The $6400 Decision That Saved This Business

The Daily Maverick is an important business. It’s a bastion of objective journalism in South Africa, a country that battles evil politicians, rampant unemployment, systemic corruption and myriad other social, political and economic issues.

Building a news organisation is no small task, especially in the age of social media, the duopoly that is Google and Facebook trying to dictate how media organisations disseminate their news and make money from this news.

In the first episode of my new show, It’s Not Over, I spoke with Styli Charalambous, the CEO and co-founder of The Daily Maverick.

Listen on SPOTIFY, APPLE PODCASTS or YOUTUBE now.

It’s Not Over is a show about near-death business experiences. I talk to business owners, founders and entrepreneurs about specific moments in their businesses where they were about to call it quits. In some cases, the businesses ended in failure while in others the businesses made it out alive, lived to fight another day or went on to dominate or exit.

Styli and I cover a lot of ground in the first episode of the show.

For eight years he and his co-founder battled cash flow, outdated business models, a declining media industry and various other complexities. But there was a turning point. There was a moment in the history of this now thriving business where the founders needed to make an important but relative expensive decision. Styli was investigating new ways for his news organisation to generate income and decided to attend an exploratory trip hosted by the Poynter Institue that would cost $6400. This was a hail mary but it was so much more for their business.

The trip was the beginning of a new revenue model, one that would completely change the way that they operated, who they hired and how they made money.

Reader Revenue was a buzzword in the media space and Styli knew that The Daily Maverick needed to pivot in this direction.

To find out how this all unravelled, listen to or watch the entire episode via your favourite podcast platform or watch the YouTube video below.

Here are a few lessons that Styli shared in this episode:

Create work that is worth paying for

It’s easy to expect people to pay you for what you produce but if you produce sub-par news, media, products or services then it’s very unlikely people will pay you. So focus first on creating an incredible product.

The Daily Maverick spent 8 years producing the best journalism in South Africa before they were confident people would be willing to spend money to read.

Use data to help you with your decisions

The best decisions are a combination of data, insights and gut. Relying purely on any one variable is dangerous.

The Daily Maverick used years of data to drive its paywall and marketing strategy.

The importance of a clear and consistent mission and vision

For 13 years, the mission and vision for The Daily Maverick have not changed. They set out with clear intentions and didn’t change these intentions with the weather. Regardless of how difficult it was or which direction investors, customers, sponsors, advertisers, politicians or business people wanted them to move into, they stayed the course and it paid off.

Changing your vision and mission too often is not a good thing for any business. Stay focused.

Personal development counts

The best founders are doing the work on themselves while they are working on and in their own businesses. It’s imperative for founders to evolve as their businesses evolve and that requires a lot of hard, personal work on yourself.

Styli speaks openly about his own struggles in this regard, the tough choices he had to make and the importance of mental health and professional help.

Styli is a founder with grit and determination building a business that is helping to shape the future of a nation. Listen to this episode now!

How Does A $150m Business Almost Go Bankrupt? Quickly…

Most people would be excited to own and run a $150m business. Most people would consider themselves successful with a $150 business. But businesses with thin margins are vulnerable to fluctuations of any kind and for Howard Mann, the fluctuation came in the form of a recession.

In the latest episode of It’s Not Over, I talk with Howard Mann, who was the CEO and founder of a logistics business in the late ’90s and into the early 2000s. He has been a business turnaround expert since selling this business and has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs find stability, scale their business and thrive.

Some key lessons from Mann’s story and experience:

You cannot be everything to everyone

Mann realised that to survive the strain of small margins and a shrinking economy he would have to niche down and focus on a core customer who needed exactly what his company specialised in. Prior to this decision, his sales team received a massive book of importers when they joined his company and were told to contact anyone they could. Once the decision was made to focus the sales team became snipers, not foot soldiers and went for key clients that fit a specific mould.

Profit over revenue

Most entrepreneurs believe that bigger is better and this is true with the correct context. Bigger is better if we’re talking about profit. Bigger is not necessarily better if we’re talking about top-line revenue, staff count, leases and rent owed and other expenses that eat into your margins.

In difficult macro-economic times, it’s impossible to defend tiny margins so when times are good find ways to increase your margins.

Don’t let ego and pride drive decisions

While Mann was working with a business turn-around expert he was reluctant to close down offices that were loss-making for fear of what other people would think and how his peers would respond to the shrinking size of his business.

Once his sales team was focused and the business was heading in the right direction it became clear to Mann that the 80/20 rule was at work in his business. 80% of his profit was coming from 20% of his offices.

As one of my mentor’s once told me: if you are thinking about cutting expenses, cut quickly and cut deeply.

What kind of life is your business giving you?

Entrepreneurs will often think about what parts of their life they can dedicate to their business but Mann believes that thinking inversely is a more sane way to build businesses. We should be asking ourselves what kind of life this particular business can provide us. One that forces late nights and early mornings? A life with high stress and low profit? Don’t let your business dictate your life.

Every Tuesday at 7 am you can expect a new episode of It’s Not Over.

Scaling When The Money Stops Coming

Raising funding feels like a victory but can often be the kiss of death for a startup. You have more money than you know what to do with or you have plans to spend the money but your situation changes and you struggle to step back from the cliff. This can be an even more complicated unravelling when it’s grant funding and you feel grateful that someone has found your startup important enough to part with their money.

This is precisely what happened to Andrew Haeg and his company, GroundSource, which is a platform newsrooms and community organizations use to build and scale two-way relationships with audiences and communities via mobile messaging and voice.

Andrew managed to secure grant funding and began to scale his company in line with the plans laid out and agreed upon by everyone involved.

He told me that he felt a sense of gratitude to the organisation providing his company with the funding so when they had scaled their team and efforts in preparation for the second tranche of funding and it never arrived, he felt awkward talking to them about it, asking for the tranches and getting the necessary contracts signed.

His story is one of intense resilience and dedication to the practice of journalism that spans decades. GroundSource and Andrew are both the walking, talking embodiment of purpose-driven business which can be both a good and bad thing as we find out in this episode of It’s Not Over.

Andrew left the corporate world to start his own business and “have the freedom to call my own shots,” as he puts it in our conversation. Unfortunately, the entrepreneurial twists and turns led him to $150 000 in debt trying to revive the business and keep things afloat.

Andrew and I talk about the self-imposed shame that comes with failure, the need to prove to himself and his kids that he can build a successful business and what you do when you have salaries to pay but the grant funding just stops.

Find The Right Partner Or Suffer The Consequences

rowing your business is important. It’s all the rage, isn’t it? Growth. Growth for the sake of growth. Growth because investors expect growth. Growth because what is a business if it’s not growing?

Well, Sean Hidden would argue that your business needs to be stable to grow. In the latest episode of It’s Not Over, Sean emphatically states that the most responsible thing that a business owner can do is ensure that the business can last for ten years.

Baristas, free coffee, lunch and drinks once a month might feel cool but profits and sustainability are even cooler. This is a very counterintuitive stand to take in the world of high growth tech startups.

Sean has gone from derivatives trading to selling ads for social media platforms in Africa. He is an entrepreneurial force to be reckoned with and his latest business, Ad Dynamo went from the brink of closure to a successful exit in 2022.

Sean has a way with words and an affable personality that makes him the perfect salesman. He has used these gifts to sell everything from payment gateways to performance management software.

In this episode Sean and I cover a wide range of topics including firing clients and partners, raising the right kind of investment from the best kind of investor and doing right by your employees.

If you’re currently struggling with bad partners, catastrophic growth or being a better leader then Sean has words of wisdom not to be missed.

A few key lessons from this episode to whet your appetite:

Expanding quickly into new markets is brutal

While Sean and Ad Dynamo were expanding rapidly their growth had brought out the rats and mice, not the best partners they could hope for. So in the short term, they had traction in new countries but in the long term, they suffered because their partners were below par and needed to move on.

LISTEN TO THE EPISODE NOW

Owning a tiny part of many markets isn’t interesting

After expanding into new markets through local partners, Sean realised that nobody is interested in a company that plays a tiny part in a big market. His entire business changed when he decided to focus on the untapped inventory in Africa, which nobody else controlled.

Tell a unique story

It doesn’t matter how good you are, how good you think you are or how much you believe you deserve success, if you can’t tell a compelling and unique story with a golden thread running through it then you’re dead in the water.

Sean needed to focus and tie together loose ends before his customers and staff would be able to take the business seriously.

Above are three of many, many important business lessons that Sean talks me through. Don’t miss this episode, it’s full of experience and hard lessons learned through suffering.

From a $50m listed entity to $10m and going bust

Shawn Johal worked in his wife’s growing family business until the tides turned and the listed company went bust. His father-in-law brought together many different businesses under a single group entity and listed the collection of businesses but struggled to find efficiencies required to make a group of this kind profitable.

Generally speaking, when you are building a group of companies you want to create profitable entities that can stand alone or an efficient central entity that can support the smaller group companies through head-office efficiencies. Centralised accounting, hr and other resources mean that the group can support the small collection of businesses and provide the operators of these entities with affordable resources to improve margins and profits.

Shawn and his family were running their lighting business and growing it through acquisitions but a series of events that turned from sunny to cloudy led to the business taking strain and coming under cash flow pressure. A recession, unfortunate timing of a Home Depot order mistake and other variables led to this listed lighting business going under.

Shawn and his brother-in-law decided to buy some of the more promising businesses and relaunch under a new name and with a new zest for profit. This move was not without complexity and struggle as Shawn had to take out loans from a factoring institution (kind of like a loan shark but legal and reputable) at 10–12% interest to help you get out of a hole to get a bank loan.

Shortly after growing, gaining ground, taking out loans and fighting for survival, his ex-employees launched a copy of his business. In this gripping episode of It’s Not Over Shawn talks about his mental health, working with his family, learning from his father-in-law and rebuilding a better business after failure.

This intense story of highs, lows, family responsibility, leadership and resilience kept me hanging on every word as Shawn and I discussed his successful launch and defence of a new entity after an old one died.

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Subscribe to It’s Not Over: www.nharry.com/its-not-over

Buy Shawn’s new book: www.elevationleaders.com/Happy_Leader_Book

Rebelion and curiosity go hand in hand - Greig Jansen

Greig is the founder of PURA Soda and in this episode, we discuss curiosity as a matter of nature or nurture, how creating the future is the best way to predict it, how curiosity is like a muscle, once you start you get better at it and become more curious about more things and how PURA pushes a curious corporate culture.

Other topics we cover and quotes from Greig:

Greig discusses the idea of living in continuous discontent.

How he conducted market research - started with family and friends.

How the sporty fraternity wanted a healthier drink alternative.

His curiosity is hereditary and is also a result of the environment he was brought up in.

We discuss the Created Future - The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself.

Greig believes that rebellion and curiosity go hand in hand.

“You need processes and procedures in place to accommodate for growth, that could kill curiosity if you're not careful.”

"Curiosity is like a muscle, once you start you get better at it and become more curious about more things."

As a startup having created a new product, curiosity is built into his business.

"Widen your network and widen your curiosity"

"Failure is simply a previous attempt at success"

Becoming an upcycled human - The Curious Cult Podcast

Jasper Eales is the founder of Sealand and considers himself to be an upcycled human being through a liver transplant.

In this episode Nic and Jasper discuss building a truly purpose-driven lifestyle brand, becoming an aspirational brand with an educational voice, how initially, all curiosity needs to be explored but then you need to follow the excitement and how a mistake is only a mistake if you repeat it.

TV is a Trauma Response - Leana de Beer

Leana de Beer is a social entrepreneur and the CEO of Feenix.org.

In this episode we discuss hiring for diversity, taking a step back and letting other people speak first, the trauma response that is watching television how the pursuit of excellence can be exhausting. 

Why You Should Need a License To Nap - Dale Rae on the Curious Cult Podcast

In this episode of the Curious Cult, Dale Rae and I chat about the science of sleep, how certain things in society (like working hours) are built around some, but not everyone, and about the power of consistency. This is a fascinating conversation and is worthwhile listening to even if you’re exceptional at sleep.

Dale is the founder of Sleep Science, a former senior researcher at the University of Cape Town. She’s obsessed with the science of sleep and is also the mother of two little kids and is passionate about mountain biking. 

Key takeaways from the episode

Sleep deprivation is a dangerous badge of honour

Many people, especially startup founders and entrepreneurs, glamorise a lack of sleep and seem proud of living on 3-4 hours a night. But it’s not sustainable and the body’s ability to take abuse in the short to medium-term can lead to long-term problems and a severe lack of sleep will catch up years down the line.

Choose your preference: Work in the way that works for you

“Night owls” and “larks” speaks to a sleep pattern and habit, but it goes much deeper than that. According to Dale’s research, the way you are biologically inclined to sleep affects everything in your day, like your exercise routines, your creative efficiency, and your eating habits. So whether you are a night owl or a lark, do your best to build your day around your most productive and efficient times instead of trying to force habit against your biological preference. 

Data is important, but over-tracking can be inefficient

Tracking data can be helpful if there’s a problem and you’re looking to solve it or improve it. But if the data is overanalysed, you might end up trying to solve a problem that isn’t there. For example, if you start tracking your sleep, it can give you interesting data which you might be able to use to better your habits. But if the information contradicts how you are feeling on the day-to-day, measuring it and over-interpreting it might not actually be helpful. 

The golden rule: Consistency is key

With all things in life - from sleep to exercise, work to food - developing routines around consistency is the best way to establish sustainable habits. It’s important to recognise that flexibility is important too. Instead of forcing a bedtime at a certain time, having a range of about an hour or so leads to routines that are far more likely to last. In the same way in work, remember to include flexibility in your regime and take breaks to maximise your efficiency. 

To keep updated on Dale and Sleep Science, you can find out more information here, on Instagram and on Facebook. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it far and wide and let’s start changing the world with curiosity.

Uncertainty is no longer an unfamiliar experience for the world

In this episode of the Curious Cult, I chat with Yossi Hasson about why connecting with “who” is more important than connecting with “what”, how uncertainty opens up opportunity and how limits can enhance curiosity.

Yossi is a tech entrepreneur born and raised in South Africa and started his first business at 21 years. He has a wealth of experience from building and scaling the tech-focused business and helping tech startups grow and develop through an accelerator while launching a non-profit coding school training Africa’s next coders over the next ten years. Now living in New York, he works in a venture capital field with a focus on the fintech sector, investing in interesting projects.

Key take aways from the episode

Before Covid, uncertainty was unfamiliar, but for entrepreneurs, uncertainty is as normal as a Tuesday

Identity is often linked to certainty - in business, in personality, in relationships. But accepting uncertainty opens up a dynamic world where things can change. Challenges still emerge and it’s not easy, but being open to adaptation makes change slightly easier to accept. 

Immediate thinking is not efficient, but looking down the line puts things into perspective

Zooming out and reflecting on how the day-to-day might impact years down the line is a helpful metric in life. You’ll find that the most important things are linked to connection and the “who”, rather than the “what”. Replacing questions like:

“What are you trying to do?”

“What do title do you want to have?”

“What do you see yourself doing?” 

with

“Who are you connecting with?” 

“Who do you see yourself as?” 

“Who do you want to be?”

can lead to building much more solid scaffolding in life.

Constraints cause creativity

Putting boundaries on creativity can force your mind to think to produce. Yossi puts an hour cap on his writing every day and has found his writing has been far more productive and the compressed timeline forces creativity to the forefront of one’s mind.

(Find Yossi’s writing by signing up to his newsletter.)

If you work with consistency, you’re bound to find some level of success

The more you do something, not only the better you get at it, but the more likely your chances are to find success. It goes hand-in-hand with the age-old adage, don’t try and you will fail. The more you try, the more your odds increase at succeeding. 

Trying something new either gives you a positive or negative result - it’s worthwhile finding out

Yossi dove into the blockchain and cryptocurrency space when it was still a novelty in the tech world. Curiosity drove him to the industry, conviction kept him there. Having the grit to keep ticking with excitement yields a positive outcome. 

Ego hinders progress and reputation risks growth

To be curious, you have to be brave. When you fail, you open yourself up to vulnerability. If you don’t care about ego, you’re more open to failure, which means you’re more open to learning and progress.

To keep updated on Yossi, find him on Twitter and subscribe to his daily-ish newsletter here. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it far and wide and let’s start changing the world with curiosity.

Nik Rabinowitz - How to be a happy comedian and what to do about the ego

In this episode of the Curious Cult, I have a fantastic chat with Nik Rabinowitz about how he got into the world of comedy, his relationship with comparison and dealing with the ego. Nik is a full-time stand-up comedian, a part-time sit-down comedian (thanks to Zoom and online comedy shows), a parent of three, and an all-round fascinating human.

In this episode of the Curious Cult, I have a fantastic chat with Nik Rabinowitz about how he got into the world of comedy, his relationship with comparison to other comedians, and dealing with the ego.

Nik is a full-time stand-up comedian, a part-time sit-down comedian (thanks to Zoom and online comedy shows), a parent of three, and an all-round fascinating human.

Key take aways from the episode

Don’t write off unique skills - you don’t realise where they might lead you 

When doing something that interests you, you might not know how the skills you are picking up could go somewhere exciting. Nik never realised he could be an entertainer by trade, telling his stories to an audience. Only when someone suggested he took to the stage, his career blew up.

Support goes a long way, but going against expectations can be surprisingly fulfilling 

Even if those close to you don’t see the same vision as you, it’s still worth trying something that could change your life. Nik’s mother was “concerned” about his idea of moving into comedy after getting a degree in business. But he stuck with his vocation and is now ticking all the boxes of Ikigai.  

Don’t let life happen to you - take the lessons and run with them

Life throws drama at us, it’s inevitable. But if you interrogate scenarios and change your perspective in life, you’ll get a lot more out of the circumstances - and grow from them.

Work through mental roadblocks - they won’t disappear unless you move them or move around them

“Nobody’s ever got talker’s block.” If you’re a writer and struggle to write - train against that. Just write through the writer’s block. If you’re creative and hit a mental roadblock - work through it. If you’re in another industry where you can get stuck in a lack of motivation - work through it. Motivation is just discipline that gets worked on. 

Comparison is the thief of joy

If you constantly focus on getting to where someone else is, you’ll find yourself struggling for happiness. Self-work is far more important than trying to get someone else’s life. 

Treat the ego like a monster - give it lots of space

Ego often gets in the way of critical, clear thinking and taking feedback positively. We tend to take things personally or completely disengage. Instead of trying to let the ego go, respect it, give it the space it needs and learn lessons with it and not against it.

To keep updated on Nik’s movements, catch him on LinkedIn, on Twitter and on Instagram. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it far and wide and let’s start changing the world with curiosity.

Mike Scott - The challenging necessity of cultivating feedback

In the first episode of season 3 of the Curious Cult, I am thrilled to chat with Mike Scott about why curiosity can be difficult but how it can help you evolve, why design by committee is bad but consensus can work and a whole bunch of other exciting topics.

In the first episode of season 3 of the Curious Cult, I am thrilled to chat with Mike Scott about why curiosity can be difficult but how it can help you evolve, why design by committee is bad but consensus can work and a whole bunch of other exciting topics. 

Mike is the co-founder of NONA, a firm which builds intuitive software for companies across the world. Mike believes strongly in habit-optimisation and is obsessed with learning and consuming knowledge. 

Key take aways from the episode:

• Lesson-learning in business happens through the process
  Through the process of building, starting and exiting a business as a teenager, Mike learnt a lot of lessons, met a lot of incredible people (who he’s working with now), made a lot of mistakes and developed the skills to continue building businesses.

• Integration over work-life balance
  NONA is now trying to create the best place for people to work in and they’re striving to create a place where life is not all about work. They’re trying to create a place where it’s not about finding that work-life balance, but integration is more important and more sustainable.
  The world is filled with business. All we do is work work work.

• Businesses have their own value beyond the revenue they generate
  As a young entrepreneur, Mike realising that companies can have their own value - and not just the profit that’s made through operations. Realising this is a game-changer in the way businesses are run.

• Be wary of someone who asks for trust

• Curiosity goes against the grain of simply believing something. It goes with analysing, learning and exploring something to find out more information to make an opinion of it first.

• Don’t take advice from someone not being bold with their lives

• When you start working on yourself, when you start evolving and growing, you are going to go through the pain
  Whether it’s the loss of friends, family, partners. Self-work comes at the sacrifice on things because it warrants change and inspiration.

• Feedback leads to possible challenge, but also necessary to make the best decisions
  At NONA, one of the fundamental messages is for people to speak up if there’s a problem with a decision. The culture comes with a lot of difficulties (especially related to ego), but it positions the business as one where the best possible outcomes come from the best possible people. 

For more information or to chat with Mike, find him on LinkedIn or check out NONA. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it far and wide and let’s start changing the world with curiosity.

Sam Beckbessinger: Creative Curiosity and Exploiting Unique Craziness

In this episode, I chat with one of my closest friends and best-selling author Sam Beckbessinger about working through a lack of inspiration, harnessing unique personality flavours and why consistency is so crucial for output in a creative space.

In this episode, I chat with one of my closest friends and best-selling author Sam Beckbessinger about working through a lack of inspiration, harnessing unique personality flavours and why consistency is so crucial for output in a creative space.

On a quest to find out “how to adult”, Sam writes by trade and follows her curiosity, recording interesting things obsessively in her pen-and-paper notebook and exploring them later through her writing. From writing to entrepreneurship to enabling and tapping into curious flairs and intrigues, Sam has a unique take on work titles, self-improvement and work ethic as a professional creative.

The difference between “verbing” and “nouning”

With Imposter Syndrome often rearing its ugly head, Sam identifies as a person who writes but battles to look at herself as a writer. The noun of a career path refers to the ownership of the thing and defines you forever. On the other hand, the verb is just an action of the thing you're doing right now.

“The difference between verbing and nouning; so I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable figuring out what the noun is for myself. I’ve been a lot of things. I’ve been an entrepreneur, a developer, a UX designer. I feel much more comfortable with the verb. I love writing, it’s my greatest passion and my greatest love. I love starting businesses and talking to people and listening to people. I love doing all of these things. So what’s cool about the verb state is that it isn’t definitional. You don’t have to meet that standard. Simply, it’s an action, you’re in progress, you’re doing that thing. So writing is the great romance of my life, where I sit having conversations with my imaginary friends and regardless of what that makes me, or what noun I have achieved or not, the verb is great.”

The power of self-knowledge over self-improvement

After trying to ‘improve’ certain aspects of herself, Sam has found that trying to combat the insecurities or “problem” areas is not always particularly helpful or sustainable. It’s better to aim to understand unique things about one’s self (both good and bad) and lean into them as much as possible. Knowing things and gaining self-knowledge can offer a way to garner authenticity and individualism rather than trying to improve to adapt to society.

“If you understand yourself, you can harness your particular flavours of crazy that are helpful for you. “

Not only does it help resolve the attempts to slot into what society deems “right”, but exploring self-knowledge and how you can exploit unique characteristics also sets much more achievable goals than changing to become a different person.

Feeding creativity and curiosity

To Sam, there are two different phases of creativity. Ever, the wordsmith, she uses the analogy of a larder and storage of ideas before executing the creativity. In the first phase, she “stocks her larder and stores ideas in her vault.” In this gathering phase, she follows her curiosity to add interesting things to her larder and ensures that she banks any interesting experiences through thorough note-taking and obsessive documenting.

In the second phase, comes the making things from the things stored in the vault. As she puts it:

“The creativity of making things out of your larder which comes from making interesting connections between things. So kind of introducing some serendipity to the process of making your recipe. And I think that you have to do both. You have to have interesting ingredients in your larder and then you have to combine them in an interesting way… The richer and more varied the ingredients, the more interesting will be that you make.”

In a creative industry: Working at your own pace

While some creatives thrive under deadline pressure and mess around until it comes time to properly crunch, others (like Sam) prefer a consistent and steady pace. Others still are a combination of both. It’s not important to try and adapt to either method, instead - working in a way which works for you is the best to discover, understand and tap into.

Choosing the right inspired thought - design or whatever creative component you use in your field - and trying to get the idea out successfully can be brutal. It’s such a subjective field and so creativity will never be perfect. What seems to work for many creatives who make money from their creativity resides in aiming for quantity within quality; since “perfect” doesn’t exist aiming for prolific often yields better results.

Every career has something which sucks

As an author, Sam finds that the most difficult thing in executing success is in the actual marketing of the product. Getting the work done, leaning into inspiration, letting the words flow; that’s where she flourishes. But getting the work out and marketing it to sell is what she finds difficult. Others might have the reverse, where marketing is easy but getting pen to paper is a struggle. Of course, it’s natural that we all have different skillsets and pure passion lies in different avenues, so it’s important to realise early on what skills you will enjoy using and which ones will take effort and grit: and seeing the “final product” to the end is where success comes in.

If you want to get in touch with Sam, you can find her on Like A Fucking Grownup.com or her personal website where she follows her curiosity “hang out with her” through her newsletter.

Rob Hope - Freedom as success

In this episode, I catch up with Rob Hope, a Cape Town-based multi-talented digital maker who goes by many labels from designer to developer to a casual surfer. With an aim is to fill his day with things which inspire him, Rob opts to take on things which challenge or offer enjoyment (like surfing).

In this episode, I catch up with Rob Hope, a Cape Town-based multi-talented digital maker who goes by many labels from designer to developer to casual surfer. With an aim to fill his day with things that inspire him, Rob’s main goal is to have a life in which he has the freedom to only take on things which challenge or offer enjoyment (like surfing). 

Complacency in content comfort

In his career, Rob found that when he was most comfortable in his career, he forgot to challenge himself. It’s “a very dangerous place to be”, as it leads to too much security in business or life; a “safe zone”. To beat the dangers of comfort, he started a Youtube show, one the hardest thing he has done in his life. 

With a deadline set (to avoid procrastinating the launch), his weekly Youtube episodes have been the most difficult, but monumentally rewarding things he has undertaken.

“Most things where I’ve dived in where things are difficult were the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.”

Plans are irrelevant but planning is imperative

When it comes to bigger picture thinking versus finer details, it’s crucial to strike the balance of both. If you focus on the macro only, you run the risk of not fine-tuning and releasing a product or service which doesn’t have the quality to be fully marketable. But at the same time, if you only focus on the small details, you can spend far too much time and energy trying to perfect something which might not be used in the way intended.

“It has to be both. My biggest problem is overthinking. Everything changes so radically when you get going and spending that time debating things that probably don’t matter is just a waste of energy. But you can’t know what your product is going to be doing years down the line. So you’ve got to get it out there as light as possible because everything changes as soon as it’s in public.”

Starting a side hustle or taking on a project isn’t actually risky business

Despite what society says, taking the difficult initial step to start a side hustle or take on a new project isn’t actually as risky as it seems. Entrepreneurs, side-hustlers, and makers aren’t that risky by nature. They’re calculated, strategic and make considered decisions. 

There’s possibly more risk-taking (whether it’s of time, energy or finance) than the average person, but they’re not random risks. All possibilities are calculated and cautious with careful thought involved.

A good entrepreneur considers the future ramifications of green-lighting a project or business.

A “Project Graveyard”: A record of failure but also lessons learnt

Rob has a list of projects which never succeeded archived in his ‘Project Graveyard’. He uses this list of failed projects to serve two main purposes:

1. To reflect on the journey of past passion projects and to remember things that have been done, even if they didn’t work out; and

2. To remind others that very few things are quick wins and that success comes from the lessons that failed projects teach.

The failures act as stepping stones to success. The motivation is designing a lifestyle by eliminating things which you don’t like doing and the Project Graveyard represents cutting out what you don’t like and allowing time for things you do like doing. It’s a symbol of every single lesson that aids to future decisions (and successes) you make later down the line.

“Stay humble and focus long-term. It’s about doing daily work consistently over time. For me, this is a lot of failures of projects I thought I might still be working on years down the line. I don’t really believe in the word luck. I get to work on things I enjoy now, and so I don’t see these as ‘failures’ because they helped me get where I am today - a place where I get to do what I want.”

Do you know what success looks like to you? Rob hope does. He goes to great lengths to ensure he has as much freedom every day as possible to work on only th...

Walking the talk: Your actions dictate your intent

If someone wants success, there needs to be a drive to hit that success. Not only are there few quick wins in business, but there are even fewer opportunities of luck to allow a person to thrive without effort. For example, if someone wants to build a billion-dollar business but spends the majority of their time messing around; their intent and their actions don’t really align and that billion-dollar dream is never going to be realised.

However, it’s also extremely important (and healthy) to hit the reset button to refocus and re-energise inspiration.

“But at the same time, it’s important to step away from you do as well. There’s massive value in doing something entirely different to reset from work. Being a maker, and being creative comes from being inspired, and that often comes from being away from the work.”

Different intrigue results in diversity, which leads to a full life

When starting things - whether passion projects, side hustles or businesses - there seems to be a misconception that everything in life has to be associated with it. But the layers of diversity in interests, like hobbies that are completely random and have no direct link to the business you might be building, is imperative in rounding out knowledge. Unique interests lead to interesting people. Not only are different interests crucial in taking a step back to refocus, but they are also important in building a fuller life.

“If we all consume the exact same content, the output would be the same. What makes me unique is probably just a mesh of absolutely everything I’ve done. It’s the bird-watching. It’s travelling. And that’s how you create a rich life.”

If you want to get in touch with Rob or find out more about his journey of success through failure, check out his website or find him on Twitter. 

Natalie Nagele - Shifting the Focus from Business to People

In this episode, I chat with Natalie Nagele, co-founder and CEO of Wildbit, a company which puts people at the forefront of businesses. With 20 years running the company, has a wealth of experience in starting things and learning along the way.

In this episode, I chat with Natalie Nagele, co-founder and CEO of Wildbit, a company which puts people at the forefront of businesses. 

With 20 years running the company, has a wealth of experience in starting things and learning along the way. She and Wldbit are shifting the focus in business: Prioritising people and developing a business culture to support individuals and promote healthy work habits. 

Living as a CEO - It’s not the same for everyone and every business

With imposter syndrome (the feeling that you are a fraud and someone will find out and expose you one day) as a constant threat as a young CEO, Natalie has learned to accept that she won’t know everything because knowing everything isn’t the point. Instead, there’s a laser focus on figuring out what the role should entail and leaning into what the company needs, rather than what the world seems to think is important for the position. As she noted, feeling like an imposter never seems to fade, but gaining confidence in the authority of her decisions is an important shift in focus:

“I had to really work in understanding that, while it’s a title that’s well-regarded and well understood, the actual role varies from company to company. And I think it was a journey of figuring out what Wildbit needs from a CEO. It took a really long time to lean into that confidence in the things that I say; knowing that they’re right and that they deserve the space. That was probably the hardest part I realised that I don’t have to be this brilliant, all-knowing and all-experienced person.”

Imposter Phenomenon: Imposter Syndrome’s optimistic younger brother

As curious people, there’s a common thread in founders, entrepreneurs and people who start things - they often want to learn as much as possible even if it’s completely arbitrary. Going from knowing nothing to the confidence in well-established knowledge can be an incredible way to challenge yourself to learn consistently. But it also might feel like you’re living at the forefront of incompetence, which ties closely in with the imposter syndrome that Natalie feels because there’s a constant worry that the incompetence might be revealed. 

However, on the flip side of the imposter syndrome is the need and craving to consistently learn. And in this space lives the imposter phenomenon. When most people feel like they don’t know what they’re doing, they buckle and give up but when the obsessively curious starters face the fraudulent feeling, they focus on combatting it by learning more and improving on the knowledge and gaining confidence in areas where they might feel lacking.

The (surprising) way a business network can instil confidence 

Natalie opted to avoid corporate networking for several years, thinking that it was ‘just for the suits’. When she and her husband Chris started connecting with other entrepreneurs though, she realised that there was a lot of confidence to be gained from being in the same space as other entrepreneurs - not because of their experience, but because of their inexperience. When she started connecting with other founders, she learnt that she wasn’t the only one constantly trying to figure things out. She realised that businesses might look like they’re doing great from the outside, but inside things are a mess.

“On the outside, you think that every business is doing so well, but then you get inside and you realise we’re all just dumpster fires. And I think that’s where a lot of my confidence was building. When I realised that it’s all just shit everywhere.”

On top of this, having a supportive business network helps to just talk things through and bounce off ideas. Either to see whether something might be feasible or to validate an exciting concept and finding a way to make it happen well. As she said, decision-making without the knowledge of others means you’re making them in a bit of a vacuum. Even if there’s inherent trust in your instinct and your own understanding of business, there’s an important balance that needs to be found to check something against someone.

To entrepreneurs: Don’t offer advice. Offer experience

Entrepreneurs aren’t fantastic at receiving advice in general. Natalie knows it. I know it. Anyone who has started a business knows it. Whether it’s a stubbornness to accept guidance or just the drive to figure something out, it seems to be difficult to take advice off the bat without figuring just ignoring it and making the mistakes anyway.

Instead of giving or asking for advice, Natalie has found that asking about a personal experience is far more effective. It’s a shift from “how would you do this?” to “how did you solve this?” or “what did you do about this problem?”

Giving advice through experienced insight is also a great way to help someone starting is not only confidence-building, but it also offers a space to learn in its own right. Having someone to learn from, someone to practice with and someone to teach is a fantastic way to become an expert at anything.

"Businesses don't exist in the natural world. We create them and we get to decide how to run them." Natalie Nagele is the CEO of Wildbit.com and in this epis...

To imitate or innovate

When it comes to starting something new, Natalie pointed out that reinventing the wheel isn’t a fantastic use of time. Rather, it’s been amazing to pick a system that’s already been developed, integrating it and tweaking it to fit the culture or the vision of the company. It makes it easier to build something and dive into execution with systems that already exist rather than innovating everything and wasting excitement on something that wouldn’t have worked out in time anyway.

It’s a question of asking: What does it mean to reinvent and what can I piggyback off?

“Realising that you should be innovating on things that make you special and just borrowing the things that don’t.”

If you want to get in touch with Natalie or find out more about Wildbit’s new brand which has a tremendous amount of content about starting a business, on Twitter, or head to Wildbit’s website.

Kyle Redelinghuys - The Art of Starting, Scaling, and Satiating Curiosity

In this episode, I chat with Kyle Redelinghuys about how he manages to stay on top of four business ventures while maintaining a relationship and still has time to exercise at the end of the day. The perfect advocate for starting things, Kyle offers a wealth of knowledge about how to scale businesses sustainably.

In this episode, I chat with Kyle Redelinghuys about how he manages to stay on top of four business ventures while maintaining good relationships and still has time to exercise at the end of the day. The perfect advocate for starting things, Kyle offers a wealth of knowledge about how to scale businesses sustainably.

Kyle originally hails from Johannesburg, South Africa. His professional history includes working for an international agency, moving to Cape Town and settling abroad in the United Kingdom. Over his career, he’s worked for VISA and several other global corporations, but his forte lies in starting his own companies. BVNK - a core banking startup - an exercise project, Travel Advice API and COVID19 API capture his current attention.

“Overcoming awkward” is all about learning

When a person starts something or just dips their toes into a new industry, concept, idea, or hobby, there’s an awkward phase where things are uncomfortable and they don’t know the ins-and-outs. Most people tend to back out and don’t launch what they want or follow through with their idea. Overcoming - or even leaning into - the awkward feeling is pivotal in launching a business or side hustle. Kyle frames this awkwardness simply as learning taking place:

“Discomfort, where you feel like you know a little bit, but not enough - it’s not a great feeling, but it is where you are learning. That is the most active learning time. I’ve learnt when that discomfort occurs, I’m busy growing. Then I ask myself: Do I want to carry on or not?”

The incentive of reward to start something

Instead of fearing risk when starting something, Kyle chooses the potential the reward as a focal point. If something is exciting and grabs your attention, he suggests that it’s worthwhile going for. He suggests that while the risk is still something to consider, it’s better to think about whether the achievement after the work has been put in, will justify the potential for failure. A question to pose before diving in is:

“Am I pumped enough about the reward which outweighs this risk?”

Satiating curiosity and “filling up” your interest

Often, one of the obstacles curious people hit is just an overwhelming amount of things which intrigue them and having too many interests. With only 24 hours in a day, diving into everything is simply not an option.

Because of time limitations, picking what feeds curiosity almost becomes a calculated consideration. Kyle’s approach to satiating curiosity is to go all into something, researching or reading; spending time and investing energy into it until it’s either not as interesting anymore or until it just becomes a part of his life.

“The baseline is choosing whatever I have found interesting over consecutive years. But then there’s the other side, like an immediate curiosity where I’m interested in a project and I spend everything I can on it. It’s almost like there’s a well there and it keeps going until it’s run out. And then, it’s not that the interest has dwindled, but the fire subsides and I move on.”

Focusing on the big picture and narrowing down

When starting something, it’s easy to keep your head in the clouds and not get to the nitty gritties and launch something with a viable product. On the flip side, it’s easy to lose confidence and enthusiasm if you have only the details in place without a dream or vision. In an ideal world, having both in place is the best approach. As Kyle put it:

“When you’re starting, it’s always in the big picture. But when you focus on the ideal vision, you bring it down to what you can reasonably build or test. If you try to get into the detail without a big vision, you are going to go nowhere because you’ll start and try to plan for eventualities that will never happen.”

In this episode, I chat with Kyle Redelinghuys about how he manages to stay on top of four business ventures while maintaining a relationship and still havin...

Should you delegate or do it yourself?

Founders tend to have a hard time letting go of certain things and often want control over every aspect of their business. It makes sense, especially if it’s something new that they’re excited about. But it’s important to recognise that there is sometimes better use for your time and it’s okay to let someone else step in and do something which will ultimately be better for the business. This is particularly true when starting something while working a full-time job or balancing life at the same time as building a side hustle.

“Sometimes, letting go and outsourcing is the difference between things getting done and not getting them done.”

So doing it yourself is ideal if there is time capacity, because it means you likely have to learn something new and things are done in the way you want them to be. But learning to delegate is crucial, especially when your business starts to scale. 

If you want to get in touch with Kyle or find out more Covid19 API, find him on his website, Twitter, or check out Covid19 API.

Ory Okolloh - Intellectual Curiosity & Challenging the Status Quo

In this episode, I chat with Kenyan activist Ory Okolloh, who has an active sense of chasing curiosity with an appetite to see social change in the African landscape. With the social development in Africa a strong driving force in her professional pursuits, Ory is one of the founding members of Ushahidi, a non-profit open-source software application designed to help give a voice to marginalised people.

In this episode, I chat with Kenyan activist Ory Okolloh who has an active sense of pursuing curiosity with an appetite to see social change in the African landscape. 

With a wealth of experience in her career, Ory serves on the Board of Directors of several organisations including the Thomson Reuters Founders Share Company, Stanbic Holdings Plc and Stanbic Bank Kenya. She has also worked as Google’s policy and strategy manager and for numerous corporations and companies, including the Omidyar Network and Luminate Group in Africa, both of which are part of The Omidyar Group.

With the social development in Africa a strong driving force in her professional pursuits, Ory is one of the founding members of Ushahidi, a non-profit open-source software application designed to help give a voice to marginalised people.

Starting something & trusting your instincts

Throughout her career, Ory has faced a fear of failure, a fear of being broke, fear of screwing up, all mingled with feelings of Imposter Syndrome. Looking at her major moves now though - such as whether to go to Harvard to study law, move back to Kenya from the United States after he studies, or moving to South Africa to live with her now-husband - she’s realised that they were the right decisions in retrospect. 

At the time, though, they felt like there was potential for massive mistakes. Pushing through this, she has learnt to trust her gut.

“Over time you realise that nobody really knows what they’re doing. I keep waiting and I still feel like I’m not quite sure about what next. And I think overcoming that feeling is important. Because everyone is consistently trying to figure it out. And as you learn, you get better at making big decisions.“

Using the analogy of a child learning to walk - which they only do after falling countless times - Ory pointed out the hesitation of a wobbly start or fear of making a big life decision is natural. Only after consistently trying, you realise you can do it. And when you fall or fail, you realise it’s not so bad and you become bolder next time and learn to make bigger leaps.

And even then, the “what the hell am I doing?” feeling never really goes away, so it’s worthwhile just going for it anyway.

Seeking out failure: Post-traumatic growth

The concept of post-traumatic growth is based on the theory is that no matter how bad the trauma you experience, humans find a way to improve.

So, instead of shying away from failure, the shift towards internalising the mindset helps to take the big leaps and make bold decisions. With every failure, there’s a way to learn to be better so it’s worth seeking out the lessons. 

“After failing, you end up better, smarter, more resilient.”

In addition, if you don’t do anything or avoid starting something out of fear of failure, you’ll have failed before you even have the chance to try and you won’t have gained any insight in the process.

Breaking the norm and going against the status quo

From an early age, Ory had a supportive upbringing from her parents, and she attributes her nature to push the status quo now to her father. 

“I was quirky. I hated wearing dresses, I wanted to wear only certain kinds of clothes. I didn’t want my hair done in a certain way. I was never a girly girl. And I was their first kid, so you can imagine what they went through, in the environment they were in, without any experience or expectations. To their credit, they let me be and learnt how to nurture my curiosity.”

Later in life, her ability to question social “norms” continued. Not only in her career path, but in her interactions. In panels, if she’s asked how she balances her career with kids and a family, she refuses to answer if the same question isn’t posed to males of the panel. 

It’s not about making a statement, it’s about taking a stance and fighting for the values despite what society says.

Intellectually curious & the power of niche reading

“If you look at my resume, there’s a story that it tells but it’s a bullshit story. Of course, there’s a theme that I care tremendously about the continent and Kenya. And I want to be in places where my work is improving my country or creating opportunities so that more people aren’t dependent on luck. So there’s a theme, but everything else in between is all over the place driven by my intellectual curiosity. I get bored very easily, so I can’t do just one thing.”

Ory used to be apologetic about this “rabbit-hole” obsessive curiosity, but she’s chosen to embrace the variety of her intrigue. She balances her multi-interested curiosity with excelling at what she puts her mind to. 

As a child, Ory read a variety of books on a number of arbitrary topics - the books her mother could find was all the literature she had available - and would now rather read widely, picking articles that she knows that others haven’t found. 

“It forces me to up my game. Through this, I have learnt a lot of stuff. Some of it is neither here nor there, but a lot of it has improved me in terms of picking up new things and meeting new people. I’ve got opportunities as a result of the interesting topics I can discuss that others can’t.”

Beating “sacrifice fallacy” and time-blocking

Ory noticed that in the United States there seems to be a sense of security in being eternally busy. Likening it to a drug, there is a culture of time-filling, hyper-drive and power catch-ups rather than productivity and quality output. 

Africa, on the other hand, seems to have an approach which tends towards enjoying that there “are enough hours in the day" to do everything. If you break your day up, you have sixteen hours remaining after sleep and it’s up to you how you want to fill them. An eight-hour workday still leaves you with eight hours, so there’s time to exercise, socialise, and fill your proverbial cup with not-work things. 

In this episode, I chat with Kenyan activist Ory Okolloh who has an active sense of pursuing curiosity with an appetite to see social change in the African l...

Embrace your narrative

In closing, her advice is to embrace that you get to choose to own your narrative and let your life’s story speak for itself. There’s a culture of modesty, especially in South Africa, but putting your hand up and saying ‘hey, look I did it’ is part of embracing your success, which is so important in building something.

If you want to get in touch with Ory, find her on LinkedIn, on Twitter. 

Bob Skinstad - Focus, Commitment and The Power of Choice

In this episode, I catch up with former professional rugby player Bob Skinstad who played for the Springboks. In addition to his time on the pitch, Bob also has a wealth of experience in the field of business and investments. From Stellenbosch University, Bob spent twelve years playing professional sport internationally.

In this episode, I catch up with former professional rugby player Bob Skinstad who played for the Springboks. In addition to his time on the pitch, Bob also has a wealth of experience in the field of business and investments.

From Stellenbosch University, Bob spent twelve years playing professional sport internationally. During his sporting career, he had a number of investments and co-investments which trajected his interest in the world business and entrepreneurship. He dabbled in a corporate role to learn the formal side of business, “learning how to dot the i’s and cross the t’s” and managed his own portfolio of investments. He is now a partner for investment capital management firm Knife Capital and is a venture partner for a family office in the United Kingdom.

Getting over the obstacles and learning through focus 

Facing a major injury in his career, Bob had to overcome the challenge of putting his body, mind and energy into adapting back into sport after three years out. To get himself, his BMI and his speed back in place, Bob had to put in an immense amount of effort to conquer the day-to-day struggle to get back to the physical strength necessary to perform and succeed as a professional athlete.

“That was the first time I realised that stuff that had come easily to me was genuinely a day-to-day struggle for a lot of people and it became a day-to-day struggle for me because of the new body type. It was a turning point in my life realising that when you take on big projects like this, there needs to an nth degree of focus and commitment and there needs to be a plan and roadmap and you need to be able to put milestones and grow. And when a lesson comes along like this, you learn it and you learn it properly.”

The fear of failure and reward of risk

Bob noted that risk and working through the fear of failure is a tremendous exploration, and it’s brave to talk about the fear because people don’t like the concept of failure. Without thinking about it, Bob’s default has been optimism and “what if I fail” wasn’t a question he asked. Growing up with supportive parents, he tends towards saying yes to risk and not getting wrapped up in the woes and worries of the fear of failure.

“Everyone believes entrepreneurs are completely on top of all the risk in the world, but actually the idea is calculated risk, not fearlessness. If I fail, the cost-benefit analysis is in my favour, so screw it, I’m going to go forward. The more you admit that failure exists, the more comfortable you get with the risks involved.”

Working in the present, with the future in mind

When working in business with different avenues of career at one time, it’s crucial to learn to say no to things. The more a person says yes, the more they risk feeling overwhelmed by having too many things on their plate. Bob’s approach to this is choosing the present with the idea of the future in mind:

“The future is not always going to provide the reassurance you seek from it, it’s actually just a little bit of what you feel right now, just in a few month’s time. The future, from my vantage point, is going to look very similar to what’s happening today. The new future is only just a couple of months ahead of that. And I think that’s okay.”

It means there’s a reason to say no, especially if you think you’re on the right track because you’ll get there eventually. Thinking about the future as the only pinpoint to strive towards makes it more difficult to enjoy the present without enormous pressure. But if you’re saying no to the wrong things for the right reasons, then that’s okay.

As Jeff Bezos famously said, people often ask what’s going to change in the next ten years, but there’s more interest in what’s not going to change in the next ten years. And that’s fundamentally true. So it’s better to play on the field that you have rather than focusing on trying to predict the future.

“And it’s freeing to mentally grasp it. You can sit here and wring your hands and say you need to change it. Changing the future will change it, worrying about changing it will not.”

Selflessness is a fallacy and altruism is a lie

Society has developed a sort of quasi-religious approach that giving everything to other people is the ideal to look up to, but it’s actually not the case. As Bob noted:

“I’m starting to understand that selflessness, complete selflessness is overrated and actually non-existent. This is especially for women. Particularly in the home environment, daughters and mothers are trained to be sort of be quiet and subservient and I think that’s a societal problem. A lot of women have fought this and are incredible in their roles.”

Instead of aiming to give everything to everyone, look after yourself and slowly things will be okay. The guy next to you will look after himself and the girl next to him will look after herself and joint and separately we will look after each other in the needs of our current endeavour. 

Give to the givers, don’t give to the takers

Prioritising yourself and your family doesn’t make you selfish. It makes you focus on improving yourself and your life, which sets you up to become the best you that you can be.

“If you want to survive in this world, give to the givers, don’t give to the takers. If you give to the takers, you’ll never give it back. If you give to the givers, you’ll get it back your whole life long. And that’s why I think selflessness is overrated. I don’t mean just look after yourself, I mean look after the people who will look after you.” 

You have agency and the choices in life are up to you

When it comes down to choices in life, you get to choose what you like, you get to choose what you fail at. So if you’re going to fail, you might as well choose to risk failing at something you love.

No matter what the world tells you: In your life, in your side hustle, you have agency and you get to choose what you want to make from your time.

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

If you want to get in touch with Bob or find out more about what his venture capital endeavours, find him on LinkedIn, on Twitter, or check out Knife Capital.

Tashmia Ismail - Avid curiosity and combatting inequality

In this episode, I chat with Tashmia Ismail who has built models to combat inequality and social injustice. Born in South Africa, a remarkably fascinating but unequal country in career opportunities and the job market, Tash has an avid curiosity about democratising access to the basic chances of employment available to young South Africans.

In this episode, I chat with Tashmia Ismail who has built models to combat inequality across socio-economic groups. Born in South Africa, a remarkably fascinating but unequal country in career opportunities and the job market, Tash has an avid curiosity about democratising access to the basic chances of employment available to young South Africans.

“I’m a big fan of two types of models. One is a Robin Hood model and the other is a Platform Model, both of which work well together. And the idea of working with people who have the resources and skills and hopefully can build empathy to work together on platforms to address some of these issues.”

From dentistry to heading up youth employment empowerment (YES4Youth) 

Tash attributes her first foray into the working world as a dentist (despite her own preference to study law at the University of Cape Town) to her mother. Going into university, her mother insisted that her first choice was dentistry as “a good choice for a woman”. With only 45 people going to dental school, Tash was convinced that she wouldn’t get into the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) in Johannesburg to study. But, low and behold, she got in to study dentistry and felt obliged to took the opportunity because she thought that she would break her heart if I didn’t.

Once stepping out of university, Tash started working as a dentist and learnt the tough lessons of entrepreneurship on the job when she made the initial decision to start her own Dental Practice. She wanted to start something which could offer people the type of service that she wanted to give, which no other dental practice was doing. Having no formal business education (like a surprising number of start-up founders and entrepreneurs), Tash took on the role of an entrepreneur while working as a dentist. After years of learning business knowledge practically on-the-job, Tash made the bold move from dental work to build a platform to empower youth to learn business literacy and step into the working world with the right resources and knowledge to excel.

No knowledge gained is ever a waste

Despite wanting to study something else at a different university, Tash is grateful for the knowledge she gained from her time at WITS. She points a lot of the successes she’s seen in YES4Youth as a result of the information and soft skills she gained from her time at university:

“No knowledge is ever lost.”

“Studying the human body is fascinating. Science is fascinating. It set me up to understand neuroscience which I use in the work I do now. So dentistry might not have been the best fit for me as an actual career choice, but in terms of the knowledge I gained and the understanding into the human body, I think a science-based education has been critical in the way I’ve looked at problems.”

Debt is a thief from your future

When starting her dental practice, Tash didn’t take out any loans despite the fact that banks were willing to lend and fund her money. From the lessons learned, one of the most important ones was to reduce any capital amount, because of how quickly that compound interest adds up.

“At the tender age of 23.5, the school of knocks works quickly and I remember being absolutely driven to reduce that capital amount. Anytime I collected any sort of money, boom! It would go straight towards reducing the capital and there was no better sense of gratification and feeling of achievement than seeing that balance come down…

“Compound interest is your enemy if you’re on the paying side of things.”

Now, using elements she learnt from her studies and work outside of university, Tash ensures that the youth in the YES programme can learn the lessons about the dangers of owing money with interest. The platform teaches important lessons in business literacy, related to the working world and the importance of setting up a career without having debt as a major roadblock in the future.

“Debt is a robber. With debt, you steal from yourself.”

Curiosity and rounding up information to be a better person

Tash acknowledges that so much of what she knows now and can use to build towards the YES platform comes from work that has nothing to do with youth employment. From working as a dentist to studying through correspondence at the University of South Africa, she consistently learns to know more to diversify her knowledge. The curiosity that drove her to study more and do other things, Tash sought knowledge to beat the “fear of missing out” on new information. 

“I have FOMO on knowledge. I need to understand and know things. In our schooling system, you go straight from school and deep-dive into very specialist knowledge and I felt that I wouldn’t be a good citizen of the planet if I didn’t round my knowledge. I needed to know more to be a better human being.”

If you want to get in touch with Tash or find out more about the Youth Employment Service, find her on Twitter, or through the YES4Youth website.

Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

Vinny Lingham - Abundant Thinking for Entrepreneurs

In this episode, I chat with Vinny Lingham about his time spent working in a corporate career and how it acted as a stepping stone to entrepreneurship. With a hunger for knowledge and an appreciation for information, Vinny is a massive advocate for skill-building experience and it's evident in the way he talks about work and career opportunities.

In this episode, I chat with Vinny Lingham about his time spent working in a corporate career and how it acted as a stepping stone to entrepreneurship. With a hunger for knowledge and an appreciation for information, Vinny is a massive advocate for skill-building experience and it’s evident in the way he talks about work and career opportunities.

Hailing from East London in South Africa, he spent time in the corporate world before branching out to start his own companies. After building his first businesses, a search engine marketing platform in 2003 and incubators in South Africa, he moved to Silicon Valley to build up more tech entrepreneur experience. In 2015, Vinny started Civic, an identity platform, which is his current focus to develop to adapt in the COVID-shaken world.

Aiming for knowledge over experience

Coming from debt, being cash-strapped, and having learnt through a year of failed attempts to start things, from franchising to working on his dad’s business to trying to build businesses.

“I made lots of mistakes back then, it was a difficult time… I did a whole bunch of things that all failed. I moved on. That was a lost year, but I learnt a lot. ”

To fund himself through a couple of difficult years, Vinny got a full-time corporate job. In his time working in corporate life, the most important thing he realised was how crucial it is to learn on the job. To work hard and gain lessons through dynamic data and changing information make the hours working for someone else worthwhile. If you’re working in a corporate company and hope to start your own business at some point, Vinny’s advice is to make sure you are gaining worthwhile insights from your experience:

“If you work in a business where it’s dynamic and things are changing and you’re learning new things every single day, you need to maximise those hours. You need to plough in as many hours as you can. If you work twice as hard as everyone else, you can learn twice as fast in a business where data is changing. If you can develop specialised skills in a certain area and you raise yourself, especially in a new industry that’s emerging, you become an expert, you can find a gap in the market and start your own business.” 

It’s important to realise that having a “wealth of experience” is not a good representation of how much a person can offer. More often than not, this is one of the biggest fallacies which corporates companies often buy into: A candidate for a job requires X number of years, and they’ll rule out the perfect person because of “inexperience” despite the treasure chest of information they might have. As Vinny pointed out, this creates a niche gap in the market which means the knowledgeable job-seeker will tend towards starting a new company rather than fighting for a job.

The fallacy of the work-life balance

Too many people are ambitious but aren’t willing to work hard to achieve. There needs to be intention to work to align with the ambition for results. And the two need to work together. You can’t only work smart and you can’t only work hard. If you try to balance your work and career and your leisure and your life at 50/50, you don't really give either enough they need. But if you can integrate both your work and your life, letting each other feed, then they can complement one another.

“If you’re trying to create wealth, then you can’t have a work-life balance because the opportunities that present itself don’t care about your life.”

The scarcity vs abundance mindset

Growing up in South Africa makes one guarded about losing something, which leads to a “scarcity mindset” and a conservative fear to mitigate risk. In developed economies, on the other hand, there seems to be a more prominent “abundant mindset”, where there is not the same drive to cling on to something out of fear of losing it. 

“If I could go back in time and change one thing, I would have done differently is I would have moved away from South Africa earlier to adjust [and adopt an abundance mindset].”

On this point, Vinny noted that to combat issues of scarcity mindset means keeping overheads low, and take calculated risks, while reducing expenses to combat possible loss. Be frugal to be abundant and maintain cash-flow. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, to be abundant, there needs to be an element of constraint. 

To young startup founders: Just take the damn advice

In closing, Vinny offered a key piece of guidance:

Learn from the mistakes others have made already. The advice hasn’t changed over years and learning through your own mistakes when you can avoid them makes for unnecessary use of time, energy, love and money.

“I got all the advice I could have got. I just didn’t listen. Listen to people who have been there and done it. Don’t mistake the same mistakes they made and listen to what they have to say.”

You can find Vinny on Twitter, or through his website.

In this episode, I chat with Vinny Lingham about his time spent working in a corporate career and how it acted as a stepping stone to entrepreneurship. With ...

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