Derek Sumption: A 30 year journey built on resilience and persistence

LONDON — One of my fondest memories of Derek Sumption was the afternoon we spent together after his invitation to take my daughters to watch a Miss Barbie Lookalike competition. It was an unusual business development exercise, but an inspired one – our kids loved the experience and the two of us have been pals ever since. Like most entrepreneurs, Derek has found that resilience and persistence have played a bigger role in his company's success than any brilliant ideas; and 30 years later, his company Brantam has developed into a sizeable unit. I asked him to share his earliest memories. – Alec Hogg

By Derek Sumption*

In 1990, I was sitting in my office having just taken over as managing director of Brantam Financial Services, when there was a commotion in the reception area. As my office was right next door, I bolted through to find out what was going on only to be confronted by a bloke who identified himself as the Sheriff.

The only sheriff I knew was the one from the Bob Marley song, I had no clue there was a sheriff of Johannesburg. It turned out the he'd come to attach all our assets, computers, switchboard, desks, etc. Once again, I didn't have a clue what he was talking about but it quickly became apparent that he was there to take all these items with him. It was about this stage that I realised I was in way above my head and that the life of an entrepreneur was not as easy as I thought.

Having just squeaked through matric in 1979 and not having any tertiary education, I'd headed straight off to the army after school. After being released from two years in the defence force, I was now on the lookout for a job. My track record with authority in school and the army made it fairly clear that I wasn't cut out for the corporate world of rules, regulations and bosses.

My first job was to sell dinner services door to door in the evenings. Work started at four o'clock in the afternoon and would finish up at about midnight. My income was pure commission, if you didn't sell, you didn't earn!

Whilst the money was good, the lifestyle was terrible, so I started looking around for something else to do. I tried a number of different businesses, such as a carpet cleaning business, selling swimming pools, selling travel bags, basically anything that I thought would earn me an income. In all these endeavours, I worked for myself, no salary and no boss.

I'd now been working for 3 years and had made good money, but nothing grabbed me as being a long term solution. It was at this time that my girlfriend's sister, who was working at Liberty Life, persuaded me to go and have a chat with one of their managers. I duly went to have a chat, mainly to appease my girlfriend, and was quite surprised that it all sounded like a pretty good idea, I would once again be earning commission based on what I was able to sell. Liberty put me through their aptitude test and informed that I'd failed and they were therefore not able to take me on.

If there's one thing that really irritates an entrepreneur it's being told that you're not good enough! I managed to convince the bloke I'd met with to take a chance on me, I'd write my business through him and he'd pay me, therefore, I wouldn't be employed by Liberty.

After about a year or so, I'd become rather disillusioned with the life insurance industry, but I had picked up a liking for the investment side of the business. So, in 1986, at the ripe age of 25, I registered a financial services company as a subsidiary of a larger business, Brantam Financial Services.

It took a while to get everything in place and we finally launched the business in September 1987, a month before the stock market crash of October 1987, not exactly the best time to be starting an investment business.

We started with no clients, no money and a borrowed office. For the first couple of years, we had to use our access bonds to pay our expenses, but slowly and surely, we started to build the business.

At the end of 1989, the owners of Brantam managed to get themselves into financial trouble and the company was going to be liquidated. As a subsidiary, that wouldn't have been very good for us, so we made an offer to the liquidator to buy the business as it had a large assessed loss and would allow us to continue trading. After much haggling with the liquidator, we managed to get the business.

Having no experience with this sort of thing, the one lesson I did learn was that whatever title you put on the door, it's immaterial, the person who holds the shares is king.

So in 1990, we took over the running of Brantam and thought we were just the bees knees, we had 27 staff, offices, boardrooms, fresh flowers delivered each week, all the bells and whistles and then the sheriff arrived. It transpired that the previous owners had bought all sorts of goodies before they were liquidated and now the sheriff had come to collect as no payment had been made.

It was an extremely harsh lesson in the realities of business, but we fortunately managed to weather it and turned out stronger for the experience.

Now, 30 years later we have a thriving business, we manage over R2 billion of individuals funds, we've been in our own offices for the past 26 years. All in all, it's been a great journey and we're now reaping the rewards for all the perseverance and hard work!

• Derek Sumption is the owner of financial services company Brantam.