How far would I go to avoid not doing the obvious?

Hi guys, time for a little update about my job: I am branding myself as a African and Latin American markets specialist. That's why I'm off to Spain and Panama in May, followed by a number of African countries including Uganda and Kenya in July, but I may also be going to Nigeria, Rwanda, Benin, Togo, DRC (aka Congo-Zaire), Gabon, Peru and South Africa between July and October, this list could be a lot longer but I'm not counting my chickens before they hatch as you know I love traveling. There's also another project that my company is working on which doesn't involve me but the project is with a Chinese client - allow me to be honest about this: I have mixed feelings. On one hand, I thought that it was strange that they didn't put me front and center on that project with that Chinese client as it would give the company more credibility in dealing with the Chinese. But we're already working with this Chinese company, we're way past the stage where we're persuading them to work with us so the issue of our credibility is no longer on the table. I know this Chinese client speaks English very well, so there is no language barrier. But I did think, "why aren't you guys begging me for my help? You think you can do business with that Chinese company without my help? Fine, I'm so busy with my French and Spanish speaking clients in Africa and Latin America in any case. I have plenty going on and I'm busy enough already." Part of the issue is that for monolingual British people who speak only English, they don't think that speaking the client's language is important if the client already speaks English well whereas for a polyglot like me, even if my clients do speak English, I would never use English with them and always speak to them in their native tongue instead as that's how I build rapport with them - of course, not everyone can do what I do, when it comes to building rapport through languages. 

Before any of you jump to the wrong conclusion, allow me to use an analogy to illustrate the situation: I love coffee so much, I start my day with coffee and I typically have four cups throughout the day. Thus when I look for a place to stay on AirBNB I always make sure that there is a coffee machine. So you can imagine my delight when I walked into my AirBNB in Germany and saw not just a coffee machine, but a drawer full of coffee pods with different flavours. The small apartment was pretty ordinary but I still gave them a fantastic review because it was an all you can drink coffee buffet for me there. Now imagine if I was traveling with friends who don't drink coffee, then they wouldn't have been as impressed with that AirBNB place in Germany since they would have just ignored that coffee machine. So in this case, since the Chinese client speaks English fluently, that company probably didn't place any priority on my company offering them a Mandarin-speaking relationship manager to translate everything into Chinese for them. In fact this tends to happen a lot in the UK when I meet people from China, they almost always prefer to speak to me in English - maybe it is because they know Mandarin isn't my first language (and I am obviously more comfortable conversing in English) but also because they are proud of the fact that they have mastered English to a very high standard. So even if I said something to them in Mandarin like, "你读了这份报告吗?" They would reply, "sorry, not yet but I promise you I will read it this afternoon." Thus if the Chinese client is quite happily dealing with us entirely in English, then whom am I to barge in and say, no no no you must let me explain everything to the Chinese client in Mandarin instead of English - nah, I know when I am not needed. 

There's also a part of me that doesn't want to do the obvious; it is boring to be obvious and predictable. Imagine if you're watching a movie from the UK or USA, there is a token Chinese character and you will roll your eyes if that Chinese character is Mr Chen who works at the local Chinese restaurant. When he speaks, he has a comically strong Chinese accent and then we meet his geeky daughter who wears thick glasses, she is a straight-A student who stayed at home to do her maths homework rather than go to the prom.Yeah, I cringe when I see such stereotypes of Chinese people when portrayed in Western media and of course, those stereotypes don't apply to me given how I am totally Westernized. When I am in the office, I don't like to take conference calls at my desk given how busy my office is; I often use this area in the building known as 'the study' - it is communal area with desks and chairs where people can work and I am often the only one in there doing my conference calls. So today, I saw this guy (let's call him Mr Red as he was in a red sweater) in the study, I've met him a few times before in the building. I told Mr Red that I had a Zoom call starting in five minutes and I was really struggling to find a quiet place to do the call, would he mind if I did my call in the study with him? He said it was fine, as long as I didn't mind him being in the room. That call was with two of my clients in Peru - so when I started speaking to them in Spanish, you should have seen the look on Mr Red's face when he heard me chatting to my clients in Spanish. He did a double take as it was not what he was expecting at all, so I looked at him and gave him a smile as if to say, "oh I bet you weren't expecting that, were you? I bet you were expecting me to speak in English or Mandarin, but not Spanish." I do like surprising people by not doing the obvious. It is way too boring to be so predictable. 

Now you may be wondering, isn't it so much harder for someone like you to try to pitch a company in Peru or Benin instead of Singapore? Is this extra effort worth it just to make a point that you do not conform to stereotypes that people may have when they see your Chinese face? Actually I have tried pitching some Singaporean companies and there is a misconception that Singaporean companies would be more receptive to me and want to do business with me. I've written a blog post a while ago about how I blamed myself when a deal I had set up between a Singaporean company and a Belgian investor fell apart because I didn't manage the Singaporeans involved. Oh there was nothing wrong with the deal, the Belgians were ready to invest but wanted to get to know the Singaporeans involved a bit better through a Zoom call and the Singaporeans were paralyzed by fear at the prospect of having to be social with a bunch of Angmohs they had never spoken to before. It all fell apart when the Belgian investors thought that the Singaporeans had something to hide and were not forthcoming with information whilst I tried hard to explain that these Singaporeans did actually fit the stereotype of socially inept Asian geeks who were brilliant at maths but can't do small talk. The fact is I have no advantage when it comes to dealing with Singaporean companies for three reasons: the companies in Singapore don't care where I am from, they care about the quality of the product. Secondly, the language of business in Singapore is English which again, leaves me with no advantage as the polyglot. Finally, Singapore is a highly regulated, crowded market for my company's product and that makes it a tougher market to crack compared to other less crowded markets. 

There is a also very practical reason why I don't want to target markets like Singapore or Hong Kong given that I have to achieve results quickly so I simply pick the lowest hanging fruit. However, in order to pick the fruit in Peru and Benin, one needs to speak Spanish and French. A long time ago, I received this rather bizarre question on my blog from a Singaporean guy who was asking the wrong question: this guy was a cook and he wanted to know if his ability to speak Mandarin would give him any advantage in the West when it came to working as a cook in a place like London? I had to tell him no - I'm not saying that Mandarin is a useless language to know, but you need to be in a customer facing role, dealing with Mandarin speaking people from places like China and Taiwan. A cook works in the kitchen, thus even if there are Chinese speaking customers, the cook doesn't leave the kitchen and speak to the customers in the dining hall. So no, given his job, his ability to speak Mandarin is not useful at all for him to get a work permit here in the UK. This scenario reminds me of a British TV programme called Antiques Roadshow - essentially a panel of antiques expert would show up at an event in a different town each week and the locals would bring an item to the panel to evaluate. "This vase belonged to my grandmother and she passed away last year. She used to live in France and brought that over with her when she married my grandfather after the war. So what is it worth?." The production team will make sure that at least some of the items on the episode are quite valuable whilst others are going to be worth very little. It can be very cruel but it can make good TV when we see the disappointment on their faces as they're told their item is actually worth very little. 

So this cook in Singapore was like the woman who brought her late grandmother's vase to the panel in that episode of Antiques Roadshow, "please tell me I am sitting on a small fortune here and that what I have is extremely valuable as I could really do with the money now." I'm the expert on the panel who had to tell him that what he has is of little or no value, certainly not in the context of his job. Oh I can just imagine the antiques expert saying tactfully, "I'm sure this vase has a lot of sentimental value for you personally as it can connect you with your late grandmother and her journey that brought her to England because of her love for your grandfather, I think it is best that you keep it for your family and pass it down to your children and grandchildren, so you could continue to share that wonderful story but I wouldn't try to sell it today as it would fetch no more than a few pounds, the panel has examined it and it is not an antique - I'm afraid it is just a very ordinary vase." By the same token, a lot of Singaporean-Chinese people grossly overestimate just how much use their ability to speak Mandarin would be for them in the workplace and thus in this case, I choose not to overestimate the advantage my knowledge of Singapore would give me when it comes to doing business with Singaporean companies. Instead, I'm willing and able to study the market to identify which skills I need to deliver the results expected of me and if it means learning a new language like Spanish so I can deal with the Latin American market, then I will become fluent in Spanish and learn everything I need to know in order to become an expert in this market. Thus I'm not waiting in vain for that fine day, when the skills I've acquired from my childhood in Singapore to eventually become relevant to me at work. 

So how did I establish my credibility with my clients in Latin America and Africa as an expert in their markets? Well, the first step is to craft a narrative and whilst I've been to Latin America three times and have visited Mexico, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile. In contrast, I have far less credentials for Africa given that I've only visited two African countries: Morocco and Tunisia and these two countries are Arab north African states with little in common with the countries I am dealing with in other parts of Africa. So I would tell the African client that I came from a very poor working class family in Singapore (100% true) and whilst my rich friends had nice toys, I had nothing but my library card; so I would go to the local library and read interesting books as a means of escapism. The library had a good geography section so I read every single book they had on Africa as it was this fascinating, beautiful, colourful continent that was radically different from the world around me in Singapore. That began a lifelong fascination and appreciation for the continent and I could back that up by the fact that I have an extremely good knowledge of many aspects of life in Africa (you can't fake that knowledge, you need to invest an insane number of hours studying about Africa which I did as part of my geography degree). I also speak some of the most spoken languages in Africa: I am totally fluent in French but then I also manage basic Afrikaans for my South African clients, my Portuguese is passable for the guys I deal with in Angola and Mozambique and I also manage some basic Arabic and Swahili, two of the most spoken languages in Africa. 

Furthermore, I don't let on that I've not been to these parts of Africa: for example, most people would know the city of Johannesburg in South Africa but I pretend to be local by using the name for the region, Gauteng and pronouncing the G with strong Dutch-Afrikaans accent which turn it into more like a very guttural gurgled H that comes from the very back of the throat (that sound doesn't exist in English but it corresponds with the R in French or the CH in German and Welsh). It would be little details like that which gives them the impression that I know the area well because I've been there, but really, I have gained that knowledge off the internet and the fact that I speak Dutch helps me figure out the local Afrikaans accent. But of course, I choose to be honest sometimes - I recently spoke to a South African lady who grew up in rural KwaZulu-Natal province and she told me about her childhood on her grandfather's farm where they were miles from the nearest town but they had books. Thus she was able to relate to the way I turned to books to expand my mind when I had nothing else. Note that this is not about me going, "I've memorized the entire page on KwaZulu-Natal on Wikipedia, now you're going to reward me for my efforts for being such a hardworking student!" Let's not go there. Rather, it's about using that knowledge to establish rapport rather than making the mistake of trying to impress people with that knowledge. After all, I'm speaking to someone who is a local in KwaZulu-Natal province, she doesn't need me to teach her anything about the region where she has spent most of her life but she appreciates the fact that this boy from Singapore has spent so many hours reading about her part of the world when I was a child - this allowed us to form a connection very quickly. 

So let's contrast that to a tourist who visits South Africa with little or no knowledge about the country, offending the locals with their ignorance. My South African client told me about how this American tourist she met in Cape Town had assumed that all the other white people in Cape Town were tourists as well and the American was shocked to learn that there are white South African people - where do I even begin? Or the American tourist who assumed that black African people spoke a language called 'African' which she then mistook as 'Afrikaans' - one of the languages spoken in South Africa ironically by white immigrants from the Netherlands and Belgium? You get the idea, there are a lot of idiotic people who are woefully ignorant about Africa and Africans get annoyed when dealing with those morons. When I mentioned that I may be going to Lagos for a business trip in July to a white British friend, he joked, "are you going to meet a Nigerian prince there who emailed you about sharing his fortune with you?" It was a pathetic attempt to be funny but that's an example of when very poor social skills spills over into racism and that is why Africans are very guarded when it comes to dealing with people like me. Thus the challenge I have is about establishing credibility as someone who knows enough about Africa to deal with them given that Africans get more than their fair share of bullshit from not just white people but Asian people as well. Hence I can understand why Africans would want people like me to earn their trust before they are willing to do business with me and I am very proud to say that I have managed to do just that even though it wasn't easy. 

So what are some of the challenges I face when dealing with business development in Africa? Well, an important part of getting any new client onboard in Africa: they want a reference from another black African person in Africa who has done business with my company. Well fortunately for me, I can always turn to my client in Nairobi who ticks that box and he is always ready to tell his fellow Africans what a joy it is doing business with me. Thus I make sure I always keep my client in Nairobi so he will be willing to give me a good reference. The other challenge I can face is with communicating with my clients in French speaking Africa - now my French is totally fluent. I watched the debate between Macron and Le Pen without subtitles and had no problem understanding them. As part of my exams when I did French at university, we had to listen to a piece of news broadcast in French and then answer complex questions based on what we heard in that piece of news: it was the ultimate test of listening comprehension and I had no problems with that. With younger clients under the age of 30, they tend to speak a more standard form of French but the older the client, the stronger the local accent and that can make it really quite hard for me to understand them sometimes. Thankfully this is only a major problem when I am on a Zoom call but otherwise, when it comes to written communication, I find that a lot easier and I often chat to them on Whatsapp. And of course, I've some momentum now but goodness me, when I started from scratch, I knew no one in Africa and I was just sending out so many invitations to connect on Linkedin to banking professionals in Africa to try to start to build my network there. I started from nothing and created a network from scratch. 

But there is a most difficult aspect of what I am doing: there is a somewhat politically incorrect aspect to what I do. You see, most companies would be talking about the growth of Africa, how it is offering the same kind of high growth opportunities that you might have found in China or India 30 years ago and how inward investment could improve the lives of some many in these African countries as they become the newest emerging markets. That's the narrative we're more used to hearing. Well, I'm doing none of that, quite the opposite in fact. I have a good product but I'm taking money from rich Africans who worry about investing in Africa because of the many problems we have come to associate with the African continent: endemic corruption, unstable governments, political unrest, coups, civil wars, the threat of terrorism, inflation, a weak local currency - need I go on? Now don't get me wrong, some African countries are a lot more stable and richer than others and there are plenty of exciting opportunities for you if you are interested in investing in Africa. However, the rich in Africa have always moved their wealth offshore, especially to financial capitals like London.  Yes there is an element of neo-colonialism when capital flows from African investors to London and sure, whilst we're making our African investors even richer by giving them access to great investment opportunities not available locally for them in Africa. Furthermore, even if we didn't offer these rich Africans clients our service, they would probably be turning to other banks and financial institutions in places like Dubai, Geneva or Paris to get their wealth out of Africa. Thus this wealth was always destined to leave Africa anyway, one way or another,,whether or not I chose to get involved with that money. 

Okay so that's it from me on this topic, I'd like to finish by pointing out that I've only really rebranded myself as a Latin America and Africa specialist in the last four months - this was a process that I had only started from the beginning of 2022. This is a long journey and I will keep you updated as to how far I can get despite not being totally fluent in Spanish and not having that much experience with the African market but I believe in finding solutions, not excuses. I have a lot to learn this year and I will be my own teacher in this journey. Please leave a comment below and many thanks for reading.