Nic’s blog
I write about building businesses, failing and building a life, not a legacy.
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 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.
Michael Smollan - Purpose-driven business and globalising a world view
In this episode of the Curious Cult, I am excited to chat with Michael Smollan about how living in Shanghai changed his life, how working in the family business has made him more hungry for curiosity and how making sure a business operates according to the purpose is crucial.
Mike is the Chief Growth & Innovation Officer of the Smollan Group, he heads up marketing, growth, and innovation in the firm after growing up in operations. With offices across 56 different countries in the world, one of the core focuses of the Smollan Group is to help improve lives and reduce their environmental impact.
Key take-aways from the episode
Travelling and getting out of your comfort zone is trajectory changing
After spending six years (after what was going to be two years), Mike lived in Shanghai. Shattering the “normal” and what was taken for granted as a shared perspective in culture, there’s a tremendous amount to learn through experiencing something that contrasts what you know.
In your mental library of the world, there are things that need to be there
Taking a deep dive into particular things - specialising in certain information - is important to find a niche and to develop interesting insights. But there are broad aspects of the world that are important to know about. As Mike puts it, it’s important to have a better-informed perspective on things (such as political opinions) to make sure you’re believing your own truth.
Increase your alternatives - decrease your dependencies
Working in a family business, Mike has made sure to build his own experience so that he can offer the business his best through diverse insight. In any company or in any opportunity in life, if you’ve got the well-rounded experience you’ve got the best bet for success.
If you’re green you grow, if you’re ripe you rot
Knowledge is nourishment for curiosity and if you’re feeding it with new insight and new perspective, you’re growing.
Fascinating, useless information has its space
Curiosity can be incredibly inefficient, but it’s vital for innovation. A need to feed obsessive curiosity is a drive forward to challenge the status quo and find better methods of doing something.
Purpose-driven business is the only way to market your business as such
There’s no such thing as purpose-driven marketing. If you’re a purpose-driven business, the marketing will follow. Otherwise, the marketing is pushing an inauthentic narrative. A purpose-driven business is one of the easiest ways to maintain sincerity in the reason for building and operating.
For more information or to chat with Mike, find him on LinkedIn and check out the purpose story of the Smollan Group. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it far and wide and let’s start changing the world with curiosity.
Alexandria Procter - Identity, layers of curiosity, & creating things
In this episode of the Curious Cult, I have a riveting chat with Alexandria Procter about identity, vertical and horizontal curiosity and a whole host of other inspiring topics!
Alex is the founder of DigsConnect, a company that connects landlords and tenants in a secure, vetted way. She’s a self-declared loud-mouth who challenges the status quo in what identity means and is deeply passionate about her work and loves creating and building things.
Key take aways from the episode
There are no score-cards in life
Life is an incredible adventure that brings with it difficulties, but the opportunity of a challenge is worth the outcome. If things don’t go as planned, then you gain experience regardless.
As an entrepreneur, exploring opportunity is great but finding focus is crucial
It’s important to nail down a path and identify the core focus and offering of your business. Initially, it’s important to trial different things and it tests the waters of what customers might be interested in. From there, though, focusing on what your business does is crucial to maintain consistency and build a brand.
It’s all about timing: Waiting is a practice in life and business
You can only brute-force your way so far. Perseverance is a skill and enthusiasm gets you through some doors but sometimes you need to wait for your plans to play out. Waiting is a practice, and the more you exercise it, the better you get at it.
Curiosity and exploration can be broad or dig deep
Horizontal curiosity is expansive and broad intrigue is important to consider things from a holistic approach and how things might work together. On the other hand, vertical curiosity goes deep and you dig into one thing you explore thoroughly, research and ponder.
Curiosity isn’t efficient, but it’s the only path to innovation
While curiosity isn’t efficient, it is the only way that innovative thinking can happen. No matter how organised you are, you only have a certain amount of time to spend on things. At the end of the day, you have to choose how you spend your curiosity and efficiency is a sacrifice for it. If things bring you joy and they’re meaningless - do them. Those things will reward you in ways you can’t even imagine.
In business, hire for the fit, not only for function
“Fire the asshole.” Company culture is built through the employees and those in the company. If you’re precious about culture in your culture it’s important to hire accordingly.
For more information or to chat with Alex, find her on LinkedIn or check out DigsConnect. 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.
The Beauty of Boredom
Boredom is beneficial to the brain, believe it or not. It lets your mind wander into interesting and different places which pushes your creativity into new directions. It allows you to think about the future more actively because you’re not distracted with the rush of everyday life. Boredom is also good for your mental health.
When was the last time you were truly, deeply, brain-numbingly bored? Take a moment to think about that. It’s been a while since I allowed myself to be brutally bored.
It’s also been a long time since I gave myself 4 weeks off. I’m talking about almost a decade. In ten years I haven’t had a proper break from working and building businesses.
I needed to let my brain recover from an intensely anxious year.
The insanely intense year that was 2020 made me finally realise how badly I needed time off and how desperate I was to be bored. So I took the leap and committed to four weeks off.
What did I do with 4 weeks off?
Nothing.
Not a fucking thing.
I mean it. I did nothing meaningful. I set myself the goal of being as bored as possible as often as possible for four weeks.
For the first 8 days, I couldn’t bring myself to read a book. I couldn’t stop thinking about work. I couldn’t break the cycle of anxiety and guilt from having the luxury of doing absolutely jack shit every day.
As day 9 ended I realised that I hadn’t thought about work at any point in the day and that I had enjoyed 10 hours of nothing “meaningful”. I lay in the sun for an hour. I lay on the couch for an hour. I read a book for a bit. I took a nap. I played with my dogs for a while. I took an unusually long time to make lunch. I watched TV series for a bit and then took another nap. I washed the dishes, swept the house, cleaned the toilets and did any mundane task I could find to engage my boredom. I was actively trying not to accomplish anything and I succeeded.
I repeated the above for the rest of my time off and it was magical.
Boredom is beneficial to the brain, believe it or not. It lets your mind wander into interesting and different places which pushes your creativity into new directions. It allows you to think about the future more actively because you’re not distracted with the rush of everyday life. Boredom is also good for your mental health.
We have been tricked into thinking that boredom is a sin in modern times. We must pick up our phones, browse the TwInstaTokBookTube at all costs and be busy, even on our own, even at home, even when nobody is around. We. Must. Be. Busy.
My time off is over now and I am glad I did nothing with my month. I needed to do nothing. I needed to let my brain recover from an intensely anxious year.
I challenge you to try and be bored for one day. This weekend do nothing of any importance on Saturday. Read a terrible book, walk around your garden, play with your dogs, talk to your kids, wander around the house, go for a walk with no music or podcasts playing. Do nothing meaningful.
Give yourself permission to be bored. You’ll hate it until you love it.
Is life coaching a fad?
In the first Waitroom Session that I hosted, I encountered many interesting people and questions. FIrst up was Lin who asked me about life coacing. Is it just a fad? Is it worth spending time on becoming one if the trend is passing by or should she double-down and commit to becoming a coach?
In the first Waitroom Session that I hosted, I encountered many interesting people and questions. FIrst up was Lin who asked me about life coacing. Is it just a fad? Is it worth spending time on becoming one if the trend is passing by or should she double-down and commit to becoming a coach?
The answer I gave might surprise you
You Are Not OPRAH
Nine years ago when I first read Walter Isaacson’s book about Steve Jobs I immediately believed that being like Jobs was the only way to be a leader. I started to act as he did. I began treating people the way that he did. But here’s the thing - I am not Steve Jobs. Not even close.
There is so much information out there to consume about great people. Documentaries, biographies, TV series, Twitter accounts, Instagram brags, YouTube shows, news articles and on and on and on. Greatness is everywhere and everyone aspires to be the next greatest in a long line of greatness.
Let me be the first to tell you that watching a Michael Jordan documentary doesn’t make you Michael Jordan. Reading the Steve Jobs biography doesn’t make you Steve Jobs. Watching Oprah every day doesn’t make you a world-class interviewer and media mogul.
Nine years ago when I first read Walter Isaacson’s book about Steve Jobs I immediately believed that being like Jobs was the only way to be a leader. I started to act as he did. I began treating people the way that he did. But here’s the thing - I am not Steve Jobs. Not even close. All I did was piss people off by being an asshole.
I’m not Steve Jobs and it’s unlikely that I’ll ever achieve what he achieved in his life. I am not Oprah Winfrey and it’s unlikely that I’ll ever achieve what she has achieved in her life.
I’m comfortable now to admit this but it’s hard in your early 20’s to think that you aren’t going to be great. I have a Greek mother who constantly instilled in me a sense of greatness and I am eternally grateful for that. But it’s also a lot of pressure to believe that you deserve to be great.
Nobody deserves greatness.
Don’t feel the pressure. Don’t try to be somebody else. Don’t try to live their lives and take the same path they did.
Or, feel the pressure and do the work for yourself. Find your own path. Carve out your own chunk of greatness.
We live in a world of misalignment. We see the end results of greatness, the greatness itself. You see Apple launching products that shape the future and define the present. You see Oprah interviewing the most incredible people in the world and growing her media empire. You see Jordan winning championship after championship but you never see (or choose not to see) the work that goes into their success. The sacrifices they make to change the world. The depression, the elation, the turmoil, the loss, the pain and everything in between.
You are not Oprah. You are not Jordan. You are not Jobs. Nor am I.
You are whoever you are and whether you like it or not, that has to be enough. Jobs, Jordan, Oprah and their equals all put the work in for many, many decades to gain the kind of success we aspire to when we see them online or read about their fame and wealth. None of it comes easy. Nobody owes us anything. Nobody handed the greatest people their greatness.
Expectation is the thief of joy and if you spend your life believing that you should be as rich as Warren Buffet, as talented as Lupita Nyong'o, as smart as Oprah or as successful as Michael Jordan then you’re only going to live a life of disappointment. Their lives are extraordinary and the exception.
We all have the ability to live a great life but perhaps expectation is killing our joy.
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.
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.
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.
Laying Foundation
Waiting is an action. These words are a personal mantra of mine because I struggle with patience. I like immediacy. I like frantic. I like working at a pace that others struggle to keep up with.
There comes a time when there is nothing that you can (or should) do but wait. Laying foundation is about doing the work and being patient.
Waiting is an action. These words are a personal mantra of mine because I struggle with patience. I like immediacy. I like frantic. I like working at a pace that others struggle to keep up with.
There comes a time when there is nothing that you can (or should) do but wait. Laying foundation is about doing the work and being patient.
It’s easy to think that plans are made exclusively to be actioned but some plans and strategies require a certain level of waiting.
If you buy stocks and are not a day-trader, you need patience to ride out the ups and downs of the markets. You need to wait to see what happens and have an end goal in mind. If you are impatient you will lose money.
If you are impatient, often you will lose. Not just money but whatever leverage you have.
Was this year a foundational year or a growth year? Was this year one of action and driving forward? What kind of year did you plan on having versus the kind of year you ended up living?
Waiting is an action. Sometimes all you can do is wait.
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 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).
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:
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
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.”
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. She and Wldbit are shifting the focus in business: Prioritising people and developing a business culture to support individuals and promote healthy work habits.
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.
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.
The Treadmill of Happiness
Here’s how happiness works:
You work.
You earn money.
You use that money to buy things.
Those things cost you money, duh. So you work to earn more money to pay off the things you’ve purchased (because obviously, you can’t really afford the things you want). You then want more things to make you happier and those things cost more money so you work harder to earn more money to buy those things. You buy the things that cost more money and sometimes live in those things or drive those things. Then you want newer, bigger, more costly things so you decide to work to earn more money. You buy those things and then…
Here’s how happiness works:
You work.
You earn money.
You use that money to buy things.
Those things cost you money, duh. So you work to earn more money to pay off the things you’ve purchased (because obviously, you can’t really afford the things you want). You then want more things to make you happier and those things cost more money so you work harder to earn more money to buy those things. You buy the things that cost more money and sometimes live in those things or drive those things. Then you want newer, bigger, more costly things so you decide to work to earn more money. You buy those things and then…
Then…
THEN… you are finally happy.
Right?
RIGHT?
Nope.
It’s pretty fucking stupid when it’s written out like that. Expecting happiness to be the outcome of buying shit that we more often than not don’t need and definitely can’t always afford.
I have been conditioned to believe that these things should make me happy. I still battle with this of course, but every day I actively work to want less.
There’s this human tendency called the Hedonic Treadmill (or hedonic adaption). The basic premise is the more you have the higher your expectations rise, the higher your desires rise and the less likely you are to achieve the happiness that you believe is attached to the things you have to buy.
There have been studies done on lottery winners and people who have suffered some kind of loss or permanent injury and in both cases people in the study return to previous levels of happiness relatively quickly. I’m talking about weeks and months here, folks, not years and years. It’s mere months between buying that new house, moving in and treating it like the place where you’ve always lived with no more elevated happiness.
More stuff doesn’t mean more happiness. Sad but true.
Think about your own life and your path towards more. You had a small car and you were happy it took you places. You purchased a bigger, more expensive car and then… you were happy it took you places. That’s it. That’s the treadmill we need to step off of. The world we live in has tricked us into believing that our state of happiness is directly proportional to the things we can buy but the proof of this increase in happiness just does not exist. That’s why we need to buy more things or eat more food or drink more alcohol because we aren’t happier after buying a $500 pair of shoes. That becomes our normal and then we’re sprinting on that treadmill again.
More doesn’t mean happier.
I don’t know what makes everyone happier as a human race but I know what works for me.
I am happiest when I have the freedom to work on the things that inspire me.
I am happiest when I spend time with people who motivate, challenge and push me to be a better version of myself.
I am happiest when I’m not doom-scrolling through social media.
I am happiest when I’m not a slave to my email.
I am happiest when I’m reading my book or listening to music that I love.
Have you given any thought to what makes you genuinely happy? Don’t read past that question. I mean it. Have you actually thought about your happiness and how to acquire more of it?
Is it your new car or where the car is taking you?
Is it your newly laid lawn or what you get to do on the lawn?
Is it the money you spend on eating a ridiculously expensive dinner or the people who you share the meal with?
I don’t have the answers but I really wish more people contemplated the question.
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 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.
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.”
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 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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
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 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.
Relationships are choices
One of the major roadblocks that people put in their way when starting a side hustle or business is their relationships.
“My partner doesn’t agree with this business.”
“My husband doesn’t want me to work on the weekends.”
“My father/mother/friends think I should forget this idea.”
One of the major roadblocks that people put in their way when starting a side hustle or business is their relationships.
“My partner doesn’t agree with this business.”
“My husband doesn’t want me to work on the weekends.”
“My father/mother/friends think I should forget this idea.”
Or one of the most popular excuses: “People will laugh at me if I fail.”
Let me get straight to the point: You are using these people as excuses for your own fears.
Your fears are driving you away from the life you want and the side hustle that could change everything. The people who drag you down are pulling you away from your success and you tolerate them. You tolerate them. You enable them. You allow them to belittle you and your ambitions because they happen to be your family, your friends or some random person that you told your idea to. That is batshit crazy.
You can choose different friends. You get to choose your family, especially if they’re assholes. Especially if they’re dragging you down to their level and beating you with experience.
You can choose to stop engaging with your family if they are bad for you. It’s OK to admit they are bad for you. All across the world, there are people who have siblings, parents, friends and extended family who hurt them, disappoint them or damage them. You don’t have to be a part of that.
I have had some difficult relationships in my life; an uncle who turned out to be a child molester and drug addict. Friends who I thought were close to me but never really cared about me. A business partner who betrayed my trust and sold a business behind my back.
These are meant to be relationships that uplift you and make you a better person. They didn’t for me and that’s actually OK.
It’s OK to walk away from relationships that are bad or even ones that are just not good enough.
At one point very early on in my entrepreneurial career, I was 19 years old and at university studying journalism. I started an online student publication with two friends. We slaved away building the site called StudentWire. It was a news aggregator for student news and after about 10 months of building this business, gaining traction and doing the hard work to get it live and get ten university campuses to provide us with weekly news stories I realised that my two business partners wanted the business to be a non-profit.
At university, there is always this undertone of saving the world and doing good and this message is often mixed up with anti-capitalism rhetoric that suggests that you cannot do good and make money. I believe you can do good and make money. We were at an impasse. We had fundamentally different ideals and there was really no way around it. I took the lead and decided that I believed the business could go all the way if we made if a for-profit entity. I stood my ground and took over the business from the two partners who were willing to give up their equity for their ideals.
That’s completely acceptable. That’s how things go. You sit down, you have a conversation and you decide if you stay together or move on. In truth, I don’t think our relationships were every the same but that’s also OK. I made a decision based on my world view and I stood by it. Not every partnership is going to work out. Not every friendship remains and not every person in your life is meant to be there forever.
You only have a finite amount of time each day, week, month, year to engage with other humans. You get to decide if you engage with humans that make you better or make you worse.
I choose to surround myself with friends who are the best people I know. They make me better, they support my side hustles, they push me every day to be a better version of myself and they hold me accountable.
Sure, sometimes we get smashed and have a party. Sometimes we talk about nothing and send each other random memes but these are people who I want to be more like and who will help me at the drop of hat and ask for nothing in return.
Everyone deserves this kind of person in their life. If you even have to second guess your relationships then it’s time to really analyse that relationship and decide if it’s more effort to stay in it than to get out. Is it better for you to be involved with these people or to walk away? Do they want the best for you and are they actively trying to help you get there?
Believe it or not, you get to choose. You get to decide who you spend time with. You are not obligated to see people just because they’ve always been around or you share some DNA.
To start a business, a side hustle, a new career or job you need the best people in your corner and if you don’t have them then your task becomes orders of magnitude more difficult.
Find the best people and get close to them.
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.”
Mike Joubert - Moving from Corporate to Entrepreneurship
In this episode, I chat with Mike Joubert who has had a thirty-year corporate career working with brands across the world. After moving from corporate to entrepreneurship, Mike started and sold his own successful business in 2009. From there, with the love of developing companies and people, he has spent his time investing in businesses in South Africa.
In this episode, I chat with Mike Joubert who has had a thirty-year corporate career working with brands across the world. After moving from corporate to entrepreneurship, Mike started and sold his own successful business in 2009. From there, with the love of developing companies and people, he has spent his time investing in businesses in South Africa.
From overcoming the fear of moving abroad, having the courage to turn curiosity into experimentation in the corporate companies, and starting his own business with amazing success, Mike has a wealth of business experience.
Combatting the fear of Starting Something and growing from it
During his early career, twice Mike was offered the chance to move abroad to head up teams in Amsterdam and the United Kingdom and twice he turned the opportunity down. He pegged the reason down to one thing: He was too nervous to leave his family and support and step out into the unknown. The people he knew and loved were based in South Africa, and he was concerned about the move from comfort. When the third chance to move and work overseas came from Levi’s, he couldn’t say no.
“I had the same doubts, but I thought that I was not going to get a fourth chance. I made the leap, and you know what, it turned out spectacularly. Not only was it a great opportunity and added some real value to the business but as a human being, I just grew.”
With no network, no perception, and no support, a person has to start afresh when making the move to another country. It’s a leap that is more common than expected when starting something, but it grows a person unbelievably quickly when the stakes are that much higher.
Money is money - it’s not about how much, it’s about what you do with it
At the time, the marketing budget for Levi’s for Europe was massive (as in, $94 million dollars massive). On reflection, Mike said that working with such an enormous budget and the perceived pressure of it taught him two things:
“The importance of being able to lead with both instinct and skill and secondly, whether you are working with R1 or R1 million, money is money. It’s not the quantum of the money that makes sense, it’s what you do with it.”
Experimenting takes courage but the results are proof in the pudding
Mike describes how he took some time to understand the variables in the corporate culture in Europe before making big decisions. Out of three major disruptive decisions he made, two worked out fantastically and one fell flat.
The leadership of innovation and disruptive thinking took some time for the European business minds to adjust to, but as soon as the results started coming in, the more innovation and experiment-thinking was accepted.
Young startups often compare themselves to an established competitor and try and follow. Mike’s experience with Levi’s shows that thinking happens at a high level too. The big guys are as clueless as startups. It often takes going back to the nugget of original thinking to get back to the point of success, not swaying to external factors.
“Once you believe in something, you need to consistently bang that drum. Don’t kowtow, don’t bend. With entrepreneurship, though, you are essentially your own master.”
As an entrepreneur, it’s up to you to build the business the way you want to and to put the work in to not follow the competitors and the crowds.
The mindset in mentorship & power of consistent messaging
Mike, with the insight of his own relationship with his own mentor Dr Anton Rupert, describes the difference between sponsorship and mentorship as this:
“A sponsor I would see as someone who believes in you and backs you, either financially or through open stores and takes his or her network to open doors. But a mentorship is a much more intimate relationship. As a mentor, you provide context and variables so that the mentee can take the information and make decisions themselves.”
One of the most important things from his time with Dr Rupert is not necessarily what was said in their conversations which lasted hours, but how he made him feel. Mike explained that one of the most important things he learnt was how consistent he was in his messages. It wasn’t about saying the same thing again and again, but having a consistent idea and threading it through all aspects of life and conversation.
Dr Adrian Saville - Starting An Asset Management Firm
In the first episode of the Curious Cult Show season two I talk with Adrian Saville, who built a registered asset management firm which started out as a side hustle between 12 friends.
In the first episode of the Curious Cult Show season two I talk with Adrian Saville, who built a registered asset management firm which started out as a side hustle between 12 friends.
“I’ve always been fascinated and intrigued by markets and the economy, I grew up in a business family. As early as 13, I remember listening to the radio and would pay attention to the stock prices, the gold prices, and I would build fictitious portfolios. That interest in investment has just never gone away.”
The art of Starting Something: If you can dream it, you can do it
In his early 20s, Adrian took his skillset in investment and economics and started something. Worried about job prospects out of university, and with the support of his friends who had investable assets, he was encouraged to share his expertise in economics which quickly became a useful tool, resulting in an investment club.
“I had growing anxiety and suspicions that I was turning myself into very well qualified, but unemployable.”
Once a month, the club would meet, talk about markets, economies, ideas and build an investment pool. The main idea was to “hopefully make some money” from the investment.
Within two years, the club had made some neat returns, gained some external attention and had expanded from 12 friends to 200 members with investments in the pool. Without intention, his business had grown from an informal arrangement to a licensed form.
“What it showed me is that what you dream is possible.”
Finding your element and being authentic about it
Adrian took a turn left from his father’s wish for him to become a Chartered Accountant and started a mobile disco as a way to finance himself in university. His love of music helped launch the university side hustle which helped develop the skills needed later to establish his investment firm.
“If you love it there’s a good chance it will work.”
Similar to the Japanese concept of Ikigai, Adrian sees business and vocation as a way to make money and live in your element: If you love it, you’re good at it, it gives back to people, and it makes you employable, the difficult work becomes more worthwhile.
“It doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it is a labour of love. And if you are in your element, it will turn into something brilliant.”
You can’t pretend you love something. You either believe in a business, a side hustle, an idea, or you don’t. And from that, there’s a deep well of authenticity which becomes a driving force of starting and carrying a business through the exceptionally difficult times.
“If you are in your element, there’s an authenticity which cannot be masked or bullshitted.”
For the Love and the Money
One of the most sustainable ways to build a business is to love something, make something of it, and have the end goal of it making money so that it can sustain itself.
“If your heart and your intention aren’t firmly in it, don’t set out.”
On the side of making a business of it, you need to make sure you’ve got something which will be able to make money before you take a leap. If you don’t have something people want, it will never be profitable.
“Life is too short to build shitty businesses, but at some point, it is about money.”
Integration versus balance
While working as a professor while maintaining his side hustle, Adrian found it extremely difficult time, but never impossible. It’s about finding the balance and keeping that as healthy as possible.
When it comes to a side hustle while you’re working full or part-time on something else, you need to try to get them to work alongside each in a way where they reinforce each other and feed each other. It doesn’t make it easy, and there’s still a lot of juggling happening, but if you can make them work together, it doesn’t always have to be one or the other, it can be both.
This is where defining success and defining failure becomes crucial, for the side hustle, the full-time position, personal life, and relationships. If something starts suffering, something needs to be addressed.
If you want to get in touch with Adrian or see what he’s up to in the world of business building and economics, find him on LinkedIn, on Twitter, through the GIBS Business School or through his asset management firm Cannon Assets.