Orphaned Brands: The Tragedy of short-sighted Brand custodians

Aliko Dangote is famously quoted as having said, "Nigeria is one of the best-kept secrets. A lot of foreigners are not investing because they're waiting for the right time. There is no right time."

It was the wisest man, King Solomon, who said, "He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap."

In a world where feasibility studies and watching the markets are prerequisites for major investment decisions, you won't find many risk-takers venturing into the unknown to plant seeds where no man has dared, unless they have the affirmative assurance that their brand will survive such a risk.

What did King Solomon have in common with Dangote? Excessive wealth.Yet both believed in, "No time like the present." Both also started their reigns at a young age, and lastly, both had some degree of marital woes. You might say, what has their relationship status got to do with anything?" A young man named Samson answers that for us. At his prime, at the peak of his unique selling point, his supernatural endowment of strength-much like Dangote's and Solomon's-he let a woman get close to him who led to his downfall.

Whereas wealth in and of itself may not be scattered because of a domestic squabble, the chances of a wrangle-free succession do become slimmer.

Relationships that you build around your brand can make or break not just you, but also jeopardize the future and continuity of your hard work. The people you bring closest to you can either be pillars to fortify that which you have already started building or dynamite to break down the very foundations you had worked so hard on.

Dangote survived a divorce or two (perhaps more) and was able to bounce back with a fresh new wife as another pillar of strength where her predecessors had waned, for whatever reasons. His wealth has for now been preserved. But he is still with breath in his lungs.

King Solomon drank of the cup of excessiveness, bringing too many too close to him, and well, we can imagine that after his demise, his seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines plus all their children and their children's children fought over the amassed wealth until there was no trackable increase of it two generations down.

We can not avoid relationships, but what we can have is the vigilance to ask the questions that will protect your personal brand early on. Ask the hard questions. Ask about what decisions they would make regarding administering your estate should you be gone.

Ask them why they believe profits would still be registered five years after you are gone. What steps would they have put in place to ensure this?

These are not the sorts of conversations people find pleasant to discuss, but the fact is, the more corporate brands we are fighting so hard to grow and protect are not really for us. We are only custodians. Otherwise wouldn't we be passing on with all the physical wealth we acquire?

When we come to terms with the fact that we are but custodians our perspective on wealth changes. It ceases to be so hoard-based because we realise it is going away eventually.

Your brand yields returns on investment but those returns are meant to be for generations to come. Yet, how short-sighted is your current brand vision? Alternatively, how long-sighted is it?

How many generations down the road do you think your brand can survive? We better start looking past that firstborn whom we want to carry the business forward even if we can plainly see he/she has no interest in the business at all. What strong relationships are you building which, though blood is thicker than water, can turn out to be a case of water being thicker than blood?

Who, in your life cares enough about your brand to want to see its vision live on and not just because they stand to benefit something?

For some, you may have to look at relationships as being as much an asset as any other tangible investment, accounts receivable, etc. One person might become the key to the preservation of all you have worked so hard for. Are you giving them the access they need to learn from you ahead of time, or are you too busy holding your cards too close to your chest? When will it be the right time to trust? I can almost hear many of you chuckle and say, "Never."

A dear friend of mine, McDavid, lost a friend—not mutual—to a kidney-related illness last October. They had been really close. She had needed kidney donors but was not able to get a match in time. At the time of her passing, she was in her late twenties. Her identity, all she stood for, her essence or her yet-to-be-nurtured personal brand, died with her. I asked him whether he would be interested in telling her story by way of a book I was volunteering to ghostwrite. Whereas he said yes, it would be good to remember her, he also quickly gave all the reasons why the book may not be so easy to put together. He chose to observe the wind and not sow, even when I put a seed of an idea in his hands.

This story paints so clearly the parable of how short-lived our prime years are when developing our brands and the question of whether it will all end permanently or live on, perhaps in another form.

I don't believe any man should live and die as inconsequentially as though they had never been born. I also don't believe that brands exist in a vacuum; they are attached by ambilical cord to their founders, and when it's time to go, as the cord is being severed, it will determine if that baby will survive without their founder or not. Steve Jobs must be smiling from wherever he is right now.

To conclude, live a life that constantly transfers the essence of your brand to others around you, especially those you trust to run with the baton when the time comes. Do not wait for the right time to sow these seeds, you may never sow them. In the end, your carelessness or carefulness with the relationships you surrounded yourself with will determine if your blood and sweat will translate into honour for years after you are gone.

McDavid, despite having been close to his deceased friend, said he did not know her so well. I wondered how that was possible, yet they were always hanging out and laughing together. This was one of the reasons why he was not confident about telling her story well.

Who will tell your story? What is your brand continuity plan, be it at the corporate level or personal?