Reliable and Sustainable

There is often a disturbing amount of truth in oversimplifications. One is that the path to wealth is shopkeeper-professional-entrepreneur-bust and repeat in four generations. 

To start building wealth you need to first find breathing space between what you are earning and what you spend. You need to snap the hand-to-mouth connection. Gradually you build capacity to think about risk differently as you have more faith in your own grounding. When you have sufficient capital for a deep sense of knowledge that you are going to fundamentally be okay. 

Then you can build that base up to be an engine. An engine earns more on average than you spend on average. At that point, particularly if the engine is earning comfortably more than you spend, it starts growing. Compounding kicks in. Growth on growth. Even without you earning. Then it is no longer just about you, your earning capacity, and your consumption. Decisions extend beyond you and even your lifetime. Impact scales. Work is no longer about financing your needs. 

If you have sufficient capital, it can become a muse. Not all ideas are good business ideas. If you have the capital, they don’t need to be. Good ideas, that are not good business ideas, can be funded by good ideas that are good business ideas. Good businesses reliably and sustainably generate a growing stream of cash.

Hesiod and the Muse

Bewildering Respect

Starting rich is a safety net. Not all safety nets are viewed the same. 

A lot of Government safety nets come at the cost of respect. They are the opposite of a job interview. To get help, you must prove you need help. With a job, you know there are limited vacancies, so you are proud they chose you. To get help, you prove you cannot self-sustain. That is a belittling acknowledgment to make. 

When we look at other people’s problems, our advice is autobiographical. We look at their problem with our whole picture. With our capital, our knowledge, our skills, our experience, our way of seeing... but I am not you. You are not me. 

Watching a participation play where the actors take suggestions can leave the audience frustratedly correcting and recorrecting as no decision plays out as if they were acting. I even ended up as one of the characters, “let me have a turn”. Even then, you are just one of the participants and many decisions are team efforts. The decision you would make in that situation would not be the same, because you would not be you in that situation. 

I find seeing real poverty humbling because it strips away how much credit I give myself for my own personal merit. It strips away vast chunks of the justification for why I am as fortunate as I am. It leads to a re-evaluation of thorny ideas like white privilege, civilizing missions, and unintended consequences. 

It leads to bewildering respect for people in their worlds.

Self-Sacrifice and Self-Reliance

The irony of growing up in Apartheid where a privileged minority received various advantages, is that that is not part of the deep soaked self-identity. 

Reach further back and the scars are of tough-love and self-reliance. “No one owes you anything” and “Life is hard. Make a plan”. That perspective is a positive-optimistic-negative view of the world. A Ja-Nee view that got baked into the stories of Racheltjie De Beer and Wolraad Woltemade. 

My great-great-(forget how many)-grandfather was Jacobus De Beer, who was a signatory at the peace of Vereeniging (the treaty that ended the second Anglo-Boer War). I had ancestors on both sides. The story of Racheltjie is of her saving the life of her brother by sacrificing her own. She removed her clothes to cover him in a snowstorm. 

There are repeated stories of self-sacrifice, but also self-reliance. A willingness to give to others, but not rely on or expect from others. A cultural sense of loneliness. A sense of fleeing others. 

I don’t have a full handle on how I ended up here. My Maiden name is Black. A surname given to expelled sheep thieves in the Scottish borderlands. All sorts of dodgy people, explorers, refugees, and randoms found their way away and down south. Unpacking stories is complicated.

Bloemfontein Concentration Camp

Simplicity and Self-Reliance

I grew up in the Methodist Church which emphasised, among other things, two key values – avoiding conspicuous consumption, and self-reliance. There were regular debates over any money spent on renovations to the church buildings. The focus was on functionality. The founding stories were based in a break away from flashiness. A foundation of simplicity. I was in the English bubble of Apartheid South Africa, but the self-reliance stories of the missionaries, criminals, impoverished, refugees, and fortune seekers resonated with those of the Afrikaans bubble (and I had Romeo and Juliet style crossing of family stars). Protestants protesting. Fleeing the European religious wars. Hard tales and hard heroes from frontiers, like Wolraad Woltemade and Racheltjie De Beer. It didn’t surprise me when I discovered that the first stories of Racheltjie appeared a few months after those of American heroine Hazel Miner, who saved her brother in the Spring blizzard of 1920. Legal Apartheid ended and I left the church, but history and founding stories soak deep. Even if they pick up flavours that resonate from elsewhere.    

Self-Sacrifice

Story of Self-Reliance

Self-reliance is incredibly empowering. It is a story in which I have been deep soaked. Lower your expectations and you can’t be disappointed. If something needs doing, just do it. Discover your ability to find joy with very little, and every little bit extra will be a delight. One of my privileges is that I don’t feel anybody owes me anything. This frees me up to give generously in the belief that good stuff will come back. To build my ability to stay in it for the long term. To build my ability to cope with the inevitable challenges involved in doing anything worthwhile. If this comes across as a little preachy, it is possibly because I learnt it in Church. Friday nights & twice on Sundays. My path led me away from religion, but our stories don’t change overnight. Bruce Lee said, “Absorb what is useful. Discard what is not. Add what is uniquely your own”. It is hard to understand other people. They didn’t do all their schooling in Westville (Durban, Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa). University in Cape Town. Work in Joburg & London. Gradually, spending time with people allows us to see their stories. How connected our self really is to non-overlapping stories that don’t make sense to us. I’m adding a pinch of salt to my story of self-reliance.

Pillow Fighting my Mom at the Westville Methodist Church

Well Covered

My rule of thumb for insurance, is to buy cover for the risks you can’t handle, while building capital to handle as much of it as you can yourself. Perhaps it is the Self-Reliance that was beaten into me by South African folklore. I push back hard on most people who talk of being “against hand-outs” when it comes to charity. Most of the time that push back doesn’t come armed with a mirror. The boundary between a hand-out and privilege is unclear to me. Privilege is compounded entitlement made invisible. Before you can start building breathing space, you have no choice but to rely on others. No one is self-made. Gradually, you can reduce that reliance. By building Capital. The only way to build that self-reliance is by snapping the connection between income and expenses. Self-reliance is a privilege. It is also one that frees you up to give back. If you get to the point where you no longer need to consume everything that is coming in. Separating consumption and creativity is the key to sustainability. The key to handling risk.