Maya the Toothpick Queen

Maya was standing at the precipice. Everything was carving into this black hole. The void was so deep and her heart was pounding. Her mouth went dry. “I am being sucked in,” she yelled. The force was too great; she fell in screaming. She woke up suddenly, sweating profusely.

The next morning Maya was standing at the top of a 21-story building skeleton. All around her stood a graveyard of similar skeletons. As far as the eye could see was a city expanding. Five years earlier this had been a bush-land.

Today, tarmac roads lead to avenues, boulevards and streets. These were going to be office and apartment blocks, a beautiful sight when you saw the plans. But all activity had withered and come to a halt in the last six months.  The completed block had few occupants. The bubble had burst, and it took many people with it.

Maya’s company was no exception. The vortex had sucked her in. She was heavily in debt. She felt an invisible hand pulling her down, she had to hold on to a column to keep her balance. Her mind was fighting not to drown.  

As she stood there she had a flash back to how it all started.

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She was 9 years old and was begging with her brother Jack. They were rummaging garbage bins behind restaurants in the city. They never knew their father. He was never mentioned. She remembered her mother who slaved to provide for their food and education. Mother always worked late. They always slept before she came home. One day, she never came and no one knew where she had gone. A neighbour visited them after three days and shared the bad news. Their mother had been crossing a road when a speeding car hit her. She died on the spot. Her body was at the mortuary and it was up to Maya to make the burial arrangement.

The local community came together to buy a coffin and pay for her transport to the city cemetery. A few people came to console with the two children, but that is all they could do in a harsh city. Soon Maya and Jack were alone.  Their mother had no family she had been an orphan.

They had to leave the house they lived in because the landlord demanded for pay despite their cry for mercy. They were thrown out, with nothing but a bag of clothes. The street became their home.

They soon found a community of street urchins, and Maya didn’t just survive but thrived. She became the natural leader that the destitute children needed desperately. It just so happened that as they ate from restaurant bins, she noticed toothpicks. Some of them still well packed and her inquisitive mind raced to answer questions. “Can I sell this?” “Will they buy this from me?” She asked herself.

She walked through the city to find out where she could buy toothpicks. She discovered a wholesaler, the only one in the city. As she looked at his store of toothpicks, her heart pounded. “One day I will sell toothpicks to every person in this city,” she muttered under her breath.

She decided to ask how much they were and struck a conversation with the owner and got to discover that with $2 she could buy a box. She went back to her shack, and decided she could raise that amount. The easiest path to get there was in collecting littered plastic bottles and selling them off.  After rallying her team, they were able to raise $4 after two days of collection. With $2 dollars in her hand she ran all the way to the distributor and bought the pack.

Her next challenge was selling toothpicks to restaurants. She overcame this by approaching restaurants closest to her shanty community. These were not 5 star establishments nor 1 star either. She made a quick buck converting the $2 to $10. She went back home elated and the following day bought more from the wholesaler, repeating this fete over the next couple of months. The reason Maya was so successful lay in her exceptional ability to sell.

She turned foe into friend, restaurant managers into staunch supporters. At 10 years of age, she was no pushover.

It thus became obvious that her fellow street urchins would be trained by her on the fine art of delivering toothpicks. She achieved this by moving them into a two bedroomed house which she convinced the owner would save the lives of some hardworking children. She failed to mention they were 10 in number. She bought them clothes, ensured they bathed daily and ate well. They had to look presentable, when delivering toothpicks. She didn’t want her business tarnished.  

When Maya was able to make enough to feed, shelter and clothe her team, she enrolled in a school. She loved learning, and her heart ached when she missed many days of school, as they begged in the streets. Her routine became, one where she would go to evening classes to finish a high school diploma, while taking an accounting, sales and logistics class she had convinced the director of a multinational to offer at a community centre as CSR. She wolfed down everything she was taught with a hunger that drove the director, Martha, to give her more material for her to study. As she did, she became better in business.

On her 16th birthday, Maya was more mature that most 30 year olds, she behaved and looked older. It was then that she was finally able to become the sole buyer of all the stock the toothpick wholesaler had for the first time. She had also recently ordered her first shipment of a container full of Chinese made toothpicks. She then expanded her business to other towns and cities. Quietly she was becoming the toothpick queen. 

Martha who became her mentor and urged her to enrol for a formal accounting class. On her first day, she was shocked at the reasons people gave for going to school. “I want a degree to be marketable for a job,” one said. “My parents want me to get a good education,” said another. For her the 2 hours during the week and the full day on Saturday she gave to this course was to empower her to grow her mind and her business. She drank at the wellspring of her teachers and loved it.

In her class was a banker. He had risen from a clerk to become a senior manager, and they became fast friends. He advised her to open a bank account and save her money so that she could be able to raise capital for her business.

The following morning, she took all the money she had in the house, and brought it to the banker’s office. It was $32,103.21. The banker was shocked that this teenager was making such money. She explained her journey to him and he decided there and then he would help her build her business.

At that point toothpicks were bringing her $8000 a month. In her class she also met a real estate person who suggested she buy a piece of land in the city suburbs for $30,000. She quickly took all her savings and bought the land. It wasn’t that large, and was on the poor side of town. But, she bought it, then build a 3-story building with no architect or formal plan in place. It wasn’t much to look at but she was now a landlord with 24 tenants that paid her $210 dollars each monthly. Over the next few years she repeated this feat 10 times. By the time she was 21 years, she was well on her way to becoming a millionaire and she had no debt.

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But here she was 23 years old building a 21-story building, deeply in debt, because her banker had promised her it would work. She felt a knot in her stomach. Was she about to lose everything?

She was a fighter. Despite all she was facing she had recently started a clothing import business, a restaurant, and was in talks to launch her own toothpick manufacturing plant.

The situation was bad, two blocks down the street the owner had jumped from the top floor, a suicide. This repeated itself a couple of times around the city. She chose to approach the banker with a proposal.

It was as bold as it was crazy.

She offered to renegotiate for 6 properties, not just hers. The other five were in the same stage of construction as hers, but the owners wanted out, the stress was too much. The banker loved the proposal, since he didn’t know what he was supposed to do with skeleton buildings and her proposal for repayment was better than no amount.

She agreed with the owners that she would buy at a fraction, and pay over a period of two years. She then consolidated the six properties into one compound, since they stood side by side.

She then approached a tycoon she had met at a networking event she had arranged. “I am an old man, and I love the way you are selling, and your boldness in the face of danger, young girl. Is very inspiring. I will deposit the monthly amount in your loan account.” He said. And for the next two years he did as he had promised.

She then went back to her running businesses and every month took everything she made and starting finishing the six buildings one after the other. Hers was the only operation that went on during the property crash, meaning the construction companies fought to get her account. In the end it costed her half what it would have costed to finish the buildings.

Fast forward two years later, 3 buildings were complete and the market had rebounded. Her price was premium and she made a killing selling these for a couple of million dollars, clearing all her debt.  

It hadn’t been easy. She had made quality decisions with nerves of steel, she had leveraged her networks ensuring she was able to overcome the immense opposition she faced.  She was truly the Toothpick Queen. 

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