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