This article first appeared in Millenial Magazine in their December 2016 issue

I took a decision at the end of 2015 to quit a fairy lucrative job working as a fixed income specialist and structurer at one of the biggest financial services firms in the country to become a lecturer at the University of Botswana. I left my decent annual salary, my consistent annual performance, sacrificed my stock options in the company and even gave up my corporate contract phone. Why?

A few reasons. Firstly I had been in financial services for close to 10 years. I started off as junior middle office trainee at the central bank, moved to becoming a junior trader and got my “big break” when one of the big banks locally asked me to join them. I was to work as a fixed income trader taking care of Botswana and Zambia. The money was great, the travelling was extensive and the work was exciting. After a few years, I took my experience to a pension fund manager and embarked on an ambitious journey that allowed me to do work I had never imagined and the money and perks continued to roll in. I was (and still am) fairly young though and there came a point where I looked at our industry and realised it is very small and the ceiling very low. Most of my peers and superiors were fairly young so the possibilities of upward mobility were very limited. In fact quite a few of my peers left pension fund management with its minimal pressure and excellent pay to move to banking and in some cases accounting for the sake of broadening horizons. 

Secondly in the last 18 months of my stint at the financial services company, we went through a lot of changes. Some events in the market put us on a collision course with our Board which resulted in us facing a restructuring and retrenchments. I did not become a direct victim but was certainly an indirect one. Anyone who has been through such an exercise will tell you that everyone is left scarred. As the restruturings happened, I also noticed across the economy that many companies were going through the same and realised that the corporate existence offered no security. We were all always one bad year away from being out of a job and this didn’t sit well with me. 

Tied to the previous reason but most importantly, in my last job I did a lot of work structuring large deals with different corporates in the market. These deals ranged from being large loans, sales and in some instances share buy backs. Consistently I sat in meetings with big players in our country and enabled them to chase their dreams of world domination. Consistently my colleagues and I would be the only people on salaries, with everyone else owning the companies they represented. My skills were essential to making these deals happen but my compensation was fixed and had no guarantees of performance bonuses. We would sit in meetings and as negotiations progressed you would see other players pull out calculators and work out that they would make seven (sometimes eight) figures from whatever deal we were working on. I on the other hand would wonder when the 20th would roll around. It just didn’t seem justifiable so I made a decision that I would in future only work where I have considerable equity in a business so my efforts correlate with my compensation. My entrepreneurship fire had been burning for a few years and I decided it was time to pursue it aggressively.

In RSA, it is perfectly acceptable and probably expected that professionals should work a certain number of years in big firms and learn but eventually you are expected to leave the roost and fly out and open a small boutique firm that allows you to self-actualise and use your skills to make a better more sustainable future for your children. This hasn’t been the case at home, largely because our current generation of decision makers were presented with plentiful opportunities and didn’t have to forage too hard for themselves. This though is slowly changing and hope that more professionals can take the work ethic and skills they have learnt and transfer them to entrepreneurial ventures that will greatly benefit the growth of our economy as the chance of sustainability for these businesses would be much higher.

The combination of these 3 reasons made my decision a lot easier when the opportunity to teach came along. I had always been a teacher. After high school I assisted at one of the primary schools back home. I had always loved training and mentoring and had offered the University once before to host one class or some sessions. Education has always been something I treasure so when the opportunity to stand in front of the next generation of business leaders and enterpreneurs came up, I jumped at it. 

My workload would dramatically decrease but so would my income. This was the most difficult part of the decision but with some creative compromises, the decision became workable. I would be doing what I love (teaching) whilst having sufficient amount of time to work on my destiny and a sustainable business. The opportunities which existed were plentiful but just needed me to focus harder on them and my new life allowed for it. It allowed me to jump ship without shocking the system too much. 

It has been close to a year since I jumped and am very happy in my new life. I wish I had known this earlier. I’m currently typing this at 838am on a Tuesday knowing I have a class at 4pm whilst sitting on my couch at home. I no longer have to run with the morning rush and have flexible hours of when I need to be in school. I enjoy standing in front of my students and imparting ten years of varying industry knowledge and hope that out of the hundred or so students sitting in front of me, I can affect one life. For now, that’s compensation enough for me.

Below is a link to Millennial Magazine… Check it out….