Life finally settled into a steady rhythm after the chaos of the previous couple of years. It was a relief. I had a job I genuinely enjoyed at MPS, the kids were thriving at school, and Terry seemed happy with Blair. My weekly Wednesday nights and every second weekend with them were precious, and I often took them on trips down to White River to visit Niels and Carey.
On the business front, MPS paid me a decent salary—30,000 Rand a month—but the real incentive was the commission structure. I earned a substantial cut on every new client I brought in, plus a percentage of the 25% annual maintenance fee for the software. Francois was generous: even existing clients upgrading from PS8 to PSNext earned me commission. I threw myself into marketing, mining the old email database and leveraging my entrepreneurial instincts to generate leads. And I discovered something: I had a knack for technical sales.
PSNext, the web-based project management system from Sciforma in Los Gatos, California, just clicked with me. It was a small company—maybe 15 or 20 people—but their product outshone giants like Microsoft Project. I mastered its report writer, customizing interfaces and reports to dazzle clients during presentations. I started landing significant contracts, tailoring the software to meet each client’s specific needs without touching the source code.
One of the biggest challenges in South Africa at the time was BEE (Black Economic Empowerment). Companies needed a high BEE score to compete for government or corporate tenders, based on factors like employment equity. MPS, however, was a homogenous team: Francois, Ian McDonough (our brilliant in-house programmer), Linda (the office manager), and me—all white. Our BEE score was abysmal.
Then Kumba Iron Ore, a massive mining conglomerate, released an RFP for a project and portfolio management system. The document was an inch and a half thick, and I knew PSNext was a perfect fit. But without a strong BEE score, we couldn’t even submit a bid.
I’d already built a rapport with Charles Peters at Lefatshe Technologies, a BEE-compliant company just down the road in Bryanston. I’d pitched PSNext to them before, but they’d never bitten. This time, I proposed a partnership: they’d front the tender, and we’d provide the technology. Francois, ever the pragmatist, gave the green light.
I’ll never forget sitting in Charles’s office, outlining the plan. He made a call to the CEO—a very large black woman in a massive corner office. She listened, then turned to Charles and said, “So, have you worked out your numbers?” I told her we wanted to quote 2 million Rand for the job. She smiled and said, “Right, we’ll put in a tender for 4 million. I’ll get Stella to help you put it together.”
And just like that, the tender was doubled. It was corruption, plain and simple—but it was legal corruption, shielded by the BEE system. Lefatshe wasn’t adding value; they were just the face. I delivered the bid, wrapped in a ribbon, to Kumba’s tender box just before the Friday deadline.
Our presentation was a showstopper. I set up three screens in the boardroom and delivered what I can only describe as a rockstar performance. We won the contract—the largest in MPS history—and I walked away with 80,000 Rand in commission that month.
The implementation was going to take up a lot of time, and by then I’d managed to get John Cartwright involved with MPS on a part-time basis. He would come in and do training on the software, and he also took to it well, so he was going to be involved in the implementation.
But in the meantime, there was another development that was taking place. Francois had decided that he wanted to hedge his bets about South Africa. He’d asked Sciforma if he could have the agency for Australasia, Australia and New Zealand. And they said, “Yeah, we’re not doing anything with it. You’re welcome.”
So using his own money, he flew over there, formed a company, opened a bank account, interviewed people, and eventually appointed a guy called Matt Stein. There were no clients in Australia at this time, but Matt was answering tenders, etc. Matt was as lazy as the day is long and one of the first things he did was hire Maurya Rieder, an American lady with an MBA from Harvard.
My first trip to Sydney was to meet Matt and train him on PSNext. This was before Muayra. He was pleasant and hospitable, but he wasn’t really interested in learning the software. Still, I fell in love with the city: the harbour, the beaches, the low crime, the Aussies. It felt like paradise.
The second trip was different. Francois had grown suspicious—Matt was unresponsive, and something smelled off, Francois up to his eyeballs in the Kumba implementation sent me off to investigate- When I landed, Maurya picked me up unexpectedly at the airport, I had planned on a taxi. It was a Sunday night but we headed staight the the MPS offices in Macquarie Street. On the drive she explained: She believed that Matt had taken a second job and dumped all his responsibilities on her. We found proof in the cupboards at the office, and the next morning, I confronted him. He denied it at first, then admitted it. I got Francois on the phone told him what I discovered and he fired him on the spot. Matt threatened all sorts of legal consequences but he knew damn well he was guilty and in the end left with his tail between his legs. That left Maurya to run the Australian operation alone.
After Matt’s departure, Maurya was left running the Australian operation alone. She soon discovered that Salmat, a large technology firm, had put out a tender for a project management system. She was still learning PSNext but wasn’t nearly skilled enough yet to pull together the kind of polished, high-impact presentation I’d delivered for Kumba. Francois, swamped with the Kumba implementation, asked if I’d handle it. He made it clear there’d be no commission this time—my reward would be a third trip to Australia to present in person. I didn’t hesitate. The chance to return to Sydney was all the incentive I needed, and I jumped at it. Maurya and I worked closely to prepare, and when the day came, we nailed the presentation. We won the tender.
The third trip was for the Salmat tender which Maurya had come accros. It just fell on Maurya and myself to do this presentation to Salmat, and we absolutely nailed it. And we got that tender.
So a couple of really big wins—flew back to South Africa, obviously. The exciting part was a few months later, I was going to be flying out to do the implementation. And it was really lucky because Francois and John, et cetera, were so involved with the Kumba implementation that that freed me up.
Back home, things were looking up. Financially, I was stable. John and I were getting on well, and I’d managed to get him employment at MPS. Not that he was paying me back anything, but at least he wasn’t a drain anymore. I had no romantic entanglements, but my relationship with the kids was stronger than ever, and weekends with Niels and Carey were a joy.
Yet, as always, the calm never lasted. Change was just around the corner.