Earnings Season - The Lead Angel with Sandra Glasgow

Episode Date: December 4, 2020

This week Randy and Danhai have a conversation with one of the legends from the vanguard of Jamaican Angel Investing, Sandra Glasgow. They cover her story, from her early days with her father to the genesis of, and her role in, many local business, tech and investing initiatives. Along the way we touch on a few other things she's involved in, including her experiences and learnings from serving on NCBFG's board, to the various support roles a founder needs at the early stage of their entrepreneurial journey. of course, we have her run the Earnings Season Gauntlet and her picks might surprise you (One was up 23.5% at the time of publishing📈💸).Come for the gems💎, get an angel included 👼🏾.Enjoy.Contact Us Here 📧Mail - [e-mail] Follow us on Twitter here 📱 www.twitter.com/Earnings_Season Randy - @RTRoweDanhai - @HDanhai🔗Links🔗 Sandra Glasgow on Twitter - https://twitter.com/glasgow_sandraSanda on Investing - https://bit.ly/39QrbbYEveryMickle Stock Calendar - www.everymickle.com/calendarBizTactics Limited - https://bit.ly/39F9dcBDRT Communications - DRTCommunications.com 🔊Shout Outs🔊 @FirstAngels, @Michael_LeeChin, JJ Geewax, @Danielle_DRT, @KimalaBennett, @Sanya_Goffe, Robert Almeida, @NCBFG ★ Support this podcast ★

i'm randy row at r2 on twitter and i'm bennett h on twitter and this is another wonderful episode of earning season this week we're coming right out the gates you have a wonderful wonderful guest you would have heard us talk about her for many, many, many episodes. We're in the big leagues now, guys. Well, at least we're definitely getting somebody from the big leagues with us here. We have the one and only

Mrs. Sandra Glasgow with us. Hello, Sandra. Hello, Sandra. Hi, Randy. Hi, Dana. It's really, really great to have you guys here at my house. It's great to have you. It's really great to have you guys here at my house. At your house, yes. It's great to have you. It's really great to have you. On our podcast.

Yeah. There's so much of a huge story I didn't even know where to begin. I had always wanted to get Sandra from, anybody listening would know that she has had quite effect on the, I think the small business space in jamaica over the years um i myself have known of her from tic there's somebody who don't know that was the technology or is the technology innovation center you you text when i was actually going to you tech actually because there um bridgette and garden swaby has also been on this podcast i know garden has had a lot of good things to say about tic i remember being at

garden's office actually over tic seeing there um after that i know you've done work with ncb in some of their early small business programs either the small the very first small business conference yeah um and then no the thing i hear about you the most is angels yes first the angels it's it's been my dream to have an angel investor network in Jamaica yeah yeah where we're coming from so for him to jump to that let me start over thank you yeah well I am the first born for my parents and as you know in Jamaica it's a I am the firstborn for my parents. And as you know, in Jamaica, you'd say, I'm the first of four for my mother. And the first of 11 for my father.

My parents were married very early. Mommy was 18 and daddy was 19. Wow. They were childhood sweethearts and they got married and they had four children in quick succession. We're all a year apart. So, you know, when I say quick succession.

They wasted no time. Daddy did not waste any time. Daddy didn't waste any time. And unfortunately, the marriage ended early because I suppose daddy got married too early. He hadn't really played the field enough. So playing the field while you're married doesn't work.

So that again fell out of our list. It didn't work for my mother. So she hightailed it out of there um you know after my my youngest sister was born and i think she was like 27 when she was divorced wow with four young children wow you know wow what time period is this in jama So this was, I was born in 1956. She got married in 1955. My brother, Peter, was born in 1957. We were both January, so I was on the 4th of January, the 11th.

Then my sister Denise was the 17th of September, 1958. And my sister Claudia, the 16th of October 1959 wow and by 1963 my mother was divorced with these children six five four and three um so I actually had to grow up very fast I mean when I was nine years old i was cooking meals for the family you know um but my mother and everybody says i'm just like my mother and i i guess i am i have a lot of her qualities she was determined to succeed you know so i remember her at one stage having like three jobs. And she did her, I think she was among the first batch of part-time students doing their bachelor's degrees at UWI. She actually worked at UWI.

She started in the filing section, and then she ascended pretty quickly. She was the assistant registrar for student affairs. And then in 1974, she became the first pro-registrar for CXC in the Western Zone. So she actually was one of the people who started the Caribbean Examinations Council. Wow. Yeah.

That's major. Yeah. That's major. That's major. So, you know, she's an educator. And my father was a businessman and actually my first job was working with my dad and i was general manager for a company called mfb limited trading as garden foods that made solomon gondi hot and you know um hot sauce brown sauce and pickles um we started off in kingston and then we went to saint mary and you started off as gm i said well at the top yeah i mean

and funny i had graduated with a degree a bachelor's degree in marine biology and applied botany so i knew nothing about business absolutely nothing in those days you did sciences and that was it there was no mixture in my last year at university they introduced a program where you could get one credit from another faculty. So I actually did economics. Professor George Beckford was one of my lecturers. It was great. It was fun, that course. But that's as close as I was, as I became when I did my bachelor's degree

to learning anything about business. So when I started, well, my dad always said, I want you to take over the business so that's why i got the job yeah and um i had to go and teach myself about marketing about accounting i mean i tell um business owners today you just have to go and learn what you need to learn and that's what i did i where i took a course actually at imp you know what i am yes even i know even i know institute of management and production it was part of the icd group at the time

i did uh it used to be a listed company just for the listeners yeah right right so i did a... It used to be a listed company, just for the listeners. Right, right. So I did a course in marketing. But for accounting, I bought books and I taught myself accounting, you know? I just want to be clear. I just want to pause, Sandra. Yes. And just let the listeners know that I did not tell her to say that. Say what? Because it's a big contention for us on this show because I'm not a trained accountant

or anything in that field. Everything I've done, I've done the same way. I mean, I teach about doing numbers, but he knows it from... From investing, from actually looking at it and learning it. So to hear you say that you have been doing that years ago, everything you have to teach yourself is... You have to teach yourself. You know, this idea that you you can just fly by without it and so many people are

afraid of accounting and finance yet they're running a business how can that how can that very that makes very very true very true yeah so i want to tell you a little bit about my family especially on my father's side because my father came from a a very big family my grandfather was a um german american caribbean guy who came here um had a farm in saint mary and had by my count and i'm one of the family historians um 29 children with eight women wow with eight women yeah so of different hues so my grandfather was white he had indian and black and he had his first wife was white um Then he had Indian and black. So we are a beautiful family

of all kinds of mixtures and we are proud of it. In our family, we don't talk about half brother, half sister. I have lots of uncles and aunts and cousins and we look very different and we look the same

no and so so i'm from i'm a walter that's my maiden name okay not walters walter okay um and then my mother on my mother's side she um she was reed her maiden name was reed and her family came from west mulland so you know um rickets reed um those are her people. Now we're very strong on family. So even for me, you know, I have two daughters, two grown daughters. My daughter just turned, well, I can't say it.

Say it Sandra, somebody might be listening, somebody might be interested. I won't say which one. I have a daughter who's 40 and one who's 39 I got married very early I was 20 when I got married so Neil and I have been married for 44 years can you believe that wow oh and I can't see the other day he was 18 and I was 14 so it's um so all of these things have shaped who I am as I said I'm very much

like my mother, very driven perfectionistic although I'm trying to moderate that, I'm trying to reign that in I understand that one I'm trying to reign that in

but I am very passionate about whatever it is we do. And, you know, when I went to work with my dad, I found my passion. My passion was business. And although I hadn't done business, I really loved running that company and then my other passion is corporate governance which is still the running but the proper running of a company running and the reason that's one of my passions because my father I only stayed with

him for four years because we had many fights about governance issues. And he would have been the head of that company. He was the head of the company. He was a managing director. I was a general manager. through the back door and he would tell the staff to do everything that was different from what I told them just because you know I'm the boss

kind of thing so we had a lot of differences about governance and in fact that company folded because these were the days of high interest rates he had loans that he couldn't um continue to service up to the 80s 90s 80s yes i started working with daddy in 1980 1979 lie when did i start working with that

yeah 1979 and I left in 1983 okay Jamaica started to get pretty rough so that period was really rough for him he had a group of companies he had another business

making awnings those metal awnings you see in a lot of communities. Communities. Girl, pretty daughter, yeah. Yeah. I remember he used to sell swing sets, patio furniture, and then later he started a drapery company.

So that was Caribbean sales and trans-Caribbean sales and then he had a farm in St. Mary at Ballard's Valley Estates so it was his group of companies that's not a, it's so funny how time turns

because now that's like a goal for many people, myself included I wouldn't mind having a group of companies and a farmer can go to disappear. I don't know about the 18 kids. 29 kids. My grandfather

has, daddy has 11. Wow. Wow. And you only have two. And I only have one. You can see it's true. Well, this generation, i think we learned from the older generation that it's not so smart to have so many kids yeah so if you look at my you know contemporaries and the younger ones you know two is good

two is more than good it was a different it really was a different age it really was a different age so you came up with business the what i call the right way so you love it actually doing of it you actually go into it you learn from it exactly i find out as you said a lot of business people they go into it and they find that they don't know what they should be doing and instead of looking for looking for the right path oh i'm just sticking my ways and then things are so bad yeah yeah so after i left that i actually went to work with an international organization called eka the inter-american institute for cooperation and agriculture there was a um a project that USAID was funding that was meant to work with micro entrepreneurs and the idea was that we would train well we would we wrote some manuals so I wrote a series

of manuals starting and financing a business in Jamaica, operating a small business, marketing small business products. And those manuals were really targeted at micro entrepreneurs, people who were clients of some of the agencies that we were working with, a lot of them government agencies, but the National Development Foundation, if you had ever heard of it used to be in the 80s and early 90s one of the um

funding agencies for for small businesses okay a big guy the db now. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. But it was actually started by the Pan American Development Foundation. So it was private. Okay. Okay. And we worked with ministries. So the Ministry of Agriculture rather had some programs. We worked with Things Jamaican who were working with craft vendors. We worked with the Bureau of Women's Affairs.

And I supervised 10 Peace Corps volunteers. And so what we did was we trained trainers to use the manuals and those trainers working with the Peace Corps volunteers trained the people in the field. And so that was a really exciting program because I got to break down business into just the very basics so that you know the idea was that a craft vendor should be able to keep track of sales sales and expenses and profits because they're really not doing it

you know and they could write a receipt and they could do a cash book, you know, so it was illustrated. It was, you know, very simple and it was just fun, a lot of fun writing those manuals. Then that, so that was what, 84 to 87. Just as my contract was ending, I got a visit from a Canadian guy who had come to start a project at CAST, the College of Arts and Technology, a precursor to UTEC. And that project was to set up an entrepreneurial extension center, they called it. And they were looking for a local manager to work with this Canadian guy, Claude Degani. And so I started there in October 1987. And I remember when I was interviewed by Dr.

Samson, I hope, Blossom Amelia Nelson. I think she's a former minister of education. No, no. No? Why do I know that name, Blossom Amelia Nelson? Oh, me, me, me. She used to actually be executive director of the NDF. But she's done a lot. No, she worked,

I think she runs at the microfinance. It's a microfinance association. Yeah, I think the association. Yeah. She's done work with Mayberry. I think I know her. No, I know her from being young

and watching on news. Chris Stokes and his mom. Yeah, that's his mom. I know her name from news. Maybe she was a permanent secretary or something like that. No, she was never in government. She was never in government at all?

No, she was actually pro-chancellor at UTEC. She was pro-chancellor. ThatEC. She was pro-chancellor. But before that. That might be. I went to UTEC also, so that may have been it. Yeah.

So before that, she was actually on the advisory committee of the Entrepreneurial Center. And she was one of the ones that interviewed me for that job. No, at ICA, I was, I drove a car with diplomatic plates

and I was earning US dollars. While living in Jamaica the dream doing my shopping in Miami oh lord good old days remember those good old days here Jamaica oh god so I remember they offering me

some ridiculous salary because I had been, no, at the time the tax rate was like 56 cents in the dollar for whatever income bracket that was. It was very high. Wow. And I was earning tax-free money at IKA. And they're offering me some ridiculous thing, right? So I said to them, well, we had to renegotiate it. And actually, it was the PSOJ in the end that agreed to top up my salary because Cass couldn't afford it. to top up my salary because class couldn't afford it.

But what I said to them was, listen, I think what you have here is something that could go places. And I think instead of just working with students, I think we can provide courses to small business people. So would you agree if i would run these courses and if you agree i'll take 10 percent of the gross revenue revenue smart move well of course they agreed because they didn't know what was going on. And so I started on the 5th of October. I think it was the 5th.

And by early November, I was running, advertised a course called How to Start a Small Business in Jamaica and Succeed. It was the same course that students were doing, but we packaged it. We said, I went to the head of the tech ed department. I said, Jerry, I'd like to rent your conference room. She said, Sandra, rent? You mean you want to borrow it? I said, no to rent it I said okay rent it our our um office attendant I said Miss Burton would you stay on and make sandwiches and tea and coffee so we could have a tea and coffee break she said sure i said i'll pay you a little extra so i think we

charge three hundred dollars for this six week two evenings a week for six weeks three hours two evenings six weeks three hundred dollars we had we had 20 um desks and chairs we had 23 people registered wow so you know success right you know you find the right thing so right off the bat we had a winner in that course um so i would stay about those two evenings we got guest presenters who came in and we were running that course for years and then that was the canadians had actually brought that course um i think it was i can't remember what agency in canada had done it and they they essentially white out um um toronto and put in Kingston and the White Oats, Waterloo and put in Maypeth, right? But then I went on a study tour the next year and I went to the Federal Business Development Bank, which had a whole set of these courses and um i use the we are a poor third world nation can't afford to buy these

yeah yeah give it to us with a grant yeah could you give us the material and they said oh absolutely and they gave us the material the license to use it the trainers manuals wow and so i came back and with some money we had in the in the project we you know re um typeset the thing put on a new cover branded it um the entrepreneurial center of course we put in proper names and yeah case studies and there were a number of course there was a marketing course an accounting course a course for small retailers of course if you wanted to be a consultant all kinds of courses and we'd run these courses in the evening and so we were making money. There was one time, there was a time that came

that I was earning more than Dr. Sangster, who was the president. Oh, well, yeah, you're getting 10% off the top. Off the top, Randy. A sharp business. But the thing is, Dr. Sangster didn't mind because he had a vision for that entrepreneurial center. He was very proud of it. He's actually been very visionary over there.

I realize who I know the name now. A great man. He was a great president. I enjoyed working with him. So that's how I started at UTEC, CAST UTEC. And then actually when I went on that study tour, it was

to look at business incubators. This was 1988. They were just starting. And when I came back, I said, you know, this is something we need in Jamaica. So again, with some money that we had in the project, I convinced the Canadians to allow us to build some furniture. We had a room in the back and we built six of these cubicles, bought chairs, and we created what we called a professional office package where people could pay us every month to come and use that space as their office.

And they had me as their mentor. And we were the first unit on the campus to have a fax machine so we had a fax service in fact for years we offered a fax service to the university and charge them five dollars a page receive and those days you had um remember the days when to make an overseas call it was a different rate so we had to have a rate sheet if you wanted to send a fax to japan or if you wanted to say so we had a roaring business yeah technology business but i was cutting edge at the time absolutely yeah yeah that's cutting absolutely we had a we had um you know then then we set up a business services center where we had high speed copiers and printers a lot of the people did you take would know that now because i know i you go if you want to get a lot printed and you get things printed you could send your faxes if you wanted stuff typed up you could get it done

you could get it done we did binding yes so if you had an assignment many thank you by the way there's many other assignments you guys helped me with at the end. Get it buying over TIC. Yes. But that started from the Entrepreneurial Center days. So it was, part of it was like going to conferences of the National Business Incubation Association because I had just been so fired up about this idea of business incubation. We joined the National Business Incubation Association. I went to those conferences.

And we were doing a lot of work, consultancy work, especially with the EU, USAID, a lot of work on micro enterprises, a lot on micro credit. We were training loans officers to give micro credit and all kinds of things and at one point i said to myself but you know i don't think focusing on micro enterprises is really going to move the needle in our economic development We need to look at companies that are focused on technology. Yes.

And so we want to distinguish ourselves as the small business agency that is nurturing technology-based businesses. And that's how the idea of TIC came about. So I, with some help from some members of the NBIA, wrote a business plan for it and sort of pounded the pavement, went to everybody trying to find funds. Because I was looking for money to build this building,

which my vision was a state-of-the-art technology innovation center. Nobody was offering grants for building. So eventually the CDB said we could provide a loan. It would have to be government guaranteed, but we could provide a loan. It would have to be government guaranteed, but we could provide a loan to build it. Convinced Omar Davis, who was the minister at the time, to provide us with a government guarantee.

And then CEDA came in and said, we will match the amount that you're borrowing with a grant to equip the building equipment, furniture, training, and some operational costs. So that's, I mean, that development, I wrote the concept paper for that TIC in 1980. No, 1995. 1995. Lie. 1989. It took us until 1996

to actually secure the funding for it. The money to start. Wow, seven years. And then after that it went like clockwork. We were the first, I think we were the first, to use a Chinese firm to put up a building. It's gotten very popular now.

You really set trends. It's gotten very popular these days. China, Jiangsu, they were doing a lot of work in trend ad because in trend that they were active but there were no chinese firms doing infrastructure work here but when we did the the um tender we had about i think we had up three or four jamaican um construction firms contractors bidding their rates were very high the chinese like you know 116 million 130 million chinese bid 75 million dollars no brainer yeah same concept being used nowadays as we hear from the construction industry, but this then is late 90s.

This is 1999. We put out that tender and I think 2001 they were supposed to start.

They were supposed to start in jan the project was from january to december they broke ground in april and they finished on the 24th of december wow also unheard of back then especially no it's unheard of and back then it was they brought though 25 of chinese workers oh well they do the same thing no i gather yes they lived on the site okay so it's constant constant work and i i always say people one of the things that impressed me with that construction was that the um mason was also a steel man, could do the framing, was also a plumber.

Ah, multi-talented. The tiler was also a mason, was also something else, right? So, you know, in Jamaica, you're either an electrician, or you're either an electrician or you're a tiler or you're a mason. I don't do that, boss. I don't do that, boss. Exactly.

No. Like the driver doesn't do. Yeah. Anything. Lift anything. At all. At all. At all.

Trust me. I think the only workmen in Jamaica who double hat are the people who fix ac we can't fix fridge too you know they're the only people i know who the two things everybody else one no but they're not they're not um what would they do they probably don't do the electrics they probably no definitely not no so yeah so that building was built in record time and you've seen it it's it's a beautiful quality is tremendous it is it has a courtyard it's one of the first buildings i've been in that has you go inside and there's a actually it sounds simple but to me that's a big deal you go in there's a and there's art and see a model of it that was done

that was done the sculpture nobody can see anybody who's been to TIC is there a name for the sculpture? well it's it's really embodying the seven S's of business incubation

so you see those seven rods behind a woman it's a woman looking up to and we were very deliberate about it being a woman and you notice that she's tiptoeing yes um now that logo was developed by tarik kiddo he did our graphics and he designed the TIC logo, which they are still using today. You know, so it, no, it was, it was a wonderful time.

I had an incubator manager called Joanne Fraser. Prince Philip came to open it. Michael Leach did the official opening it was a really wonderful time and when I left TIC because I had been promoted to senior vice president

that was 2004 we were making profits, 12.7 million dollars was the profit we made in 2004. You guys were profitable then. Did you hear what I said? Wow.

Because in 2004, I would have just started to go to UTEC. And it was thought of as almost a charity thing. We were on our own. Yes, it was separate. It was thought of as almost a charity thing. We were on our own. Yes, it was separate. Subsequent to that, the university changed its policy and integrated TIC into the university's accounts, which was the worst thing they could have done. They heard about the profits. think they could have joined because we had been operating as an

autonomous unit for all of those years and since they changed that policy yes there was a let me not step on anybody's toes but there was a time

you could tell TIC used to be very good for two things it was you could get was a time you could tell. TIC used to be very good for two things. It was you could get printing done there. You could get copies done. And I know they're a little bit of the age. Anything online. There was a time you have to go there. You could use the computers there quicker than anywhere else.

Right, because we had internet. Exactly. Early days of internet. No, I mean, Lloyd Distant, who used to work at Cable & Wireless at the time. I mean, we had a very sophisticated telecommunications infrastructure. We had a server room. I mean, it was plug and play. If you were a tenant, you came in and you plugged in.

Those days you used Ethernet or whatever it is. The 56K or whatever. You plugged in to get your internet. It's not quite so. Internet is not so available these days. By the time I'd left UTEC, it was known for printing still, copying

and good lunches. You go over to the IEC to get food. But I think that's just how the students refer to the closest lunch. Yeah, because we had our own little restaurant. Yes. We had our own little restaurant. Which was also better than all the food on the campus. Right. So the thing is that the students came to do their printing and copying and so on.

But we were always, from Entrepreneurial Center days, focused on people outside. So, you know, most of the tenants were people from outside, people who wanted to start businesses, not necessarily students. In fact, we had very few students. There were people who would come there, and it was not just for the space. It was a bundle of services. We had speakers. We had actually tried to start something called TIKEN, the Technology Innovation Center Angel Investor Network.

Wow. Wow, in the mid-2000s. In 2004, I brought down a woman named Susan Preston. We had seminars with high net worth people, including your boss. Thanks for giving me something to edit. And we went to Mo Bay and had a seminar there. And there was a lot of interest. It just wasn't the time. In fact,

Michael Leachan pledged a million US dollars to a fund we were starting. Did the fund start? Well, no. Same old year, a million. Well, what happened? You know, I mean, 2004.

Things got rocky. Oh, 2004. Things got rough. Oh, yes. 2007, 2008. So it didn't actually happen. But that stayed with me. The information that I had picked up on my Eisenhower fellowship in 2000 and bringing Susan down in 2004 and connecting with people like, you know, we had a little group

that was working on actually setting up this fund. Chris Berry, P.D. Chin. That's not Tasty's. Am I getting that right no no peter chin peter d chin alliance oh yeah yeah yes yes yes yes if you don't know alliances you will know in about six months right so um we had a group they're working on this we had a consultant who was doing a feasibility study and you know in fact we flew up to michael to to michael's office in in canada in canada to to pitch this thing to him and he he said yes so those were in train but then i I got promoted into a different area. I was in corporate services.

And so I was no longer responsible for the TIC. And then I left UTEC in 2007. So, and then I went to the PSOJ as ceo spent five and a half years then and then in 2013 i i decided i'm gonna start my own company and then joe and i started first angels wow and your own company that's that's these tactics yeah which is essentially if i understand it right it's essentially teaching that allowing people who are actually running businesses to learn some of the things that you don't even realize you need until you're in the middle of it right so i mean what

our tagline is um supporting growth aspiring firms um i do a lot of work in corporate governance board leadership, mentoring boards helping companies that don't have boards to set up their boards and then mentoring the CEO to make sure that the board structure

the governance structure works I do strategic planning I help with policy formulation. I was actually the first accredited mentor on the Junior Stock Exchange. Wow. Wow. That year's a lot of firsts. Yeah. That's a lot of firsts. First accredited mentor on the Junior Stock Exchange. So

my first company that I mentored was CPJ. I stayed with them for five, five and a half years as well. The early heavy growth years. Yes, the heavy growth years. And then I'm mentoring now medical disposables and supplies. Awesome. Yeah. About to, well, they're not new, but they are, I think. Yeah, listed. Yeah. And they're about, no, I i think 13 yeah listed yeah and they're about no i

think personally to jump to like the next phase of their growth yeah yeah and i mean actually the the booths um i met them because i was doing a lot of work at psoj on on um family business governance. Just looking at the particular issues that family businesses face. Yes. Because there's the intersection of the family and the business. And very often the family issues spill over into the business.

And the business is making the family. Yeah, helping the families, especially those that want to grow and want to list navigate that that

journey to not being so family or not having the family issues spill over you know

setting up family councils and how just in general how you manage it the difference between and it's for the listeners really you're seeing a tidbit like the difference between jmmb which is a family company started as a family company and how that was set up in terms of the family ownership and running and let's say like a fontana which would have been a more recent also family

listing but that is set up and run and you can see the two different you can see the different the different approaches and two different times but it is a great lesson and then anybody when you think about a lot of the companies in jamaica you've listed ones. They started out as family businesses. Grace Kennedy was one. Mayberry is a family business. I want to say most. Most, absolutely. It's really the big ones that have pivoted away

from the family structure. The thing is when you go public, you are forced to be public and for the family issues not to take such know such such a big thing but for small businesses it's a big transition it's a big challenge to manage those issues in a way that will allow the company to grow there are all kinds of succession planning yes um i mean so we had actually quite a successful project that i um pitched to the idb and got funding for when i was at psoj and we did a really fantastic um project working with

some specific family businesses um and i still am very very interested and you know it's coming from my own experience yes i like that build up i like that build up from the father's business that's where it all started you know so i understand it very clearly very very clearly and you touch board points i mean you you brush it lightly but in the streets your name ring out in a sandra. You are Miss Board. I mean, you touch, I would say, probably the most powerful board in Jamaica.

NCB Financial Group. Yeah, NCB Financial Group. The company is so big that if they are better, we're all better. I like that, Randy. I'm a happy share Randy. I'm a happy shareholder. I'm going to share that one with Mike.

You tell him that Randy said. I will. I'll tell him that Randy said. You should talk to Mike one day. I agree with you. I'm going to make it happen. I agree with you 100%. What

is that like though because i mean he's revered in jamaica i think it's almost at a point where the idea of michael leach and is bigger than i'm sure the reality of michael leach but you you know both so what is that like well i tell you i i tell him all the time i i um i was really honored when he asked me to join when he just bought NCB. And I actually my formal training in corporate governance started when when I became a board member at NCB. Really? Because I wanted to know more i mean i i'm curious about these things if i'm going to as i said to you if i'm going to do a job if i'm going to run a company i need to know what i'm doing so i actually did you can see there the company director course that was 2003 right and that's we're looking at now that that company that

organization doesn't even exist anymore it was a commonwealth association for corporate governance cagc in the commonwealth secretariat and they did was that a five day or a sevenday course does it say but it was at you know um what's that hotel it was a residential course it used to be owned by Carreras Randy um so it was like there um and I learned a lot about being a director. From that course. From that course. Yeah. So when I went back to the board, I said, well, here are the things we need to be doing to improve our governance. And they took on board everything that I recommended. thing that that i recommended so for my you know i mean for all of that you know when when you start giving advice to people they say okay run with it so i i am i have been the chair of the corporate

governance committee since then and that's not light because ncb is legendary on the market and especially i tend deliberately to give them praise because they are the standard yeah and the structure their corporate corporate governance structure is the best hands down the best hands down let's tell us you know when the dividends are coming you know when the financials are coming you can track at the start of the year exactly you can't care about investors exactly not to mention the fact that we have won many many many awards at the stock exchange yes especially for corporate that is true that is true so i mean we are very competitive when it comes to that and as chair of the committee i'm always pushing the boundaries of disclosure and transparency

um and so like we were the first to disclose directors fees yes we were the first to disclose attendance at meetings yes you're also i think i could be wrong but you're either the first or one of the first to stream your AGM. It's popular now, but before it was popular, you could watch it. And your quarter is, and you do calls. Absolutely. So we are very, very big on corporate governance. We need some more of you in Jamaica.

We need some more of you in Jamaica. Well, you know, with the companies that I mentor, I say to them, listen, I want you to win the, you know, junior stock exchange. Not everybody is as competitive as I am and interested in buying for those. And I understand that's not a competitive drive. I'm like, come on, guys. You need to you're not

everybody's like that right but i think um winning awards tells you something yeah because they're very and the stock exchange especially has very stringent requirements yes to win those awards and we get very disappointed when we have to share it or when we're on the one or two occasions that we have actually lost the corporate governance award. You did lose it to Carreras one year when I was there.

Did we? I was very happy. It's a good thing but that is not a light point that you mentioned. You see how in the 80s and 90s you're pushing entrepreneurship and understanding of entrepreneurship and we've seen the effect of that two decade a decade two decades on no right now when it is relatively easy to start a company 25k companies office and if you have an idea you put you return your computer boom it's a business and you can actually make some very good money very quickly but then you get into another world now where you actually need the governance you

need and the governance is hard i can tell you somebody doing it myself now you did i didn't know i'd spend most of my time handling customer care or just small things or if i need somebody to do something i have to do it myself i have to learn it so that when i ask you to do it if you do it wrong i have to fix it and in all that you lose sometimes it's having a board the number one thing which i i i tell everybody and i'm not as good with my board as i should be but i know that and i like that they know that i know that also that the board is necessary so number one thing i tell them if you're serious about an idea, form a board. You have investors? I know I've found everything out of pocket.

So when you have investors in your company, like, you know, if you're a public company, you have loads of investors. Correct. You have to account to them. You have to account to your shareholders. And it's the same thing. So jumping now to first angels yes all our portfolio companies have to have a board i'm more i want i want back up a little bit because you give us such a good story i want you to give the same person okay start

first angels is current and that's where you are so this so in 2014, actually, was it 2013? Julian Robinson was then minister of MSTEM. Yes. Yeah. It's funny. I was going to leave PSOJ the next week and he called me to say the World Bank wants to send a delegation to Chile to look at their startup Chile program um would I come I said absolutely I will come I am leaving PSOJ so I'm on my own I'm going to start my own company so went to chile and there were 12 of us audrey um audrey richards from dbj ingrid riley myself

um some world bank people can't remember who else but we went to um look at the startup Chile model. And Julian said to me, would you help us to do something like that in Jamaica? It had been built into a project that the World Bank was funding, but that project had not, they hadn't yet signed the agreement for it and Julian really wanted to get it going so we said well let's go to the private sector so we actually went to flow as it was then and Jamaica National. And they, Flo agreed, JN agreed to put up space about 3,500 square feet

on their building at Duke's, 32 and a half Duke Street. And Flo agreed to furnish and equip the space. So we had all the pictures from Startup Chile. I did a lot of research on what these accelerators looked like. And the flow people brought in their designers.

And I don't know if you have ever been there, Randy. Startup Jamaica on Duke Street. A beautiful space. I don't know if I went to the Duke Street one. We started Startup Jamaica, although it was part of this World Bank project. JN and Flo were the private sector drivers of it. And so the model was we did a boot camp.

And actually we had people from, one guy from Barbados and a couple guys from Trinidad and they came with the Jamaicans then the World Bank people brought in a partner five Oasis 500 from Jordan and to my disappointment some, some of the boot camp people were sent to Jordan. I don't think it worked out. Probably not. But the idea was that they would be incubated in this space. And then World Bank was doing a lot of work with Digital Jam. Digital Jam. Digital Jam.

So there were a lot of young people pitching their ideas for mobile innovations. You went to Chile with her. I don't want to get her name wrong. You just mentioned her. Ingrid. Yes. That's how I know of it because I know Ingrid used to have events. Well, Ingrid had her startup, what she called it, weekend.

Eventually it was weekend, but even before that, she was bringing a lot of people. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So that's how I got exposed to a lot of what you were doing for the whole space. Right, right, right. So anyway, after a year, DBJ actually had hired me to get it started. And I had a one-year contract and actually left a month before my contract was ended. It was time.

Always set in space. It was time. And the World Bank had, in that time, said to us, they'd invited some private sector people to a meeting. And they said, you know, we want to send you on a study tour to look at incubators and accelerators. No, and angel networks. Angel networks, sorry, not incubators and accelerators. Angel networks. Because they were pushing Angel Networks.

I put up my hand and said, been there, done that. Tried to start one. Actually had a guidebook. The World Bank had used Susan Preston's guidebook that she had done when she was at the Kauffman Foundation. And they had updated it. I said, I have the original thing yeah the actual original guys you know so it was Joe Matalon Joe M and a guy

named JJ G Wax an American you know and we said you know what We're not going on a study tour. Let's just get it started. So Joe said, all right, do up a budget. Do up a budget. So I did. Looked at some costs. And I said, Joe, would you host a luncheon? We'll invite some of your business friends. We did.

Did up a presentation for him and um i think there were like 14 people at the luncheon and we said to them who is with us 10 of them said yes i divided the budget by 10 and that became our subscription fee to join the network. Smart. That's the Epli model. Yeah. This is what we paid, so this is the price. Exactly.

And those fees haven't changed in six years. That is the Epli model. model so we and we um we just started running a um an investment readiness workshop with jj built the website and we started doing pr and this just started coming yeah i think you know it's quietly spread throughout the list of people who care about business like that. We actually started doing some of our early pitch events down at Startup Jamaica. So I was still there when we started. And we had our first pitch event in November 2014. November 2014.

Daniel Terrelon and twin girls from Montega Bay who had a lovely fruit. What did they call it? Anyway, it was like a popsicle, but it was local fruit. So they pitched and Daniel did a really good pitch. And by May, we invested in her.

That was our first investment. That's now DRT Communications. DRT Communications. She's also strong. She's strong. She's a good leader in that space. Yeah. If you know the advertising space, DRT holds their order

and especially the data analytics side. PR is their forte and media monitoring. Yes. Which was the, I mean, she had been running this as a sole trader,

DRT communications. But what she brought to us was this technology that could listen to the radio, could pick up mentions of brands from the internet, from TV, any electronic means, and could just translate them into a report.

I don't know about you, but there was a time when everybody, even at PSOJ when I ran it, the front desk lady had you know we bought the glean and she would look cut out all the mentions of psoj right and i remember back as far back as um 1988 going to jamaica house um one time to talk to Babsi Grange and I saw this big room of people and they were listening

to Mote and they were listening to all the talk shows and they would be writing down what was said. That was media. That's how they did media back then. So when Daniel came to pitch her idea, we loved it. And we've invested.

I sit on her board and she's a wonderful founder. She is, I say this all the time, Danielle is the poster child for angel investing because she had a great um she had a business that she recognized needed to step up to another level she found technology licensed it um she's been very responsive to her board. She uses, utilizes the support that her board gives her. She will

call me and bounce things. Her chairman is Stacey Hines. I mean, all of us, Kareem Tomlinson sits on the board as well. She soaks in advice.

She's not resistant to having a board she has our board meetings we get good reports she frankly she's the only one who has been consistent about doing her annual reports getting her audited financials i mean we're really struggling with some of the others to get them it's a yeah it's a real thing somewhere in that story i know you you had the small business conference very first one i think ncb sponsored i know i went to that one myself and garden actually went to that one and um i remember they did they did a quick survey while they were there and i think maybe only two people in the room said that they they had their they consistently did their financials for their company and these are

listed companies obviously this is people running small business but no names out there you know and they're making good money but the financials are not doing it and it's the two things i know that i see hit business people all the time keeping up with the financials are not doing it. And it's the two things I know that I see hit business people all the time. Keeping up with the financials, one. And the second one is not thinking of your board as a threat. They're there. Everybody seems to think of the Steve Jobs story, they're going to fire me.

Go and understand that story. That can happen, but it's the last resort. And it should. It should. If you're not running, if you're not but it's the last resort. And it should. It should. If you're not running, if you're not stewarding the company properly. If Steve Jobs hadn't been fired, Apple wouldn't be what it is today. That's right. He needed to have been fired at the time.

You know, Randy, I'm actually running an online, our first online investment readiness program right now. Really? Yeah, we started on july 21 and we end we have pitches on tuesday and wednesday and we end on the 16th um and i i say this to the you know people who are aspiring to get um investments from first angels i i say this to them i say listen when somebody packs their money in your company for five years you have to be responsive to you have to be accountable yep they're an owner of the company exactly i didn't realize that yeah we own the company too like you. And they don't realize that. Yeah. We own the company too. Exactly.

Just like you. You know, so you can, I mean, even if it is that there are some people on the boards who are proxies for the shareholders. Because some of the shareholders, you know what I mean? I could be on all the boards. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, respect that. And take from it, I tell you a lot of the,

this is a complaint I hear all the time from our founders. Oh, why can't we have some entrepreneurs like so-and-so and so-and-so instead of these corporates? I say, but listen, those corporate people know stuff. They are accountants, they are specialists, they are HR people, they are analysts, they are whatever. So they may not have

started a business themselves, but they understand business. And they bring something to the table. And they bring something to the table. They're bringing real value. So embrace it. You cannot knock it. To add to to your point i know i spent eight years at carreras and i now look back at that time there are things i learned that i didn't know

as learning yeah i because it's a well-functioning machine you get a job within the machine so you work but knowing i'm on my own i then i talk all the time one of the things i did for a couple years i managed to receive those portfolio i understand it so clearly now from the ground up because of the years i spent doing that and also things like the need for these whole meetings and blah blah corporate don't know corporate people they have learned and have actually done day-to-day the things that you may not have even realized you needed i think entrepreneurs they often take for granted where they're going so they see the big company and they say oh it's they find every niche in it to say oh that's a problem so you're you're a cog in

the machine and you don't bring value but if you're if you want to be anything you want to be you want to be at some point that big match the big company so you're going to understand that that you're going to need cogs in your machine to bring value. It comes from somewhere. If you were at that conference, you would have said, behave today like you are a hundred times bigger. Yes. You actually said that at the small business conference. I said it.

You said that. I still say it. Behave today as if you are a hundred times bigger. Because that's the only way you're going to get there and i really believe that if you have good governance it's it's your path to success yeah because it makes it put in injects discipline accountability right and and so i i tell you it's a it's a big challenge that we have working with businesses why i say danielle is and there are a couple others like um ajani harris williams from sci-fi studios who is one of our investees okay what do they do there you know some free ads okay um they have a company called get

it's called sci-fi studios but they have a a platform okay a real estate platform um called keys yeah yeah i do know about keys k-e-z no i know it i know very well where you can find places to rent places to buy so one of the things we have had to, well, not had to do, we have done, is embed in our term sheets and our shareholders agreements that you must have a corporate secretary that we designate, that you must have an accountant that we designate. You must do your annual audits, although lots of them are

trying to catch up now. And have your annual general meeting. Because you have to behave today like you were 100 times bigger. It is the biggest. I'll never forget that you said it. It was after they had given the

results for how few people exactly i'd included that in my presentation yes yeah it stuck with me and you said i'm certain i've heard randy coty before yeah run this big company like a small company small like a big company that's not me that's sandra glasgow yeah it was a nice weekend in my bed i got the hv got they rented the hotel and it was really cheap. I was like, wow, I get a hotel and I get to do a conference. And that stuck with me there. Run this big company like it's a small company. Run your small company like it's a big company. And I've done that.

Since that, I have said every single time I start an idea, form a board. Yeah. Every single time. Absolutely. And I tell people, if you're not, you'll know if you're serious or not. Because if you hesitate on that, then you're not really serious. When I tell people, if you're not, you'll know if you're serious or not. Because if you hesitate on that, then you're not really serious. When I say to people,

you know, look at somebody like Patrick Hilton, who is just a genius, really. Underappreciated, I think. Yeah. A genius. I think he's too close to know this to Michael, but I think he's too close to Michael

so people don't appreciate that. Michael is not handling NCB every day or that group. And that's not Michael's style. Exactly. And you would think that he's the 60 how much percent shareholder that he would have his

fingers in. Every day now. Right? He steps back. Nose in, fingers out. That's a saying in in in um good governance right nose in fingers out yeah yeah that's a smell test but when you see patrick interacting with his board um you know we don't have just quarterly meetings we have a 10 11 meetings a year. Really? Absolutely. Plus committee meetings. So the notion that, you know, you get big,

you don't need the board's support and intervention. That's nonsense, right? And that's at the NCB level where they can step back. Of course, they could. Yeah. But it's because they haven't stepped back where we see the level where they can step back. Of course, they could. They could. But it's because they haven't stepped back where we see the effect of them not stepping back. That board is so interesting to me. I'm sorry, I don't want to concentrate too much on it.

But I think the four. So I've always said that obviously Chin again gets a lot of the praise because of his story. And the second most impressive person I want to meet from there is you. Really though you really no yeah and then there is i'm not just saying that because you're here i mean it and of course there's patrick and sanya literally the four people i didn't know there's everybody rob elmida is uh is is great no he's brilliant he's brilliant rob almeida and what about professor alvin went to taught me international business it's not that I doubt that they're good it's that I just don't know what I'm telling you we have a

fantastic board you know Thalia Lin is on our board yes and Thalia Lin legendary also and actually my son Adrian has just joined one of the things we we have been trying to do and certainly i i brought sanya on board is to lower the average age yes because it is it is we're getting up we're getting up there so this is active succession

planning at all levels succession planning yeah so let's get back to First Angels. Yes. So First Angels, you really seeded the culture of entrepreneurship, but response to entrepreneurship, and in such a way that you can see what you consider established business people paying attention to it and now putting in not just feedback but also money if the idea is good enough yeah and we've seen the success you mentioned BRT yeah well you know it's it's for me personally the culmination of all the work I've done all

these years because I've touched hundreds of small business people but with first angels we are able to not just provide them with you know access to capital which is a big problem for small business people big big problem but so they're not just getting money but more importantly they are getting that hand-holding that nurturing that support i mean any one of our portfolio companies that needed support from anybody just think about the 31 people that we have in our members that we have in our network. Okay. Yes. Are the who is who in business.

Yes. Yeah. The people with the highest integrity, the people with loads of capital, right? Not everybody has loads. You can't drive right now. Too late. Everybody has some capital. Some capital and access. you can't drive right now too late but it has some capital some capital and access

there are some who have loads but more importantly there are people who just yesterday I was talking to a prospect for membership and he was saying I don't want to just pay the dues

and be a member i want to be active i said that's you're talking my language now because the truth is we have 31 members where we probably have 10 or 12 people who are really hands-on hands-on active who will volunteer to to present a session in the investment readiness program who will you know talk at a meetup or speak at a phone a founder's retreat or sit on a board or coach somebody and just provide guidance open up their contact lists and put you on to someone else put you on to someone else you know what a big deal that is

I do first hand I know what it is it's a big deal I know exactly what that's like to see what effect it has on the person where because of my network I I got to it.

But not even just Kimala, because Kimala, I'm going to put her in medium. And by the way, you know, Kimala is a member of our network. She is. And I saw her presenting on a session of yours recently. I don't remember the details. She just did it. She just did it this past week. Okay.

She did a session and she's going to do another one on the 15th, but she did a session on strategy growth and scaling. Yes. Which she knows a lot about. She does. And then the next session,

which will be the last session in the series, is on how to become a CEO. You know? And she knows that right back to front house so we have great people in our network who really are all patriotic jamaicans if they're not jamaicans i mean bruce boyan is in our network he's in jamaica but he has love fallen in love with it he's in jamaican but he has love fallen in love with it he has i mean he's come back after he's left bns to start his own company here g wax i think is not g wax is in jamaican wax is not jamaican but he has a host down the road i meet malone from the british virgin islands who is a

member again he he comes and he preaches in runaway bay every year um so we have some great people douglas aray and steven facey um douglas has i mean i want to start yes plus we have great companies so n we have KPMG, we have HeartMirror Head Fata, Sanyo represents HeartMirror Head Fata. We have New Fortress Energy, the DBJ, cable and wireless, business, lots of people, Stephen Marston, Roderick Gordon,

Gregory Peart, Stacey Hines, Jacqueline Leckler. For me, the right kind of people who not just know business and are successful but are wanting to help um small companies succeed you know i said i said a major push there um yeah yeah i am thankful directly and indirectly from seeing a lot of the push but you put in. But I feel like I must, I need

to be fair to the listeners and give you a little bit of pushback because you raised the point which is a serious point that small businesses, the funding is still hard. And I'd be bad if I sit here with a board member of my bank because I own a little piece. So of my bank and not press on

some of those issues. Which bank is it? NCB, if you've heard of it. Oh, my bank. Yes, of course. Well, you know, the thing is that, the truth is that, and in my training, I look at the financing lifecycle.

Banks aren't really meant to fund startups. That is true. That is true. It's a higher risk. And actually, BOJ regulations really put some brakes on them doing that. So they can, if you have traction

and if you can show that you're growing, then maybe. But they just won't fund a startup. Right? So what we are and and i was just talking to tanya allgrove last week about the need for closer collaboration with the network um because once you have a small company, it's no longer a startup after we have funded and they're on their way. Yeah.

But if there is a board in place and there's governance and we are insisting on audited financials and monthly financials and, you know, compliance, tax compliance, which a lot of SMEs aren't. Yeah, a lot of SMEs run from it. They run from it, but compliance is a big thing for us. If we have those things, then you're a better candidate for a loan. A loan, yeah.

Right? for alone alone yeah right um and so we are really trying to find a mechanism and we're working with our banking partners in the network jmmb gen um you know dbj is great because they provide so much support already yes they do have that that voucher program right vouchers grants all kinds of things so we are really working with our partners to see how can you make it easier for these companies to get because they've got some equity but sometimes they've given up a lot of equity and they don't want to give up anymore. And that's understandable. We take an average of about, you know, I think for the portfolio we have now is about 28%.

Really? As an average. Are you into 40 or something? No. 28, okay. Actually, we don't, we have a deliberate policy that we don't want to be a majority shareholder. Because then it's not angel investing. It's a subsidiary.

And the other thing is that you want to leave some room for future rounds. Because most of the companies need more than one round of finance. I can see that. But I've also seen the effect where you mentioned DRT. We've had on the podcast, we've had on the podcast, Quick Plate. Monique's Quick Plate. Yeah, and Monique also is somebody I see who's gone from thinking about the idea, going into the actual idea i know she you can see her getting

into like the actual business of it which is i don't just have to get my sales but i have to record myself put together because i have to represent it to my board eventually and i mean well we talked to people you can hear to you've heard that episode she it is a rough thing but it is that it's worth it it's like it's like good work. It's work that you do, you feel good when you do it, and you see the effect of it. Listen, entrepreneurship is hard. I tell people all the time. Entrepreneurship is hard.

There is no doubt about that. And this is why we are really trying to provide as much support as possible. We are partnering. We had a great founders retreat in February this year. McKinsey and Company facilitated it and actually came for it. They brought the founders books so that they can read up on stuff. I'm talking now to Google for Startups. I'm talking now to Google for startups and they are going to be working with us on some of the meetups that we are planning. Oh that's good. Bringing some of

their specialists, some of their talent, to share. Which is what we've always needed. We're using local talent and we're really always looking for good deal flow. So this this investment readiness program that we are running now, there are 20 people in it and they're going to be pitching next week, Tuesday and Wednesday, in front of real live angels. I'm surprised how well the virtual thing has worked. We're using Zoom and it's great. You can still do a lot of interactive things. Yes, yeah, you can. And they're really appreciating it.

Are you going to run it again? Because the people here in the snow definitely want to. Yes, definitely, we're going to run it again because the people here in the snow definitely yes definitely we're going to run it again um we've been partnering with dbj we started in 2018 um we're working with the dbj we used to do it by ourselves um prior to that like a one day thing then it became a two day um and now it's like six days because what we are finding is that there's lots of stuff you know once you've invested you expect that founder to be running a business that has millions and millions of dollars of investment And that founder now has a responsibility. Exactly.

And many of them don't know how to do it. Yeah. You know? So it's not just about pitching. It's not just about coming up with an idea. It's not just about coming up with some numbers in a projection. It's not just about that presentation. It's about, can you manage your people?

Can you manage your customers? Can you manage your finances? Can you manage your intellectual property? Do you know how? Do you even know that you're doing a business? That's a thing that... Well, I'm not doing a business, but I mean, Danielle tells this story all the time you know she was saying

um i'm having this issue with my staff do i sing kumbaya which way which how do i handle it you know and and i appreciate that's why I appreciate Danielle because you know she said meet me for breakfast let's talk about it and her chairman is the kumbaya one and I'm the tough one so you're the bad cop and we came up with a solution

that you know she could work with you know and so you know we're really interested in getting because we think that this is the only way the economy is going to grow

you are 100% right you are 100% it is it is literally the only way I have a pet theory I say all the time about how I can track. I personally think that you can track Jamaica's economic resurgence

from Legion taking over NCB and having to find growth. And then 07 happened and then you definitely have to find growth and you can't go to those fights. You have to find it here. And so what happened was that

as much as I say I was pressing on NCB, NCB has actually been great to small businesses. Oh businesses oh for sure they need to pay me for this ad yeah but exactly so on on that point however what happened is that as smaller and smaller companies started getting more and more funding they started to spread more and they hire more and so we have something that would start like going back to kimala kimala who like doing music videos is a filmmaker is now actually running a multi-billion dollar ad agency because it's really just a person with this idea given the lines along which to run doing the work

being disciplined and getting the funding and doing good with the funding, you find that a lot of, no, a lot of, I don't want to say wantrepreneurs. No, but you understand. People think it's just the idea and then everything, the road is clear after that. Exactly. And I just get it right.

And Dana, to be clear, I love the fact that people are wantrepreneurs. Yeah, no, they should. Yeah, they should be. Because it's a process yes it is exactly yeah but it's on the side that doesn't stop there and not also to be fooled by the the glitz yeah the glitz grab everybody yeah the glitz grab everybody and i want to come back to my friend kimala because um one of the things about kimala and she will tell you this is that she sought out mentors yes

actively sought out mentors so so i was one of those people that she sought out and i'll tell you one of my daughters very jealous of the relationship that i have with kimala you know she'll say but why are you and kimala hanging out you realize that she could be a daughter but we just she she understands me i understands her and she is always sandy i mean she'll call me oh we lean on each other frankly but just if you look at her story she's always found mentors and utilized their support support the talent she i tell her that i think her greatest her greatest thing is being able to identify like a specific talent in somebody and the use for it and bringing it out there yeah yeah i mean i was not as great

at business i understand business i know to make money help people their businesses but i never call myself a strategist and she said no but you're a strategist so really kimana tell me more but she was right yeah she's like that she and she in the way she's mentioned you it's yeah man she imposes and she is not a fake thing you actually see the active thing. So to see a lot, hearing those stories from people and seeing it linked back to you and hearing how you look at it and where you came from to me is huge, huge, huge, huge, huge, huge. And I don't think you get enough praise for it. You feel you get enough praise for it? I do get a lot of great feedback. I mean, I don't, you know, I don't do it for the likes. I do it for the love, right?

And, you know, that's fine for me. I'm blessed beyond measure in the opportunities that I have gotten from all the work that I have done over many, many years. And still doing. And still doing and hope to do. My husband is going to retire in December. I said, only you. You're still working.

I am not. You're still working. Yeah, yeah. Because I still have a lot of energy and passion. I'm down here at four o'clock in the morning sometimes. Wow. Just because if I have stuff to do, I have stuff to do. I have to get it done, right?

Yeah. So I still have a lot of energy and passion about the things that I do. And, you know, I sit on 10 boards and it's 10 serious boards yeah well you know some of them are startup boards but I take those as seriously as I do my other board

I must get my board papers I read them I'm going to the other day a colleague we were looking at an audit audited financial statements and he said Sandro you pick up all of those you know because

I read every word and that has come through some of my training being on the audit committee at NCB you know that's a corporate again you can't send out a financial statement with grammatical or accounting or arithmetic or any other errors. So you have to read every single word.

Correct. And it has to make sense. Correct. Right? So it's no different for a big company than for a small company. Excellence is my mantra. I like that. We might need you.

Have you constantly been on the board of the Stock Exchange? Why would I be on the board of the Stock Exchange? No, I haven't. And to tell you the truth, Ryan. Randy. Randy. I'm all the time. I'm all the time. I'm all the time.

I'm all the time. Ryan, really, is that my man? No, the thing is, I'm actually looking to see how I can cut back on some of my boards. Because it is, it's. It takes energy. It takes a lot of energy. It takes energy. It takes a lot of energy.

And the way I do it, I'm on three pension fund boards. I'm on two of our startup boards. I'm on the student loan bureau board. NCB and NCBFG. I'm chairman of CrimeStop. Wow, wow that's where plus your own company plus my own company i'm on the board of multi-care youth foundation oh you are not resting at all who's retired you're definitely not retiring am i old enough to retire i don't think so actually well you told me

you told me the years i'm thinking this will make sense it's the same person i know but i i i mean i can i can look and i'm only looking 20 odd years i'm 33 and i'm looking back 20 odd years at most and i'm seeing huge changes but you obviously have a much bigger purview so if you could change like what would you want to see going forward for the space in jamaica yeah i think i think that there isn't enough recognition and incentives for growth oriented startup and early stage companies our tax the tax burden on these companies is too heavy it's too heavy yeah yeah um i do understand the abuse that the the systems in former years the waivers and you, tax holidays and those things brought about. But I really, I mean, DBJ is doing a fantastic job, but they are not touching.

The ground. They're not touching the majority of small businesses that need support. Agreed. small businesses that need support. I'm very, you know, I really feel that there isn't enough educational support for people who want to start businesses. When I went to CAST in 1987, and I think we started that course in 1988, every single student in every single department was required to do a 36-hour course in how to start a small business and succeed.

Wow. Every student. Wow. No entrepreneurship. on business and succeed wow every student wow no entrepreneurship you can't miss it at all and you don't have to you don't have to do right but you know i i have to um give dr sanks a lot of credit for his vision because his vision was that every student leaving the institution should be equipped to start their own business every student and i mean whether you're an engineer or a marketer or a land surveyor or somebody in the health services or any of the disciplines that you can get. IT, if you program, yeah. IT, all of these, right? And the same thing at UA,

elective courses that you don't have to do and that aren't really touching enough people. So we have a lot of people who are trying to do a thing. Yes, hustle. And I mean, they have good intentions. They want, they've seen something online. It's happening in another market. They want to try it here.

But they don't know how. They don't know how to come back to it. They don't know how to manage finances. They don't know how to manage people. They don't know how to come back to, they don't know how to manage finances, they don't know how to manage people, they don't know how to manage customers. So there's a lot of... Financial illiteracy. Illiteracy.

It's not just financial, it's business. Business, yeah. You want to find something business. It's business illiteracy that takes a long time for you to catch up and learn. and it's probably going to be too late yeah a lot of people learn it a lot of people don't know that i mean i i've tried and i still

do try to invest with um smaller businesses you know if somebody has a shop and they do somebody have a farm i try to i try i'm not not just to help out i don't seem like it's charity because i'm putting my money there i care about it so i want to go but i've realized oftentimes we thought it was people dead they don't want to grow they don't want to go and a lot of them don't understand the concept of our business like yeah i'm not giving you a million dollars i'm putting a million dollars in the business you still have to work you're going to have to work hard and i can only help you to the tune of a million dollars. And I don't want it to...

I make it very clear that I'm helping you. And I'm trying. I want you to do the best. And you can be sure that I want you to do the best because my money is in there. But I find that a lot of people honestly think that I can have a good idea. And Leach is going to come in with a helicopter. And he's going to land it. And he's going to say, it's a great idea you should

take two billion for it and he'll give you two billion and then it done it done it has not worked yeah and he didn't pay you even just a concept of explaining that this is the investment but it's not your money it's a company's money yes so how much are you going to pay yourself and you see the real life that way no but this is money for me It's a company now So the company has a capital A base of a million dollars What are you putting in? And other people forget that They don't realize that

There are other owners So when I invest in your business I own it too Yes So you can't tell me around the corner Say oh No man I'm going to get a little thing for it What?

Yeah No the company got that No I just do no or you hear that they're they pay that dividend in a sense but they you never know about that dividend you never hear about it yeah you look like you're tired let me tell you it's it a struggle. It really is. And so, you know, I say all the time when people ask me, I say, what I would do is make sure that... So I don't know if you have ever met Alfie Mulling-Zakin.

What does she do? She runs Junior Achievement Jamaica. I used to sit on that board when I was at the PSOG. bent Jamaica. I used to sit on that board when I was at the PSOG. Doing fantastic work, doing extracurricular activities in several schools.

I mean, plenty, plenty schools in Jamaica. But it's an extracurricular activity. I want to see the day when entrepreneurship becomes a subject at primary school, high school,

and at university, you have to do it. Because we, the business illiteracy is a big problem. It's huge. It's huge. We have a get a job culture.

Nothing wrong with that. You need workers. Yeah. But I think people need to understand the value of what they can bring. And I realize they don't. I have a little brother who is the same. He's just not realizing that way. I can,

he likes me because we've hated it for years. I'm in a manga tree mechanic. I used to tease him about the same thing, but he truly loved it. Stuck with it. Overseas to learn, train and work at these big garages and he's no he's just coming he's away he's working for a guy and he told me that the boy in boss said to him say do you want to work or you want to live i look at him say wait why do i have to choose and it's him starting to learn and click that no if you have a true skill and you have a true if you're bringing value in a

specific area to the point where someone is willing to give you money for that value that's a business but formalize it and it works best for you it literally works better for you but it's a skill also to grow a business yes yes a lot of people don't want the business to really grow because they don't have the skill to take it to that level. It gets scary because you lose control of it. And a lot of them want to be able

to make every decision and do every aspect of the work. Letting go is hard. And finding the talent to help you that you can trust to take it to that level.

That's another. Another thing, other people, they start the business and they do this part, they do this part, they do this part. And then they finally

take it somewhere. The person is more skilled at that one thing than them. What they do is won't let them do it. Or they won't even acknowledge that the person is the best person to do it.

Absolutely. Absolutely. It's a fear because I know it's hard for me them do it. Or they won't even acknowledge that the person is the best person to do it. Absolutely. It's a fear because I know it's hard for me to do it, but I know I can do it and I know when I do it, it's done. It's harder for me to let it go and trust that you'll do it because if you get it wrong, and you might get it wrong too, if you get it wrong, it's still me and I'm feeling, but

I think we need to understand that that is part of business. It's a conversation I have in our investment readiness program. I said, listen, what would you say, do, say or do, if your investors say you could not be CEO? Yes. Because everybody has a dream of being founder, CEO, president and CEO. President, founder, CEO, and MD.

President, founder, CEO. Right? But you may not actually be the best person to be the CEO. That is a business. So understanding the difference between being a shareholder, That is a business. So understanding the difference between being a shareholder, an owner of the company, and being a CEO who runs and maximizes the potential of the company. That's a big problem too.

Right? And it's a conversation. So, I mean, you know, back a few years ago, one of the reasons a lot of small business people didn't want investors to come into their business is because of this fear that they will come and take away my business yes right still is there take away the business but I mean you can't take away the business if you own it but then my family my family a CEO I said if the board thinks that you are such a bad CEO that you should go

and they find somebody better than you and that person runs the company you're no you're no you're no home making money

and I bring them back to the Apple example all the time I said when Steve Jobs left that company they were barely scratching in the billions when he came back

it was a multinational multi-billion dollar company that he took back over and he had to leave to learn to do it somewhere else yeah it is it's the difference between seeing the glitz of the story and the reality of the story yeah the more so coming back to the business yes literally that and i'm to bring it to the listeners one i mentioned about stocks it's the same thing in stocks and to bring it to the listeners we want to mention about stocks it's the same thing in stocks and i say it all the time it's great to be here talking about oh we saw signos there and we bought it at ten dollars and it's at twenty dollars now

but you don't get the twenty dollar praise without getting the ten dollar fare yeah whenever we had to see the twenty dollars in our mind and click buy at $10 and trust that what we're seeing is there and pay attention and up 3 o'clock in the morning recalculating blah blah blah and you see the $20 and it look good and you're like boy I want to do it like you you can as I tell people all the time you can but it's not as nice as you look

you don't get to be bolt at the finish line without being bolt in the gym that part is not as glamorous no that's not as glamorous leeching on the helicopter is not oh i'm behind the private jet let me tell you something the first thing i learned the second i started getting money is that the reason rich people have luxury is because they're always working and so i need to be able to rest nicely while working he doesn't have the private jet because it's nice to have a private jet although i'm sure it's nice i'd like to find out private jet and the two helicopters because i sleep better here on the yacht but i also have a seven-year meeting at the headquarters

and the best way to get there is on the helicopter and all of a sudden you no longer notice the trappings it's just i need to get there yeah very very or as michael would tell you those days that he would walk from door to door in canada trying to sell insurance and investing that is a hard job you know and being rejected again and again think about that yeah in a country that's not yours though exactly that is hard I can tell you that he is deserving of every single

step that he has made he didn't get it by chance and one of the things I always say to people too you know with Michael the notion that you build a business and that you are going to have that business forever.

Ah, no. I build something that's, if I build it right, it's going to become bigger than me. And I should. And you should sell it. And when to sell it. Danielle and I, Danielle daniel will tell you this story because i remember when i was coaching her to pitch and i said to her as well what's the exit

strategy for this business yeah and she said exit strategy what's that well when you sell the business so that the angels can get their their return and she's like bawling. No, I don't want to sell the business. No, I don't want to sell my business. Ask Danny today. Are you ready to sell? Because we're pursuing the exit strategy.

And she's ready to sell DRT. Anybody wants to buy DRT? Right? Because she's going to do something Anybody wants to buy PRT Right Because she's Going to do something else Which is what entrepreneurs do Yes

That's what real entrepreneurs do They create something new They build it And they just think about all the businesses Mike has had That he no longer owns. Exactly. But he's harvested to buy another business.

And you do it right, you still have a little piece left in there. But I make a piece. Yeah, but it is the way forward and people need to get that. If Daniel is looking for someone to buy a business, I mean, I know people who buy businesses. Yes. Yeah. Give her a call. I will try. She will tell you. I'll tell you tell you if it's a serious thing it is a good thing

but for the people listening also the consideration all the time in business of what you need to do not just now but tomorrow and you shouldn't think of a business it's the same job idea don't think of your business as your job so you're thinking a lot of times I don't want to sell because it's like in my mind it's the same job idea. Don't think of your business as your job. So you're thinking a lot of times, I don't want to sell

because it's like, in my mind, it's the same as getting fired. No, you're in a business in such a way that I shouldn't have to be there every day. And if I'm not there every day, what now am I caring about? And whatever that thing I care about, I'm thinking your time

is going to eventually become your passion. So you should be able to let this thing go. So, I mean when when we engage with our portfolio companies when we invested them we say well the job one for your board is to start thinking about your existence and start looking at where must i be because you pitched it yes you said in 2024 you're going to be here how are you actually going to get there yeah this is exactly like investing yes so the thing the idea of the pitch and you can go up there and tell them any foolishness the pitching is i'm going to be this is where I'll be in 2024. And this is how much investors will get, how they'll get a return on their investment.

You have to start working, putting in the right strategies to actually get there. To get there, yep. So that you can sell those shares, sell a part of the business, sell the shares, whatever. So that you, the angels can get their return but you will get a return too and you you can retain some shares whoever buys it you if you know if you can you don't want to buy the whole thing you can retain some shares you can go buy your yacht and sail or whatever you want to do or you can start a new business because that's what entrepreneurs real entrepreneurs do yeah again and again you can't stop it you're right if you eat chicken i stopped you know a couple episodes ago about we always talk about leeching

on the program what you think about it the man is a huge coffee farmer now he's uh yeah there's like but he has this big farm now at inswood that's the second thing i was going to touch i don't have coffee not doing so well because pricing had gone down yeah i mean he still has the coffee but he's early in it because he has now consolidated a huge part i really need to talk to him you know he has now changed the face of the industry yeah and let me see no you call him you tell him right now that i said but but it really is it really is a different sort of thinking once you once you change your approach to it and to see that sort of change now happening in the space and knowing that we still have the people around who started it because back in the day it was i just trying to hustle yeah and we have a lot of companies still know that are literally just that was daddy's hustle

and i come in here it is my hustle and i can't teach you you're a hustle that will have a step away from it so i like that you do angel and i should then ask because you mentioned drt mentioned selling when are we going to see the angel network put something on to the the exchange well the the so the companies so drt may well i mean we're looking we're exploring options now they might ipo oh you know so we have options we're looking at here's hoping here's hoping yeah but you know i as i said at the start i think any company that is seeking to um list on the stock exchange must understand that they have to have um shareholders are going to expect growth in the business

they're going to expect dividends so you must be generating enough cash to be able to pay those dividends and profits so it's not you know

it's not a quick one no losing, no net losses are allowed So it's not, you know, you don't want to walk in the park. No net losses are allowed. Or if they're allowed, if they are allowed, it is that, you think of it like the pitch, you sell a story to those investors,

but then you have to deliver on the story. Whatever it is you, in that prospectus, people will be looking back at it to say, what did they say they were going to do? And if you don't, you get punished. Yes, and the punishment can be harsh

as it should be. But you are also punishing the people who put their money into it. So it's a big responsibility. So we wouldn't, you you know our companies would need to

really demonstrate that they're on a growth path they're profitable and they can fulfill shareholders expectations which is right I like that

I won't keep you much much longer yeah thank you so much sandra for this um do we have a run the gauntlet of course so we have we have our thing that we do what each our guests we ask them about the market because we still do care about the stock market and we ask them to tell i won't press you know since it's corona times i'll give you to say what kind of investor are you near term long term long term all the way buy hold prosper all right all right i know that's also the legion method um i'm not a speculator not to speak excellent all right so i'll ask you to tell me three companies that you would buy now that i would buy now right now to hold for

let's say next 10 years to tell the truth I'm not sure I'm watching the market I haven't bought any stocks in this time March the first week of March a lot of people have been out but it's a good time to buy

yeah I mean there are some that i um i i i separate can't go wrong yeah i agree of course ncbfg i'm biased to increase my shareholdings there. The third I haven't looked at the stock prices in a while. The stocks that I have in my portfolio that I like. I have

Trans Jamaica. That's not going anywhere anytime soon. You're good with that. I have GMMB. Also not going anywhere anytime soon. Very good with that yeah i have jmmb also not going anywhere anytime so i'm very good with that carreras is one of my favorite stocks also not going anywhere it's a good picks strong solid long picks you know my blue chips I have to tell the honest truth

I have not really dabbled in the junior market much I think just because of my age I sort of have that solid base

of blue chips that are dividend paying, which is what I like. And I think investors, you guys can do your speculation. 33. Yeah. How old are you? 27. Okay, even younger. So you can do that.

so you can do that and i mean i i would encourage um every young person to start with anything um yes start buying stocks just by i mean i can if when i look back in my files at what i bought these stocks for yeah you know two decades ago whenever it was I bought them you know you really just need to start I'm big on saving I've always I've always been a saver yeah but your picks are great great yeah because i mean i asked for three and it was yeah much more give the people a chance it's just that those are so good because those are the companies that i especially know in covid times they're they're so resilient yeah because oh you're definitely winning them yeah You should go and check that right now to see because you're up a lot of money.

I mean, I started with like two. Two Apple shares are worth a lot. A lot of money. And they're about to split into what? Eight. Yeah. So you're getting a good run out of that. I should do more overseas stuff. I really should. No, you should actually do more local that. I should do more overseas stuff.

I really should. No, you should actually do more local stuff. I should do more local stuff. Yeah, man. Local is... I'm big in the stock market. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We see your name on a lot of lists.

I like that. So we hear you. So you're about entrepreneurship. You're about actually people being empowered and learning. Well, not just doing, but also learning while they're doing. But you also invest perfect thank you so so much

this was great imagine how we feel I loved it thank you so much thank you and I hope to have you back again I hope actually to have Mr. Lang from DRT here soon he'll be a great guest i i think so i think so

too so i hope so uh and let me just say thank you thank you to lisa thank you then i of course this has been earning season again i'm randy at rt you're on twitter and i'm then i have to each day on twitter and this has been san sandra you want to tell me at you want them to follow you on twitter yes at glasgow sandra glasgow underscore sandra the one and only also on twitter so she's not yes i'm a twitter what is i don't know what to call her you're an influencer i'm not an influencer but i love twitter i love twitter yeah there is nothing quite like it in terms of keeping pace again you're on the cutting edge my news yes yeah that's everybody gets their news no wow wow wow wow thank you so much for being here right and we will hopefully

do this again very very soon indeed no problem you That will be for money rather just him we got two thousand a lot I