It started behind a shop counter.
Long before social media, algorithms and AI, business was about people — knowing their names, listening to them, and giving them a reason to come back.
Meet The Professor
My father never called himself a professor. But he was mine.
I grew up watching him work — serving customers, taking orders, solving problems and building relationships one person at a time.
He taught me lessons you won’t find in a textbook. Lessons about customers, business, family and life.
More than 40 years later, I still use them.
Read The Professor’s full storyPeople still buy from people they trust.
I took those lessons into retail, sales, distribution and business across Southern Africa. Times changed. Technology changed. Customers changed.
But something important didn’t: people still buy from people they trust.
That’s what The Professor & Me is about.
Real stories. Old-school lessons. New ideas. And the occasional cup of coffee.
No guru talk. Just things I’ve learned — sometimes the easy way, sometimes the hard way.
Pull Up a Chair — Read Coffee TimeSome lessons are better told over a cup of coffee.
These aren’t business lectures. They’re stories from more than four decades of selling, serving customers, making mistakes, meeting remarkable people and learning how business really works.
A fruit shop. A hotel order. A bad potato. A customer who came back. A salesman doing thousands of kilometres on the road.
Small stories — but often with a big lesson.
One Bad Potato
Why one small mistake should never cost you a good customer.
Read the story02 · Coffee TimeBusiness Before WhatsApp
Watching my father take orders over the telephone at Funchal Fruit & Veg.
Read the story03 · Coffee TimePeople Buy From People
Why trust still matters — even in the age of AI.
Read the storyThe world changed. So did I.
I learned business before the internet existed.
Today I’m building websites, experimenting with AI, learning new technology and testing whether the old lessons still work in a completely different world.
Most of them do.
But I’m still learning — and that’s the point.
You’re never too old to learn something new.
I’m learning it myself first, testing what works, and sharing the useful bits along the way.
Explore Upskill with GilbertWhat’s Your Dream?
I’ve spent more than 40 years working, selling, building businesses, getting things wrong, starting again and learning something new.
And I’m still learning.
Maybe you want to start a small business. Change direction. Learn AI. Earn some extra income. Or simply prove to yourself that there’s still another chapter to write.
You don’t have to know everything before you start.
My father taught me that progress comes from doing the small things properly, one day at a time.
Perhaps the question isn’t “Am I too late?”
Perhaps it’s simply: “What do I do next?”