Catching up - work

Well, I am learning a lot. I have been working on these business plans for a couple of weeks now and it is quite interesting to analyse already what I have done right, and what I have done wrong. My goodness, I’ve done a lot wrong; and not so much in terms of what I’ve done but in terms of how I have gone about doing it. In short, I’ve been so focused on getting things done that I haven’t taken the time to make sure everyone is on the same page, which I KNOW is absolutely the wrong way to go about doing things but sometimes we all get blinders on.

I am also learning so much about managing because it has been a while, and it’s pretty stressful to make sure that everyone is happy, productive, and actually understanding the objectives that have been set out. There are so many interns, and some are more capable of acting on their own than others. I have always respected the amount of time it takes to be a good manager, and I know that I’m not being a particularly good manager at the moment. That bothers me in a lot of ways but then again it bothers me that I can’t work past about midnight before I can feel my mental capacity decreasing, and it bothers me that I can’t be 100% focused all day long. And it bothers me that I can’t perform certain physical activities. So apparently, I basically wish I was a Cylon. But definitely one of the final five.

On the other hand, if I were perfect life would be pretty boring as I would have no learning left to do. That I think is what I love the most about work or life in general just now, this is stretching me in all sorts of new ways but not in a way that’s too much. As my mother once said, I don’t like learning, I like knowing. So what I’m doing is close enough to a core competency that I can struggle through figuring out what to do and how to do it, and the process is fun. Being in way over my head would not be fun, I don’t imagine.

Anyway, at this exact moment I am feeling pretty excited actually because I had a fantastic meeting (why do these always seem to happen between 5 and 6pm??) with two of the members of the management team and I’m happy because we are not only giving the business plan template a dry run (and are making a ton of changes to it as a result), but also the whole incubation methodology. So, rather than red tape when we are trying to move fast, we are now actually refining the incubation methodology which is about as exciting to me, honestly, as any business plan. As much fun as it is putting a business idea through the ringer, systematizing the way to produce a business plan is both more challenging and more powerful. It is, after all, why we’re here – our rock star CEO is a visionary but we need to be able to replicate a model that works, which means the methodology has to work in the real world and not just on the drawing board.

That was a funny moment because I think all three of us had a bit of a different epiphany sitting in that room as the sun was setting over the harbour (sorry American readers, the spell check keeps “correcting” my American spellings). That is also a very cool feeling to take a bunch of bright people, put them in a room with a problem and see what comes out. There is very little to me that’s as inspiring as working with a bunch of really smart, hard-working people.

Herding cats … that about sums up what I’ve been trying to do this last week and change. A couple of highlights (other than getting dragged to the roti place twice in a week …. SO NOT ON MY DIET!):
• A visit to Philippi to meet with a large scale farmer Johan Terre’Blanche (no relation to Eugene). All I can say about this is that I’ve heard all this before (about the “benefits” of conventional over organic) and don’t agree with the half of it. Also, thank goodness I wasn’t the only one in the room who didn’t speak very good Afrikaans … my learning is coming along so slowly, there are so many other things to be doing and learning. It doesn’t help that my vocabulary is getting added to in odd ways (i.e. waterpokkies and hout (chickenpox and wood)).
• Visiting Mama Rosie and the Philippi Farmers Market (site for a future Grow Zone – see the image with the tractor) and learning about their farming challenges
• Reviewing the work I’d done on the second half of my coworker’s drug rehab parent support programme. I swear every time I meet with this guy it’s a new revelation. The world is a better place that he is in it – he makes an impact in a way that I never could, as a role model and an incredibly powerful spirit and presence. We all contribute in our own ways; my way just now is as someone who gets things done but you never know – I am so much more of a dynamic leader and speaker than I was ten years ago, who knows what role I’ll find for myself in the future.
• Watching this same [ex-gangster, mind you] guy making Purple Heart hampers
• My one co-worker asking me exactly what was in my water bottle (I drink a lot of water, ok?)
• Finally grasping conceptually what needs to happen for market research for all of these business plans
• More Purple Heart business coaching; this time of the team of girls. The epiphany this week was showing them why inventory theoretical vs. actual count was important (actually they realised this on their own, after I explained the concept of over/unders). THAT was very cool. As I read this I realise it sounds patronising which is not what I mean to be … people are people. Some are smarter than others. The people I’ve met from the townships aren’t stupid (ok some of them are but a lot of people across all walks of life are pretty stupid), but they lack knowledge. Seeing them make leaps of comprehension around business ideas …. VERY cool. Oh, and they also like the pictures of the soccer players. I think the zoom on my camera makes me the most popular person in the Purple Heart office on business coaching days.
• Working on the Purple Heart business plan all of Friday night to about 1:30am and waking up early Saturday to finish it before heading to the weightlifting clinic. The funny thing about this was discovering a major flaw in my spreadsheet around 8:30am when I had to be at the gym before 9. Nothing to focus your mind like a deadline…
• Touring the Abalimi/Harvest of Hope operation and meeting Rob Small, the founder. What an amazing character. Harvest of Hope is essentially an organisation that helps train and provide a route to market for township farmers, telling them what to grow and holding them to very strict quality standards. They also have farming training classes a few times a year that I would love to attend if I had the time (and if I didn’t probably already have 80% of the knowledge but that lats 20% is always the difference between mediocrity and excellence). I may be getting involved with a new project Rob wants to get off the ground …. More on this later if it comes to fruition. Like I needed to add something else to my plate, but this would be just up my alley.

The only other thing I can say at this point is that I wish there were more hours in the day. Boy did my ex-boss have me figured out….

I leave you all with a quote from an email I just received: “There is work to be done, mostly by you. Ellie, please drive the process. We need to torture the financial model next. Please read the whole document - all 79 pages - so that you have the context you need to complete your sections.” Life at heart.

Soccer and Wine

Saturday morning! I woke up with a headache and so clearly, 15 minutes of deadlifts were the thing to do. Got rid of my headache at least, but I really really, really need to work on my grip. Big problems when one part of your body is so much weaker than the other parts. Following that I went to the Old Biscuit Mill market to stock up on meat for two weeks, then fought match day road closure traffic all the way home. That is one thing I will not miss!

The rest of the day was taken up with soccer. I went to the Germany-Argentina game at Green Point. This was an afternoon (4pm) game, and it was actually pretty neat to walk the fan walk during the daylight and actually see everything. Including the wacky fans. Someone had put a big German flag up on Signal Hill which was pretty cool, except that I was rooting for Argentina, ha!

This was more of a massacre than a game, as Germany just completely took over in the second half. It was funny, our seats were in the nosebleeds … literally. We were one row from the top. But we were close to the media, and it was pretty interesting to see them all on their computers. Also we got a stunning view of sunset over the ocean as the outside of the stadium is some sort of mesh-like material. Well, as they say there is not really a bad seat in the house and we could certainly see the game very well, although my friends did leave early (this is a thing for me – I never leave until the very end, regardless of how much my team may be losing).

Following the live game, a large crew of us headed over to Dizzy’s in Camps Bay for dinner and to watch the Spain-Paraguay match. That game was mostly notable to me for the series of penalty kicks, including a Spain one where the goal was called back due to encroachment and then they missed the repeat. So much for the refs having been bought off in favour of Spain! Well, whatever, Spain won. Again. And so I won my bet [originally that Spain would win, later modified to whosever team got further, Spain in my case and Brazil in my friend’s case]. Ahhh, Spain, you’ve won me so much money as getting me drunk can be a bit of a mission…

For some reason probably having to do with working too much and not sleeping enough I became quite exhausted by the time dinner ended and did not stay out that evening with my friends. I blame the deadlifts.

It was OK because on Sunday I had to get up at a decent hour and head over to Sea Point where a bunch of us were meeting to carpool to the Stellenbosch wine festival. This was good fun except that we had to spend like 90 minutes at the first winery due to logistical issues with the park & ride system. Following that, I went to get my car and left the larger group I was with to go join a friend from I met at my gym and her sister for a couple wineries and some gossip.

Every time I make it out to the winelands it’s just breathtaking …. I have been to maybe 12 wineries now and the scenery at almost every one of them is just incredible. It’s hard even to pick a favourite as there are so many to choose from, but I ended up the day at Waterford for a chocolate and wine pairing. That was spectacular more for the chocolate than for the wine: “Masala Chai Dark Chocolate,” “Rock Salt Dark Chocolate,” and “Rose Geranium Milk Chocolate.” All were pretty incredible, and I’m not really a chocolate person. But apparently I’m not a true cheese lover, either. Random thought – I just realized the last brew pub I was in was in Illinois. That seems like a lifetime ago.

Moving on … we went back to collect all the cars, then tried to go to another wine farm but it was closed, despite what the booklet had to say. No huge surprise there. We did get accosted by German fans who insisted on painting flags on all of our faces (except for the Germans amongst us, who somehow managed to escape … random).

Last but not least today I want to pause in honor of my uncle Tom, who passed away over this weekend. My thoughts have been with my aunt, cousin, and the rest of my family all week.

Tragedy for BaGhana BaGhana

Yep. I’m sorry but that was just low, Suárez. Suárez has now turned into a bit of a swear around here … and I’m doing my best to make sure it stays that way!

But first, work. I had to be at work early again for Purple Heart business coaching. Today I was with a team of two (Patrick and Sipho). I really love this business coaching; it’s always something new! We were reviewing their inventory levels which were quite low (they had sold out of several items). I was trying to explain how to calculate when to re-order by looking at average order volumes between the days that they ordered, etc., and found that they were resistant to ordering more stock. I asked why, and it turns out they were so concerned with paying back the initial loan for the inventory that they had essentially lost sight of the trees for the forest. Muy interesante.

I spent the rest of the day at work frantically working on this RFP. I was so sleep-deprived that I went the whole day thinking I’d managed to lose my phone between the gym and the office (even heading back to the gym to look for it), only to find the darn thing in plain sight in the back seat of my car (NO IDEA how it got there). I was so tired that I could focus on only one thing and that was work. It scares me sometimes how I get into a bit of a marketing zone sometimes and everything I write just comes together. Kate, if you’re reading this I know you know what I’m talking about!

At one point my coworker came over to say hi, and oh by the way Wines with heart needs a business plan as well so I needed to talk to the guy who ran that. I was so much in the RFP zone that I didn’t even really process this. I actually tried to unload it on someone else later that afternoon (I failed miserably), and that was when I realised my work level might actually be approaching my maximum capacity because when I try to pass off a business plan that has to do with the wine industry something is seriously wrong!!

Yeah so anyway I unfortunately missed the Brazil-Netherlands game because I was stuck helping my co-worker brainstorm how to finish his sections (he was actually meant to write most of this but he got pulled into end of month status reporting meetings all day). Actually I saw the last 2 minutes of it. Shocker. Netherlands. Wow.

After a quick dinner I joined my friend and some of her friends at the Mexican Shebeen where we had a table reserved. In terms of intensity of emotion, this match was second only to the Bafana Bafana games (someone clever had come up with the BaGhana BaGhana slogan, so we of course were all into that). One of the things I remember most clearly from this was discussing our dearly hated (well, not anymore but at that point) Diego Forlán, specifically his hair. This girl at the table behind us at one point yelled out “Fuck you Forlán! You look like a parrot!” Something about the way she said this with her Afrikaans accent made it one of the funniest things I had heard in a great long while. Now the thing about Forlán is that he’s a pretty boy, and he wouldn’t be pretty if it weren’t for that hair. Not that I’m complaining – I think I’ve watched more Uruguay games than any other team, so it’s not bad to have a pretty boy striker to look at (never mind that I don’t care for pretty boys in real life). But yeah … parrot.

So unless you’ve been living under a rock this past week, you will know that Luis Suárez blocked a would-be goal by Ghana and then Asamoah Gyan missed the penalty kick, and Uruguay won the game on penalty kicks. I tell you my heart just broke for Gyan when he missed that goal and I think that image of him trying to hide tears after that miss is one of the iconic moments of the World Cup. Ouch … so after the game the air just went out of the place and almost everyone left, leaving beers half-drunk. It was that bad. I remember we were all hugging each other, and then this one guy gave me a big hug and then immediately asked me if I wanted to dance. Yep, Cape Town during World Cup.

Never one to abuse alcohol, I did finish my beer before heading back home to sleep. Oh, and I actually had a beer confiscated by the police on the way home! He probably wanted to drink it to console himself, and I actually didn’t really want to be drinking it anyway.

Spain-Portugal and a bunch of other stuff

I was originally not going to go to this game. I was for a while a bit relieved because it fell on a school night and I wasn’t looking forward to dealing with that, especially only four days after Netherlands-Cameroon …. But, what can I say, World Cup fever took over and by Tuesday morning I was quite excited. Not to mention that I had money riding on Spain.

But first – the work day. Oh, actually, before that was Tuesday’s workout which actually made me sore later; the first time I’d been properly sore in about a month. It consisted of 150m of walking lunges carrying a weight. Good heavens that was painful, and of course in the Old Castle Brewery between heart, Purple Heart, and the Hub you have to go up and down stairs all day long. Sheer craziness.

Yeah so I can’t actually remember what I did that day. But I do remember leaving early, around 5pm, to go home and cook dinner before heading out to the game. The fan walk was as annoying as always, and the queues to get in were some of the worst I’d seen them, outside of the first game. Yech.

This game was pretty fantastic. I was pulling for Spain, as mentioned above, but also just because I like them. It was quite interesting – Spain had ball control for most of the game, but Portugal actually had some of the best chances, I thought. After David Villa broke the Green Point curse (scoring here has been quite low overall, Portugal’s scorching of North Korea aside) and scored his fourth goal in as many games (amazing, but not quite as amazing as when he scored his fifth goal in five games a few days later in Spain’s 1-0 win over Paraguay that won me my bet), Spain started playing what I can really only describe as the trap. Didn’t help I suppose that I was there with a fellow hockey fan. Because yeah that was all I needed, to have the boys in red compared to the New Jersey Devils, blargh.

This is a dangerous game to play – it seemed like the whole match the ball was glued to Spain’s feet but whenever Portugal would get the ball they would generate a decent scoring chance and if one of those went in it would have been a whole different game. But it didn’t, so Spain won 1-0.

Wednesday I was very sore. And the day was literally filled with meetings – first FoodTents then a couple on Purple Heart. The FoodTents meeting was a bit intense, because there are a lot of decisions that need to be made quite quickly, and it’s pretty complicated – everything from what should the product mix be to how we should go to market (or even if we should or should we leave that to the entrepreneur/beneficiary). Even on the social impact side there is a lot of work to be done, to quantify what it means in terms of social impact to produce a certain amount of food.

In the middle we went out to lunch (I owed a couple of people lunch, and for one of them it was his last day) to a place called Jamaican Me Crazy. That took forever, and my pumpkin soup was watery and I scared/amused my co-worker by refusing to eat the utterly fried dough that came with my meal (he was happy to eat them for me). I was not pleased because I didn’t have time for a two-hour lunch but that is what wound up happening. And I wonder why I don’t get any sleep. But, sitting in the winter sun looking at Devil’s Peak and the lovely different colored houses in upper Woodstock was quite nice, I’ll admit.

So after work I quickly ran to get my veggie bag, then to my apartment to unpack it, and hurried over to Perseverence to meet some friends (a group of people from the gym, and some of their coworkers). But unfortunately I could only stay for one drink as a group of us were going out to Bombay Bicycle Club for another friend’s going away dinner. I really wanted to stay longer, but hey these people aren’t going anywhere. So saying goodbye was sad, but the meal was good and passing the hats around quite amusing I must say. Then instead of going out after I went home, probably to work some more before getting to bed.

Thursday we started off our morning meeting in I think one of the best ways I have seen so far. The guy who is running one of the in-house social enterprises wanted us to take the time to say things that we have left unsaid to our co-workers. One of the great things about heart is that everyone is really genuine, so it was really nice to hear the things that we had to say about each other. I thought it was really cool that there were actually three people that I had literally within the past 24 hours been thinking nice thoughts about, and to have an opportunity to tell them what I thought was nice. Of course there was the inevitable mutual love-fest going on with one of the projects I’ve been working on, but hey that’s a good thing. It is still nice to make implicit mutual respect implicit; usually these conversations only come out over a few beers and not at 8:30am!

This was also the day that someone told me my job was their worst nightmare. He meant this in the kindest possible way – meaning that they had a tremendous amount of respect for what I was trying to do; shape four business models at the same time. I do know that my stress level is unhealthily high, to the point where someone called me out in the kitchen. Asked how I was doing and apparently I responded a bit defensively….. “What? I’m fine! Who said I wasn’t fine?!” ok not like that, but enough that I got teased about it. Yoga maybe. Or, get back into running – that was what I liked about long runs back in Bolton; it was the only time of the day my brain wasn’t going 100 miles an hour.

The rest of the day I spent mainly on the Grow South Africa project, which is more complex than I feel like explaining just now. This was when I realized that I’m going to have to get more efficient at this or it’s going to take forever. Hopefully once I finish wrapping my head around the potential business and operational models and figuring out what research we need collating the results will be straightforward. Or that is the theory, at least.

Towards the end of the day I got roped into an RFP for Parliament that we were responding to. So instead of a hot date with my pillow I wound up on my computer until after midnight which was absolutely not what I needed given how little sleep I’d been getting. Lekker slaap indeed.

Madness at the Silicon Cape

Monday was an interesting day. I had a new intern start working for me and all I can say is THANK GOODNESS because this guy is fabulous. No business experience and studying philosophy but smart, hard-working, good instincts, creative, and common sense. That’s about all you need to be successful in business and I seem to recall myself entering the startup world head first with my liberal arts background. Hooray for being thought how to think!

I started planning with some coworkers the market research we are going to need for some of our business plans. For Purple Heart as we have already written most of the plan what we need is data to back up our wild suppositions (never mind that this is completely the wrong way to go about writing a business plan). For several of the others, where the businesses are much more nascent we have the ability to do things properly.

So I set my intern off to researching market size and segmentation for voluntourism and I started working on the social impact section of the FoodTents business plan. This, of course, led pretty quickly into questioning a lot of the statements I picked up from our existing materials. Wrapping my head around the complexity of the proposed expansion of the business model was a bit challenging. I’m actually not there yet, a week later, mainly due to the fact that other than one meeting on the subject I was pulled in other directions all week. But, more on that later.

According to my calendar, I spent much of the rest of the afternoon working on reviewing sections of the Purple Heart business plan. So, I suppose that is what I did.

In the evening there was a networking event put on by the Silicon Cape Initiative. Now I had been following Silicon Cape remotely ever since my first Skype call with Justin Stanford last September. I still remember that conversation because I was so happy to hear a South African accent that it literally made my day, and because I was inspired by the passion and the vision he had for what he was doing. The Silicon Cape initiative aims to bring people from the tech industry together, and get South Africa recognized internationally but mainly in the U.S. as a high tech hub. There are a lot of barriers – distance, lack of capital, actually a lot of lack of expertise, etc., etc. but the aim is laudable. I think that the initiative has a lot of promise but there needs to be more bringing of people together, so this networking event (only the third since the launch in October), was a good start.

Now believe it or not Becky Brandt (and others), I really am shy! At least until I get to know you, then I am most definitely not (ok I know you all believe that!). To cut to the chase, I considered not going to this event because I didn’t have anyone to go with and I always like to run back to safety, or at least have someone to go around and meet people with. But I figured what the hell, I’m talented and good looking (inside joke), I actually am fine with networking even if I don’t care for it, and it’s good to push yourself to do things that are uncomfortable. And there was an open bar. That helps.

So I went. The event was at the Old Biscuit Mill and it was crazy to see that space transformed so differently! I really wished I’d brought my camera, as words don’t really describe the scene very well. There were the hay bales of course, but lots of standing-height tables, fires, and huge screens with live Twitter feeds of the #siliconcape tag. This was amusing especially when DustinStanford (a parody of JustinStanford) started up. This provided us with some good amusement during the obligatory sales pitch by the good sponsors at FNB and Paypal. What these people clearly don’t realise, though, is that their audience is of above-average intelligence and a more subtle sales approach would have been much more effective. Ahh I hate it when marketers don’t understand their audience.

Saul Klein was amazing though! I wanted to get a chance to talk to him after he spoke but he vanished (figures). Well, that’s what the internet is for.

It was nice, actually, to be back in the company of tech people. I was a bit of a minor celebrity in my own right due to my first-hand experience of Silicon Valley during the tech boom. The first guy I met kept introducing me in this vein. The true test that you’re around people who are fascinated by Silicon Valley? They ask you how much you used to be worth. I was thinking yeah, nice to have THAT rubbed in again. I did find it strange that fewer people asked me why in the world I left the Valley to begin with. Too polite I suppose. Well, money isn’t everything.

All in all, I met some really pretty interesting people. Amazing how small of a world it is – the first guy I met was just told at an ANDE conference a few days earlier that he needed to get in touch with heart, and his co-worker had spent time at Berkeley. I also amused myself by feeling the need to explain to him that no, I don’t get referral bonuses from my gym. One of the people I met amused me by saying that CrossFit sounded like a cult to which I had to admit that I was in complete agreement, and I’d been saying that since before I joined the cult! But I met one guy who apparently is responsible for importing large numbers of vuvuzelas from China (always good when you get to say “so this is all YOUR fault!”), and amused a bunch of people by eating additional curry for dessert instead of dessert. I’m sorry but that curry was fantastic! Even the bartenders were really cool. It’s always a party when the bartenders are cool.