The term “mo­mager” has be­come pop­u­lar in re­cent times.

As the name im­plies, it is a com­bi­na­tion of “mom” and “man­ag­er,” and refers to a moth­er who man­ages her child’s or chil­dren’s ca­reers.

But Eliz­a­beth “La­dy” Mon­tano the moth­er of so­ca star Machel, and al­so his man­ag­er for over 20 years does not as­so­ciate her­self with that term.

“First to be­gin, I keep it sep­a­rate. I was nev­er a mo­mager. I was a moth­er and I was a man­ag­er and I kept the two roles very sep­a­rate,” Mon­tano told the Busi­ness Guardian in a sit-down in­ter­view.

“The pub­lic nev­er un­der­stood it, but when I was a man­ag­er, Machel was my boss and Machel is a tough boss be­cause he al­ways de­mands a cer­tain set of ex­cel­lence,” she said.

“How­ev­er, when we are home as moth­er and son it is a to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent dy­nam­ic,” Mon­tano said.

And Mon­tano be­lieves that sep­a­ra­tion was able to help their re­la­tion­ship blos­som, al­though oth­ers may have been scep­ti­cal about their dy­nam­ic.

“We are very close. He does noth­ing with­out com­ing to me. We make jokes and it is to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent so it was no big thing to me. It was a prob­lem to the pub­lic or some of the peo­ple but as I al­ways tell my chil­dren ‘know your truth’,” she said.

Speak­ing to the Busi­ness Guardian at the Xtatik of­fice lo­cat­ed along Gor­don Street in Port-of-Spain, Mon­tano gave us some of her tips in man­ag­ing one of this coun­try’s most recog­nis­able faces.

Tenac­i­ty is nec­es­sary

Mon­tano said her tenac­i­ty helped her achieve against all odds.

“Every­thing I do I try to achieve ex­cel­lence. I do things in a very de­tailed way and I am very com­mit­ted. So that once I am set a task, you can bet on it that it is go­ing to go through 100 per cent,” she said.

“I am not claim­ing to be the bright­est or any­thing but I go through re­al de­tails to find every­thing and to make sure that every­thing is cor­rect. I just do it my way,” she said.

One of the mo­ments that Mon­tano said helped de­fine her char­ac­ter was when she did not pass the Com­mon En­trance ex­am­i­na­tion.

“I got a late call. I at­tend­ed St Crispins in Wood­brook and then I was called out to St James Sec­ondary. When I reached down I saw all these chil­dren in my class. And I was watch­ing them and I said to my­self ‘not one of you all will beat me from to­day’,” she said.

Dur­ing that pe­ri­od Mon­tano usu­al­ly placed in the top three in ex­ams.

Com­pete with your­self

But she said since then her com­pe­ti­tion has al­ways been with her­self.

“I made study­ing part of my life. I did ex­treme­ly well just ap­ply­ing my­self and go­ing to be ex­cel­lent and com­par­ing one per­for­mance with the pre­vi­ous one,” she said.

While Mon­tano was not fo­cused on busi­ness sub­jects the first hint of her en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it be­gan when she start­ed to teach and babysit younger chil­dren and charge them 25 cents for her ser­vices.

Mon­tano even­tu­al­ly left school in 1968 and, af­ter a brief stint work­ing in the pub­lic ser­vice, suc­cess­ful­ly ap­plied to the Mau­si­ca Teach­ers Col­lege.

Apart from get­ting a ca­reer out of this, Mon­tano al­so found a hus­band.

“When I grad­u­at­ed from there I start­ed teach­ing in Mar­aval and then I got mar­ried to Win­ston, had my chil­dren then I went to Ja­maica to do my de­gree in ed­u­ca­tion,” she said.

She then be­came a guid­ance coun­sel­lor.

Help oth­ers find them­selves

Then the Mon­tanos dis­cov­ered Machel’s tal­ent.

“The main thing that helped us to be suc­cess­ful with both chil­dren is that from very ear­ly we ob­served our chil­dren’s in­ter­ests and al­though Mon­ty and I were teach­ers and Mon­ty be­came a ge­ol­o­gist and I be­came a guid­ance of­fi­cer we nev­er forced our chil­dren in­to do­ing what we do,” she said.

“You have to ob­serve your chil­dren, you have to know what they are in­ter­est­ed in, and you have to sup­port them you are not to push your child in­to some­thing that you feel you want them to be be­cause then they will not ex­cel,” Mon­tano said.

At that time Machel’s man­age­ment team com­prised both his par­ents.

Mon­tano was do­ing the pub­lic re­la­tions and pro­mo­tions but had to in­crease her role af­ter her hus­band had to go off­shore to work.

She took vol­un­tary ter­mi­na­tion in 1989 and start­ed trav­el­ling with Machel as his “man­ag­er, chief cook and bot­tle wash­er.”

“The thing is al­though I was the man­ag­er to Machel I was more like a sup­port and con­fi­dante be­cause Machel had al­ways known what he want­ed and what he want­ed to do and I was very hap­py I could be there so I could as­sist,” she said.

“As I tell peo­ple I am an ac­tion la­dy, the go-to la­dy so that he knows if he wants some­thing he could come to me. I sup­port­ed him, and a lot of peo­ple who were in our band were my stu­dents, they came from the vil­lage so it was easy for me I loved the trav­el­ling and be­ing with them and I loved to see him per­form I am al­ways there in the front. It was not hard be­cause I didn’t re­al­ly have to do much but to sup­port and be there to de­liv­er,” Mon­tano said.

Ed­u­cate your­self

Mon­tano said to be­come the best man­ag­er she could be for her sons she sought to get bet­ter ed­u­cat­ed.

She did a post-grad­u­ate en­ter­tain­ment man­age­ment diplo­ma as a re­sult.

Mon­tano has writ­ten a book called King of So­ca chron­i­cling her son’s jour­ney.

The book first be­gan as her post-grad the­sis.

“I al­so want­ed peo­ple to take away that it was not smooth sail­ing it was not any gold spoon. It was hard work, sac­ri­fice, blood sweat and tears,” she said.

Mon­tano said she be­lieves her son was born des­tined for great­ness. Af­ter be­ing born still­born, Machel was al­so switched at birth.

“They brought me a chub­by East In­di­an child with clothes that I did not recog­nise with Mon­tano tag on his hand. They had ex­changed the chil­dren,” she said.

“It just hap­pened that that child was the child of one of our friends who went to Mau­si­ca with us and it was a pop­u­lar fam­i­ly so this child grew up know­ing he was ex­changed with Machel,” Mon­tano said.

She said this is why Machel has Je­sus as a mid­dle name.

Know when to step away

In 2014 Mon­tano of­fi­cial­ly re­tired as Machel’s man­ag­er.

She was even­tu­al­ly re­placed by Che Kothari.

Mon­tano said she re­tired be­cause she knew she could not take Machel’s ca­reer any fur­ther.

“You have to know when it is time to let go. With me, I knew be­cause for ex­am­ple, I was not that ad­vanced in tech­nol­o­gy and Machel is very much on to tech­nol­o­gy and then I was not,” she said.

Nev­er live in re­gret

Mon­tano said she does not live her life filled with any re­gret.

“I don’t ever live in re­morse. I don’t ever re­gret any­thing be­cause I sim­ply be­lieve that des­tiny is planned. I tell my chil­dren every day that life is a puz­zle and you have to fit in the parts. But it is not us fit­ting in the parts, it is the cre­ator fit­ting it in but you have to help him,” Mon­tano said.

“So I tell my chil­dren nev­er to be dis­ap­point­ed if some­thing hap­pens, it is sup­posed to hap­pen. I told Machel nev­er be dis­ap­point­ed in com­pe­ti­tion do not quar­rel with the judges’ de­ci­sion, do not ar­gue be­cause some­times the best does not al­ways win. Just know that the judges’ de­ci­sion is fi­nal and you have to know that that is your best and next year you will bet­ter your best. So I nev­er live in re­gret,” she said.

Set mea­sur­able goals

Mon­tano’s book is ex­pect­ed to hit shelves in June.

“I would like my book to be­come a best­seller so to do that there are cer­tain cri­te­ria and one is that you have to sell at least 5,000 copies in the first week of the launch so I want to aim at that,” she said.

She said the book is meant to be in­spir­ing and al­so to help clear up pre­vi­ous mis­con­cep­tions.

Mon­tano said she has al­ways felt em­pow­ered.

“I nev­er see my­self as a fe­male out­side of be­ing a wife and a moth­er. Out­side of that I am a per­son and when I go to you, I go to you as a per­son with a spe­cial tal­ent or a spe­cial some­thing to of­fer so I don’t ever look at my­self as be­ing in a man’s world or any­thing like that,” she said.

“I would give women op­por­tu­ni­ties and youth but to my­self, I think I am em­pow­ered and how am I em­pow­ered. I was ed­u­cat­ed and I used what I had, free ed­u­ca­tion and every­thing to my ben­e­fit, whether I was a girl or not I did that and I had the op­por­tu­ni­ty as a Trinida­di­an and as a fe­male Trinida­di­an to go to school just like a boy and I just had to do my best,” she said.

“So if I go to you and you don’t want to give me a job be­cause I am a woman, it is your loss and that is how I faced life all the time,” she said.