Change One Small Thing
That’s How You Get Out of a Rut
The way we live today isn’t good for humans. Of course, nobody knows what a wild human is anymore, except perhaps for a handful of anthropologists that study the remote peoples of this world.
When you feel like a cog in the machinery of modern life, how do you get out? Are you the wall or the woman? The projection or the real deal?
Five years ago I was a tenured academic. I hated it. I was stuck teaching first year calculus, and only because I was an exceptional teacher. I needed to get out, so I took a jump into business. Then, I changed one small thing.
Breaking the Mould
First, I broke the mould of my existing frame of reference. I left an academic career on a vague notion that I would work as a consultant solving maths problems for a living. I had a Ph.D. and a couple of other qualifications that gave me good standing. I built a website. But that means very little in business. I had no clients. I had no contacts. So, how did I get that to change?
I started talking to strangers.
It happened at a conference on Industrial Maths. We had teams of mathematicians working on industry proposed problems. I had a chat with the industry representative. Here’s my card, why don’t you give us a talk on your results. We meet once a month. It took me a few months before I called him, but I gave the talk and met with some capital raising folk.
The next time it happened I was walking on the beach in Cape Town. It was early January — the holiday season. I met the head of an exchange-listed company that owns most of central Pretoria and Johannesburg. A few weeks later we had a meeting. Nothing came of it, but I was probably the first consultant they had met that took a bus to their offices. Nobody takes buses in Johannesburg or Pretoria, apparently.
On a whim, just after that meeting in Pretoria, I had set up a follow-up meeting with the capital raising folk.
We’re building a blockchain project. It’s a UBI, a little different. Can you do the maths for us?
I said yes. It was one small thing.
I didn’t lose my academic spirit in business: I solved their problem, but the beauty of one small thing is compound interest.
Compound Interest
Three years after that meeting I’ve done some groundbreaking research blockchain tokenomics. Way had lead onto way. I was still problem solving and asking questions, but I was inspired again.
I figured out money and I built a model for an abstract ledger, and I wrote a proof on why bartering, money, and information are linked.
How did I get the idea for the problem? I spoke to a chap on a train while heading back from Pretoria. It turns out he was head of FinTech at the Reserve Bank.
Connecting
It’s all about connecting. We keep connecting no matter how stuck we feel, or how dangerous the world may seem, or how bleak the future looks. Our ability to connect, sincerely, and from the heart is that one small thing that moves the world forward.
In between all these business contacts, I made friends with the former CEO of Bowers and Wilkins. He left the speaker business to make music in South Africa and set Black Coffee on his path.
How did I meet him? I sold him a car and included lunch in the deal. In the conversation we laughed and cried, and I asked him to mentor me. It’s still the best business deal that I have made to date.
It’s one small thing, connecting. But it makes the world smaller.
