A man of humble beginnings in the village of Lwakhakha (Manafwa District), Amos Wekesa is a definition of defying the odds and making the climb. He was born on 22nd April 1974, two years after Idi Amin had taken over as Ugandan President. Today he’s one of Uganda’s biggest Tour Operators having presided over Great Lakes Safaris for the last 17 years. If you mention Tourism in Uganda, then Wekesa, the name comes to mind.
He was the first nominee on the Ugandan Excellence list and was the first person to be interviewed setting his own record on this project. We caught up with him to deconstruct Amos the person, the ideas, the values, habits and life outlook.
Ian: I am surprised you’re actually here on time as promised. Impressive. How do you do it?
Amos: We don’t value each other very much. We don’t value time. We also don’t have big dreams. Our dreams are based on a system that has been created in the country. (Our dream is) to study hard, finish school, get a job, then you put up a small shelter and marry. Get a car and wait to die. In fact most people go down the moment they have achieved all those things.
Ian: Is that our own idea of success? Is that all there is to the Ugandan dream? If you basically told your Ugandan parents that after University, you are working on a startup, they will be taken aback? If you did tell them you are working with one of those big corporate organisations, that is exciting to them.
Amos: Because you see for them, their generation was that. You had to finish school if you had studied very well. Even before you finished University, you had a job. That Job which was most likely a government job. With it, you had a house, you probably had a government car. And your salary was good enough to take your children to a good school. Today we have over 500,000 young people graduating from tertiary institutions and Universities every single year. All of them are competing for somewhere between 8000 to 12000 jobs. And it’s gonna be worse in the next few years. Because right now, 36% of our population is 9 years and below. 56% of our population is 18 years and below. 70% if our population is 30 years and below. We are also producing one million children per year. So every single year we are adding between 3.2 to 3.4 percent of our population. Then that means that in the next 10 years, (Don’t forget that we are also having children producing children, the guys between 13 and 18 who are producing children.) Fortunately they are also going through Primary Universal Education systems. Those are not products that can help this nation. So you have a generation that is useless.
The most important age in terms of practical work is the age of between 10 and eleven to about 18. That is when you engage a child into practical things. So you see my son is involved in doing practical stuff. He is not joking around. He is biking, he works at my office. At home, he does the cleaning. He makes food for all of us. Because that is the age where there is a lot of energy. But you see that is gonna be his real life. If you don’t learn how to clean after yourself, don’t learn how to make a meal for yourself, you are going to finish education and think that everybody must do everything for you.
Ian: This brings me to one of my questions. If you were to design an education system that would prepare a kid for life, what kind of system would you design?
Amos: That will be very difficult. You see education is not just gotten from school. I would encourage parents to stay together even under the hardest of circumstances. And I see it with my own family. We are not 100 percent perfect (as a couple, me and my wife) but we realized that us together, there is some kind of safety that our children feel they have but at the same time my wife decided to become a stay home mum. That means she looks after the children. I pay her a salary at the end of the month. But she has invested so much in our children that I can never quantify it. Even the school where our children go, people can see the difference in our children. So, there is that education, the home education. The first 7 most important years of a child are between 0 and 7. The impact, the emotions, everything are mainly dealt with in that space. But that education is provided by the parents.
Then of course you have the national education. National education should be more of less University degree but more of practice. And by the way we had some of these things many years ago. In our schools we had things like home economics, you had Technical Drawing (TD), you had Agriculture. You had things like Physical Education (P.E) which was actually examinable. In a way they took them seriously. That is what I put my child through. Because you know a human being is spiritual, but you also have a body. That body needs exercise, reading. People like you are reading all the time. It is part of life, you have to gain that so that it is able to be applied very well.
But most people have no attachment to their spiritual life. They don’t do exercise. And yet they don’t understand that a good brain can only exist in a healthy body. So it is a very holistic thing.
Then we could look at how the Germans have done it. And that is what Rwanda is trying to do. Rwanda is working with the Germans. If you read Lee Kuan Yew’s book, when he transformed Singapore; “From Third World to First World.” He clearly says that he looked at the education system of the Germans.
You remember during the industrial revolution, there were two major giants. You had the British, they were doing things that were needed, the basics. But they were not as durable as the Germans did. But the Germans did not have as many Universities as the English did. But Germans had more tertiary/technical institutions that were teaching practical subjects than the British. The British were ahead of them. But now, the British are not close to the Germans. You know why? Because the Germans have been consistent. They valued quality. Because they had taught their people to do quality stuff. And long term, they are winners.
So even me, when I am doing any small thing, if you come to my office, you are not coming to a very tattered place, if you come to my office, you know you are coming to a better office. Every time I am doing anything new, If I am doing a lodge like now I am building my fourth lodge, It is better than everything else I have ever built.
Ian: Is that the one you shared the Designs on Social Media?
Amos: Yes, that is the one. Right now as I speak, last night a truck took beds. We are not going towards the finishing phases. When I started out, my quality was poor. But that was my best at the time. So anything that I did after that, was getting better than what I did last time. Because I was getting a lot of experience from my failures, successes. I also started engaging people that had done better than me and learning from them. Because you have to learn from other people. Now when you have a lot of people with technical minds, they are different from people with theories generally speaking.
Because a lot of people with theories like in Uganda here, they are very scared to ask. (They will credential and say) “I have done a University degree, a master’s degree in Human resource, whatever it is.” To them, they want to present themselves like a finished product.
Ian: So for you, where do you get that humility? Someone was sharing something about why initial success can be a disadvantage. They said; “success is the enemy of learning. It can deprive you of the time and incentive to start over.” Where do you find the humility to want to keep learning and not get over-confident in your abilities and think you now know it all?
Amos: My travelling has exposed me to see who successful people are.
Ian: But most people travel..
Amos: Yes, most people travel but they travel as important people. I travel, you see me on the plane. Everytime when I board a plane from Entebbe to Dubai, the guy sitting next to me will know my name, will have my business card. I will chat with them, I will find out what they do. So anywhere I go, I am interacting with people, I am asking questions. I am curious, what makes them tick.
And when you sit in a plane, and you are observant, a lot of Ugandans will not even speak to their neighbours. And the people who travel are educated in this country. They will not speak to their neighbours. I have been in a plane and I have observed. Ugandans will not be reading, they won’t be speaking to anybody. And they often travel business class. As for me, I only travel business class when I am flying for over 4 hours but also, only if I am gonna do something, if I am gonna do business.
If I am going to go to Spain for my own personal life, I am not gonna travel business class. I am gonna do economy. Why I travel business class is because I wanna reach there, I am a bit comfortable, you arrive on Saturday in New York and have meetings. So I wanna be fresh for the guys I am gonna be meeting. I can sleep throughout the trip. So everything you do, you put in some thinking.
Now, I have also had a chance to travel around the region. Anyone who has a name like me in Kenya, (the equivalent of Great Lakes Safaris), is turning over 100 million dollars. And there are two things; One, that these guys have been there a longer time but two, they are exposed to bigger competition. We are not. That’s why even people like you can come and start interviewing me. Because we are not exposed to real success. I am not a very successful case. When you talk about the region, I am not.
Ian: Actually when you talk about that, I agree. I told people that if I were in Nigeria and I had the same traffic that www.bigeye.ug has here, it would be very different. I was reading about Linda Ikeji, the successful Nigerian Blogger and I told people that competition over here is very smooth. So I feel maybe once in a while, someone needs to move out and test different standards of competition.
Amos: You see in Kenya for example, a company has two planes arriving. Two Boeings 737s arriving dropping clients for one company. One company handles more tourists than all the tourists that go into our national parks. But also as Great Lakes everything we do is around 5 million dollars turn-over. To an average Ugandan, 5 million dollars is staggering. I see people look at me and say that guy has done over a million dollars. And I am thinking, a million dollars can’t even pay my bills, it can’t pay the bills of Great Lakes Safaris. It can’t.
So the thing is because we are small, that makes sense. In Kenya, I would not be among the Top 100 tour operators. And that’s why you see, I started up an office in Rwanda, Great Lakes is there. In 2 months, God willing, I am gonna have one of the key lodges in Tanzania in Tarangire National Park. I want to go and compete.
The other thing that limits us is the small dreams. Let me also tell you, I had similar dreams. When I started out, and I think everybody, you start out thinking, how am I gonna have a shelter above me. How am I gonna have my clothing.
Ian: Did you ever get scared while starting out and think may be these things will never be possible?
Amos: No, I didn’t. I had nothing to lose. For me, when I started out as a young man, I had nothing to lose. I had come from abject poverty. I owned nothing.
Ian: Basically when you have nothing, you have nothing to lose…the only way is to go up.
Amos: Absolutely. That’s why today when I tell people that when I started out on my own, I started out I would see men who had limousines, Coronas. I would find owners of these cars on the streets and tell them; “Boss what are you using your car for? I do car hire, I do weddings, can we do something and guys would abuse me. But you see you abuse me, but when you have nothing, you walk away unscathed. You don’t even think about the abuse.
Ian: So let me ask you; now that you have done something. Do you for once ever get scared that maybe, I could lose it. In that case, if you ever lost everything you’ve ever worked for, how would you handle that?
Amos: I have lost resources. I have lost money. If I went back to zero, and I still had my life, it would be different. Remember, I have taken on certain traits that have made me who I am. So I have to really be against those traits. Tourism is a business where people pay me a year or two in advance. People entirely depend on me based on trust. But I have made trust that when you pay me, I will pick you at the airport. When you pay me and I tell you, you will be at the Sheraton, you will be in Sheraton. When you pay me, and I say, you will be picked everyday at 7am, you will surely be picked everyday at 7am. Those are traits I have picked up. I have done it for 17 years. It is just impossible for me to go against them. It is now embedded.
Two, for 13 to 14 years, I have been earning a salary from Great Lakes Safaris. And I have learned to live within my salary. I can’t go to Great Lakes and say I have a need of a million dollars on my personal things, let me go and withdraw. For 17 years, everyone who has worked at Great Lakes has earned their money, their salary on the 26th of every month. Everyone, as long as you have a contract with me. It becomes a habit.
Ian: What’s the biggest failure you’ve had?
Amos: It is my inability to seize all the opportunities. I am one of the most connected people that you will ever find in this country. Not just locally but also international. I can easily tell you, maybe between me and Obama there are only 2 phone calls. I have not exploited such opportunities to maximize output in anyway. I have also not been very good at following up certain things. Because I didn’t come from a core academic field as a background. I have never kept a diary in my life for example. So I have depended on my brains to keep my appointments. If you see me write figures, those figures are in my head.
Ian: This could make you sharper in a way…
Amos: Yes, but you see people who are organized. People like me, if you are better organized, you achieve better. I don’t think I am organized in that way. I also risk a lot so I have lost quite a bit.
Ian: Speaking of risk, what scares you the most? And why?
Amos: I think things like divorce in my life. That for me would hurt me more. And because my dream is to really, really have a good family above everything else I do. I used to be scared about departing early, leaving my children young but I realized I don’t have control over that. But I am also giving them my best. When I am in Kampala, it’s only on Tuesday when I am doing a Radio Show that you find me not home by 6pm. Every other day I am home with them. Saturday and Sunday, you can’t get me from my family. You can’t. I call that the first level of success.
Ian: Right now, people talk of work-life balance. And I feel like a lot of CEOs, business leaders, entrepreneurs kind of struggle with that. How do you juggle these two balls so none of them falls?
Amos: One of the things I have is that I surround myself with the right people. If you came to my office, you see my Marketing Manager who is a Master’s Degree holder, my Personal Assistant is a Black American with a Master’s Degree from the University of Colorado, my Manager is a former World Bank person. Our receptionist is a University Graduate. I am having very good brains around me that I don’t have to be involved in the petty running of the business.
So every single day I wake up, I have at least 7 things to achieve. I make a list in my mind. Some of these things are just phone calls away, others I have to practically do. One of them, when I wake up I have to go to Trip Advisor and find out the current comments, of reviews of my clients. That’s my business. I just work out 7 things everyday. When I achieve the 7, most times I will achieve 10, I call that a day.
Where I am not, I don’t need to be involved in petty stuff. I worked for 16 to 17 hours everyday when I was younger. I started my business when I was single. I got married in 2003. 2003 I was 30 years old. I started being pressured to marry after circumcision. I got circumcised in 1990, on the 12th of December. In our culture, the next year after circumscision is supposed to be for marriage. So from 1990, around 17 years when I was in Senior 1, people wanted me to get married. But I was in a home of less advantaged kids.
But I knew the abject poverty I came from, up to today, I know that. That’s why I tell people, if poverty can’t inspire you, then there’s nothing in life that can inspire you. If your background that is poverty riddled can’t inspire you, trust me nothing will ever.
So today even in my expenditures, every time I have resources in my hand I think about where I came from. I can’t just be careless. You will not find me hanging around at Serena spending money just like that. If I go to Serena, it’s a planned thing. Four times a year, I take my family to Serena Lake Victoria , it is planned. But you cannot find me every evening hanging around. No No No.
Ian: What’s the one thing that most people don’t know about you? What is that one assumption most people make of you that’s actually wrong?
Amos: The assumption is that my wife is probably behind what I do.
Ian: So you see, I was speaking to someone telling him about this great man, Amos Wekesa. And he shut me down saying, come on, you are the only one who doesn’t know that this Amos was made by his wife?
Amos: My wife did not even attend our tenth anniversary because she was just disgusted. I told her, why should you be disgusted. My wife came here as a missionary. If you want to marry a Mzungu who has money, you don’t marry a missionary. My wife had 500 dollars in her account when I married her. That’s what she had.
Ian: Why do people have that assumption?
Amos: There are so many Mzungus in this town, how many have the money I have? How many have the comfort that you Ian, you have? I can tell you many don’t. It’s because for us we’ve been told anything foreign is great. You think my wife can do everything I do, marketing? No, she can’t. What I do is exactly what makes Great Lakes Safaris.
The other thing people actually don’t know is that my biggest business is actually property.
Ian: What’s the most worthwhile investment you’ve ever made?
Amos: It is buying good locations. And I used to buy them when I was younger and they were cheap. Like where I am building Elephant Plains, each acre was UGX 800,000 then. I got 85 acres. No one wanted Budongo. No one even thought about it. Primate Lodge, getting that location cost me almost nothing. Yet the last offering I had was 2.5 million dollars before I even put in money. You know Entebbe? You Know Faze 3? That’s my place, those are my tenants. The next property to that is also my property and the next on the side. If I told you, the land at Faze 3, I bought it at 20,000 dollars. That’s all I bought it at, 14 years ago.
Ian: How come you are able to really think long term? Most people would have cashed in at a deal of 2.5 million dollars.
Amos: Because most people don’t understand the value of money. You see anything that you are offered 2.5 million dollars, it means someone has seen value in it. But I also know in terms of my potential earnings from all these places. A lot of people rush to sell out because they have put themselves in some kind of race where you are still struggling to have your food, shelter. You are not sure of your shelter, you are not sure of your food. A lot of people put themselves in that race, borrowing, living large. And what people don’t know, if a business is owned by a woman anywhere in the world, a woman has to be at the forefront. No woman is going to give you resources and just watch from the sidelines.
Ian: What is the one thing that you believe that most people would disagree with you on?
Amos: God. I believe in God. A lot of people would disagree with me on this one. I believe in God because in many ways I have tasted and seen the goodness of God in my life. I pray quite a lot. And throughout my life story, I just can’t be without God. When I was young, my skull broke when I was like 2 years old. It went inside.
On 22nd December 2002, I survived a plane crash. I was flying to South Africa. The plane came from up and went almost crashing into Lake Victoria. Somehow it picked. But we’d had a prayer, a friend had covered me with prayer. The plane picked and went back into the air. We reached South Africa and I asked the air hostesses because I knew them. They said even the Tanzanian Pilot doesn’t understand how and why we survived. The whole plane infront was like iron sheets.
My marriage, my wife was the most loved girl among the two girls. Their parents did not imagine their daughter marrying an African person. It was very tough. It is me who decided the date of our wedding. But my wife had done a placard at the age of 14, she drew a map of Africa, she drew the equator. Her favourite date was 27th September, she had put her favourite name as Amos. It is what my mother in law presented on our wedding day. We were all shocked. Yet it is me who had chosen the 27th of September for our wedding. That date was on that placard.
Ian: When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
Amos: I jog. Everybody needs a drug. If you don’t have a positive drug, you end up using a negative drug.
Ian: Do you have any moment where you judgement has failed you?
Amos: Many times. I lost a lot of money to a Rwandese Guy. I put a lot of trust in him. I thought let me buy Gorilla Permits. So I got a couple of thousands of dollars and wired it to him. And he just ran away with all the money. And unfortunately I had actually met him on Social Media. I have been conned by quite a number of guys. I am easily trusting. I have made those kid of mistakes.
Ian: How often do you read?
Amos: I read two hours everyday. When I discovered that I had failed school, just 17 years ago, I couldn’t write. Then I started reading everyday. I started realising my children love reading. The biggest punishment you can give to my children is telling them you are not gonna read tonight. So I thought if I don’t read, I am gonna remain behind.
Reading gives you a lot of knowledge. I read at least 30 minutes out of the 2 hours, it should be something tourism related because it is my thing. So good that anybody who is looking for current information on tourism, I am probably the number one who has the current information.
Ian: What are those 3 things that on reflection you would say really thought-provoked you?
Amos: The best book I ever read in my life is ‘Buy the Future’ by Dr. Mensah Otabil, a Ghanaian guy. It is based on the story of Isaac, Jacob and Esau. I thought every human being must read that. It gives you two paradigms, the hunter’s paradigm and the farmer’s paradigm. And when you read that book, you realize everybody either has a farmer’s mentality or a hunter’s mentality. I need to write about that thing. Look for that book. It is probably the best book.
The other book is by Lee Kuan Yew; ‘From Third World to First World.’ It is a very intriguing book. My wife reads more than me. The difference is when we read a book together, I will remember like so much. I like how Lee challenges the African mentality of thinking. He was talking about how they used to go for meetings abroad and African presidents came in their private jets. For a long time, Africa’s shinning star, Kwame Nkurumah kept inviting him to Ghana. He says he arrives in Ghana and Kwame says; ‘I have extremely very educated Ghanaians.’ He says for a number of days he kept thinking about those guys that he was told were so educated. So when one of the guy comes and I ask him what he studied, they tell me, the guy studied Philosophy. And he says; “I asked myself, is the challenge of Ghana at that time Philosophy?”
Then the other one I read was Good to Great by Jim Collins on how good can be an obstacle to greatness.
Ian: What are the most common mistakes you see people make over and over? Those pitfalls you see people fall in again and again?
Amos: One thing I see, I see there are three categories of people. There are people who make the money. There are people who abuse the money. There are those who make the money but abuse it. And a lot of people have a very wrong feel about money. They are constantly in a state of want. Money takes them over. They wake up and think if I make money, it will sort out all my problems. You get there and realize it doesn’t entirely sort them all out.
The more money I make, the more I discover the shortfalls of money. There are so many things that money can’t do. But I also realize that money is actually innocent. When you get money, it just brings out your character. A lot of Ugandans already have very weak characters. And when they get the money, it just amplifies it. That’s why the Bible talks about the renewal of our minds. We are all prone to challenges, all of us. There is no one who is perfect. However the Bible encourages us to renew our minds. Every two days, three days, I go back and see what I have done wrong. (Romans 12: 2; Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is–his good, pleasing and perfect will.)
Ian: If you are speaking to a 20 year old, somebody graduating from University, about to enter the real world, what advice would you give them? What advice would you tell them to ignore?
Amos: I think when you are young, you are like a pilot who is 10 kilometres high. 10 kilometres high means that whenever there is a problem, you can easily go back. It is easy to recover. You have got the advantage of time. But I will also clearly stipulate a few things.
You asked me why I am not scared about going back to zero. Do you know why our politicians are scared of losing their positions? Because a lot of them did not follow a normal system of life. A normal system of life is you first chase skills. I am fairly very skilled in tourism. I have done my 10,000 hours. And I am still chasing the skills in tourism and accomodation. And that’s why you see me with Head of Hilton, and we just have a chat, we travel together, I learn from them, they critic me, advise me.
After you’ve gotten the skills, you go to the second stage, that is networks. Now, however skilled you are, if you do not have networks to give you an opportunity to apply your skills, you are going to be a nobody.
The third component then comes after the networks, and that is money. When you have skills you have networks, you have money, then you have the fourth thing, and that is influence. People don’t talk to me or follow what I say because I am an Ortega. Ortega is a fantastic writer. No, tourism people respect me because the guy drives to Primate Lodge and sees it is able to compete with any Mzungu in town, it is run well, my staff are clean, they are paid on time. If I was writing the way I am writing and I was not paying my staff on time, it will have backfired already. So you have not to just know how to talk, but you have to back your talking.
If money goes away, you can still go back and apply your skills through your networks. Networking is actually a skill. A young man, a tour operator was asking me; ‘Amos I was in a flight with you, we boarded SN Brussels with you, we reached Brussels, almost everybody had gotten your business card. We reached London, you were giving out business cards, and I asked myself; ‘why have I not given anybody a business card? Why is this guy chatting with everybody, strangers/?’
But you see it is a skill. I did not just wake up one day and I said I am gonna chat up anybody. I practised it and I learned that when you are networking, you need to be very knowledgeable especially in general knowledge. I have been skiing in France, I have travelled across the US States. So when I meet a guy and I talking about travel whether in South Africa, a lot of Americans when I am talking about America they are shocked. Tell them about the Grand Canyon. So you prepare yourself.
Ian: What are your rules for these 3 or 4 areas (Health, Wealth, Relationships and Happiness)?
Amos: I can’t claim that I have been perfect in all these areas. But everyday I wake up with a desire. If you’ve seen me write about my running, I hate the first 2 kilometres but if I didn’t know about the feeling after running those 10kms, I would never run. I think many runners in life hate the first 2 kilometres. What I am trying to say is that I regulate myself. I make sure that every week I run between 27 and 30 kilometres, that’s three times a week.
About wealth, money doesn’t take control of me. It has never taken control of me. I am driving a second hand Land Cruiser. It is 15 years old. It is my 2nd personal owned car in my life in 17 years. My first car was a pick-up. I remember I bought it at 7 million shillings.
Ian: I find you very contrarian. How come these car pressures don’t take you up?
Amos: Boss, everybody gets such things. I have saved up four times 150,000 dollars, gone to Toyota, touched a car four times and went and bought property. I have had that desire. One thing I know about cars, a car is supposed to move you from one place to another. So all of us have that temptation. That’s why I am saying, you have to renew your mind.
It’s not that I need to save up to buy a car. When I saved up the last 150,000 dollars. I was in London and a friend told me, you can buy this car at 10,000 pounds. The car I am now driving cost me 10,000 pounds. That was 7 years ago. It’s an old car but I am very comfortable in it, I look after it very well. Each and everything I have, I want to look after it very well. Because I value everything I have spent money on.
Ian: If you think of success, what names come to your mind? For my case, if I thought of success, Naval Ravikant would come to my mind. He’s one personality that’s influenced me more. I always wonder when I am stuck; “what would Naval do?”
Amos: If you have observed my life properly, I try to invest back in young people. Because the only way things will live is when you have impacted people’s lives. That’s the only thing people are gonna remember about me. That’s why I wake up and write. If it was not that, there’s nothing else I would do. And that’s why I keep time to my children. It’s not just young people, it’s also to my own family, my own children, I give back to them. Because that’s the only thing I can pass on. Most likely they will also pass it on to someone.
And a lot of people here don’t have the opportunity to have people that can pass on relevant knowledge. Many people don’t have.
So you asked me about my mentors, the people I look up to when I think of success. There is a guy called Kim Tan. He is my mentor. He is a Malaysian English person. That guy is very rich. He brought me another guy and said; “Amos you think I am very rich, this one is very rich.” The guy is a Christian. He’s written books. If you google him, you will see him with Bill Clinton. He comes here three times every year, just to sit with me and chat. If I post on my wall that I am in London,
Ian: People will be shocked you have a mentor…
Amos: I do man. For different things in life, I have a mentor. You see there’s no one in life who can give you 100 percent what you are looking for.
Ian: When people succeed to their wildest dreams, they get more comfortable in their own abilities, they may tend to seek out advice less. Why do you continue to? It’s blind spots, some cognitive biases.
Amos: But Ian I have told you, that I know, I am not where I am meant to be. I know that I have so much potential. And I know if I start thinking that I am very good now, I know for sure I will not achieve greatness. But as long as I am a human being, as long as I am alive, I want to achieve greatness.
Ian: So why do you choose Dr. Kim Tan as your successful personality?
Amos: He represents exactly what I want. That guy, he’s just such a great thinker. Did you ever see me write about the Poopoo business in Kenya? About the guy who went to a slum in Kibera, and designed toilets. This guy has patents of so many high end scientific machines in the world. He is a scientist. He creates these machines, gives them to women. He believes if you empower a woman in a home, you have empowered a family. A woman will not allow her children to go off hungry. He now collects tonnes of poopoo everyday. He got a machine that transforms Poopoo into manure. That manure is now being supplied to Unilever. He goes to the government of Singapore and says I want all the Prisons. He creates communication centres for accounts and all these kind of stuff. As we speak all Singapore Prisons are doing call centres. And you realize the guys who are coming out of prison in Singapore are much better human beings than before. Because they are coming out already having money. They are saving money when they are working in the nights. He’s coming. I was even thinking I should make a meeting where young people just come to listen to that guy. I made sure that my Ugandan friends in London gather and he gave them a talk. I arranged that for them and they were shocked. Reason being Ugandans in the UK are not organized. They fight each other. He was talking about unity, working together. Kim Tan hardly flies business class. He has never bought a brand new car in his life. That guy owns one of the key rugby teams in the UK (Saracens Rugby Club). He has businesses on three continents.
If you have seen me a few years ago in South Africa in a game reserve, with a Lion eating a zebra, that was his place. He has a national park like his place just to go and rest. He also believes so much in God. He’s kept his family united. That’s the guy who represents my dreams. He’s wanted to invest with me for many years. So now we’ve agreed, me and him are gonna set up something. We want to create 1500 jobs in the next 5 years outside what I am doing.
Ian: So Warren Buffet tends to ask; ‘Would you rather be the world’s greatest lover, but have everyone think you’re the world’s worst lover? Or would you rather be the world’s worst lover but have everyone think you’re the world’s greatest lover? Reputation versus Integrity?
Amos: I love where I am. I can tell you. If I don’t believe in something, I just don’t do it. I may not grow too rich in the short run, but you know what, as long as I grow the way I am growing, it’s just a matter of time. And that brings you more happiness than you going out to cheat people. I wanna sleep. Me, I sleep properly 8 hours, without any worries.
Ian: What’s the most wrong advice you often hear people give in your field of Tourism?
Amos: A lot of people tend to think this business is for white people. They also think you need a lot of money. But for any business, financial capital like in Japan they will tell you only 10 percent of the success of a business depends on money. And that’s why a lot of people think someone came and gave Wekesa a lot of money. You are actually one of the few people I have told how much I turn over. Have you ever seen me write about it? Never! I never even talk about it. Even today if you asked me about my value, I have no idea. I have an idea about how much money is in the bank, I have an idea about how many properties I have. But I don’t wake up everyday and think today I am 10 million dollars worth or that sort of thing. I don’t think like that.
Ian: In the next 10 to 50 years, what do you think are those ideas that people should bet or ground themselves in? What are those things that you are certain are going to change and those that are not?
Amos: When internet came into play, it changed the whole theories. For example, how often do I meet you? I meet you everyday through your write-ups. And you are one of the very few people that I read, whose pieces I wake up to read, see what you think about different things. See, I meet your thinking everyday. I meet you everyday.
Those days you would have sent me a letter through the Post. What Ugandans must know is that the dynamics of the world are changing because of the internet. Many years ago, if you had property, you were a very important person. Today the most important person is the one who has access to clients. Facebook, what has he got? He has you and me who use his platform. He uses us to make money. Airbnb, what has he got? In future even owning planes is going to mean nothing. Owning cars is going to mean nothing. In the next 5 years, I don’t want to have Great Lakes owning cars. I will come to Ian, you, you have cars, me, I have access to clients. And you, you will struggle with the cars, me I will just give you clients. Hilton wants to work with me now. And they told me, Amos we have access to a permanent 73 million people and we want to help you tap into it. Hilton used to own accomodation but they sold. They no longer own, they come to you and say, we have access to clients. They have all the systems and that’s what I tried to bring out in my write up about Airbnb.
If you buy internet, don’t just misuse it. Use it for a purpose that is known. Read about such important information like how to position yourself through social media. People don’t even know, I could go sit in my village. Every day, every week I get business worth $15000 on my Facebook page, in my inbox. That’s everyday. So I could easily just go to my Village and sit there just write my stories on Facebook and I will be earning.
I don’t write everyday and say guys travel with Great Lakes Safaris. But as I write, people know why I am writing. They know where I belong. I take a picture and there is Great Lakes Safaris there. It is subtle marketing.
They say 40 percent of the jobs of the future have not been created. There is need for people to start thinking about creating a generation of very flexible thinkers. That’s where I am fitting my son, allowing him to understand learning. Let him do everything such that he’s flexible. The job environment is gonna change in the next 10, 20 years.
When I was starting Great Lakes Safaris, you did not need a Search Engine Optimizer (SEO). Did you? You did not need someone to maintain your social media pages. Now I have someone fully employed for this.
Ian: What’s the best quote that you often think about? And your parting words. I will give mine. I often think about that Steve Jobs quote: “When you grow up you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.”
Amos: That quote for me is; “nothing beats a man who has decided to invest rightly in his mind.” There’s nothing in the world that doesn’t come from the realm of the mind. That’s why they tell you, a disciplined mind leads to disciplined thought, and a disciplined thought produces a disciplined action. It is more often in the head.
Ian: Your Final Words…
Amos: Every person should know that we are all born with equal potential. All of us are born with equal potential. Anybody can be anything. If I can come from Wakaka (Manafwa District). My mother wanted to kill me at the age of one because we were so poor. She could not even look after me. I can come from there, and sit with billionaires, do a business that has been profitable for the last 17 years, then anybody can! Anybody can! The worst is us undermining our own abilities. We are where we are as Ugandans because we have undermined our magnitude. We sit everyday and think about the foreigner being the investor. Hardly anyone will call me an investor here. People here think blacks are not investors, it’s the foreigners.