A reflection on delaying instant gratification

The many gigs I overlooked

As I was walking around Manchester last night, I realised that Take That was playing at the AO Arena for 4 nights, having been moved from the unfortunate poor launching of the Coop Live venue in Manchester.

When they launched in 1990, I thought the 5 boys were some of the sexiest boys on the scene, I appreciated them more for their ability to dance and bringing such great energy to their performances. In those early years, they played the gay clubs in London and elsewhere. Indeed, Madonna, Kylie Minogue, and Anastacia among others have played at these venues too. Gays were probably their first big fans.

I guess I was not too keen on attending overly crowded venues. The music in Heaven and Bang was also too loud, you could hear and feel your eardrums beating, and it became unbearable after a while.

Fixing the issues happily

However, what came to mind was the memory of how I refused monetary reward for helping fix computer problems which even led to greater appreciation and gifts. In Nigeria, as I worked for IT Systems on the ground floor, there were occasions when Deji Sasegbon Publishers upstairs who were in the race to publish the Nigerian Supreme Court Cases would have an issue and ask for an engineer to visit and resolve it.

I would go up, fix the problem in 5 minutes and be on my way when Deji or D-Shash, as he was known to all, would dip in his pocket to give me 50 Naira, which was a quarter of my salary, I refused the offer, waving it aside that the issue was hardly worth anything. This happened a few times and I think he took my gesture to heart.

I left IT Systems to go into self-employment that everyone around me thought was crazy, yet, I was comfortably earning 10 times my salary from IT Systems, just teaching people about computers and even so, desktop publishing.

The result of delaying gratification

Before long, word got around about this desktop publishing whiz kid and Deji invited me for a conversation about being a desktop publishing consultant for his firm. His offer was broad and generous, not offering employment, flexible hours, attending a few days in the week, guiding, and teaching his team, whilst taking on some projects. The remuneration was a stipend and my ticket to the UK was paid for, whenever I was ready to travel.

The stint got me a few other jobs along with a directorial partnership with a legal firm that veered into desktop publishing from traditional printing, we called the outfit NextStep Limited, and I had 30% of the firm. I made my first visit to the UK in a while under the auspices of our firm to acquire equipment and software for our fledgling firm. Sadly, our venture did not last because my partner was not accustomed to the personality and confidence of a self-assured young man. I got on better with Deji, in all respects.

After returning from my business trip to the UK, I began to plan for my return as I saw opportunities to thrive and succeed, despite the odds and the impressions others had for my lowly academic qualifications despite my rather advanced computing skills.

Free tickets as great reward

In any case, I found myself fixing what in my view were minor computing problems for friends and acquaintances, never taking money from them because I felt those issues were insignificant. This laid up store for other rewards. Two tickets for Micheal Jackson, Earth Wind & Fire, and Bryan Adams, amongst many along with tickets for innumerable West End shows, none of which I could normally afford, but I would receive as gratitude for my help.

Then there were gifts and presents, even offers to spend as long as I wanted at villas by the sea that I never took up because I did not appreciate the value of such gestures. I know better now. It made me reflect on how delaying instant gratification does lay in a store a greater reward from the appreciative and many never forgot to extend that generosity at any opportunity they found to so do.

Life matters more than work

Invariably, while money does matter, it is not everything. It informs why I have preferred working in Europe where we have workers’ rights baked into any contractual agreement including the right to holiday and much more. I appreciate that Americans might earn a lot more for the kind of work I do, but none of them can take up to 10 weeks off a year and still have enough for the enjoyment of a work-life balance that emphasises life helping work be more productive.

Building goodwill helps networking and references that make for the essential connections in work and life. I am thankful that what I have gained from many of these relationships has been worth more than money can buy. Cultivate relationships over remuneration, and the rewards will always follow.

My last 4 weeks in Nigeria, 28 years ago (The business angle)

My departure boarding pass issued on the 30^th of December 1990.

Taking the next step

Twenty-eight years ago today, I left Nigeria to return to the UK, I had only returned from the UK 4 weeks earlier, having been on a business trip for a firm in which I was part owner with a 30% stake, we called it NextStep Limited and it specialised in desktop publishing, offloading the burden of typesetting and printing from traditional methods to technologies provided by personal computers running Xerox Ventura Publisher.

NextStep Limited probably would have gone far if the majority partner was not too full of himself expecting subservience and obeisance, but two events in the 4 weeks of my return put paid to that relationship. The first was during a conversation when he dipped his hand in his pocket and threw money at me across the table. I picked up the wad and put it back in front of him saying, my parents have never thrown money at me, neither can you.

Maybe not a good step

The second event resulted in me saying to him, “You don’t give a 24-year old 30% of a company and think that is the end of his life, I will throw it away and start over again somewhere else.” It wasn’t that I was not full of gratitude, I just could not stand being treated with disrespect just because I was younger.

Whilst I was beginning to give more of my time to NextStep Limited, I had 4 other contractual engagements going. The most important was with Deji Sasegbon Limited, a legal publishing outfit that had just finished publishing the Nigerian Supreme Court Cases in 40 volumes and it was this that brought me into the purview of my patron and majority partner at NextStep Limited who was also a lawyer and a director at the United Bank of Africa.

On an earlier step

He was a Nigerian bigwig and I was an atypical young ‘Nigerian’, well, Deji Sasegbon who gave me my big break saw me differently, he had the wealth, influence and authority to employ me outright to work for him. Instead, he offered me a deal, he said, “Akin, I want you to consult for me, teach my staff to know the workings of desktop publishing, take on the complex stuff and for that, I will give you a monthly stipend and your flight ticket whenever you are ready to leave for the UK is paid for.”

Deji Sasegbon, unfortunately, passed away two years ago, to him I owe a great debt of gratitude, more importantly, he treated me with dignity and respect, it was always a pleasure to work for him. When I told him I was leaving for the UK, whilst he was saddened, he understood and bid me Godspeed.

Blog - Adieu D-Shash! (Deji Sasegbon)

Definite the worst step

At NextStep Limited, one of the jack-of-all-trades businesses my partner was involved in was selling Christmas cards. Some staff in that other business had stolen some of those cards and my partner corralled every employee including my own staff at NextStep Limited and had them banged up in a police cell without the courtesy of informing me. I spent a whole day negotiating bail conditions for my staff, or at least my staff did the negotiating because I did not speak with the language or accent the police understood. I got them out, but that was the very last straw for me.

Whilst, there was a kind of youthful exuberance in the way I decided to break that NextStep Limited relationship. In the circumstances, that was my only option. There was no other engagement where I had been treated as disdainfully as I was with that man. I divested myself of my other engagements and handed over to my able assistant and threw away NextStep Limited.

After my departure, my ex-business partner attempted to besmirch my name to my family and other contacts I made on my business visit to the UK, suggesting I had made off with material and some other stuff. The only thing I took from NextStep Limited was my participation. It was his desperate attempt to assuage his ego when he had been dealt the same hand of discourtesy he had dealt me.

My good friend later wrote to me saying, when you left NextStep, there were no other steps to take.

On an airline step

This was a man who got his sister a job for in the foreign exchange department of the Central Bank of Nigeria, on arranging the foreign exchange for our business travel, she pilfered a full 20% of that transaction. He had more leeches and hangers-on around him filching, dissembling, needing and stealing, everyone was coming to him with business deals and scams, he probably invested in more scams than viable businesses.

He came to me with a proposition that I accepted because I thought it was a good idea, with hindsight, I should have taken some advice and I would have gotten the best legal advice money could buy for free from Deji Sasegbon or any of his partners and lawyers, all of whom I had a good relationship with.

On the 30^th of December 1990, I left Nigeria, on Nigeria Airways flight WT808 running almost 3 hours behind schedule. I had £15 in my pocket and a future ahead of me. That is another story.

Holiday Snaps: At the font of letters amiss

The baptism of the font

Being a veteran of desktop publishing when it was a technical feat requiring your read the manuals to know what you were doing, I think I have a good idea about typesetting.

This was a time when you only had three fonts, Times New Roman, Helvetica and Courier, you had various weights and learnt that you did not throw everything on the screen and print out on paper with the thought that you were some artistic genius.

Printers were expensive and memory was not cheap and when you got new fonts it took the best part of 8 hours or more to build the font tables for each weight – you appreciated the luxury of variety and with moderation applied what you had to differentiate your work from others.

Rue the fate of the guru

Serifs, san serifs, proportional spacing, kerning, ghosting, pitch were some of the many terms brought from the printing world into the domain of personal computer software.

What I was involved in was not typical of the cut and paste collages by Patrick & Pets Printing Press just down the street, this was legal publishing in volumes as much as 40 requiring thoroughness and consistency you had to be meticulous.

Along the way, you picked the flyer type of work knowing that you were encroaching on the turf of traditional printers who were loath to embrace technology or were afraid they would lose influence.

The part about influence was something I experienced when I interviewed for a job at the BBC Enterprises and I was told I was selling myself short, a euphemism for you are a threat to our cosy setup – I was being hired as a desktop publishing guru with pedigree and I was to report someone whose background was from the toil and graft of setting type – I moved on, but it was tough lesson in 1991.

Brewing tea from steak

In any case, desktop publishing is no more the exclusive technical field it once was; everyone can churn out that most impressive work or the downright rottenly bad thing thinking they have done a work of commendable art.

Another sign came into view just last night, very big type at a restaurant I might have dared to patronise, SILOIN STEAK it read, someone had dropped a letter - Arggh! And I wonder how rare it would have become if a few more letters were dropped to allow for larger type whilst fitting the words to the width of the A2 size poster.

The tricks of desktop publishing, language, correctness and fitting all reaching for some consensus like if the STEAK lost the S and the K, the meat of the meal would have metamorphosed into Ceylon Tea – the rumpus of forgetting to spell check signs and the trouble that ensues.

Even Es are good

However, the economic situation in Spain was brought into stark relief when I noticed that name tag on one of the waiters in the hotel restaurant had lost a letter, he said it was due to the cuts – it was centred to create excite the animosity between the Catalans and the Castellans, the former preferring to drop the E on the end and the latter keeping it.

Which brings me to a memory of childhood – songs on the Children’s Television Workshop about how the E on the end can make all the difference between a tub and a tube; a scar and a scare and when driving a car, do it with care – English suddenly takes on a modicum of difficulty requiring everyone just make sure the letters are all in place, in the right order and check against a basic English dictionary.