My Act Two begins tomorrow. Thank goodness. Eight months is really long when kept from your passion. I get what Confucius meant when he said if you love your job, you’ll never work a day in your life. Borrowing from another wise man, I’m determined to tap dance to work. Every day for the rest of my life.
Warren Buffett’s got almost 30 years on me, and he still manages the daily tap dance. He reminded we 30 000 Omaha Pilgrims a few weeks ago he only does what he loves because he’s never been good at anything he doesn’t enjoy. It’s that simple. Easy to understand. Like all brilliant concepts.
From tomorrow, I’ll be starting the day hitting the keyboard with comments on business and investment news. Writing daily on this site about stuff my restraint of trade barred. Sharing news, ideas and thoughts on the sweet spot in my circle of competence. Like I’ve tried to do since landing that trainee reporter job thirty-something years ago.
Then mid-morning it will be off to CNBC Africa to co-host Power Lunch, the continental broadcaster’s noon to 1pm business news show. It’s a bit like returning to an old love. I had the same shift when the channel launched in 2007. Back then I worked to different priorities. Fun trailed behind returns for Moneyweb’s shareholders. Our share of profit wasn’t high enough, so we didn’t renew the contract. No such obstacle this time.
At times during the past eight months I’ve been asked about regretting taking Moneyweb onto the JSE back in 1999. Surely if you’d kept it private, pals ask, you’d still be running the place? Maybe.
But without the listing, the company itself might not have been around today. The R10m in cheap funding we raised at the height of the dotcom boom built us a financial foundation that protected Moneyweb from becoming road-kill. Later, having shares as currency gave us the ability to buy a cash-generating newsletter business; then to rescue and turn around Classic FM. There’s also something to be said for witnessing an idea born above your garage turn into a vibrant, healthy member of the national news establishment.
So, no, the biggest mistakes I made came after the listing, not because of it. Primarily through not embracing a more entrepreneurial approach to opportunities. Allowing what caused us to walk away from CNBC to also permeate our thinking and actions elsewhere.
CEOs of public companies are ever aware of the next reporting date, the share price, the profit margin. Decisions are weighed against this distracting triumvirate. Doing so can be very unhealthy for a developing a media business. In this industry, the best decisions take time to yield results. But that doesn’t fit with being listed. When you actually take a leap of faith by sacrificing short-term profit for long-term benefits, nobody wants to understand. Mr Market craves instant gratification. Resist and he’ll punish the thing that matters to most investors, your share price.
On the flip side, the one place where we did successfully side-step the short-term demands was by investing heavily in staff. This was at the very core of the organizational culture, proving the business actually lived what so many others meaninglessly mouth: That people are the company’s most important asset.
Our much-criticised move to expensive but safe, convenient Melrose Arch reflected this. Ditto the policy of 20% pretax profit distributed quarterly as staff bonuses. And, learnt from Investec and Allan Gray, a rule that every staffer was able to and usually did interview every prospective employee – and carried a veto right. Moneyweb’s employment “process” kept many talented individuals away. But it also ensured collective ownership in a strong, coherent team.
Those are the big lessons I’ll take into the future. Perhaps through a managerial position at another operation. But most likely not. Because the media industry, like any talent-driven business that’s transforming, must find a different model. It can no longer be business as usual.
Nobody yet knows what the new model will look like. But my bet is it will be close to one where people are properly rewarded for the value they contribute. That it will following the trend of talent trumping capital in other transforming business sectors. So it is no longer unusual to see the best athletes, lawyers, bankers and, indeed, CEOs being highly rewarded. Not just lackeys for those who own the capital.
The closure of old media’s lucrative toll roads has rewritten our rules. Legions of employees mindlessly doing capital’s bidding never really worked. And it certainly cannot in any true meritocracy. Which is what the media sector is rapidly turning into as technology smashes once impregnable barriers to entry.
It’s an exciting time to be independent. To have the choice, as a talent worker, of selecting partners on the basis of fair reward from contributions and on how your view of the world aligns. A place where you need never work with people who churn your stomach. As long as I bear that in mind, there’s no reason why tomorrow’s tap dance won’t last the rest of my life. Like Warren’s.
