Mark Cuban is the billionaire who appears on the CNBC TV show Shark Tank and I recently finished an abbreviated version of his book, “How to win at the sport of business”.  The one thing he did emphasise is that basically you don’t get anywhere without working hard.  To that end, he recommends reading, reading and more reading – something that I have always pushed my staff and everybody I know on.  As he says, talking about hard work, “Sweat equity is the most valuable equity there is.  Know your business and industry better than anyone else in the world.”  

He goes on to say that you need to have staff who are as passionate about your business as you are and who are as keen to deliver top service as you are.  Without the client’s you cannot achieve anything and I do my very best to root out any staff in my office who I don’t believe are passionate, either about working or the job that they do.  I would like to believe that the vast majority of my staff, if not the overwhelming majority of my staff, are extremely motivated about the work they do in helping people whose lives, in some cases, have been devastated.  I am very proud of the team that I have and it is no wonder that staff who have worked at other firms, or have left us and returned to our firm, say that the quality of work that we do and the passion that our employees have for the work, simply cannot be matched at other firms.  

Readers of my blog will remember I have detailed jeans in the jean market before and the fact that I really never thought True Religion was well designed jeans.  I know that they are popular here in South Africa, but their popularity has been going downhill in many other countries for many years and obviously filing for bankruptcy tells you how bad things have become.   Apparently, this is largely because of women in particular are moving to wearing leggings and to yoga pants – they say those types of pants which typically retail at about $89 or $98 are far better value than the jeans at $300.  Some jeans are benefiting though, Levi’s in particular, which are considered a cheaper brand of jeans, are doing better than before but the premium, more expensive jeans such as 7 For All Mankind and Hudson fell 8% last year.  Men apparently favour Levi’s and women apparently tend to favour denim from economy brands like H&M, Old Navy and Forever 21.   

It is amazing how, despite the fact that year after year we see higher temperatures, many people still deny global warming.  In fact, the Republicans in the American government now make it one of the basic beliefs of their party not to admit that there is such a thing as global warming.  Sometimes they concede the temperatures are warming, but they say it is not because of man.  

Around the world we are starting to see more and more bizarre weather and weather patterns.  It is clear that something is amiss with the weather, and it will become more and more difficult for people to stay in places that are really hot.  If this trend does continue, and if you believe in science you will know it is going to continue, then people will find it far more attractive to move to areas which are now cooler.  In the meantime, we all have to, in our own way, start seeing what we can do about the environment and the way we are living.  There are plenty of things that one can do - beginning with recycling your rubbish, minimising your wastage and packaging materials and pushing politicians to adopt more environmentally friendly laws.  The fact of the matter is we all have something invested in this – not only the future of our children, but the value of our houses.  If temperatures continue the way they are, people may not want to live in Johannesburg in summer in 20 years’ time!

The 747 was the first plane to be known as a “Jumbo Jet”, but Boeing has decided its days are over.  Apparently, because it uses four engines it is much more expensive to operate than most of the twin jet aeroplanes that are used these days and there is very little interest in the plane anymore, with most airlines retiring their 747’s.

Boeing’s new plane, which they expect to be far more popular, is the 777X.  This will seat between 350 to 425 passengers and is set to debut in 2020.   It has the largest jet engines ever developed by the aerospace industry and 7 different airlines have ordered 340 of the planes.  The big selling point of this plane is that it is the most fuel efficient plane ever, using about 12% less fuel per seat on the plane than any other competing plane according to Boeing.  It is also going to be wider than the current planes in use and will be able to take passengers more easily on long haul flights.  I am still waiting for technology to improve a little bit more, so that long international flights reduce in duration – in other words, take less time!

I started my working career in a variety of interesting jobs, beginning first with the Checkers in Sandton City where I was a cashier and later I worked in the fruit & veggie department.  Subsequently I worked at Absa Bank in Rosebank, and also later as a waiter at Spur in Randburg – I should tell the story as to how I had to sue the branch, who settled with me on my terms, after the manageress tried to cheat me on my commission.  Anyway, that is for another day, because what I am writing about today is what some people refer to as gratuities and we generally call it tips or tipping.  

As somebody who worked in restaurants, I know how important tips are and I have always taken an attitude that, whether I am at a restaurant, or I am putting petrol in my car, I should tip.  I generally give R10 when filling up my car with petrol, which I think is probably more generous than most people, but I strongly believe that if you are mean you will struggle to do well in life.  I have often observed that people who are generally generous have their generosity flowing back to them.  In other words, I honestly believe if you don’t tip, or are not generous, it will cost you in the end.  

Having said that, it is interesting that in different cultures tipping is either frowned upon or accepted and the amounts vary considerably.  For example, in South Africa, if you are pleased with the service you have received you would give somebody 10% and possibly a little bit more.  If you gave somebody 10% in America it would either be a sign that you are living in poverty or that you are absolutely disgusted with the service.  Most restaurants in the USA would provide on your bill, which they call a check, a calculation of what an 18% tip is, a 20% and a 22% tip.  In other words, if you think the service is decent you are meant to give 20% and if you think it was really great then you should give 22%!  I think there would be a lot more people in South Africa interested in being a waiter if that is the amount that people tipped!

I would love to know what you think is the best holiday you have gone on or what type of holiday you prefer to go on the most.  I have some staff members who have travelled to far more countries of the world than I have and I have done all sorts of holidays ranging from cheap holidays to very expensive holidays.  In fact, one or two years into my law practice I booked a tent in Kruger Park that could sleep 4 people and if I remember correctly the cost was R100 a night – probably the equivalent of about R400 a night now, or maybe less than that, and as the holiday got close I realised I could not afford it.  

I spoke to my girlfriend and she arranged her sister and her boyfriend to come with us on the trip so as to cut our cost down to R50!  I can honestly say that the over 100+ nights I spent in Kruger Park are some of the best and most relaxing times of my life and I have always loved Kruger although I dread the drive home.  

Anybody who has children will tell you that it is very hard to beat any destination that either has a swimming pool with lots of other kids in it or the beach – and the great thing about the beach is that beach holidays are generally pretty cheap unless of course you are choosing some fancy beach in Cape Town, which is pretty pointless with kids anyway, because they cannot swim in that freezing water!  I also loved holidays that I took with my family when I was about 10 to 13 years old where we used to go to the mountains quite often.  There is something about the mountains, the thinner air, etc that I love, and recently I went on a skiing holiday for the first time in my life.  I touched snow for the first time in my life probably only about 4 years ago and to have a white Christmas was tremendously exciting for me and my children.  

It is amazing for me that I first got to touch snow when I was approximately 43 or 44 years old and yet my kids have done it at the age of 6.  At the end of the day, I think that travel, relatively speaking, has actually gotten cheaper over the years in terms of air flights, etc, and I came from a very middleclass family where there were times for example we could not afford to eat meat and had vegetarian meals only for about three months.  It is not something I am embarrassed about at all – I think coming from less has always made me work harder than those who come from more.  There is also a saying, which is quite true as well in my opinion, that money cannot buy class and likewise, you don’t need to have money to have class.

I don’t think most users of Uber will be excited that they are now introducing tipping, but their drivers certainly will be.   It is going to take some time to get to South Africa, as it has just started being tested in three cities in America, including Seattle and Houston, and towards the end of July Uber plan to roll it out to more American cities.  No doubt, it will not take long after that before it is introduced all around the world.  

Drivers will obviously be thrilled to have a chance to earn more than before, but I do hope in our country that money finds its way to the actual drivers and not the owners because in most cases the person driving the car is not actually the owner.  What would be interesting to find out is whether or not the drivers have to rate the passenger (because passengers also get rated by the drivers for those of you who don’t know) before or after they get notification as to whether you left them a tip? 

I would be interested to hear what features you would like to see on some of the apps that you use.  The one feature I really want does exist, but only on jailbroken iPhones.  That is not something that appeals to me, although it is probably not that dangerous for your phone – if anybody knows they can certainly let me know!  The feature I would like would be on WhatsApp.  

I often have some of my best thoughts late at night and I like to send voice notes to staff members, friends and advocates that I work with.  I would love a feature that allows a delayed transmission of those notes so that they go out as the working day starts at 8.00/8.30am.  Unfortunately, that is not available on the usual version of WhatsApp, but there are a number of message delay apps that are available on jail broken phones and I really cannot understand why they don’t implement that feature for normal iPhones.  It would also be another great way to set yourself reminders or to remember to wish somebody something on a certain day, etc.

I am one of those people that understand fully why the LLB has become an under-graduate degree, but I do think it is a pity.  Certainly, we needed a transformation of the legal profession in South Africa and dropping the requirement that you had a degree before doing the LLB made sense.  The problem is that it puts a lot of people out in the market who have no experience of working, no experience of life and have studied nothing else in their lives, other than a law degree.  

For those of you that are not familiar with the situation, in the old days if you just wanted to study a law degree without any other degree first, you would study a B.Proc.  Attorneys like me generally got a B.Com or a BA before their LLB and their LLB was a post-graduate degree which it no longer is.  In other words, you needed to have another degree before you could even do your LLB.  The top Universities only took those with the best marks into their LLB program and if you didn’t do well enough in your first degree you would go to another university to do your LLB.  In my years those that never made it into Wits went to RAU which is now the University of Johannesburg.  So you had to compete to get into Wits after school to do a degree in the first place and then plus or minus 1000 people who already had a degree would compete for 200 spots in the LLB program at Wits.  The B.Proc was unpopulatr though because it was seen as an inferior degree and so eventually it was scrapped and the LLB was made into a 4 year degree just like the B.Proc had always been that you could do without a previous degree.

The problem now is that there are 17 institutions in South Africa offering LLB degrees and they are obviously churning out too many students, many of them that are fairly weak – and I don’t just mean the students – I mean the Universities too.  In fact, four Universities have recently been informed by the Council of Higher Education that unless they improve their Bachelor of Law degrees that their accreditation will be removed.  The four Universities, whose degrees are being questioned are North West University, Walter Sisulu University, University of South Africa and University of the Free State. For example, the criticism of the Walter Sisulu University is that their programme at the University does not have enough adequate senior staff and that the majority of the staff members have the LLB as a highest qualification – which is not really good enough for them all to be teachers.  The report goes on to say that the teaching in law degree resources are inadequate, impacting negatively on the achievement of the intended outcomes of the qualifications.  

Discovery is apparently preparing to launch a banking service in 2018 and while nobody knows when that will be exactly, it is expected in the first half of the year.  It will be interesting to see what services they bring to the market and how they compete, but I am sure, like most things Discovery is involved with, it will be a success.  

FNB recently launched a new single account for most of its customers in their private client/private wealth section which they call FNB Fusion and what FNB Fusion allows is for people to have a single credit limit across their credit card and their overdraft – so it does not really matter where you use it, it can extend across all of them.  At the moment, it is quite difficult for clients of banks, because often you will have one limit on your credit card, another limit on your overdraft and yet another on your mortgage bond and so you can access credit in about three different places, but obviously putting all of them together is far better.  The 55 days interest free is going to be turned into a 30 day interest free credit and it also means that for FNB clients they will in future only have one bank card and not three different cards and to remember three different pin numbers, etc.  

It will be interesting to see what products or innovations Discovery bring to the banking market in an effort to get clients.

One of the recent editions of Time magazine had a cover article that basically said it is almost impossible to lose weight.  Essentially, most people who win all these weight loss competitions almost all get back to their original weight within a few years and some of them even end up weighing more.  They were trying to isolate what it is that leads to some people managing to successfully lose weight and others not.  So far the evidence seems to be very unclear.  Nobody seems to have any idea what works, other than it appears to be that different types of diets work for different people and what works for some people does not work for others.  Some of the basics obviously include exercise, which is largely in the form of walking and the restriction of the diet, but whether that restriction relates to just eating proteins or what it is, seems to differ from one person to the next.  I have been fighting very hard this year to lose weight and I’ve had fairly dramatic results, but for me it always gets down to severely reducing what I eat at the same time as increasing dramatically how many steps I take a day.  The truth is, it is extremely hard work and it seems the older you get the harder it is.  Basically, what the article really reveals is that you have to try and prevent yourself from putting on weight in the first place because once you have put it on your body seems to do its very best to fight you to stay at that level!