Gerry Elsdon- A Force to Be Reckoned With

Source : Kutlwano

Author : Lindi Morwaeng

Location : Gaborone

Event : Interview

You are married to a successful Canadian business man and you are a very successful businesswoman. What is the secret to your success?

There is really no secret. Hard work, hard work and more hard work. But it doesn`t come with just hard work. I believe that entrepreneurs are born. I think that you can see the industrious nature of individuals from a young age.

I believe that it is born out of a hunger. I grew up in Cape Town, South Africa from humble beginnings. When I say humble I mean single mother of five children, I being the youngest, no dad, one bedroom house. And I think when you come from such beginnings and your first opportunity shows itself, you have two alternatives.

One is to cast away the fear of taking on a project or an opportunity in saying this is not for me, this is not the people I was born from. Or we were never born to succeed. All you can say to yourself is that this might never come around again and so I am going to grab this. You must say I am going to ride this horse until it falls flat on the ground.

And that is my spirit. My spirit is that there are no small or bigger opportunities. There were just chances, to create success. And so nothing is too small or too big for me to take on. It means that I work hard. Some people say “but you have an audience of 20, why are you preparing all these stuff, it is not like it is the super ball.”

The fact is that they are all worthy of getting my best. And if you think of always putting out your best you will begin to receive what is good into your life. I am also an extremely positive person. You shout, I laugh at you and I walk away. I go and make my success somewhere while you are still screaming. So I don`t stay in the negative. I also believe in turning situations around for me and for other people.

A lot of women believe in going

the short-cut route. Get married to some rich business man, become a trophy wife and shop until you drop. What is your take on that?

I was successful and a business person before I married my current husband. Until recently he was the chairman of Mercedes Benz Financial Services in South Africa and having married him I was able to learn so much from him and my business has grown from strength to strength because I did not go into any relationship thinking I know best. I don`t walk into anything with my ears closed. I am a kind of person who tomorrow will probably find a reason to do business in Botswana creatively not because you are all here or they invited me because when there is an opportunity and I see that there is a gap, I am going to take it. They call people like me hustlers, but for us big business, it is horsing for the hustle, or the risk that they took. Otherwise they wouldn`t have seen the success they have seen. That`s all I do.

Where does your husband fit in to  your current business?

He is my chief financial officer in my business. And so when you got that resource in the house, why not use it? I am wonderfully creative. I am fantastic at project management and producing and directing a phenomenal project but I am terrible with money. I do more charity work than I do actual work. And it takes him to manage my finances in such a way that I can actually benefit from it.

What is your core business?

Fashion and entertainment. I work quite a bit in fashion at the moment. I am looking at the local resource in order to create products and I am not talking about arts and crafts. I am talking about high earned accessories and fashion products that can in fact put southern Africa on the map in away that the fashion house and fashion designers in South Africa has been able to do. The fact is we must lend from each other not steal in terms of talents and skill and resource to see what it is that we can do to give southern Africa a bit of a platform internationally.

I have those accesses thankfully through some of my products and that will be interesting for me to look at. I have a jewellery range mainly in gold, silver and crystals. I would love to look at those types of industries also and see from the semi precious side of things what one can bring out of southern Africa that can surprise the world again. It is not so much about the stones. It is really about how you use the resource. I make hand bags with semi precious stones. And I make belts with all kinds of high fashion accessories for the industry. I am particularly interested in taking a look at textiles and other materials.

 How has the journey been like?

Don`t ever begin to think that what we do is easy, that how we got here was fun and easy because we spin music labels and because we wear beautiful dresses and pounce around on stages and television. It is hard work and it is a push in a shelf to get there. And I think that only the ones who love the entertainment industry truly do make it. If you are prepared to do it for no money, you will one day make money. But if you are going to into our businesses to cash in you are probably going to run out of a few pennies here and there. So people should be aware of the fact that the arts is really about compassion and love for a business not just for fame because fame is just fleeting.

 You have many businesses. How do you manage to stay focused.

I have got people who manage my businesses and they answer to my husband

There is a general perception that women are not risk takers. What is your opinion on that?

Women have many responsibilities. They have mouths to feed. They have extended families to nurture and take care of. It is not easy for a woman to take a risk. Not each and every one of us can sit at home with the kind of support for example I have and take a financial risk, or physical risk or a psychological risk. It is just not easy for everyone. So yes women tread carefully. Statistics show that women are still struggling to keep families together.

So it is hard for them to take a risk. But we are finding that more and more women with access to education, the confidence is building and therefore are stepping out a little more. I think it is slow. We now live on the globe, we are no longer living on the continent…we get to see what is happening in the world. We would love our women to speed up but let`s be patient and be a good driving force those of us who can, to see to it that the right things happen for the right communities of women.

Teaser:

She enjoys numerous directorships in many companies she owns. With so many caps she wears, she still finds time to give back to the community