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.

Is South Africa not good enough for Vinny Lingham?

Vinny Lingham has recently secured $5m dollars in Venture Capital investment for his startup, Synthasite, from Compagnie Financière Richemont’s subsidiary, Swiss-based Columbus Venture Capital.He is making waves internationally, he is doing a great job of building an empire. Unfortunately that empire is moving away from it's home.Vinny is moving. Now most of you wont think twice about this, good for him making something of himself and moving on to bigger and better things. But I have an issue with all of this and trust me, I am not the only one.Setting up a fund for local companies to pool resources from (commonly known as Venture Capital - VC) is great. But taking these companies to a global market, removing them from SA and garnering credit from an international market with no emphasis on the South African nature of the product is not on.If Synthasite is anything for us to go by we can expect all of Vinny's "investments" to up and leave SA for greener, better, larger, more profitable markets. Which makes sense I suppose. But the nature of our market is one that needs nurturing and growth from the grassroots up and the inside out. Vinny could've been our man but it seems as though profit and power motivate more than development and growth for SA.Don't misunderstand me, I am not berating Vinny's success. It is marvelous that the man is set up for at least the next well, forever. Investments are great but how about giving something back?Vinny has the opportunity to hire local developers, train local people to become great innovators, developers and business people. He has the chance to make an impact. Instead he is fleeing SA for San Francisco. The money is greater, the market (I mean USA when I say "the market") is more appealing for him and SA is left in his wake. Sad situation if you ask me.He claims to be a VC but to date Lingham Capital seems to have invested in SkyRove and that's it. In fact, for someone with a site that builds sites (Synthasite), Lingham Capital's own website looks pretty dismal to me. The homepage is barren, the featured investments are empty, there hasn't been a single blog post and it seems as though the site never even got off the ground.Some might say he's been busy raising $5m for Synthasite but that's hogwash. Yes he raised the $5m but then why bother even making a massive announcement that he would be investing in companies locally?Speaking of local investments, it seems as though Vinny has no interest in investing locally unless there is massive global focus. Vinny has openly stated in the past that he's not interested in the South African money - the market is too small. He did so on David Bullard's blog where he only spoke of dollars and pounds because his company, Incubeta, only generate about 5% of their R60 million turnover from SA.Eve Dmochowska has a great post wherein she chats about a meeting with Vinny, Justin from Afrigator and others. Here's a quick excerpt:

This is how the situation panned out. Try to keep up.Vinny cannot invest in Afrigator, because it does not have immediate global appeal, but Triumph cannot invest in Synthasite because it does not have enough local focus. Unfortunately, even though Afrigator is all about local focus, Triumph wouldn’t invest because there is no cash flow. Blue Catalyst might be able to put Afrigator in touch with angel investors who might provide the capital necessary to get Afrigator to a positive cash-flow situation, but the fact that Afrigator’s creator has only had one failure behind him (and not at least five) puts him at a disadvantage in all the VCs’ eyes. Go figure.

Damned if you do and damned if you don't. I am sure this is how Vinny is going to feel after reading this post. Unfortunately I am one of those people who believe that it's not someone else's job to make change happen. It's my job, it's your job and it's the job of whoever can actually make a difference.Vinny has openly said that he wont invest in Afrigator because it is too local. Why would he not want to invest now and help them mould their company in to one that is locally based with global appeal? Why must profit = global alone? Why can an African website such as Afrigator not make it in a VC's mind? Short sighted and naive in my opinion.South Africa needs heroes, captains of industry and leaders. Not Capitalists who flee when things get tough and the market is more lucrative somewhere else.