?Hugh Hen­der­son

T&T will have to deal with fi­nan­cial and em­ploy­ment dif­fi­cul­ties from 2012 to 2015, which means our na­tion­al bud­get will con­stant­ly change pri­or­i­ties, and sport may be a ma­jor ca­su­al­ty giv­ing way to health, wa­ter, roads, in­fra­struc­ture, ed­u­ca­tion, nev­er-end­ing crime pre­ven­tion, CLI­CO and now flood dam­age.

As a na­tion we need new think­ing and a new at­ti­tude to re­verse our ma­te­ri­al­is­tic, law­less and cor­rupt lifestyle, so when a re­cent Guardian head­line read "Cen­tral Bank says En­tre­pre­neurs Crit­i­cal to Econ­o­my," I de­cid­ed to out­line my ex­pe­ri­ence with a lead­ing en­tre­pre­neur, Dr Aleem Mo­hammed, own­er of SM Jaleel and Co (SMJ) to pro­vide con­struc­tive sug­ges­tions to those com­mu­ni­ty Sports clubs will­ing to re­flect on "what was; what is and what might be."

By de­f­i­n­i­tion, en­tre­pre­neurs think "out of the box" and do things dif­fer­ent­ly to their com­peti­tors, so our com­mu­ni­ty sports clubs which of­ten strug­gle to sur­vive much less flour­ish, should con­sid­er the SMJ guide to fac­ing chal­lenges and work­ing to­wards achiev­ing goals.

I was for­tu­nate to at­tend SMJ "uni­ver­si­ty" lo­cat­ed in Ota­heite, from 1997 to 2001 where I was ex­posed to sev­er­al lessons in­volv­ing strug­gle, sur­vival, growth and suc­cess. I was em­ployed by SMJ as a "teacher" (I think) but soon be­came a very en­thu­si­as­tic "stu­dent" as I ex­pe­ri­enced true en­tre­pre­neur­ship in dai­ly ac­tion.

To­day, SMJ em­ploys over 800 "grad­u­ates" who op­er­ate in busi­ness con­di­tions their par­ents would not have dreamed pos­si­ble, and who in turn man­u­fac­ture high pro­file suc­cess­ful prod­uct "grad­u­ates" such as Bus­ta, Chub­by, Fru­ta, Oa­sis, Vi­va, Caribbean Cool, and Cool Kids. How did all this evolve and how can the SMJ sto­ry ap­ply to your Sports club?

• SMJ was found­ed in 1924 by a vi­sion­ary, risk-tak­ing, en­tre­pre­neur named Sheik Mo­hammed Jaleel who man­u­fac­tured the soft drink "Red Spot" un­der his home on Prince Al­fred Street in San Fer­nan­do un­til the ear­ly 1970s when he died and the busi­ness closed. One of the Jaleel daugh­ters mar­ried Shafikool Mo­hammed whose youngest son Aleem qual­i­fied as a med­ical doc­tor in the late 70's. Dur­ing his in­tern­ship, Aleem's moth­er (who died last month aged 90) asked if he would be will­ing to sus­pend his med­ical ca­reer for a while to re­vive SMJ in ho­n­our of his grand­fa­ther. Aleem spent many months study­ing every book he could find on man­age­ment, fi­nance and mar­ket­ing, then ad­vised his fam­i­ly he would give it a try but if the ef­fort failed, they had to be pre­pared to be "out on the street" giv­en that a large bank loan would be nec­es­sary. They all agreed and the rest is his­to­ry.

• First, en­tre­pre­neur supreme Dr Aleem ("Doc" to all) called to­geth­er many res­i­dents of Ota­heite, sev­er­al il­lit­er­ate, and told them he had been ad­vised that to build a fac­to­ry would take three years, but "we" were go­ing to build it in one year, which they did by work­ing al­most non-stop in all sorts of con­di­tions, of­ten not go­ing home for sev­er­al days. Next, Doc called an­oth­er group and ex­plained that they were now open for busi­ness but had ex­act­ly ze­ro per cent of mar­ket share, how­ev­er, in three years SMJ would cap­ture 30 per cent of the mar­ket if they worked their butts off every day. That too hap­pened. There­fore, the ini­tial im­por­tant lessons to be learnt from SMJ are (a) the need for de­tailed self-prepa­ra­tion and on­go­ing mon­i­tor­ing of com­pet­i­tive ac­tiv­i­ty in your in­dus­try (b) un­der­stand­ing the pos­si­ble con­se­quences of risk-tak­ing both pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive; (c) goal set­ting with time frames to achieve such goals (d) mo­ti­va­tion, com­mu­ni­ca­tion and faith in one's em­ploy­ees which buy their loy­al­ty and will­ing­ness to go the ex­tra mile; (e) demon­strat­ing high pro­file, vis­i­ble lead­er­ship by "walk­ing the talk" every day. Does this man­age­ment ap­proach re­flect your own modus operan­di?

• Oth­er ma­jor SMJ lessons for con­sid­er­a­tion are pay­ing strict at­ten­tion to Doc's two favourite words, "pas­sion" and "dif­fer­ence." He of­ten re­peat­ed that if you are not pas­sion­ate about your work, "please don't work here." For ex­am­ple, when a case of Bus­ta, Chub­by, Fru­ta or Oa­sis came off the as­sem­bly line, Doc ex­pect­ed you fig­u­ra­tive­ly to hug it, kiss it and care­ful­ly put it to bed in the ware­house, be­cause the sale of that case was "your bread and but­ter." If no-one pur­chased a SMJ prod­uct, the com­pa­ny would close down, "so un­der­stand well it is the cus­tomer not SMJ who pays your salary so you must de­light your cus­tomer every day."

In terms of com­pet­i­tive­ness, Doc kept stress­ing "we have to be dif­fer­ent. SMJ can nev­er be big­ger or bet­ter or more fa­mous than Co­ca Co­la and Pep­si, but we will fight them on 'dif­fer­ence'," which is where the size, shape and price of Chub­by came in­to play and with Doc's gift of cre­ativ­i­ty, vi­sion and use of his net­work in the Mid­dle East, Chub­by quick­ly be­came an in­ter­na­tion­al brand in over 40 coun­tries. I re­call sit­ting in the board room of an­oth­er com­pa­ny the day Chub­by was launched and the news was ridiculed be­cause "Jaleel can nev­er main­tain that launch price." Amaz­ing­ly, that iden­ti­cal price re­mained for years. I watched all this un­fold with great ad­mi­ra­tion, and the les­son is that re­sults don't sim­ply drop from the clouds-it takes brain storm­ing, ef­fort, tim­ing, hard work and re­lent­less com­mit­ment. Re­mem­ber, "in every group of peo­ple, there are those who watch things hap­pen; those who wait for things to hap­pen; those who hope noth­ing hap­pens and very few who ac­tu­al­ly make things hap­pen." Doc and his team made things hap­pen on an on­go­ing ba­sis. Do you and your sports club ex­ec­u­tive try to be "dif­fer­ent" from your com­peti­tors and do you make things hap­pen? Are your club mem­bers "pas­sion­ate" about be­ing suc­cess­ful?

• In this short ar­ti­cle, oth­er mo­ti­va­tion­al and thought pro­vok­ing lessons prac­ticed at SMJ "uni­ver­si­ty" are (1) ex­cel­lent use of "woman pow­er;" (2) strict fi­nan­cial con­trol; (3) re­silience, (4) up­dat­ing equip­ment to stay ahead of com­peti­tors; (5) need for mar­ket ex­pan­sion, (6) re­duc­tion of waste and (7) the im­por­tance of God in busi­ness.

(1) Doc's wife, An­na is a top class busi­ness woman in her own right and she has proved her worth in gold over the years head­ing the mar­ket­ing de­part­ment from her Ch­agua­nas of­fice. She in turn hired sev­er­al qual­i­fied and suc­cess­ful fe­male brand man­agers in se­nior po­si­tions. (2) Doc's fa­ther, Mr Shafikool came to the of­fice every day even in his late 70's and signed every SMJ com­pa­ny cheque, so there was no pos­si­bil­i­ty of com­pa­ny mon­ey go­ing miss­ing or be­ing spent un­nec­es­sar­i­ly (un­like CLI­CO). (3) SMJ's re­silience has been test­ed first­ly by wicked ru­mours spread by com­peti­tors in the ear­ly days and in re­cent times, by two se­ri­ous fires which de­stroyed much of the com­pound, yet in no time flat, loy­al em­ploy­ees helped re­build their work­place. If one vis­its SMJ, one can see the lat­est up­grade in the fac­to­ry or the ware­house to keep up with mod­ern tech­niques/equip­ment. (5) Ota­heite is not ex­act­ly New York, but Doc saw that "small" can be "big" and im­me­di­ate­ly ex­plored the ex­port mar­ket leav­ing slow thinkers to stay in T&T. In 1997, we used to play wind­ball crick­et on Sun­days in the enor­mous yard. How­ev­er, in one year's time, wind­ball crick­et play­ers were re­placed by count­less con­tain­ers filled with Chub­by to be shipped around the world.

(6) Doc did not "eat nice" when he saw ma­te­ri­als be­ing wast­ed through neg­li­gence. He kept re­mind­ing em­ploy­ees that while they could leave SMJ any time they chose, he could not be­cause it was "my mon­ey jump­ing up with the bank loan to keep you em­ployed." (7) The im­por­tance of God in busi­ness: I sat at many in­ter­views with Doc who al­ways tried to as­cer­tain how im­por­tant God was in the life of the ap­pli­cant. For Doc, re­li­gion is an in­te­gral part of life and busi­ness and he want­ed ev­i­dence of that in the val­ue sys­tems and morals of his em­ploy­ees. Is God in­volved in your Sports club's ac­tiv­i­ties?

In short, does your ex­ec­u­tive see the bot­tle as half full and be­lieve that there is a sil­ver lin­ing "some­where out there" wait­ing to be dis­cov­ered? Not enough! Doc al­ways saw the bot­tle as "over­flow­ing" and odds or no odds against, he not on­ly saw the sil­ver lin­ing in the dis­tance, he be­lieved he could ac­tu­al­ly touch it.

Be open-mind­ed, be­lieve in your­self, be eth­i­cal and trust in God. Good luck, and keep your sports clubs alive and kick­ing. The na­tion needs as much sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ty as you can sup­ply through an ac­tive and pas­sion­ate club mem­ber­ship.