One Christmas morning not too long ago I was walking after church with my children in Kalk Bay when I came across an old friend who I had fished with on the wooden commercial fishing boats when I was growing up. He looked in a bad way. One leg of his denim jeans was ripped. He had a gash on his big toe. His face said it all: he had a dreadful night alone on Christmas Eve.
I shook hands with my old fisherman friend and wished him Merry Christmas. We spoke briefly about fishing. There was a promise that someday we’d fish again on one of the commercial boats that go out from Kalk Bay hunting for yellowtail and snoek.
About a year later I was devastated to hear that he was terminally ill. He passed on shortly afterwards.
This fisherman lived a hard life, growing up and fighting for survival in the street of Windsor Road, Kalk Bay. But he never complained. Not even when his wife left him, taking his children to another country. He never showed a drop of bitterness.
The tools of his trade were simple and he worked hard. With a few spanners I saw him work for six hours on a Cummings diesel engine on a hot summer’s day in December below deck repairing the motor single-handedly. Using a simple broom, he would clean chimneys in winter, taking pride in his work. And with a few old fishing lines he could catch more than enough to feed himself and others. Fishing lines in those hands were sheer artistry when the snoek were on the bite and went berserk. He had assimilated the fine art of line fishing from those Kalk Bay fisher folk whose trade in fishing stretched way back 250 years.
It’s amazing how someone with so little could, using simple tools, make a life for himself without complaint. Yet others are quick to talk about their bad luck and complain about how hard done by they are. People who even when rich beyond one’s wildest imagination still hang on to an illusory someone or something to blame. They trade in half-truths and misery. Sympathy seekers, milking the system.
It’s hardly worth wasting another breath on these losers. Rather, it is people like my old fisherman friend who lived in the now used ready-at-hand materials and tools, combined with street smarts and practical know-how, could make something from nothing.
It is people like my fisherman friend who value even what is given for free seriously.
They will take “The 10 warnings that your business needs a cash flow tune-up” seriously – actioning those that could damage their business right away. They are not the people who sit in courses feverantly typing away at their smart phones or staring into their tablets. They are not the type of people who book for training courses and do not attend them. Or buy books and CDS and never finish them like 90% of people.
Here’s information that you won’t find anywhere else to protect your business from cash flow disasters in this uncertain economy. You know what to do next.
