“Unless a big bang creates a business universe with limitless possibilities for expansion, small money will continue to beget small money,” Josh said to a friend close by. “Imagine a business with a start-up capital of $100 run by an operator who relies on the profit for day to day living expenses. Imagine the owner dreams the business will balloon to the status of a billion-dollar multinational in a decade,” Josh concluded.
Josh – a short form of Joshua – classified himself as a pathological optimist with the capacity to sell ice to citizens of Iceland if given the opportunity. His dreams included the possibility to fly a wooden aircraft across the Atlantic. Without a dime to his name he saw the possibility of a blockbuster movie with a billion dollar return on investment on a thousand-dollar budget. He saw in his mind’s eye a replica of the Burj Khalifa in his home town based on funds from his personal savings. The big dreams kept him at his desk for 18-hour days and seven-day weeks. And the drive for the gargantuan continued despite failure of several ideas in his repertoire.
As day turned to night and night turned to day Josh slid closer and closer towards frustration. Forward movement generated few possibilities while a reverse gear held no excitement. New ventures took everything in him from cash reserves to emotions, from physical strength to spirituality to a point to give up would mean cessation of life for him.
Josh spent much of his resources on a studio which printed designer cards, mementoes, and t-shirts as his first ‘major’ project. He shut it when a new shop named ‘Swank’ opened with a bang on High Street a few yards from the place he holed up in a modest shop. The mega shop offered an array of specialties and capped things with drinks, snacks, music, films, pin-ups, and stickers to make it a one-stop shop the in-crowd felt excited to be in. The decor complemented the space while the sales personnel looked like actors in a movie. Josh’s dyed-in-the-wool loyalists dropped off one by one till some days he slept through the hours with no client. Big money put Swank ahead and Josh behind despite his taste, low price, and love for his customers. His dream of the big league at the stock exchange went through the window like the hearty laugh of an excited maid.
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The day he closed the shop with the fancy and futuristic name Titan, Josh spent some time at Swank to chat up his one-time favourite customers. When they asked him how his business fared he laughed and told them the sun rises every day. He folded his tail between his legs and like a wounded dog slunk to a rural community to start another fancy project, this time a flower garden.
Few sources of live flowers existed for the few flower devotees in the cities close by. When cities lose space to architects and builders, engagements related to land and nature fall by the wayside. Given the need to satisfy the few devotees of the beautiful world of silent flowers Josh went to a rural community where there were hills and downs and streams available to be tapped without the expense of irrigation.
Commencement in spring saw nature become a venture partner with no prospect of dividend for it. The flowers bloomed as if they were in competition with each other for the prize of the Most Beautiful Flower of the year. He watched with excitement tinged with amazement the aconites, the spring’s first flower nestles on the palms of the green leaves which guarded the tinctured petals of blue. On another ridge spotless white flowers of the Blood Root provided the contrast between the aconites and the hydrangea. Josh wondered why the colour from the stem should cover the colour of the flowers in the minds of those who assign names to flowers.
Tulips set the garden ablaze in glorious red with the bulbs held aloft by green bracts which competed with the red roses lined on another ridge. The sunflowers put out their bright yellow flora and swayed with seductive gazes at visitors like scarlet ladies on a red light street. And imagine daisies close by, another flower with a head of the capitulum structure. Nature arranges white to milky flowers around brown florets along with the iris group. These put out their saturated blue costumes with green neck ties.
What would a flower garden be if the ambient air lacked glorious scents? Imagine a new scent on every yard when the flowers arrayed as troop formations envelope the air with what nature endowed them with. These included scented geraniums, scented primroses, lily of the valley, sweet autumn clematis, nicotiana, tuberose, among others. Unlike other forms of competition, the outcome of the floral race made one dream of a world of floral scents twenty-four hours a day everywhere.
With production assured Josh turned his mind to sales as should be expected. But he accepted he goofed and chided himself because he placed the cart before the horse. To ask whether anyone would buy his products he regarded as unacceptable and imprudent business strategy.
When he made his first harvest he saw beauties with nobody ready to buy. The cost of transportation of the beauties to the cities along with storage and distribution generated stock piles of wonderful products with high potential for disintegration in hours. Flowers wilt and succumb to the dictates of nature, which beautified them and brought them about in the first place.
In a short while Josh saw his first harvests vanish like day at sundown. His bank account grew downwards like water in a beaker under the influence of heat from a Bunsen burner. He hyped himself with a consolation prize of a new lesson in business management.
Josh returned to the city and climbed with confidence into the world of mega structures – the world of real estate – where the product dwarfs the creator and the builder. He went into the housing sector with an empty purse in a world where the acceptable discourse circulated on currency often in six figures. But Josh saw the possibility of a swagger into the market in a way he would one day smile all the way to the vaults of several banks and scrape the sky with a JOSH TOWER.
He studied the Forbes List of real estate moguls and found comfort in the realisation most of the big names were small starters.
Some went with bare fingers but with big brains, guts, and tons of patience. The richest, Hong Kong’s Hiu Ka Yan with a war chest of $36 billion at the beginning served as a technician in a steel factory. Chinese developer Wang Jianlin, a soldier in the Red Army boasted of $22.6 billion by 2022. In the United States Donald Bren led the pack with $16.4 billion but he laid the foundation stone with a $10,000 loan which meant the tag silver spoon floated miles from his doorstep. Next to him Stephen Ross of The Related Companies with $7.6 billion made his way up the stairs with a loan of $10,000 from his mother. And Ted Lerner borrowed $200 from his wife to start his climb up the staircase. Josh took time to ask himself whether Stephen Ross and Ted Lerner returned the monies they borrowed.
On his slow climb up the stairway Josh did just fine as he linked prospective buyers with prospective sellers or where necessary did makeovers for commission. These were the ABCs in the school of brokerage Josh joined by personal choice thank the heavens at a youthful age.
He decided to operate on a simple business model – search out good properties, re-model if possible, and place them with sure buyers at a decent profit. Everyone in the lineup should, at the end of the day return home and have a good sleep. To cheat the buyer or buyers as well as the seller or sellers he created no space for in the model. He heard stories of persons who made away with entire proceeds of a deal and relocated. He saw such persons as Sons of Satan (SoS) or daughters of Satan (DoS) where females dared.
In all he regarded the venture as a fun world more so it provided opportunities for interaction with moguls and charlatans. A neophyte in the world of real estate stood a fair chance to rise to the penthouse in a short while with availability of a palm top, hard work, knack, and a handshake from Lady Luck. Josh did find himself rise on the ladder at a fast pace and his bank accounts climbed along. The word comfortable suited his situation at the stage he found himself.
But few in the world of business find ultimate satisfaction in the class of the comfortable. Many set their eyes at the zenith despite their confessions to being satisfied with membership of the middle income group. Who should hate the capacity to buy out Facebook if Microsoft sits above the tallest branch of an oak?
With his restless spirit on the prowl Josh searched for opportunity to move higher. He smiled when he recalled his climb up the 284 steps of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris following his trip to the zenith of Eifel Tower. He reached the top of the Memorial through the staircase from the base. The memory of the slow climb told him it would be right to aim for the group where Donald Trump and Jerry Speyer with famous buildings sit. But because the industry has several empty seats at the level of Donald Bren, he decided to set his sights a little lower.
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