Treoc.com, the biggest and fastest-growing investors' club in Southern Africa, has just announced that it has secured the biggest sponsorship ever in the history of the Group, for May 2009.
Every month Treoc.com offers international investment seminars where they teach their members how ordinary people can create spectacular wealth using a simple but holistic method, known as the Treoc Way.
During the recent Klein Karoo National Arts Festival in Oudtshoorn, a very wealthy Afrikaner philanthropist pledged R1,2 million to Treoc.com for the economic empowerment of all those in South Africa who can understand Afrikaans. Coert Coetzee, the founder and chairman of the Treoc.com Group, this week announced this important event in his customary story-telling way, in the Group's newsletter, the Treoc Times. See his message attached.
Exciting News for Afrikaans-speakers
Treoc.com's biggest sponsorship ever
by Coert Coetzee
Over the Easter weekend my family and I went to the Klein Karoo National Arts Festival in Oudtshoorn, and what an experience it was! It was my first time, but Vanessa and our daughter Bianca went last year, as special guests of Rapport. They enjoyed it so much last year that they wanted to go again this year, and absolutely insisted that I go along. As Vanessa put it: you can't just do business all the time, you need to relax too. Of course, doing business is very relaxing for me as it is, but nevertheless I agreed to go along – little did I know what fantastic consequences it would have. I'm the kind of person for whom work is relaxing and relaxing is work, but I enjoy both of them thoroughly. I think it's this positive attitude towards everything that attracts good things towards me like a magnet, and the KKNK was no exception.
We were privileged to meet some important people at a function one night in Oudtshoorn; many of them knew us, and knew what Treoc.com was and what we do. To be honest, a lot of important people are Treocians these days. During the function I had the privilege of spending quite a long time in conversation with a very formidable woman. Although I have known her for years, I realised that night how little I knew about her, whilst she knew a surprising amount about me and Treoc.
Early in the conversation, and without beating about the bush, this lady asked me the following question: “Why are you neglecting Afrikaans?” Needless to say, I was a bit irritated, and I explained that I was a businessman and that the language in which I conducted my business was irrelevant to me. Little did I know that I was talking to one of the biggest philanthropists that the Afrikaans language has ever had – not just a philanthropist, but also a financial supporter. I found out later that there are very few things that happen in Oudtshoorn that she is not involved in in one way or another, indirectly and anonymously.
She wanted to know why I only present my seminars in English; luckily I could quickly correct her there. I told her that I do in fact sometimes present Afrikaans seminars, and that ABSA, who were coincidentally also the KKNK's main sponsor, had sponsored a series of Afrikaans seminars in the Western Cape for me in 2003. In fact, all my seminars in those days were in Afrikaans. I also told her that the Transvaal Agricultural Union had sponsored a big Afrikaans Treoc seminar last year at the CSIR in Pretoria. She then asked me all sorts of questions about the Treoc Way of property investment, our seminar content, the fees, our costs and so on. I could see she was impressed, and she said that I should consider presenting more Afrikaans seminars, because in her opinion too few ordinary Afrikaners were economically empowered, and based on what she had already heard about Treoc and what I was now confirming to her, it seemed like the answer.
Treoc is not an exclusive organisation, and the fact that our services stretch across language boundaries and even national boundaries is proof of that, but I couldn't help agreeing with her about the lack of economic empowerment. It doesn't apply just to Afrikaners, though, but also to Zulus, Xhosas, Tswanas, and so on. The economic power belongs to just a handful of people in each group. She agreed with this, but also added that her involvement is limited to the upliftment of all that is Afrikaans; and since she'd already achieved just about everything that she could in terms of the cultural upliftment of Afrikaners, she had now become very interested in their economic upliftment.
Once again I couldn't disagree about the Afrikaner's cultural upliftment; right there at the KKNK festival I had seen the cultural might of the Afrikaner with my own eyes, and there's only one thing I can say about that: it's spectacular! What I'd also noticed, and I mentioned this to her, was how many billions of rands the Afrikaners spend on culture, while only a small percentage of them do anything about their personal financial position. They live for the HERE AND NOW, and they're prepared to drive a long way and pay a lot for it. At the same time, Afrikaners make up the majority of those who end up destitute when they can't work anymore one day. Then they discover that the big life insurance companies, which were built with their money, cannot or will not provide for them. According to the insurance industry's own statistics, their retirement products are inadequate for 94% of the people who have them. The philanthropist and I found common ground with this topic, and we talked until late that night.
I wasn't surprised when I got a call from her office a week later with a request for a meeting, but what she discussed with me did surprise me. She was brief and to the point and made the following proposal:
For a whole month she would sponsor 80% of the seminar fee of every Afrikaner attending my seminar, out of her own funds.
I was dumbfounded, because although this lady is very wealthy, she has no commercial motive. She doesn't own a bank, for instance, which would derive a direct financial benefit from something like this; and her conditions for the sponsorship were also very simple:
1.The first thing, and the most important to her, was that she doesn't want any publicity; I had to undertake not to reveal her identity to anyone.
2.I had to undertake to choose a specific month and to present all my seminars in Afrikaans during that month.
3.I also had to promise that in that month I would publish all my personal articles in the Treoc Times in Afrikaans.
I wasn't entirely in favour of all the conditions, but before I put forward my terms, I asked her out of curiosity why she didn't just sponsor 100% of the seminar fee. Her answer was that she didn't “help people who are not prepared to help themselves”. I couldn't find fault with that. I decided that May 2009 will be the official Afrikaans month and during that month I will publish my articles in the Treoc Times in Afrikaans as well as English. In fact, this article is the first one in that format.
So the conditions were acceptable and easy to comply with, but I did have one problem with her offer. I said to her that I would only be able to accept it if it applied to everyone attending the Afrikaans seminars in May, regardless of their language group. She accepted that, provided my presentation would be given only in Afrikaans at those specific seminars. So this is the offer now:
All people who can understand Afrikaans and who attend the Afrikaans Treoc seminars “Maak Geld Met Eiendom” in May 2009, will not pay the normal price of R3750 per person, but instead will pay just R750 per person. No other discounts or group rates will be applicable during this period.
I'm sure that our members realise that this is a once-off, highly exceptional event that they should take full advantage of. We expect tremendous interest and have already booked big auditoriums, but despite this, we still don't think that everyone will be able to be accommodated. So book immediately for the following dates if you are interested:
5 May - Johannesburg – FNB Conference Centre
15 May – Pretoria – CSIR Conference Centre
28 May – Bellville – US Business School Conference Centre
Mrs Philanthropist, our secretive sponsor, will be there herself to see “how her money is working” as she says, but I think she actually wants to get started on the Treoc Way herself! Whatever the case, I will have to put my best foot forward.
My Afrikaans might be a bit sketchy at times, but I am going to present these seminars myself and I'm really looking forward to them. See you there!
Regards
Coert
P.S. By the way, last week Media 24, the giant Afrikaans newspaper group, invited me to take on a regular financial column in the daily paper Beeld. Isn't it funny how these things all happen at once? Makes you think, doesn't it?
Henk and Mariska came to visit last weekend and boy did we enjoy it. They drove all the way from Durban. Thanks for the effort guys!
They have two beautiful boys, Ben and Zak. We enjoyed playing and spending time with the little ones. They are full of energy and kept us busy - what a pleasure.
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