Share this
Mister Wong
Digg
Del.icio.us
Slashdot
Furl
Yahoo
Technorati
Newsvine
Googlize this
Blinklist
Facebook
Wikio
Hear this text
Print
E-mail
Leadership talks to Tony van Marken, the first South African to scale the seven continental summits“It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.” So said Sir Edmund Hillary, the man made famous when he was declared the first person to conquer Mount Everest.
I wonder what Sir Hillary would have to say about one of our very own, Tony van Marken, who has not only managed to conquer Everest, but has scaled the seven highest summits on all seven continents, all in a record time of under three years.
To top this off, he also reached a pinnacle in the corporate world as the chief executive officer of Vox Telecom, one of South Africa’s leading alternative independent telecoms operators.
The climbing bug first bit him back in 2002 when Van Marken organised a trip to Mount Kilimanjaro with a group of six old university friends. However, when push came to shove, all his friends had to bail out due to lack of fitness, work priorities or pressure from spouses.
Determined not to follow suit, Van Marken flew to Tanzania alone, bought a permit, hired a local Tanzanian guide and simply climbed to the top of the mountain on his lonesome. So began the mountain conquests.
However, this was not the beginning of personal conquests for Van Marken. He had already carved quite a niche out of the business landscape for himself before tackling the first environmental one.
Born in Holland, his family moved to South Africa when he was still young. After attending SACS, he completed a Computer Science degree at the University of Cape Town, followed by two years in the army.
After cutting his teeth in the corporate world for a few years in South Africa and in London, he found his niche in Canada, and this was where the adventure really began.
Van Marken built and ran a venture-backed software business that took off and successfully listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange in March 1996 and the NASDAQ in 1998.
Not only did he earn the title of youngest CEO of a listed company in Canada, but he was recognised by the Canadian Venture Capital Association as Entrepreneur of the Year and was declared a member of the Canadian “Top 40 under 40”, which earmarked the top rising leaders coming through the ranks still under the age of 40 years.
“It was a nice compliment, but you cannot really read too much into those sort of things,” he admonishes. “At the end of the day, one still needs to deliver. In the North American environment, you are only as good as your last set of quarterly results!”
Oozing confidence after his success with his software company, Van Marken and two partners launched a venture capital fund. This was going along smoothly until the Internet bubble burst and funding completely dried up as the markets ran for their foxholes.
Like other venture capital and private equity players, Van Marken and his partners spent years triaging the portfolio. “It was an incredibly challenging time after the tech market collapsed,” he admits. “We had a few successes and numerous spectacular failures.”
This would stand Van Marken in good stead for his experience yet to come in the challenging world of mountaineering.
With the venture capital business being wound down, Van Marken and his family moved to France because his oldest son suffered from severe asthma and he was unable to adjust to the Canadian winter. France offered Van Marken and his family a new palette on which to paint.
Following the Kilimanjaro solo expedition, Van Marken moved to France and it was then that he read Richard Bass’ epic book Seven Summits, which told of the quest to climb the highest peaks on every continent.
“I set out with a new mission,” explains Van Marken. “It took me two and a half years, but I finally became the first South African to emulate Dick Bass and climb all seven summits.”
This quest led Van Marken to the four corners of the Earth. He spent two months in both Alaska and Antarctica, and conquered peaks from New Zealand to Tibet.
“It became a pretty big thing to me and as I got through six of the seven summits, I realised the biggest challenge still lay ahead – Everest.”
Just before heading off to Everest in early 2004, bad luck struck. Van Marken tore his meniscus in a skiing accident. This was a huge blow, as he had to be operated on and then start a lengthy run of rehabilitation. Besides the injury, there was a race on to see who would be the first South African to summit all seven continents’ highest peaks, and this would seriously set Van Marken back in the running.
His stark determination saw him come back from the injury even fitter than before, following heavy training sessions in the European Alps and then Tibet. He climbed and trained in Switzerland, France, Italy and New Zealand – conquering the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, Mount Cook and other classic peaks around the world.
The family moved back to South Africa, and Van Marken went off to finally face his biggest challenge in March 2005 – Mount Everest.
He joined an expedition run by a world famous mountaineer, Vernon Tejas, who now has the world record for completing the seven summits five times. “I liked the fact that at that time, Vernon had been on eight Everest expeditions, but failed on his first four attempts. I can appreciate the failures more than the success,” he says.
Mountaineering is very similar to business, explains Van Marken. One needs to manage your risks and be prepared. Both require meticulous planning, discipline, determination, endurance, passion, team skills and total focus in order to be successful. There is no room for error, and attention to detail is essential.
Seventy-eight days later and 13kg lighter, Van Marken eventually summitted Everest on 2 June 2005, which at the time was the latest summit date in history for the pre-monsoon climbing season on the south side of Everest.
“High-altitude mountaineering is an endurance sport where you can spend up to two months focused on one single goal in a hostile environment. Some days I was on my feet for 18 hours.”
Eight thousand metres with a pack on one’s back and three oxygen cylinders are tough in anyone’s book, but it is even tougher when the summit is a 17-hour round trip from high camp and the climbers need to acclimatise all the time. There are many days when they are doing more retreating than actually going forward.
Van Marken, at the age of 40, was the oldest man in his team to reach the top. But he was on top of the world and on top of his game.
It is by far the most mentally and physically challenging task that he has ever endured and one he will always hold close to his heart. He returned to South Africa and a flurry of invitations began rolling in, asking for him to share his experience.
“We had multiple summit attempts and were forced to retreat in the face of bad weather. On our final summit attempt, we spent six days at camp, two at 6 500m and three days above 8 000m – what is known to mountaineers as the death zone. It was hectic,” says Van Marken.
“The 2005 Everest season was characterised by very strange weather patterns, with only 25% summit success on the south side – the lowest success rates for the last decade. When one is dealing with success and failure all the time, one starts to see the metaphors between climbing a mountain and business and life.”
With this analogy firmly rooted, he began doing motivational talks. He had always had a healthy respect for the Red Cross Children’s Hospital, particularly as he had the experience of being in and out of hospital so often with his son.
“I climbed Everest in aid of the hospital and when I came back, I donated a year of my time to the Red Cross and we raised R185 000 for the hospital as well as a huge amount of awareness for their cause. I also carried the Red Cross mascot to the summit of Everest.”
After these talks, corporates began asking him to speak to their employees and his popularity soared – doing talks in South Africa, Japan, Canada, the UK and all over the world.
“With climbing, people set big, audacious goals and I think it’s the same in business. If you create a big goal for your organisation and you don’t compromise, then at least you have set the bar high. It all starts with the vision of what you are trying to do. For me, that’s the one thing I always tell people – that they need to dream. If you go for something significant and you can bring everyone along with you, it’s amazing and one can keep raising that bar,” says Van Marken.
“Everyone talks about having balance. I have found that hard to achieve and in my experience, to do anything really well you need to have total focus and dedication to a goal – whether it’s business or sport related. That single-minded dedication normally compromises the objective of balance.
“However, over the journey of life, I think it’s possible to have different chapters in your life where you reach some sort of equilibrium.
For me, climbing was one of those chapters,” he says.
Conquering the seven summits was an identifiable goal. There are, according to www.7summits.com, only 248 people worldwide who have completed this.
From a business perspective, the extreme nature of Van Marken’s escapades has provided him with a competitive edge. An edge that he is currently wielding in his role as CEO of Vox Telecom Limited (JSE:VOX), a leading independent telecommunications service provider in South Africa, with an annual revenue of R1.85 billion in 2008.
Just after taking up the position at Vox in 2007, Van Marken was asked by employees if they could plan a trip to climb Kilimanjaro. So he organised a trip on the understanding that the individuals would have to pay their own way and had to train hard. If they did not train, they did not come.
Fifteen employees plus the majority of the senior management team signed up and they had a 100% summit success rate.
“It was a transforming experience for all the people,” says Van Marken, smiling. “We took a team of varying athletic ability who put in the time and the effort to achieve their goal.”
Last year, the Vox team went to Ecuador to climb five volcanoes. They succeeded in conquering four of the five, and this year they went to Turkey and successfully climbed Mount Arafat. One would imagine that a team who can scale volcanoes and peak mountain summits together would be quite a combination in the boardroom together, too.
Vox currently has 737 employees, over 18 000 corporate clients and 135 000 consumer customers; it seems they are planning to summit a few peaks in the telecoms industry.
“I think the next five years are going to be exciting. Although we are up against well funded competitors, big gorillas in the industry like Telkom, MTN, Vodacom and Neotel, I believe Vox will be able to offer innovative alternatives at a reasonable price with good services,” says Van Marken.
“The telecoms market is set to take off regardless of Telkom,” he adds.
Vox has brought together various brands: @lantic, with 135 000 individual Internet customers; Vox Datapro with over 7 500 business customers; and Vox Orion, providing telecommunication services to over 60% of the top 200 JSE-listed companies.
On the question of where the market will go, Van Marken believes there will be much change in the industry. “We need some regulatory change to deal with local number portability and the unbundling of the local loop so we can see real competition. It’s all about challenging the status quo, going after the lofty goals, being prepared to come out of your comfort zone and do something different.”
Vox is the type of business that moves quickly. In the time that Van Marken has been with the company (officially since June 2006), it has achieved incredible goals in a short space of time. Part of his role has been to raise the bar, whether it relates to financial targets or new business prospects.
What was his most defining moment? His first summit of Kilimanjaro comes to mind immediately, which is probably why last year he completed his sixth summit of Kilimanjaro with his 13-year-old son. It seems that conquering peaks is in the blood...
In parting, Van Marken gives me one last tip on the similarities between climbing and business: “It’s all about decision-making. It’s about making decisions when there is a fork in the road. When to go to the summit and when to go down. Do we take extra oxygen? Do we take extra supplies? And I’ve tried to use this thinking in a business context. To inspire people and learn the lessons from setting goals and choosing your team, to preparation and planning. You have to get your plan and strategy right, and I think one of the most critical things is planning for things going wrong.
“In climbing, the entire focus is around what’s going to go wrong. If there is a storm, what do we do? If conditions change? In business, we don’t plan like that. We plan for success, and then don’t plan sufficiently for things going wrong. It’s a series of good decisions that ultimately gets you to the top,” says Van Marken.
It seems it is working for him on the mountains and in the boardroom.
Robbie Stammers
