On Power to Persuade

Chapter three of the work I’ve been reading is mostly on precision and technology. It surmises how, for instance, someone like Ferdinand de Lesseps was able to persuade governors to start with the Suez Canal and then eventually Panama.

I don’t think I concentrated much on the topic, but I want to tie it back to the documentary I just finished by Untold. I’ve written about it yesterday but this is maybe a fond, forward piece on it.

But I also wanted to highlight the manager, Bob Whitsitt (I can’t pronounce it). He got that role because, for some reason, he knew Paul Allen.

What he brought up was that he was managing not just this, but the women’s NBA, the other subsidiaries Allen owned which spanned from the Seahawks, and I think about five businesses overall that he was managing.

And the question you would ask is: why is he doing all five of them for him? Why didn’t Paul hire more people, or at least delegate some of these. Maybe have him delegate these to other people?
And I think I read somewhere that the average millionaire has seven streams of income. Now stay with me.

Seven streams of income, but then they expect nine-to-five workers to be loyal to only one job.
Meanwhile, they’re in how many boards? how many.

Now, what does being in these different environments do to you? You’re able to meet different people, to forge different business connections. Because the truth is, people say, “Yes, you should develop a network in your workplace.”

Can you categorically tell your coworker that you’re looking for a job without the person snitching?
But if you’re in five different boards and you’re looking for a new opportunity, you can talk to people in those other boards that aren’t where you are trying to leave from.

That is the leverage. So they own all of this leverage, and then they expect plebeians - the peasants, the average person to be stuck, loyal to what they’re doing.

And again, I still have to tie back to agriculture and the building of the Suez Canal. I think I keep coming back to this Suez Canal thing, because it sheds light on how we are more like puppets in the hands of these overloads.

That’s the one thing I’m gleaning from this. Yes, I knew it before, but this just reinforces it.
So why did Bob Whitsitt, keep making decisions about retaining Black people, hiring people that… I mean, he hired someone who is a convicted rapist to join the team, and he wasn’t reprimanded.

Will the average person do that in their place of work?
They wouldn’t.

So that really emphasizes the key role relationships play with persuasion.

I mean, Dr. Ola Brown’s lesson I learned about how Tesla is valued at a higher rate, despite being a traditional hardware company even though it has underlying software, and even though there is competition and everything. Well, it’s just because of the Elon Musk hype.

I mean, when was this one that got its IPO? SpaceX and it got the highest IPO ever? There was absolutely no other reason apart from the fact that it is Elon Musk.
So how did he build that hype? Well, let’s go back to when he sold his company and put all of his money into Tesla.

So people just naturally gravitated to someone with that much audacity.

If you believe, in your innermost heart of hearts, that you’re putting all your money into this, people just try to root for you to succeed.
So like Dr. Ola said, yes, there are other regulations and specifications that affect companies’ valuations: what’s the scalability? What’s the marginal cost as customers grow? What is the competition? How much are you spending? What is your capex?

All of these normally affect a company’s valuation. But when it comes to personal relationships, it’s superseded because, at the end of the day, human beings are emotional beings.
People exert emotions in different ways. It could come in the form of anger, like we saw with this documentary, these “Trailblazers,” “jailblazers?” They were fighting and raging because of how unaccepted they were made to feel within their community.

Or it could come in different ways: expecting so much from somebody that you think, “Okay, if this person is on this vision, this is definitely going to be successful.”
These are all interconnected. Interconnectedness is crazy.

People are trying to get into close proximity with Trump. They’re doing insider trading. I mean, everybody knows they’re doing insider trading. But I didn’t know there were tiers. Basically, there are folksthat pay to see his tweets before they get tweeted.

We live in such a corrupt society. And I think that was what I was telling my friend: I’m signing up for this thing because we’re regulating who?
Yeah. That’s because there is politics and there is the economy. These two are so interconnected. And it still comes back to persuasion. How are you able to pursue it?

Because there are three arms of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. But in America, they call it lobbying. So you’re putting money in the heads of legislators and the judiciary? You eventually appoint them and in turn, they don’t really prosecute you because it’s like returning a favor. So everything just comes back to emotions at the end of the day.

I mean, the Suez Canal, from what I read, de Lesseps was able to do it because Mohammed Sa’id, the fourth in line that eventually took on the throne, was, I think, his student or something. But he had a relationship with him. So when others declined and he eventually came to him, it came to fruition. And I’m not saying that’s the baseline. I mean, the Suez Canal - best decision by far, at least for Egypt.

Even with the casualties that were lost in the process. But these days, I don’t even know what is right or wrong anymore when it comes to these sorts of decisions. Because when you look at it in hindsight, okay, let’s talk about it in terms of systems thinking.

What should have been done differently when it comes to complex systems or complicated systems? So from then to now, it’s a complex system because it’s the first time they’re trying something like this, at least in Panama.

But it’s also because he refused to listen to experts who told him, “Do not do this. This place needs locks.” It’s not the same water level as in Suez. This place is different because Suez is like only 28 to 25 feet; the Panama one is like 80 feet.

So it’s a complex and complicated matter. In hindsight, yeah, we should have started with the lock from the get-go. But leaning on past wins, he was able to persuade people: “Oh, I was able to achieve this the first step.”

Let’s override everything geography was telling us about the advantage the Suez environment had, and do it my way for the Panama situation because of what?

In any case, I’m still trying to make sense of how to get better at networking, maintaining relationships, and all these other parts.

Anyways, back to it: I think I need to really watch the other things I’m talking about. I still have not really come to the aspects of the venture capitalist that I want to talk about. So I should stop listening to the West and talk about Africa. Yeah. So I’m just going to focus on this: do politics and Africa-based ventures.