I have to admit to having been very reluctant to start reading The Last Resort, Douglas Roger’s family-based account of the crisis in Zimbabwe (or Zimbodia, as a Sunday Times satirist calls it). By default, any white person in Zimbabwe (especially an exile), is a victim, and there are only so many victim stories one can bear to read.

It’s not that I don’t empathise with what’s happened, nor that I don’t condemn Mugabe’s misrule; it’s just that Zim books seem to follow a theme. It’s also probably a lot harder for South Africans to read such accounts, because one can imagine the same thing happening here. There’s probably too much ‘structure’ to allow it to happen, but when one looks at the worst of Malema and other ANC comrades, it is possible to negatively predict a slow slide into the abyss. For us, Zimbabwe – both as a country and topic – is very close to home.

And yet The Last Resort is different. Rogers builds his story around characters that he has developed as well as any novelist. Whether they are his parents, surprisingly cheerfully – and at times grimly – holding on to their property, or the fearsome ‘war veterans’, they are fully-formed people that rise from the engagingly-written pages.

The central characters in the book are his parents, who may be more real to me because of their ‘Southern African-ness’, but I suspect they’d be as real to a reader in Los Angeles, London or Auckland. I’m not suggesting that being white and assailed in Zimbabwe is anywhere near the experience of Jews in the Holocaust, but I couldn’t help thinking of Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, the central theme of which is that – regardless of how dire the circumstances – we have the freedom to choose our response.

Rogers doesn’t hold back on facts and figures, but because they are woven so seamlessly into a narrative of characters with whom the reader is able to empathise there is no chance of getting bored or overwhelmed by them.

Read The Last Resort, if not for the story it tells, then for the masterful way in which Rogers has told the Zimbabwe story with such humanness. And no ‘victims’.

I can’t say I’ve ever thought of myself as a Post Office kind of guy. In my aspirations – and very, very occasionally in real life – I dine at Michelin-starred restaurants, buy my shirts at Ted Baker, make my travel bookings online, avoid fast food and generally live a privileged life.

No, the South African Post Office is not a brand or service with which I feel any affinity. It is desperate in every possible respect. The design approaches Soviet-era grimness, and the queues move at a pace that give the expression “slow-moving” a new extreme. I’ve been in many queues; what distinguishes Post Office queues from all others is the uniform displeasure etched into the faces of everyone else in the queue. Even the queues at Heathrow security checkpoints seem happier.

When you finally get to the counter, you’re likely to find that similar transactions will be handled with random consistency, depending upon which staff member is helping you, or which branch you’re in. If there is such a thing as a Post Office training manual, it is used as a vague guide rather than the set of inviolable protocols it should be. What is consistent is the length of time it takes for the person behind the counter to do whatever they do.

All the Nomushop.co.za orders are sent using the Post Office’s counter-to-counter service, so I’ve been spending a lot of time in the Post Office. Much more time than I would choose to.

In the spirit of remaining positive and solution orientated, here are a few initiatives that could yield results:

• Identify functions that could be changed to self-service
• Review all systems and procedures, so that processes can be stripped down to the efficient bare minimum
• Train staff properly
• Develop some kind of incentive programme for frontline staff
• Equip staff with the correct tools. I’ve seen a variety of sticky things (some of them probably quite costly) used when ordinary sticky tape is not available

In addition, I think there’s a huge opportunity for retail activity, but until such time as the Post Office adopts a customer-focused attitude any such initiatives will be doomed.

The Post Office claims to “deliver, whatever it takes”. Perhaps they’ve sorted out that problem, which – after all – is one of the key performance indicators of a postal service. However, delivering the mail is just one of their required functions.

The organisation may well be part of the engorged government bureaucracy, but there’s no need for it to behave like one. Imagine how much more motivated its staff would be if the Post Office were a dynamic enterprise, loved and respected by its customers?

It would make me so much happier spending time in Post Office queues if it was that kind of place.

I can dream…

It may surprise some readers (especially the non-golfers) that golf is an activity I’d classify as pleasure. Even if I’m not playing well, it’s a good walk and there’s generally some entertaining banter with the rest of the four-ball.

I’m one of those golfers who is happy to be carrying his own clubs, but my companions often employ caddies for their rounds. These men generally have single-figure handicaps (that would be the caddies, not the golfers!) – last time one of them was a scratch golfer – and offer invaluable assistance in getting around the course with the lowest score. While I’d always want to make the final call myself, their reading of the possible breaks in a putt is based upon an intimate knowledge of the course, and can make the vital difference whether one sinks that birdie putt. Or not.

One unquestionably gets caddies that are bad (which goes for all professions), but one would have to regard caddies as being skilled labour.

The going rate for caddies is R130 for 18 holes, and R20 for halfway refreshments, which makes a grand total of R150. Given that it takes anything between four and five hours to play a round of golf, the caddy is unlikely to get a second round, so his earnings will be R150 for the day. Unskilled gardeners and other casual workers would typically earn a similar amount for a day’s work!

A caddy can, admittedly, augment his earnings with tips, but that’s not going to be a huge sum, and probably not sufficient compensation for the pain of watching really bad weekend golfers hacking their way around the course.

It seems more noble to campaign for a better deal for teachers and nurses, but when we’re through with that, perhaps we can give the caddies a hand.

“Sell benefits, not features” may be the most clichéd piece of guidance given to people involved in marketing and sales, but it’s certainly the most valuable. It’s also indispensable when starting a business.

Benefits are hard-wired into the NoMU range of products – primarily a collection of proprietary herb and spice mixes that enable the most ordinary home cook to easily produce great-tasting food in a flash.

Over the years the range has grown to include the most innovative packaging ever for real vanilla, as well as dry mix-at-home pesto and fabulous hot chocolate. The most recent additions to the range are four concentrated liquid stocks (Fonds) that comfortably beat anything else on the market.

It’s rare to find a business that is as successful in focusing on the benefits its products deliver to its customers. The international food brands may have been like that at some point in their life cycles, but they have grown into monoliths who do nothing more than manage (dominate?) a supply chain.

NoMU was started nearly 10 years ago in her home kitchen by my sister, Tracy Foulkes, who may be the most detail-obsessed person I know (in a good way). It’s a trait that can occasionally produce inter-personal challenges, but it’s fabulous if you’re using her products.

Since May I’ve been on the receiving end of the love that people all around the world have for NoMU, in the form of orders placed on ‘my’ site Nomushop.co.za. Before building the site I had this image of Mrs Botha, living in the countryside, or perhaps even a suburb of Johannesburg or Pretoria, who turns to the online option in frustration at being unable to find her favourite NoMU products in her local store.

Well, it turns out that there is also an equivalent of Mrs Botha in Texas, Belgium, Slovenia, Australia, Chile, and many other countries around the world (OK, I know Texas is a state, but most of Europe could comfortably fit inside it).

The other half of NoMU is Tracy’s husband, Paul Raphaely, who is as obsessed about marketing as Tracy is about flavour and design. What I’m seeing, in the form of orders placed at Nomushop.co.za, is the result of their combined efforts.

At this point you can rightly ask: What is the benefit of Nomushop.co.za? Simple, it’s the world’s only 24/7 source of the entire NoMU range, including the bulk packs and refills. We’ve recently added the option of airmail (previously all international orders were sent by surface mail only, which takes a dreadfully long time). And, I’d very much like to have a stock holding in Europe and North America, so that we can reduce both delivery cost and transit time.

Just so that we have this straight, the stock holding in local markets is a feature. The benefit is quicker and cheaper deliveries.

Late one Sunday evening (probably about 20 years ago) I turned on my car radio as I was driving home, and heard the Theme from Time for the first time. The streets were quiet, Sir Laurence Olivier’s narration was other-worldly and the words struck deep into my core. I know it sounds weird, but there’s no other way to describe what happened to me.

I spent years looking for a copy in every music store I went into, all around the world, and eventually gave up. Had this search been taking place more recently the internet would have been my first port of call, but because it all happened before the ‘internet era’ I never thought to try online when the option became available.

So, here it is. I don’t think I’m breaking the spirit of copyright too badly, because I have tried really hard to buy the track (turns out, it’s been out of print for decades). You may already know it, and you certainly can find it on several other websites. For those of you unfamiliar with this fabulous bit of wisdom, download it and listen with your eyes closed.

I also found this version of the lyrics, which seems to be more-or-less accurate. And, here’s a link to the Wikipedia entry.

When the all-encompassing history of online retail is written, it is likely that the author will identify trust – or absence thereof – as perhaps the biggest initial factor inhibiting the growth of ecommerce. Fears around credit card security have largely been dealt with by banks’ continually tightening up procedures, but the main issue remains: you’ve paid somebody for something that still has to be sent to you. What happens if they either don’t send it, or send a product that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to?

On almost every measure Amazon.com is the ecommerce benchmark, and for good reason. We had reason to contact Amazon recently about a faulty Kindle. Within two hours of the telephone conversation they had despatched a new device, along with instructions for returning the faulty one.

True to form, within a couple of hours of us sending them the tracking number for the Kindle we were returning, the cost of the airmail postage had been deposited into our credit card. And, within four days of reporting the problem, a brand new device arrived by air freight.

I’ve always thought that one should measure customer service levels not on companies getting it right (because that’s what is expected of them), but on how they deal with the unhappy situation of things going wrong. Amazon came through with flying colours.

What’s interesting is the way they reversed the trust dynamic; it became a case of them trusting us to return the Kindle, which is the opposite of how the internet trust thing normally operates.

Amazon is currently on a P/E ratio of over 50 (think about that; they would have to trade for half a century before their profits have recouped your investment in their shares!), which implies that a huge amount of brand premium and expected future growth has been built into the share price.

Effectively, investors are trusting Amazon to continue growing its business in a way that will generate escalating profits. As customers, we trust Amazon to deliver what it says it will.

Regardless of who writes the history of online retailing, one thing’s for certain; Amazon wrote the manual.

Sales and marketing – or S&M for short – are often lumped together as one function. While they are related, and both necessary to the success of an enterprise, they comprise different stages of the product eventually reaching the customer. For me, marketing prepares the environment for sales; the textbook example of Kottler’s demand expansion. Sales is the process whereby one converts prospects into customers.

Whichever textbook one studies, though, the customers one already has are easier to sell to than the new ones one hasn’t yet acquired. With this in mind, it amazes me how few enterprises (they could be charities, too) maintain a customer database. And use it.

If you’ve been sitting on the sidelines, perhaps one of these inexpensive online solutions could tempt you into the game. Both iContact and Constant Contact offer the following services:

• maintain mailing lists online
• hundreds of newsletter templates
• develop your own newsletter from scratch
• do customer surveys
• manage invitees and attendees for events

And, they both have sign-up forms that are easily incorporated into websites. Billing is monthly, and is generally under $10 if you have fewer than 500 contacts in your database.

Last week I played around with the survey functions, which I’ve never used before, and was amazed at how easy it was to construct a survey that could track seriously valuable customer preferences.

I also came across Omnistar, a highly sophisticated piece of software that one pays for once and which sits on your own server. If you’re a larger-scale company, the $287 is probably a better deal than a continuing monthly expense. It also offers campaign management, a very necessary feature that generally isn’t built into CRM (customer relationship management) packages. For people wanting to offer this as a service, Omnistar also have multi-user versions that can be white-labelled.

Doing it this way means you’re using your own internet service provider (ISP) for sending the mails (services like iContact send the mails via their own servers). Bear in mind that most ISPs have a daily/hourly limit on the number of emails you can send. If you’re getting limited by your ISP you could switch to SMTP2go. They offer corporate accounts that allow you to send up to 100 000 emails per month, not to mention my favourite feature, which is the ability to send emails from any location.

Someone who has given you permission to email them has given you privileged access to a precious place – their Inbox. I’d offer these as pointers:

• don’t abuse the privilege, by over-mailing or sending waste-of-time content
• as you’re writing the content, have a clear idea of what you want the message to achieve, or the action you want the recipients to take
• keep it short and simple

If you feel you’re in need of extra guidance, Email Marketing Demon and Responsive Email Marketing both offer a series of instructional videos.

I’ve been writing and distributing emails for more than ten years. It’s something I enjoy doing, and which – thankfully – seems to get reasonable results (click here to read about one of the best ever). The resources listed above are useful if you’re planning to do it yourself. If not, drop me a line, and I’d be happy to see how I can of assistance.

Often, I think, too much is made of food and wine pairings. Achieving the perfect complement between the flavours of the wine and food (in the midst of myriad subjective factors) is almost impossible, and threatens to distract from the enjoyment of either the food or the wine. Having said that, wine dinners can be an enjoyable way of spending an evening, especially if one is making new discoveries, and if the chef has been sympathetic to the wines.

I attended a Neethlingshof dinner at Sidedish (021-4223735) last night, with the winemaker, De Wet Viljoen, presenting the wines. The menu had been compiled by Dish’s head chef, Arno Janse van Rensburg.

I first encountered Neethlingshof wines in 1993, when they supplied several of my Mystery and Eclipse wines. The most notable of these was a Cabernet Franc-dominated blend, called Vivaldi, which won several large panel tastings, out-scoring wines at double the price. Until that point, I don’t think Cabernet Franc featured on their radar screen. They had several vintages in stock (still in tank), so I could blend to my heart’s content. Those were the days!

Neethlingshof, now, is a quite different place. De Wet is clearly passionate about his wines, and it shows. My favourites were the 2005 Shiraz and 2010 Maria (noble late harvest), which were both delicious.

As far as the food pairing was concerned, the surprise of the night was the harmony between the 2009 Gewurztraminer and a dish that comprised fish (hake), fried squid, caramelised banana, guava sorbet, naartjie segments and a kimchee dressing. Fruit and wine are not always a happy combination, but there is so much going on in a mouthful of Gewurztraminer that one can get away with quite a lot. The Neethlingshof release has a fabulous acidity, which makes it a bit challenging to drink on its own. However, it was twice the wine when the sips followed a mouthful of food. Of all the flavours on the plate, perhaps the most surprising complement was with the banana. Wow!

The one rule I do have when it comes to food and wine pairing is one I borrowed from the Hippocratic oath: “Do no harm.” The seared sirloin tartare with lemon atchar and salted apricot purée was delicious, but the lemon and apricot clashed badly with the shiraz that accompanied the course. It says a lot for the wine that it held its own under the circumstances. Based upon cursory online scouting, the Shiraz is available at under R70 per bottle, which I think is extremely good value.

South Africa has a wonderful tradition of various sweet wines, whether botrytis or fortified. The Maria (from Riesling) is fabulous – a wide array of gorgeous fruit flavours held together by rapier-like acidity.

Falling under the umbrella of Distell (through their subsidiary Cape Legends), Neethlingshof is assured excellent distribution throughout South Africa. The wines are not at all ambitiously priced and worth looking out for.

I sometimes get asked, as one does, for a list of my favourite books of all time. The one I’m about to share with you may not get into even the top 1000 of the most absorbing, entertaining or stimulating books. However, it’s right up there as a simple encapsulation of life wisdom. Moreover – without question – it is the most surprising source of such guidance ever.

If I told you that this gem was penned by Dr Seuss you’d probably doubt my sanity.

So, the cat is out of the hat, if you’ll excuse the expression. The book’s title is Oh, the Places You’ll Go! True to form, it has all the typically crazy pictures and delightfully rhythmical text that just begs to be read aloud.

As you read it you may recognise some of your own experiences. I’m tempted to quote selected lines, but that – I’ve decided – just wouldn’t do the book justice. I’ll simply leave you with the first two pages:
“Congratulations!
Today is your day
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.”

Buy it for yourself. Buy dozens of copies to give away to friends. Make sure you read it aloud.

Gadget

Genetics, especially as applied to the breeding of the swiftest racehorses, is a subject that occupied a great deal of my brain space until wine started taking over (that would be the subject, not the substance, although I wouldn’t deny its daily effect).

The moment when chromosomes match up can be something of a lottery, but the overall characteristics of the breed are generally respected. So, while it was possible for humans to reach a point of having created the Thoroughbred (the official designation for racehorses), we have very little certainty that the match between sire and dam will produce an animal capable of winning major races. Indeed, examples abound of full-brothers and full-sisters to great champions who couldn’t get out of their own way.

Pedigreed dogs have gone through pretty much the same process, except that breed standards are aesthetic ones, as defined by humans. The kind of performance testing that has shaped the Thoroughbred doesn’t exist for most dogs. Perhaps I’m just expressing the arrogance of one breeder over another, but I’d have to regard the process that gave us Pocket Power, Rachel Alexandra or Zenyatta as being superior to the one that produced our three Weimaraners.

Partners in crime - Kai and Oliver

The history of these things can get manipulated with time, but the gist of it is that this breed originated as hunting dogs for the Weimar nobility. I can attest to their instinct in this regard, having witnessed successful capture of squirrels and various birds – including a swallow on the wing. In fact, any smallish fluffy creature can incite their hunting nature, which is a problem when the unsuspecting owner of a toy pom has decided to take her little pet to the park at the same time as we’ve been there with Psycho Sam (one of our previous Weimaraners).

Given my racing background I can also appreciate their athletic ability, which they are able to deploy as successfully on the flat as they do up and down a 45-degree forested slope.

Weimaraners are also very affectionate dogs. According to the Wikipedia entry they have always shared the family’s living space, so are prone to separation anxiety. I’d have to say I’ve seen that in action as well.

Another feature about which there is no argument is their beauty, to which their athleticism surely contributes. I hope I’m not about to offend someone, but I believe that a significant number of people who own Weimaraners do so because their neutral warm grey colour fits in with most homes’ interior decoration.

It’s now time to introduce you to each of our hounds, which will reveal a little more about this man-made breed.

Gadget is the bitch, sometimes in more ways than gender alone. She is the oldest, the most intelligent, but also has the least characteristic body shape, in that she’s more stubby than sleek. We’ve had our moments with her, although in comparison with the dogs that have come after her she’s an angel.

Psycho Sam was good-looking trailer park trash; his maternal and paternal grandsire (assuming the term can be applied to doggy genealogy) were the same dog. While his end was sad, in that he was poisoned, it was certainly for the better.

Kai came to us because his owner had relocated to a smaller property (space and exercise are very important for Weimaraners). He’s the soppiest, most friendly creature. His vice is that he cannot resist a gap in a fence, especially on Sunday nights if our neighbours have already put out their garbage for Monday morning collection. The first time he went scavenging he came home with a 15 cm gash on his side, which he sustained in squeezing through the abovementioned aperture. The resulting vet’s bills were such that it would have been cheaper for us to take him to dinner at The Fat Duck or El Bulli. Despite his distress, he subsequently caused himself similar injuries on a future occasion. Kai has demonstrated a pea-sized brain, which matches the size of his bladder (judged by the number of times per night he wants to be let out).

Oliver, the pup, is currently the bane of my life. Despite a couple of bites from Gadget (if I had teeth like hers there are times I, too, would have bitten him) he’s going to grow up into a beautiful dog. If only he could spell, Ollie would put the ‘R’ into retarded, giving us a hat trick of desperately unintelligent male Weimaraners. His penchant is the destruction of Havaianas and Victoria’s Secret bras (when it comes to apparel he’s clearly brand conscious). Any food in reach of a dog on hind legs is not safe when he’s around. And, we’re looking forward to the point when he’s house trained because we don’t much enjoy the experience of stepping in puddles, of either sort, when on our way to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

Despite their absence of grey matter (not Gadget so much), our dogs know when it’s a Saturday or Sunday. They follow me around the house, fixing me with a gaze that says “do it now, come on!”. From the moment I start pulling on my cycling shorts they are in a state of high excitement (sometimes I have to make a visit to the toilet after getting changed, which confuses the hell out of them).

A good Sunday morning mountain bike ride takes us to the King’s Blockhouse and back – a distance of about 17 km, including some serious uphills, which is a lot for a dog on foot. Gadget is getting a bit arthritic, so she struggles to keep up on the downhills, forcing me to go back for her, which gives me a longer ride.

At the same time as defining aesthetic standards, it would seem, humans have also done a successful job of breeding canine companions. Dogs – of any breed – are bred to be man’s best friend. I can moan about stupidity and sundry other irritations, but I cannot fault our dogs’ affection or loyalty.

While the performance test for dogs may not be the same as the Epsom Derby, it happens in millions of homes around the world every day.