Do not adjust your sets. This woman’s life is real

SHE’S one of our best known and most well-loved news anchors, having been the familiar face of eNCA as a senior anchor for more than a decade. Among others she’s interviewed former presidents Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma, the venerable Oprah Winfrey, and today hosts radio talk show on POWER 98.7.

But who is the real Iman Rappetti? For a start Iman (meaning faith) is not the name she was born with. And what many don’t know is that from her humble beginnings in Phoenix, Durban, she took a path that even the bravest would spurn.

Rappetti’s memoir is one of the most gripping I have ever read, with not much left to the imagination as she vividly lays bare her life.

Rappetti was born as Vanessa Lena Rappetti to a coloured mother and an Indian father, which was the start of a difficult childhood as it often played havoc with her identity and spelt further trouble in a traditional, unforgiving Indian family.

She writes wryly: “Despite putting up a rickety, united front to family and friends, my mother’s ‘colouredness’ and my father’s ‘Indianness’ were their only weapons of destruction. Sometimes it didn’t matter whether the fight originated over burnt curries or burnt feelings ... it always came down to the fact that my father was a greedy, oily coolie, and my mother was a bushman with twisted hair and twisted brains.”

It is to her mother that she probably owes much of her chutzpah. Maureen Jane Smith is a somewhat flamboyant and outspoken woman who, to put it mildly, calls a spade a spade. An entire chapter is dedicated to her and she features prominently throughout the rest of the book. A great cook and a mother who withstood many trials and tribulations, she seems like a tough cookie with a heart of gold for those who matter.

Rappetti writes about many things that have stood out in her life, dividing them into whimsically titled chapters. The Wounding Years; Aunty You Want Brass; A Green Bakkie and a Biryani Pot, Ai ... those Brown Boys; Chadors, Clerics and Change; and more, much more.

Her coming of age, her first love, the difficulties of being cool and not so cool in the eyes of her ever critical peers, her father’s death, the close and warm community, are all poignantly related.

The defining moment is when Rappetti converts to becoming a devout Muslim and travels with her then-husband to Iran, where she lived and worked for two years. She makes much of it sound appealing and paints a portrait of welcoming, and yes human, people, who in the face of a rule of terror still manage to smile and be gracious and kind.

The book is beautifully written, with an often wry and poignant sense of humour. I loved the descriptions of the early days in Phoenix where one can almost smell the curries thousands of miles away to the evocative rendering of the holy city of Qom, where one can almost sense the reverence of being spiritual.

I read it in a day and it’s an inspirational book on many counts – the courage of standing up for who you are no matter what and carrying out your dreams, even in the face of strong criticism. Highly recommended. FOUR seconds is all it takes to make an impression on another person. Good, bad, curious, indifferent, trustworthy. That’s not much time at all. Jordan Belfort takes us back to cavemen days where an instant assessment was crucial for survival and, according to him, we still have this ability to assess another.

These days, society is rather different. Humans are very good at making things. Homes, televisions, insurance products, pens, learning courses. Of course, we also have to sell these things to other people to fill our coffers with money, therefore, making the correct impression on someone else is crucial to your ability to sell.

is written as if it’s spoken. You can hear Jordan Belfort speak. He taps his fingers on the table. He pulls out his white board marker pens. He is emphatic and makes liberal use of italicised words to drum home a point.

It makes for quick reading, even though some of his concepts require some time to think through and review. He claims that if you can master half of what he offers, you will be well on to your way to becoming a persuasive and more successful person.

Belforts’s points are compelling. If you are to make the right impression in four seconds, you need to work on your appearance. Smartly dressed. Clean. That will be from underwear to nails to hair and shoes. No sloppy jeans and oversized hoodies. Can you imagine your airline pilot dressed down? Would you trust him to fly you across the world?

In direct face-to-face selling, your appearance is crucial in establishing a sense of trustworthiness. Look at Julius Malema. Love or hate him, his physical presentation is smart.

Then Belfort works on your voice. How you speak is the next part of your improvement. This brings to mind Raymond Ackerman of Pick n Pay, who went to elocution lessons, so that he could better persuade the housewife with a mellifluous voice that he was a champion of their cause. Belfort takes you step-by-step in improving your vocal presentation and establishing appropriate tonality.

Finally, he turns to the art of persuasion and selling. This is not a book specifically about prospecting for sales. This is more about selling your products and ideas to people who are interested. The sales funnel is the modern parlance for prospecting. For every 100 leads, you probably end with 2% to 4% of viable ones. Those are the ones you work with.

Belfort is adamant that you should not waste your time on people who are not interested.

This makes it easier to sell convincingly. He scripts his sales talk. To sell successfully, you need to keep to your script – as you would if you were an actor, who has memorised it. The script is the anchor – or straight line – which then loops back and forth to counter objections and bring the client to the close, or the sale.

You can learn to be charismatic (Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela are two people who could connect with people, even just with eye contact) and you can learn to be persuasive, but guard against lack of integrity and ethics, because success does not exist without those qualities.

This is an excellent book, well worth reading, with exemplary advice that is useful to everyone, whether or not you are in sales.