Determination how to keep focus on what matters

so

right off the bat i’m going to start by

saying that i

am a business consultant i’m a business

consultant at heart

i’m a business consultant by occupation

i tend to be known as a

hardcore capitalist i’m a pro-business

type of person and this is important to

understand

when i tell you my story so i have

worked in

a lot of countries around the world

none more interesting than africa

africa is a continent that it is its

own sort of universe

africa i worked in um south africa which

is

a little bit closer to the reality

that we know i worked in west africa

which is completely different than any

reality

that you can imagine and i want to tell

you a story about

determination what does it mean to be

determined and what is determination

in its essence so determination in its

essence is

understanding that you have a clear

objective

and no matter what no matter the

insanity that’s happening around you

no matter the chaos no matter the

obstacles

you break through that wall and you

reach

your objective so i’m with my

colleagues in ghana in accra

the capital of ghana so ghana in itself

is already very interesting and unique

i don’t want to tell you a lot about

ghana i want to tell you the story about

how we were going from accra

to lomei lome is the capital of

togo so ghana and togo

have a border we’re driving

from akra to lome

the drive is beautiful

beautiful drive it’s great country

great roads it’s almost the coastal sort

of drive

you can see the coast constantly on and

off

you drive through these small little

villages and you drive through these

interesting little sort of areas

and you you go through this mixture of

colors

and mixture of cultures and ethnicities

and people and all in all

it’s it’s a shock to the system you’re

trying to figure out

where am i and what the hell is going on

going through this process in itself

it’s interesting when you’re a tourist

it’s actually fun

when it’s when you’re a tourist but when

you’re there on business

especially being a business consultant

in our business being

in ghana and togo you tend to look at it

from a different perspective

you tend to think of things like

demographics how old

is the population social economic status

how much money do they have is their

purchasing power here

ultimately you’re thinking about it from

a business

and foreign direct investment

perspective

so we’re driving through this crazy road

beautiful road

there was two or three very interesting

bathroom breaks and i used the word

interesting

very very lightly but ultimately we end

up

at about two hour drive we end up

at the border the border of

ghana and togo

is a microcosm of craziness

the moment you arrive all hell breaks

loose

it’s just a massive amount of people

walking back and forth you have no idea

what’s happening

where is the actual border where is

passport control

all of the things that we’ve been

engineered

to habitually look for passport control

customs

none of these exist there’s nothing

you’re looking for signs passport

control

customs nothing there is

absolutely nothing except

thousands and thousands of people

running across this border just going

and coming and going and coming

and it’s just mass insanity

so we arrive here it’s me

colleague which is from africa so he’s

holding an african passport

i’m american i’m holding a us passport

and it’s one of my other colleagues that

is holding

a italian passport so it’s an american

an italian and an african it’s almost

like a joke

an american italian and african walk

into a bar

it’s very close to that because as soon

as we arrive we have no clue what we’re

supposed to be doing

the driver is lost the driver had to go

to a different location because he has a

car so he has to go through a different

checkpoint with the car

so he basically left us there and

went away so understandably

the italian and i are in the center of

everybody’s attention

all of the different everybody who’s

wearing a uniform

be that military uniform or police

uniform everybody’s just kind of

looking at us like two white dudes

there’s something here okay

so we we realize that what are we

supposed to do

look for the guy with the uniform he’ll

know what to do

so we walk up to the first person and we

kind of look at the situation we’re like

okay so

all of these different people are

running around but there’s one guy

that’s just sort of

you know standing there in his uniform

and just bossing people around we’re

like okay that’s the guy

we gotta go talk to that guy he knows

what to do

so we walk up to this guy and he goes oh

hello hello

my name is i have no idea what he said

after that

a bunch of consonants no vowels but you

can call me johnny

hello johnny my name is armin this is

mateo

how are you good how are you we want to

cross the border

into togo good no problem

can i see your passports so we hand this

military man

an american and an italian passport

he’s already looking at us like

something is wrong

why are you crossing into togo we have a

client there he asks us we’ll have a

client

we have a client meeting the client

meeting is actually in 40 minutes

so we’re kind of a little bit in the

rush we got to go

he’s like okay no problem he looks at

the passports and he said oh

there’s a problem all right what’s the

problem

he goes well your gonna visa is single

entry

so i can let you leave and go into togo

but you can’t come back because you

don’t have a multi-entry visa

like all right at that moment

there’s 5 000 things that’s crossing my

mind

the first of which is i don’t care what

happens

i have to go to that meeting that

meeting is important

it’s a client it’s a paying client

so i have to be at that meeting

so i’m telling my italian friend here my

colleague saying you know

matteo we got to get to that meeting i

don’t care what he says there’s no way

the client has paid we can’t cancel it

we don’t want to cancel it

we want to show professionalism so we

have to somehow

get to that meeting so what are we

supposed to do

like i don’t know let’s ask the african

so we have an african colleague we’re

like okay

so here’s the situation what do we do he

says oh it’s not a problem

we’ll just pay him like okay will that

work

sure sure i’ll talk to him i’ll talk to

him all right

so he talks to him they come up with a

number

he bargains you know that whole

bargaining thing he comes up with a

number

he comes back said it’s solved it’s

solved we’re going to togo

and we’re going to come back fantastic

awesome

so out walks johnny with both of our

passports in his hands

and he says uh wait here wait here we’re

standing right here

somewhere right here like literally on

the street he said right here right here

okay

he five minutes later he pulls up in a

car

literally a car he says the africans hit

next to me

white dudes in the back all right so we

white dudes are sitting he still has our

passports so i’m very aware

that a ghana military officer

named johnny has an american and italian

passport in his hand

i’m very aware of that fact at this

point so my main focus is

i want my passport back as soon as

possible

he says sit in the car so we get in the

back of the car

and he starts driving towards the border

towards the actual border

so as soon as we sit in the car and we

lock the door a mosquito

just flies in the air like this and i

know that means nothing to anybody

unless you’ve been to africa in africa

if you see a mosquito

it’s all panic all hell i mean mosquito

mosquito doors open we jump

out you know like that whole it’s

malaria so it’s very dangerous

now we’ve had our vaccinations and our

pills etc but still

it’s a mosquito flying and just all hell

broke loose

so the mosquito went away we all got

back in the car and he’s

he’s coming up to the border and i see

out the window that the border is not

like

an actual like physical border it’s

literally

a dude standing there with a piece of

rope

in his hand looks like this and the

other side of the rope

is attached to a pole and he’s just

standing there like this and that’s the

border

just a dude with a rope so we

we’re coming closer to this dude and

johnny goes

uh white dudes in the back duck

i’m like what he’s like duck duck i’m

like what do you mean duck he’s like

duck now duck now we go

so we’re the absurdity and

the surrealism of that moment that i’m

sitting in the back of

johnny’s car crossing a border that’s a

dude with a rope

and we’re ducking so that the dude

doesn’t see us

so he opens the window he says whatever

dude let’s go to the rope we cross he

goes eight meters into togo he stops and

get out get out of the car

like okay we get i was like welcome to

togo

you owe me money i’m like all right so

question number one give me my passport

question number two how the hell are we

gonna get back

okay i’m illegally in togo at this point

with no passport

which i guess is very dangerous and all

i can think about is how the hell are we

gonna get back

it’s not a problem it’s not a problem

here’s my cell phone number

when you come back call me and i’ll

basically smuggle you back into ghana

all right that works give me my passport

no no no passport stays with me

so that i know you will pay me i’m like

ah no no no

this is where my armenian side kicked in

and i’m like no

no no no no you have to give me back my

passport

it took about 20 minutes of convincing

him

ultimately ended up with if you don’t

give me my passport

i’ll tell my colleague not to pay you

where he broke down he said fine here

you can have this one

but i’m keeping the italian one

so we’re going to this meeting now

ultimately we ended up

making the meeting which was important

because the client

especially understood the process that

we went through

but throughout this entire ordeal and

throughout everything that’s happening

all i can think about is the objective

is to get

to the meeting get to the meeting i’m

determined

to get to that meeting because that’s my

job

and i’m a professional at my job and if

everybody does their job

in that determination it’ll be pretty

good

so we’re driving towards this now i’m

i’m happy because at least i have my

passport

there’s no stamp in it but i have my

passport

if anything goes extremely horribly

wrong i can still call the embassy

and i still have my passport in my hand

the italian

is freaking out he has no idea what’s

going on

he’s like i don’t he doesn’t even have

his passport

he’s this tall sort of dreamy looking

you know

italian dude very italian dude and all i

can think of is

i need to release the tension because

we’re going into

a meeting and i need him on his game i

need him to be in the game

during the meeting i can’t him you know

having him freak out

he needs to be focused on the objective

which is to make money for these people

because we need to do business there so

i’m trying to relieve the tension i

don’t know if i did a good job or not

i’ll be honest because the only thing i

can think about was to make it more of a

joke

so i started like trolling him i’m like

listen you know what

i’m not talking about anything big if

this car we get into an

accident and the police comes

they’re gonna want papers and you don’t

have a paper

so you’re gonna end up in prison he’s

like oh crap i’m like okay this isn’t

working i need to find a different way

to release the tension

so i started making jokes i started

talking about the business at hand

and what broke broke it open is we

started talking about business again

once we started talking about the

business again his mind got off

all the problems and again we were super

focused on getting

getting the job done so

this was my story about how we crossed

from ghana into togo and back

i have been to togo but i have no proof

i have been to togo i don’t have a

document i don’t have a stamp in my

in my passport all i have is memories

of how we cross that border now

this is very important especially in

today’s world because i keep remembering

the story over and over again

i’ve been actually thinking about this

story more in the past year

than i have since the eight years since

it happened

i’ve been thinking about it more and

more because i feel like the world

overall today

looks a lot like that border it’s a lot

like that ghanaian togo border

it’s mass chaos it’s insanity

you have no idea what’s going on you

have

no idea what’s going to happen you don’t

know what the next step is

there’s no guidance there’s nothing no

signs

so you’re just kind of like running

around in the dark

trying to find your way and today’s

world looks a lot like that

pandemics elections there’s a lot of

political turmoil in multiple different

countries around the world

there’s a lot of diversity people are

pro or against you’re either black or

you’re white

you either love me or you hate me you’re

either republican

or you’re a democrat there’s these hard

lines that have been drawn and because

of those hard lines

the world today looks a lot like the

ghana and togo border

there’s mass insanity and you don’t know

what the future holds

but one thing that you need to always

remember is that determination

always wins in the end you have to

maintain

that you have a specific objective you

want to reach

and no matter the chaos happening around

you

no matter the the barriers that are in

front of you

you have to break through those barriers

and get to that

meeting thank you very much