Part I- Uganda Property Index (Upix)
True to form, late as usual, my partner, Ian. Garbed in an oversized white shirt, a conspicuous hand-me-down, oblivious to the crime committed against fashion. I have since found, in no small part to Ian’s demonstration, the most egregious fashion crimes are those of ill fitting garments, dwarfing color clashing, and indecent, inappropriate wear in the hierarchy. But that’s beside the point. Our new brilliant idea had matured to the stage where we adjudged it was ready to be presented to various stakeholders. A free bi-weekly real estate magazine to be distributed at high traffic pressure points in and around the city centre, free of charge( that was the clutch) , to be financed purely by the revenues from scrambling advertisers, actors in the hitherto hot real estate market. Our thinking was that if we syndicated the home, land sellers as well as financial institutions which were the ultimate conveyors of the requisite funding to purchase the real estate in question, we would easily have a steady stream of uptake for this bright idea. With no funds, we co-opted a former publisher of a school magazine Ian had worked with, praying that once we showed him that the supply side was promising, he could then provide graphic and printing services upfront without payment. The idea was that the publication would grow in stature quickly enough so we would have to turn away money from willing participants. As you can probably tell, that was not to be. First phase, tackle the monster first, the banks, get them sold on the idea of advertising mortgage packages in this our free offering, a hassle free way for them to push their product onto the market. After chiding Ian for his perennial lateness, we performed the morning ritual, a vile cigarette called sportsman, a coke for me, Pepsi for him. Intellectual juices flowing, the undercurrent of fear ever-present, we made our foray into the first bank. Looking very much the very wide eyed duo that we were, we relayed to some bank staffer or the other our urgent need to see the “Marketing Manager”. Suspicious of our intent, staffer reluctantly pointed us in the direction of the man we sought. Banks, I would later learn are torn when it comes to the all-important role of prejudging clients. This is primarily because many people you treat with disdain based exclusively on their appearance could very easily be the money-laden downtown businessman whose enterprise has inadvertently enabled you realize your objective of gainful employment.
On that basis, we secured the benefit of the doubt and were ushered into a waiting area situated outside the manager’s office. After a brief period, we were the next piece of luggage on the manager’s conveyor belt of meetings. In retrospect, we had a genuine belief in the validity of our offer, and I still do, eternal optimist that I am. That impassioned reverence for what we saw as a million dollar idea, is why I was so beset with disillusionment when he summarily rejected what we put to him. Thinking about it now, a middle aged Indian gentleman, clearly unhappy with his station in life, significantly past his prime that he was entirely unable to rally behind anything of the sort we were offering, the odds were not in our favor. As we teed up to proposition him, at the first mention of “advertising”, he cut us short and launched into a salvo of corporate buzzwords “budgetary constraints” “macroeconomic externalities”, et cetera. After a polite declination, it was time for us to leave, but not before thanking him profusely for the award of his precious time and the labor of his counsel. A good man, this “Muyiindi”. We were sufficiently downcast after our maiden excursion into the big bad world of business/entrepreneurship and the thought of this being merely the beginning was not a comforting one. It’s true what they say. “The First Cut is the Deepest”. – Smiley face – Next stop another bank, this one even more daunting than the last. An uptown financial institution, so embedded in its exclusivity, it symbolized financial well being to be banked by them regardless of the actual amounts attributable to your account. It was helpful that my “business associate” had a relative in the organization, which helped make it slightly more familiar. On balance, that reality served no real purpose except that which I have already indicated. It made our task less psychologically taxing, I should say, for clarity. After a brief interlude between banks, a smoke break to discuss cues from the last meeting, and the lessons it sprung, a dollop of positive reinforcement, we hiked to Bank B. Pregnant with intent, more fake than real, given the adverse response in the first instance, we marched into this place. Waiting in the reception, we saw two more familiar faces with whom we briefly chatted. Given that we feared the worst, the treatment we received here was stellar by any metric. We were marshaled to an affable twenty-something gentleman, an indigenous this time, thankfully, and more age appropriate. A quick mental calculus told me the reduced power distance in this particular scenario, made the pitch easier to articulate. We sat at a desk in the banking hall and were fortunately rid of the burdensome intimidation of the official set-up. He listened attentively through the fervent presentation, nodding and mumbling tacit agreement where he felt good points were made, spurring us to put our best foot forward. After his judicious consideration of our concept, repeating it to indicate full understanding, he agreed to look more into it, a follow up email requested plus a promise to run it by the higher-ups to know whether it was something that they could get involved in. It was not to be, but I appreciate solidly the professional duty of care we were afforded. It was emotionally refreshing and a ringing endorsement of the kind of quality shop these guys were running. Unsurprisingly, Bank B continues to outperform its peers to date.Bank C was the last domino. An up and comer with no real identity but more inclined to the well heeled type than those to whom the lottery of life had been unkind. In a blind omission of common sense, we decided it was pertinent to go to their “corporate” headquarters, tired from the first two draining meetings and for my part, excruciatingly hungry, with no conceivable immediate relief, taking into account “budgetary constraints”, “macro economy” notwithstanding.
We met with a very kind lady, very well dressed and impeccable professional manner to boot. She led us into the elevator, which we boarded in silence, all the while drinking in the sweet scent she had donned, grateful to the gods that be for the glorious contrast from our trippy start to the day. After the end of an elevating experience on the Lift (pun unintentional), our trio sat in the “marketing room”. Air-conditioned, new look conference room. Simple, but elegant and I later found out Ian interpreted as a positive sign that we were on the up and up. It might have been premature, but not entirely without merit. She too, listened intently but was more practical concerning the modalities. Payment, cost structures, the business model, distribution et cetera. We grinded out edges she wanted smoothed and after what was a pleasant meeting, she said they could only participate in a living thing, and pipeline ideas/concepts were not a favorite of theirs. It was a fair deliberation on her part in my book. We then parted, promising that though she and her organization had come agonizingly close to enjoying the amenities of being a first mover on a scheme that was going to blow up most assuredly; we promised she would be our first call when we would be accepting “new” clients from our growing list.Thrice bitten, exponentially more shy/shier, we took a trip back to the drawing board. In our imaginary situation room, we analyzed the events of that day, to determine where redress was imperative. All those good business strategy books written by those successful white men that cost $9.99 advise that good business strategy is one that is predicated on flexibility, adaptability. “Business Re-engineering” I believe is the terminology. Buoyed by our survival in the banking war zone, albeit with zero success, our conclusion to re-engineer was a positive discovery because it gave us the confidence that we had the rare ability to identify the ailments in our approach, and re-inform in a timely fashion.
Re-engineering
The decision we arrived at was that we would first get the monopolistic competitors in the business of selling real estate to buy into our concept before the banks would have the confidence to bring their skin into the game. Scared by the prospect of being late to the party, they would rush to sign up to attain a competitive edge over their counterparts who they knew for facts were furiously advertising using all means available. We accurately predicted that ours would be no exception. It was off to Old Kampala, the hub of most real estate agencies operating at the time. You couldn’t spit in Old Kampala without it landing on some real estate broker “bulooka”of some sort. In a car with amounts of fuel more suited to boda bodas that consume considerably less petrol, we set off. The failures of the day before seemed like ancient history because such is the gift of enthusiasm. The ubiquity of potential clients in Old KLA meant that we had our work cut out.
It however proved to be an advantage because every new broker we saw we never failed to mention the receptiveness of his neighbor upstairs in the same plaza or this and that competitor down the road. A notch in our strategy began to rear its ugly head however with every additional real estate agency we visited. They were open to, some even overtly excited about this idea, except they were not willing to pony up cash up front. They wanted to see the first publication on something more than my notebook computer (a laptop’s poop), on the streets, how it appeared and how it was received , then the next publication they would definitely pay to play. We had not wholly failed to anticipate this scenario. It was a headwind we had scripted into our model, but we worked on the outside chance that one risk taker would take a chance on us, an aberration. We knew outliers are rare and insignificant but they exist. Chances are, larger sample spaces provide higher probability of capturing an outlier, and after testing that theory, three days in the real estate agency capital, we found us that outlier.
Outlier
We saw the signpost of his office on one of our travels, and it looked unassuming, almost being sacrificed for more promising looking operations. Unable to deal with the guilt of cherry picking our sample space, we ambled into the half finished plaza. Stairs with no rails, works ongoing pursuant to completion, the occupants’ rent presumably financing the final putsch. Our precious outlier was a middle aged, balding fella with an easy manner about him. His office was immaculate, furnishings quite plausibly only recently procured. For reasons unbeknownst to me, I appeared extremely familiar to him, and he referred to me with the tone of a person he recognized intimately but perhaps with whom the relationship had ebbed somewhat. Even amidst my denials of the people he suspected I knew of, he probed relentlessly and succumbed only to that extent where he did not accept that I was indeed not the person he thought I was but just that passage of time had caused me to forget him. I had no qualms about it. He proceeded to inquire what courses we had done at the university. Given that we were just only going to start in a month or so, we offered fantasy business courses to assuage any fears in the stead of the truth. We later learn from one of his tangential ramblings that he had only recently joined the business, having traded in the glamour of the classroom ( a former lecturer at MUK) for the rough and tumble business of real estate agency. That explained the new furniture. I wondered privately whether the leap from the insular security of academia to the vagaries of real estate brokerage was properly conceived (beside the point).
After a century of idle talk, we pitched our idea to him, and before our eyes, we watched him dither from skepticism to excitement in short order. It was clear to me, after we did some name dropping that he was deeply afraid of exhibiting the indecision that is a byproduct of novelty but also had to be careful not to show over eagerness to be among the number (the “growing list” I spoke about). All said and done, he bit. Hook – Line and Sinker. We had our big fish and it was all we could do not to leap for joy right there from across his desk. At a handsome fee, he had just bought out one of his “competitors” for the front cover of our maiden publication. A breakthrough had appeared and we knew we had to act quickly. Using the funds from our fat cat, we would subsidize all our future customers by giving them free advertising until they saw what we were doing was genius and they would be chasing us in dark alleys ready to pelt us with their money. It was not to be – sad face- The thing about picking someone’s pocket is that impulse is your only ally. People make decisions about expenditure in one of two ways, impulsively or after careful consideration, planning and budgeting. The former was our best bet because our beloved whale, after a good night’s sleep and the dividend of reflection, saw that the balance of probabilities was skewed heavily to disfavor him if at all we failed to deliver on our promise to him. Our next meeting would ultimately be the final straw in what would be one of many entrepreneurial expeditions. He politely framed his recant of the earlier offer deciding to err on the side of caution. This is just a skeleton of what was an action packed attack on the world of business and primitive accumulation. That project is all but done, but as I go, I have the obligation and the responsibility to memorialize my failures by documenting them. The only debt I have is to my sponsors and to failure, arguably the greatest sponsor of them all. And of course to my erstwhile, long suffering associate, Ian.
Aluta Continua. Mungu ni Mwema