are being? While I fully support transformation in South Africa, and constantly seek ways for me to do more, I am adamantly opposed to racism. What would happen if a company ran television adverts stating that a special offer was only applicable to white South Africans?

Futher, the advert showed a number of coloured people. Does this mean that coloured people are allowed to by shares as well as black people? What about Indians? I didn't see any Indians in the advert so are they being excluded the same as whites?

As much I felt the need to have a bitch about this, I have no idea where the line is drawn. Maybe it is a good thing that a company like Media24 is so bold because they are simply saying what other companies have been doing but keeping quiet. Maybe I have been naieve all along, and it took a television advert to make me realise that BEE is straight-up racism!

And so it starts

So this is the first of hopefully many posts to come. Needless to say I'm incredibly excited about where this could go. Aside from that, I don't have too much more to say right now because Invasion is on in the background and it's getting heated!