By David Jenkin

Creative Mornings is a global initiative with local chapters in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Harare, intended as a space for those in creative industries to learn from one another. Haralambous took the opportunity to give a rather personal lesson based on his experiences in business along the path to success. He focused on the definitive moments in his life that led him to where he is today, making and selling socks.

He began with the subject of balance. Acknowledging that his view on work-life balance is very controversial, he said that he doesn’t believe in such a thing. “I define myself by my work and therefore there is no balance. My work is my life, my life is my work, they are one and the same.” He then launched into a reflection of his experiences.

“A lot of what I did in my twenties was about ego and drive and ambition and building something other people told me was cool, and that all culminated in me naming a business after myself.” Like many others of his generation, he explained, his career was defined by a lot of job-hopping. He was advised that by naming the business after himself he would be more reluctant to leave it, and so far, four-and-half years later, it’s working.

Some may feel a bit of fear and trepidation when examining the defining moments in their lives, he warned, but we tend to experience these moments, push them aside and then move on along the path that the world tells us we should be on. We tend to not examine those moments in enough detail.

Some years ago, he wrote the line, “plan in decades, think in years, work in months, live in days,” at the end of an article titled Advice To My 20-year-old Self which became phenomenally popular, and those words struck a chord. Successful people, he explained, planned their lives in decades.

Haralambous admits that in his twenties he was planning in moments. “Literally moment to moment,” he said, “Who’s the next thing, where can I job hop, how much money can I make if I go there, who can I leverage against someone else? All these people whose books I read, they plan in decades, and that fundamentally shifted my thinking.”

His first defining moment was his childhood decision to be a war correspondent, which led him in a certain direction. His schooling and his student days contained several more, each working to define his path. It was while studying at the age of 19 that he started his first business, which failed. His second business was a successful band, but he didn’t think of it as a business at the time and that was a mistake, he said.

“If you want to be a famous musician, you are a business. If you want to be a famous creative – and what does ‘creative’ even mean, I hate that word – if you want to be someone who creates things, you need to sell those things to make money from them. That’s a fundamental truth.”

After working different jobs, building a couple more start-ups and learning many more lessons – including the realisation upon reaching his thirties that he was essentially unemployable – he started a sock company.

“The idea was to take a little bit of money and prove that you can build a business with R5 000 or less … So I took R5 000, started a sock company, and after 30 days we had sold 600 pairs of socks. We rolled the business out of that into where we are today with five stores and a website that ships to 20 countries.” This business has been incredible, he said, because he has started to think in decades.

“The point of this whole talk is about patience. My twenties were about ego and drive and building big things and being a man and having a building and all that bullsh*t that comes along with it that the world tells you to be in your twenties. And in my thirties, I learned that patience is an act. Waiting is a strategic move ... You need to have the patience to experience the moments, and the perspective to learn from them.”

Concluding, he said that he has started paying attention to the moments that push him onto paths, and he challenged the audience to ask others what three or four moments have defined the last decade in their lives.

For more information, visit creativemornings.com.