I kept knocking.
I knocked on doors, reopened conversations and asked people to take a serious look at what we were building. I never needed to beg or plead. I kept presenting the case and allowing people to decide for themselves.
Not for the business this time. For someone I have known for more than twelve years, who has just lost her husband and discovered that the safety net she believed was there no longer exists.
From Lance Jerrard
To each and every person who chose to take a position: thank you.
You did more than contribute capital. You looked at something that was still being built, examined the thinking behind it, and chose to share the vision of what The Careful Optimist could become.
I do not take that confidence lightly. Every conversation, every question and every commitment helped us move from an idea on paper toward a business that is now ready to face the market.
I knocked on doors, reopened conversations and asked people to take a serious look at what we were building. I never needed to beg or plead. I kept presenting the case and allowing people to decide for themselves.
That capital-raising chapter is complete. The positions have been fully taken up, and the focus now shifts away from filling places and toward proving the business in the market.
We now enter one final real-world validation phase: put the system in front of real customers, measure what happens, refine what needs refining, and then move into cash-flow-positive operation.
So yes, I am knocking on a door again. But this time I am not knocking on behalf of the business. I am knocking on behalf of Hentie Pretorius.
Ben and Hentie Pretorius travelled from their farm outside Bloemfontein to Johannesburg, where I met them and we concluded a number of business transactions.
Over the years, we stayed in touch. Whenever they were in Johannesburg, they would come and visit. In time, I got to know not only Ben and Hentie, but their children and some of their grandchildren as well.
When the US$300 positions became available, I offered Ben the opportunity to participate. He purchased five positions at US$300 each.
Those five positions formed part of an offering that has now been fully taken up.
Last Wednesday, Ben’s son sent me a message to tell me that Ben had passed away.
When people remain part of your life for that long, the relationship stops being merely business. Somewhere along the way, they become family.
I tried to reach Hentie, but I could not get hold of her. It was only last night that I was finally able to speak properly with Hentie and their son, Hendrik.
During that conversation, I learned how much Ben had kept from his family. He had not told them how critical his health had become. He had not told them just how utterly devastating their financial situation had become. And he had not told them that he had purchased these five positions.
Hentie has asked me to find buyers for Ben’s five positions because she now needs the funds to cover the cost of laying her husband to rest, having discovered that the funeral and life policies she believed were in place had all lapsed.
She needs the capital now. But I do not believe that immediate need should force her to surrender the longer-term benefit Ben intended those positions to provide.
If the five positions are transferred, the incoming holders will receive the five existing positions in the normal 150-position structure.
At the same time, Hentie’s agreement will remain in force for payment purposes. Each month, we will separately calculate what her five positions would have earned and pay that amount to her from our own/company funds.
The purpose is simple: to give Hentie the money she needs now without taking away the passive income Ben was trying to leave behind for her.
The 150 positions remain exactly 150, and the existing 20% qualifying-revenue participation pool remains unchanged. Hentie’s continuing payment will be a separate company-funded calculation, outside that pool, so no existing or incoming position holder is diluted.
I am not asking anyone to make a financial decision because of emotion. You already know the opportunity, the structure and what a position represents. I am simply asking whether, in these very unusual circumstances, you would consider taking one or more of Ben’s five positions.
For me, this goes well beyond business. It is about helping someone I have known for more than twelve years lay the man she spent her life with to rest with dignity — and, at the same time, helping preserve a passive income for her when she needs that security more than ever.