spread to their children who also were not
talking to each other.
In the hiatus created as the siblings
fight, the business will eventually be the
casualty since the mother is incapacitated
and the siblings cannot even agree on the
immediate priority which is to take the
mother for medical attention as fast as
possible.
The Lone Ranger
The business had thrived in a very
competitive area even after the untimely
demise of the founder mainly by the fact
that the wife, who knew nothing about
the industry, was wise enough to hire a
professional to run the business.
She of course over time learned on the job
and became quite adept at hiring the right
type of personnel to run the company.
The company was able to provide for a
comfortable living for her and her family
and was admired as a model company.
A well-run company always attracts
investors looking to grow companies to
realize their potential and many were
56 MAL34/20 ISSUE
the business suitors that approached the
company to inject the needed funds to
take the company to the next level.
This is where the company met its growth
waterloo as the lady was mortified by the
idea of ceding any control of the company
to an outsider by diluting her control of
the company. It is telling that she held
ninety eight percent of the company
shares with her two children holding one
each.
She and the children were the only
directors of the company and it was a
standard joke in the company that the
company had a board meeting every time
the three sat down to share a meal or to
have a drink but board minutes were not
taken.
So paranoid was the lady about the
ownership of the company that she would
not even entertain a suggestion from her
general manager that the company would
make a lot more money if she allowed a
strategic investor to inject funds they
needed to expand.
Even advice from the bank manager, who
was her friend, that the company reliance
on bank overdraft and other expensive
bank facilities was not good for the
company, could not convince her to part
with any percentage of her holding to
help the company grow.
One soon realized that her strong
emotional attachment to the company
was because to her the company was an
extension to her late husband and she felt
that any inclusion of an outsider to the
company was akin to letting strangers into
her bedroom.
The Copy Cats
When he identified the type of product
that was needed in the market he went
to work with zeal and was soon raking in
thousands. He even identified a supplier
from Egypt that had a better product at
a much cheaper price that improved his
margins.
Soon he bought a pickup truck to help
manage his deliveries and turned his
garage into a warehouse as he was finding
it hard to satisfy the market demand. He
even contemplated quitting his regular
job to concentrate on the side hustle that
was now booming.