Sidney Sheldon has given me a lot of favorite fictional characters that making a decision was rather difficult. I love Sidney. All of his collections felt like it was written by one of the gods of Egypt who had a great knack for selecting characters and weaving them into people that you wish you could meet in real life. One of my favorite books that is written by Sidney Sheldon is Master of the Game. I love Memories of Moonlight too but today, I'll choose Kate Blackwell from the book, Master of the Game.
If I met Kate Blackwell, there are lots of things I would say to her. I would ask her to teach me how she gained the courage to finally go to school even when she did not want to have anything to do with an educational institution. She was a brave girl and very intelligent for her age and no matter how much her mum pleaded with her to go to school, she stood her ground and acted all boyish, throwing away anything that made her girlish in the gutter.
Every time I remember her, I feel as though she's me and I am her. The idea of going to school doesn't really appeal to me. I feel as though it's a waste of time, energy, and resources because the few friends of mine who were doing it mostly get to study past questions and pass their exams. This feels wasteful as there is no sense of competition or even an iota of trying to improve oneself in their course of study.
So meeting Kate Blackwell would be a perfect opportunity to ask her how the Boer War made her go off and do something she didn't want to do all her life. I would ask her if going to school was indeed a good decision or not. She was affected by the Boer war and she wanted to make sure she was no longer powerless going forward. I wonder if being certified and handed a certificate by an institution brings some sort of power that I am not aware of. Miss Blackwell would be the one to answer these questions perfectly.
Apart from education, I would love to meet Blackwell so she could teach me how to handle businesses. I was really Inspired by her ability to see a gap during the war and took advantage of it by supplying the weapons needed for war even though David Blackwell, her father's lieutenant, whom she married was against the business. She did really well when she ventured into it after David went off to serve in the army.
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Yes, she might have had her father's empire, Kruger - Brent handed down to her after her parents passed away, but the fact that she was able to identify different gaps in the market and fill them took her dad's empire to the next level and the various expansions were inevitable. Miss Blackwell will be asked by me to teach me how to inherit not only an empire but a business acumen. I would ask her to hand me the keys to a prosperous business.
It's easy to have a product but if you don't have a market for it, it might likely fail. Watching the movie, Queen of the South in the last few days has made me realize that there's more to business than just having a product. And that it's better to find a Market first before you hand them the product. It's this movie that simplified the theory of market research and the idea of trying to fill a gap in the market.
Kate Blackwell being able to see different gaps in the market and fill them is an attribute I would love to inherit.
The most important thing I would love to learn from Kate is how to persuade the next person. This is a trait she had that I think made her outrightly successful. She was able to persuade people to do her bidding as long as it helped the business move forward. She showed these traits when she desperately need David to marry her so he could help with running the business. David was her dad's lieutenant and knew the inner workings of the empire so it was only right that he became family and continue the legacy. Apart from that, Kate loved him dearly even though their age gap was widely apart. So she won by buying out the company that almost took him away from her and David agreed to marry her when everything did not work out as planned.
She also showed her persuasive power, when she was able to pull a couple of strings that brought her son, Tony, back to the house as she wanted him to take the reins of the business but he wanted to be an artist. When Tony figured out she had a role to play in the failure of his art career, he did not want to have anything to do with his mum. But Miss Blackwell still found a way to encourage his wife, Marianne Hoffman, a Germain Heir, to conceive and give birth even though the idea of Marianne giving birth was a death wish as she could die in the process.
Marianne did die but she gave birth to two girls, Eve and Alexander. Eve was the perfect candidate for an heir, she had Kate's courage and acumen but she was mischievous, and Kate had to disinherit her when she tried to get rid of her sister, Alexander, who was the complete opposite of her. Alexander like her father, Tony, wanted nothing to do with the business but she gave birth to Robert after she married Keith Webster' close friend. Keith Webster, a surgeon married Eve after he disfigured her face as revenge for cheating on him. Late Blackwell had died hoping that Robert even though he loves music will continue the family's legacy.
Kate Blackwell has had a series of events happen to her but she held her peace and her calm as she navigated the turmoil that came with running an empire and holding up her family together. She was a queen and more, and indeed a Master of the Game.
So there would be a lot more things I would ask her to teach me. Not necessarily how to make people do things that would help my business move forward but to learn the positive ways of persuasion so I will be able to build successful businesses and a good family too.
I'm very sure these two pillars of life can be very difficult to hold together at the same time, but this is something Kate Blackwell was exceptionally great at, even though she missed some points along the way, she tried her best, and I would love to learn all of that from her.
This is my entry to Hive Bookclub Community Contest and I invite @princessbusayo, @deraaa to join.