Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Both an art and a science. Valuations are complex things and their impact is enormous, making the difference between generational wealth creation and a comfortable retirement. At Biswal, we know how tough it is to grow and run a business, which is exactly why we've made valuations simpler. Whether you are using our online tool, Biswile Live, or reaching out to us for a concierge offering where we spend more time on your numbers and your business and give you detailed feedback, you can be sure that the same techniques being used by professional investors are also being used by us. And with Biswal Bootcamp, we will prepare you for those discussions with investors.
Welcome to this episode of the Biswile podcast with your host, the Finance Ghost, and my guest today, Ranier Lombard. I'm really looking forward to a chat with you. We've done some work together and I must say I've really. I've really enjoyed it. I love the way you've built what you've built in the past couple of years, and I think it's a story that needs to be told to the broader Biswaal community. So thank you for making time this morning to do this podcast with me. It's going to be a blast, I think.
[00:01:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Fabulous, man. Thanks very much, finance ghost. I really appreciate it. Yeah, I really had a. Had a lovely experience with you guys. So, yeah. Appreciate just being here and sharing my knowledge. It's been a journey, so if I can share some value and nuggets of what I've learned, all the better.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you. Look, I've got to say, you have definitely got one of the most sorted backgrounds. You know, you get onto these sort of zoom or teams calls that we're doing this on Riverside. There are no fake backgrounds. Yes, I know. That's real. That is very tasteful. Are you responsible for what's going on back there? Because I can see you've done a lot of video calls with a background like that.
[00:01:37] Speaker B: No, not at all. This is all my wife. She's decided that I need to have a better looking background. It was quite average before she got her hands on turt. So, yeah, the only thing that I did put on to it is the. Is the rhino picture.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: Yeah, there we go.
[00:01:51] Speaker B: I love rhinos. I think they're magical. So, you know, they're real life little unicorns running around. So, yeah, that's one of the animals that I love and put that into my personality when I speak to people. Yeah.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Very cool. And of course, you know, in this post pandemic world, well, during the pandemic and post pandemic world, suddenly how you look on a video call is actually pretty important, right? Pre 2020, it was a bit of like, you know, what is a video call? And do I really have to have the video on? And, oh my gosh, you know, and there's like the washing in the background and that's a very personal example because I just moved some on the side. You see, the joy of being a ghost is I don't need to have a fancy background like that because I don't do much in the way of video like you do. But I think before we dive into how much the pandemic has changed the world, you know, I think for the listeners, obviously we need to sort of do a run through of what your business does. And I think also just how you got involved in it. So I'll open the floor to you to kind of just give us the story of not just flats, but your involvement in it as well.
[00:02:45] Speaker B: Yeah. Fabulous, man. Great. So I joined Flance about eight years ago. We merged as an agency. I was actually a one man band running a small digital marketing company called Social Animal. And we would help your general businesses with Google, Facebook, everything in between. And by all means. I was a freelancer, but I called myself a consultant. I just thought consultants get paid more. So from the get go, I call myself a digital marketing consultant. But yes, I was a complete freelancer. And every client I would speak to, I would have a mini team behind me, but it was just me and a few other freelancers that I would engage with. So it's all about perception when you start, if you go out and say, I'm a one man band freelancer, people are going to try and pay you less. So from the get go. And I realized this within the first few months. And when I started calling myself a consultant, people's way of engaging with me just changed. So that's what I started with.
Then I met Mister Eugene Mayer doing a few websites for him, and I've never done websites before when I first started, so I never did WordPress sites. And I met Eugene Mayer through a mutual friend and he had two sites for me to do and I just thought, yes, I can totally do this. So sent him through a quote for two mini websites to do and he paid me within the eyewear and I was like, this is mind blowing. I need to learn how to do websites.
So there's me on fiverr trying to find individuals to help me do websites. And it took three days of no sleep and a lot of back and forth and a lot of customization. But, yeah, got the site done within four days. I charged like, four grand a site, not knowing that he actually charged people. I think it was 35 grand a site. So, you know, it's business. So immediately I started, you know, learning how to do websites. And that's how I met Eugene, which was the original founder of Flance. And just by meeting this person, this is where relationships can change your whole trajectory. One relationship can change everything. Your life, your business, your bottom line, everything. That one person is key to doing everything. So Eugene, at that time, was that key relationship that changed everything. We started working together, helping his clients with digital, because he was a creative agency. It was purely creative. He was also a one man band, but he had a few people that were helping him part time, and none of his clients had digital. So I came in and started helping his clients with digital, and things just blew up. I mean, the clients were happy. They were getting leads. He was doing all the creative. I was implementing Google and Facebook, and it got to a point that we said, why don't we merge together and build an agency together? At that point, we had a large few clients in Nigeria. And he said, great, let's merge. And as soon as we merged, we got an office, got some furniture, thinking this is how it should be, and started hiring people. He then handed me the keys and said, chiz, I'm going to go to Nigeria and manage a few of our big clients there, and I'm going to live there. But, you know, I run the company. So I was like, fine, let's do this. So he put me in charge to grow it and to run it. And that's where we started building a bit of an agency side. It's gone through a few iterations as a company. We've gone through a few restructures. It's a nice fancy word of saying retrenchments, but it was necessary for the company to survive at a certain stage. So that was about, what, six years ago that we had quite a downturn. And, yeah, I mean, hard decisions I made was probably the hardest day of my life. But with that, a few steps back, you can take a few steps forward. So after that, you know, we were, I think, three, three full time people in the company. It was myself, Rion, the other director, Madeline, also director. And we just completely lean and mean that. And we then started outsourcing everything. So we had to completely take a step back where we were ten people all the way down to three. And still kept clients. And from that actual experience, two of the staff, I helped them start their own businesses. They now have their own agencies and they've got their own kind of companies, but we would outsource everything to them. So out of that, it was quite a positive thing. But what I can say is, if you do have a few toxic team members in a team, it can really spoil the whole batch. And that's what really happened with this situation. But we learned. We live and learn as a company. So then what happened after that was we needed to get business as a company. And I stumbled upon this individual that was doing this LinkedIn day course to say, hey, come and join us. Come and learn about LinkedIn. And let me show you how to find new business on LinkedIn. And I was like, okay, cool, you know, let's. Let's go and try this out. Went to this talk. It was an hour sales talk, essentially, and they pitched us a 5000 rand day to come and actually do this for the full day with them. So I said, fantastic. Spoke to Tania, my girlfriend back then, our wife, and I said, you know, should I invest this $5,000? It was a lot of money for me back then. It wasn't. We were living in a little garden cottage in Rondebosch, and that was basically my rent.
So I said, cool, let's. Let's invest a 5000 rand into one day. And it was probably the best investment we have ever made. That. That little 5000 rand training day has. Has brought in millions and millions in revenue into the company. And it's where we are at the moment because of that day. So, you know, if I can recommend to everyone, go on these little sales, go to these talks, learn about new things, you know, you never know where it could bring you. So, met Matt Clark. He was the other relationship that changed everything. He taught me how to use LinkedIn. And it was. It was the 5000 rand day, and then it was a bit of stuff afterwards. And in that day, I was able to book four meetings using my own profile on LinkedIn for our agency. And one meeting was with a marketing director in Ghana, another one was in England. And I was just like, this is mind blowing. I could just message these people. They were open to chatting to me, and I booked meetings. And, okay, no business came out of that initial day, but my eyes were open. I was like, wow, this is amazing. I didn't have to spend money on Google. I didn't have to go and spend money on Facebook. LinkedIn gave me this ability to speak directly to the decision maker, build a relationship, because that's what, you know, business is really about. So started implementing that for our own agency, messaging, marketing directors and CEO's and mds. And. And we were able to pick up big, beautiful work. And this was about a year before the pandemic. We were then maybe four or five people started employing one or two more people. Yeah, I mean, we were outsourcing everything. And I think when I. The pandemic hit, we were five full time people in the agency. So we shrunk back down to three, went to five, and we started then offering LinkedIn as a service to our current clients. And I said to Jacques, my brother, he was actually working as a manager at a hotel in Saldana. And I said to him, he wanted to relieve hospitality industry. I said, come back to Cape Town. Help me build this LinkedIn thing. I can actually get you a job here. Come and work with us. So it really started to try and get him work and pay him a salary. So he came back and we started helping clients on LinkedIn to manage their own profiles. And then the pandemic hit rug, out of all of our feet, didn't know what was happening. We lost quite a few clients because businesses shrunk, you know, they didn't want to advertise. And a lot of our. Some of our clients were in the event space and hospitality space, so we shrunk quite a bit. But then we were introduced to another key relationship. Just before the pandemic, I employed or got part of this coaching mechanism, coaching system that was quite expensive. It was about $12,000 a month for the first year, and I wanted to engage with them to get also access to their network. So spoke to Mike and Landy from Circle of excellence and told them, what I want to do from a LinkedIn side, start a new unit, because it wasn't a big unit before the pandemic hit. But when the pandemic hit, I was like, this is where we need to pivot. This is where we need to focus on. Because digital was kind of shrinking. Our clients were closing businesses. But then on the LinkedIn side, all the CEO's and mds and people that were used to being in the field and actually networking couldn't do that anymore, and their online presence was not anywhere to be found. So the pandemic was the fire that we needed, the catalyst to grow what we need. We were then introduced to Chris Reed, which is a LinkedIn expert in Singapore, biomarker Lundy. Another key relationship that one relationship has now blossomed into a big partnership that he was able to send us all these clients and we grew extensively fast. So we do a lot of work for the singaporean client and we have our own products as well. And yeah, fast forward now four years later, we a team of over 70. I just hired my 74th person yesterday. It's all bootstrapped. Crazy growth. We went from, yeah, the revenue has quadrupled from a yearly year on year basis. I think we've had a 30 34% growth year on year in the last three years. And yeah, it's been mind blowing. It's been really great. The pandemic really helped the product, product market fit, if you had to call it that. People were not as open to it before. But the pandemic really opened the work from home, remote kind of perspective and it really made them realize that their online presence is a very, very powerful and necessary tool to have in business. Now if you don't have an optimized profile, if you're not doing stuff on LinkedIn or anywhere in digital, from a personal branding perspective, you're missing a big opportunity. You don't have to go and spend money on Google and Facebook to get business. You just need the right introductions and then the right credibility and reputation and brand. And it's a consistent play. It's an asset that you build, one that can produce fruit well into the future. So yeah, we used that, that catalyst to really grow. And I can tell you now, it was, it was chaos in the beginning, the growth. When you grow fast as a company, a few things happen. You lose a lot of clients and you lose a lot of staff because when staff come in and you now six months into it, because you're growing so fast, you have to create processes and sops and, and quality checks. And the people at your hired six months ago weren't used to that. Now as you're growing and you're creating this formula structure, people don't really like that at certain times because they can't hide them. They have to produce KPI's and okrs. And you do go through these transition periods and you shed skin, unfortunately. And with that goes staff and clients and there's a lot of turmoil and anarchy when you scale. So the only consistent thing is loss and gain at the same time. But the scale really taught us how to use every single mistake and loss to reiterate, pivot, change, learn, and actually use those little teachings and learnings to make our product and just the system a lot better because that's the key, when you build a business, it's all about systems. It's all about making sure that the pipeline's full. And when you do get a client, how is that managed? And at a certain scale.
[00:13:47] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:13:48] Speaker B: So, yeah, I know I've gone on a bit of a journey here, mister finance ghost, but, yeah, it's.
[00:13:53] Speaker A: This is your own podcast, man. This is. But it's great. But it's cool because there's so much to talk about and there's so much passion, and it has been like a ridiculous, ridiculous journey. You know, there's not a lot of businesses that grow that quickly. And, I mean, a few things that I'll sort of pick up from what you said, there is one, the concept of, you know, it's that key relationship at a point in time that makes all the difference. Yes, that's true. That's been my own experience. Not just with Biswaal, but also with the finance goes one thing happens, and then suddenly things pick up. I was writing for months on the markets, and then eventually Mark Hassenfeis from the financial mail kind of retweeted something that I'd written, and he really liked it. And then he said to me, hey, do you want to maybe write a bit for investors monthly? And that was kind of the start, I think, of the trajectory that it's been on. And I'm sure you also look back and go, you know, what would have happened if, you know, for me, for that to have happened, I needed to join Twitter, as it was called at the time. I'd never been on Twitter before, so there were a hell of a lot of people who had been plugging away at Twitter for years, and I'd never been on it. And I was kind of like, okay, not too dissimilar to you and your website story. You're kind of just assuming you'll figure it out. And I think that unfortunately, and fortunately is entrepreneurship. I always feel nervous when I hear people say, oh, you know, I didn't study the right thing advisory, or, I want to study entrepreneurship at university. I'm like, there is no one less qualified in the world to teach you about entrepreneurship than a university professor specializing in entrepreneurship. This does not make sense. You are hiring the unfittest personal trainer at the gym and then hoping that he or she is going to work miracles for you. Like, that is just not. That is just not how this works. You know, it's an absolute hustle, and I think that's such an admirable thing. Look, I mean, for everyone who's kind of taken that route. There are a good number who have failed for sure. I mean, you had to do a hell of a lot right along the way. And I think you and I both know we've both had luck along the way in our respective journeys. Every entrepreneur has had some good luck and usually a lot of good luck, things can go wrong and sometimes it just doesn't, which is wonderful. But there is an element of making your own luck, and I think it's that decision you took. Let me pitch for this website work. I can hustle, I can figure this out. And four days later, you had hustled and you had figured it out. And also, just putting yourself out there is not just a freelancer. You took the decision to say, I'm not going to spend the rest of my life just working for someone else. I want to actually build out a team. And the difference there is, you're solving a problem, you're not waiting for the work to land in your lap. You are helping your client understand what they need and then you're solving it for them. I must say, when I heard the name flaunts, I do just have to say I did think it might be quite a painful medical device. I did think to myself, oh, you know, I don't ever want anyone to use a flance on me. But I was quite pleased that it actually meant, well, freelance with a couple of letters missing.
[00:16:37] Speaker B: So. So what I say, what I used to say to people is, yeah, flowers freelance without the free. And you get them laughing a little bit. But.
[00:16:48] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a, that's a, that's a good line. That's a good line.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: Yeah. It comes from a. It comes from a saying in Afrikaans called Sampre Flance. And what that means is you throw a lot of things together to make it beautiful as. So Sampre Flance is that saying, and that's where flance comes from. But now we've rebranded and reiterated the name we now seen as FTC because the full name is actually Flaunt's directive creators and FTC is now the brand that we work under, similar to your KPMG and EY and all this beautiful. The longer names aren't as popular.
[00:17:21] Speaker A: Man, I thought it was just someone in Paris celebrating the rugby down ten brandies deep.
[00:17:27] Speaker B: We're here in France to add. To add what you said, you know, I think as an entrepreneur, you need to relish the uncertainty. You have to actually want uncertainty because certainty is. I'm actually more scared of getting a set paycheck than not knowing what I'm going to get paid. Because to me, an entrepreneurship is you have the ability to create whatever you want. You have the ability to build whatever you want and make whatever you need. So my dad had a good saying. You know, I grew up an entrepreneurial household, so the whole, the whole system of him running a business and, and doing things, and I think one of my best education was. So I didn't actually do a traditional high school. I wasn't in high school. So I left my schooling system just after primary. My dad said to me, he's like, what do you want to do? So I said to him, I really don't want to go back to school. I hate being told what to do. I hate the teachers, I hate the politics. I hate all of that. Can I not just do this myself? So he said, well, okay, this is interesting. And I found IGCSE and HiGSc, which is the Cambridge system online and homeschooling kind of vibe. And I said, well, I don't really want to do this at home. Can't I come and work in an office in your workshop? So he said, fine. I would come in with him every day. He built me a small little adjacent office to his office, and I was there doing my projects and certain things online. So I'd go in in the morning and come back at night, and I'd have a full day of schoolwork, if you had to call it that. And I did my own high school. My dad mom didn't really teach me. I had one or two tutors, but I was in control of my own education, if you had to call it that. I finished a year early because I'm quite a self disciplined individual. But the biggest education was actually sitting there in the office with my dad and listening to how he would work and do deals and do certain things. Being exposed to this entrepreneurship and this way of how to make money, it's actually, making money is the super easy part. It's not hard at all.
He had a good saying. Anything in life can be fixed just by making more money. You want to do something, you want to go somewhere, just easy, just make more money. And it is easy. It's not a hard thing, but if you make it a hard thing, it's going to be hard. Money is infinite. It's flowing at the same time. And a lot of people don't understand that. You need to also be free and flowing with money. You can't sit there and expect money to flow into your hands if you're not very generous and gracious with the money that you have.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: I've got to add one thing to that, Renez, before you move on, because I know you're going to. You're going to move on from there, but that whole like money sorts things out thing. So one of the things I think of a lot is I was, I must have been about 20, I think I was on holiday in Mozambique. Varsity budgets, you know, like, basically you've used all the money to put fuel in the car and the remaining money is for the Tippo Tinto on the.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: Other side, the Duchenne, which is over here.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: Yes. Now there we go. Now there we have it. Wonderful. So you understand. So anyway, you know, there was this market there in Pontidoro, as there is, and there was this like really awesome typical raster kind of guy and this like driftwood art that he had made and in this very like Rasta style. And it basically said, money is ever ten, you know, just like that, it gives you option. And I was like, man, I love that. And then hysterically I couldn't afford to buy it. So, you know, like, that's like, I remember that day so well because I was like, this is literally something I believe so strongly. And then I couldn't afford to buy it, you know, which is just like the final. The funny thing about the story, really, and I think back on it, obviously, I wish I had found a way to buy it, but it's almost funnier that I didn't because it's true. Unfortunately, it is a fact. Like, you know, money may not buy you love, but man, it can solve basically every other problem.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's not about buying material things. It's a, it's an ability for freedom. It's. It creates freedom to create, to do, to travel, to do anything, really. So money. Money needs to be championed. It needs to be studied. It's not a static thing. So when people say, oh, you know, I save a lot and I do this. Yep, fine. But what are you investing in yourself now to grow? And the best money you can actually spend is personal development, investing in yourself for the future. Because if you didn't use that money for you now, you wouldn't be able to then earn a lot more later. So I do say, yes, do save. Obviously, don't not save, but invest in yourself. You know, it's very important.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: And money is fluid and continuously develop yourself. You know, that's the point that you make. You can't stop learning. You can't stay still that high school story of yours is astonishing, by the way. I'm not actually shocked now that I've gotten to know you by this, you know, that you just casually didn't do high school. You were like, no, thank you. I don't think you were ever, I don't think you were ever going to be the classic corporate ladder, you know, five to seven years between each promotion and eventually retire with a nice party. I don't think that was ever going to be you.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: No. No. By no means. By no means. Yeah, I was, I was fired from my last job because I am a horrible employee. I really am. I wouldn't employ me and I wouldn't be employed. I'm an unemployable individual because, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs are. Employing them is like caging a lion. You know, it's, it's, they're not going to be happy. They're going to try and get out. They're going to look sad. They're not going to enjoy the process.
They need to be free, you know? So, as I said, you know, uncertainty. I love uncertainty. I love not knowing what we're going to earn because it gives me absolute freedom to do what we need to do. So I would rather take a smaller paycheck, not knowing what that's going to be, then actually have a paycheck that's set at a certain amount of, now this is only what you can earn. That scares me significantly.
[00:23:07] Speaker A: We're so similar. It's that capped upside is horrible, right? It's horrible. It's kind of like how, you know, how can, how can you tell me what to aim for? This is awful. You know, uncapped upside. I'd rather take the, take the tough months, take the awkward phone calls when you lose a bit of revenue and, you know, everything always goes wrong more than one thing at a time. It's a guarantee. And yet somehow there's this feeling. But the point you make about money and freedom, though, and that is, that is so absolutely true. You know, and for entrepreneurs, I think what corporate people do is they, their expense base increases as their income increases. And it's almost like together, you know, it's kind of like, okay, I've got my pension. That is supposedly enough. Actually, it's not, but never mind, you know, and now I got a raise. So that naturally means I can have a better car and, you know, slightly better house, and they never get off the hamster wheel ever, you know, and that's fine if they don't mind being on the hamster wheel, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you're the kind of person who absolutely hates the thought of working for someone else, the only way you're getting out of that is if you do not increase your lifestyle every time the paycheck goes up. And if you build enough of a buffer that you can actually take the risk. So I used to have a spreadsheet called escape plan and it was literally like my bare minimum overheads and like where I could keep cutting it. And then I used to doodle and be like, okay, so if I left tomorrow, like how would I cover off, you know, the bare minimum and then what would the cash burn be? And what are my savings look like? So like what is my Runway? Okay, I could eat myself for a year, you know, man, that's a long time. If I can't, I remember thinking to myself, if I can't figure out a way within twelve months to make a living, actually just put me down, rather just take me to the vet, just with, you know, Bruno, the twelve year old dog, and just send me out.
[00:24:45] Speaker B: Now that's so funny. You see what, what happens with, with withdeze working corporate and actually start earning salary. You get to a point that you do earn quite a decent salary. And now if you stop that to try and replicate that from a new business perspective, it's very hard because when you're working in corporate or with a job, your network is only within that frame of reference or that company that you have. You don't have an external network and that's really where one should focus on and build. Because when you do exit the rat race or the corporate world, you need that network to lean on and to take you to the next level. So what I say to everyone that's looking to leave a job, this is a year to two year experience that you need to start understanding. It's not a I'm going to quit tomorrow. You should actually start exposing yourself and learning and engaging and actually networking with other entrepreneurs well before you want to leave. So a year or two years before you actually want to exit, start engaging, going to events, going to talks, going to these entrepreneurial kind of events, because that's where they are and that's how you can get to know people and get into certain systems and get support, because that support is very, very critical. Your network is completely key when you're running a business. That's how we've built what we've built. It's network, it's not a flashy campaign it's nothing to do with that at all. It's about the people that know us and the work that we do and the value we created. And the bigger the network becomes, or my network becomes, the more the company makes. Because every key little relationship that you build along the way is just so big. I mean, as you said, you know, this is my tagline on LinkedIn is one relationship will change your life in business. Let me show you how to find that one relationship on LinkedIn. And it doesn't have to be local. It can be international. It can be people that can pay in dollar and pound and euro. So if you're in South Africa, which is an amazing country to live, by the way, it would be very hard for me to leave this place. I think the only time any. Any time I'd consider leaving is if they mess with our Internet, if they take down the Internet or something, and.
[00:26:48] Speaker A: I can't do anything, never mind, nhi, it's all about fire.
[00:26:51] Speaker B: So Internet would be that actual enemy. But if you're into Africa, guys, it is so cheap to live here. It is unbelievably, you know, just from the quality of life and cost of living, it is one of the best. It's very hard to replicate this anywhere in the world. Now, I've been overseas. I've lived there a bit, I've worked there a bit, still having my own company. But living there costs.
It's unreal. So if you're in South Africa, work with overseas individuals, especially if you're in the service based industry, or if you have a product you can sell overseas. We have such a beautiful talent base here and such a vibrant, just quality of living and culture. I don't know why people want to leave. I think there's a thing now where all these expats are coming back to South Africa because they've gone overseas and they've seen how average it really is.
There's no life and spice there, if I had to call it that. I think when I went to Switzerland and I looked at people in Switzerland, they had no struggle. I even said to my business partners, these guys need, like, an hour of load shedding a day just to keep them on their toes. But there was no struggle. It's just, like, softness, and it does. It makes you soft as a business person, it makes you soft, and it shows. So South Korea creates these resilient entrepreneurs that are always fixing problems on a daily basis. And I think this is why South Africans are so sought after internationally, because we come with this grit, this grain, this resilience that we've built up over time. And it's because we're just thrown with so many issues.
Living in South Africa is great, but do business offshore, that's the key.
[00:28:28] Speaker A: Yeah, that's, look, you get the life you design. I do firmly, firmly, firmly believe that, you know, I always wanted to live in Cape Town, so I took the steps required to get there. You know, that was, it's a small thing, but it's a thing, you know, I don't particularly like having anything in my diary on a Friday, so I don't accept anything in my diary on a Friday. And that gives me one of two options. Either freedom to work on what I feel like working on that day, or which I manage about every three weeks, going and playing a really bad game of golf with a good mate, you know, which is my preference, clearly. But again, in a corporate, there's no chance. You know, I spend every Wednesday and Friday afternoon with my little boy. That is like sacred time. From two until five, it's two half days a week. You know, you show me wearing a corporate, I'm going to get the two half days a week and be making more money like I am today than I ever would have made in corporate. So this is the thing is when entrepreneurship works, it is magnificent. But you've got to understand the route to get there and you've also got to understand how hard it's going to be, because I think the mistake people also make is they look, they look at the five years, ten years later, and they go, oh, you know, I want what that person has. Sure. We all do. Are you prepared to put in? You know, no matter how sick you are, there's no one to take sick leave from. If you're going to work till one in the morning, your health is going to, at some point you are going to stare down the barrel of like, okay, I'm not going to be alive to enjoy this money. I need to make some changes. That's going to happen to you somewhere. It's going to happen. People are going to leave your life whether you like it or not. Friends, who knows who else it will happen. You're going to be a bad friend to a lot of people. You're going to have to pick the four or five you really care about and the rest you're going to go. So, yeah, it's difficult. It's really hard.
[00:30:02] Speaker B: There's a saying with entrepreneurship, it's the people that are willing to live a life that people don't want to live so that we can live a life that people can't live. And it doesn't have to be forever. It's a few years.
The first few years of entrepreneurship is horrific. It's not easy.
You're going to be at stages, broke, and you're going to have a few breakdowns and existential crisis, and clients are going to leave without notice. People aren't going to pay. I had a friend that just left his corporate job. He's like, oh, now I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I said to him, do you have cash flow available for when clients don't pay? It never even occurred to him that clients weren't paying on time. He was like, what do you mean, clients aren't going to. I'm like, welcome to the world of business.
[00:30:49] Speaker A: Listen, I had, I actually have to tell you. So I had a client early on, especially when I was still hustling and I would take on whatever work I could get my hands on, because you know how it is in the early days. That whole, like, strategy is about saying no. Yes, that's cool. But unfortunately, I can't say no to the bank for my next mortgage repayment. They don't accept that answer. So, you know, strategy is what happens when your mortgage is covered. So anyway, the hustling, you know, the hustle was real, obviously, as it always is. And I will never forget, I had this wonderful, I say with sarcasm dripping off me, who was doing this major transaction with some big hitter international buyer, and she had won, like all these business awards. You know, I won't say who it is, but, well, I mean, you won't know who she is. She has to really tell you which awards she won. But there were a whole lot. There was a good website, the whole Shebang, and I was helping her with this, and she was absolutely clueless about this transaction. Like, without the help, she would have been dead. And when I sent my invoice at the end, her response was, look, I'm not going to pay it because that's a good lesson for you in your entrepreneurial journeys. I'm just going to be your bad debt and you consume me. Obviously, I wished her a lifetime of happiness and success many times, and at least in two different languages, but it's my own fault because there were red flags and I didn't ask her for the money upfront because I was only too grateful for her. These days, it's like, listen, this is what I cost and that's what I cost, and it's cool. If you can't afford that, it's not a problem. And I don't, I'm not angry with you, but then just go somewhere else, you know, and that's fine. Then. No one here is losing what people don't understand.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: And yes, that, that happened to me as well, not as blatantly, but if you, every business goes through people that. That wrong them and don't want to pay them. And it's inevitable it's going to happen. It's not all rainbows and sunshine, but what I can say is, don't be that person. Karma is very real. And if you do wrong to people, it's one sure way of making sure that you're not going to succeed 100%. Because the world is small, ladies and gentlemen.
The global village is very, very small. And that is probably not the first time she's done it, not the last time. And you'll probably find that people will just stop doing work with her eventually, you know? So all you're really doing is shooting your own self in the foot by being an unethical business person. So I also have a, I have a policy within, within our, within our business and personally as well. We don't have suppliers invoices lying around in our to pay folder. And it doesn't matter what I need to do, but anyone that sends me an invoice or the company an invoice, and this is by, you know, our finance people say, I probably shouldn't be doing this, but we pay them immediately. As soon as someone sends an invoice without even asking to be paid, they might even say, I want to be paid at the end of the month. No, I will pay you when you send me the invoice. And yeah, it'll be done. Unless it's a big project and it's a 50% upfront, and then 50%, then that's a different story. But if you engage with a consultant or freelancer or service provider that's doing work for you as a business, pay them, because you know what happens. And two things really happen. One, that person is like, wow, they value me before I've even started. So I'm going to now put extra energy into this because they're a good client. Okay? And the second kind of thing that happens is that they tell people about how awesome you are, okay? And you, and the more people that you have that tell other people how awesome you are as a company. Other people want to work with you, they want to engage with you, they want to help you. And support you and grow with you. So I always look at a lot of businesses that don't pay the invoices on time or, you know, they take time to pay it. They're missing a very big key opportunity to make it extra amazing. Because when you pay a service provider upfront or within the amount of energy that you expect from them, sure, the work that you get from that is phenomenal. People will go the extra mile and we do the same thing. If clients pass quickly and upfront, guess what? They go to the top of the list and they get the best team, they get the best service. And just in life, if you don't pay your bills on time or when you need to pay it, it's going to happen in life as well. You're going to get, you're going to get subpar service. You're going to get subpar people. I even say to a lot of people that service providers that work in my personal life, if my house or the pool guy or the guys that do the garden, I will pay you more for a better service. And they'll be shocked. They're like, why are you paying me more? Because I want to make sure that I get the best service because I don't have time to do this or worry about it. So I literally say to people that send me invoice, but add an extra 10% to it because you go, I expect the best service, but I'm going to pay you a bit more. Try that. It changes a lot of things.
[00:35:40] Speaker A: Yeah, it does.
[00:35:41] Speaker B: It changes a lot of things.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: I can agree with that. I mean, my nanny domestic helper is probably the most overpaid nanny domestic helper in Cape Town. Between the amount I formally pay her and everything else, and it's 100% worth it because, one, it's the right thing to do and she's supporting her kids and it's really hard out there. It's very humbling to actually work through her monthly budget. And you realize that 200 rand in her world is a huge deal. And for me, it's three smoothies at Kauai. But aside from that, it's also because, honestly, my life would just fall over if she left. She's basically the coo of my house. You know, I need her and she knows that and I know that and everyone knows that. So we, you know, that's how it works, which is fantastic. So, yeah, I agree with you, and I think maybe this is a good place to finish off. I'm going to say the first podcast with you because I feel like we need to do this quarterly because I think we could talk for 5 hours. But, you know, that concept of, of paying suppliers on time versus giving yourself the full length. So, you know, when we value businesses, obviously working capital is a big part of it. And, you know, if you can hang on to it, that helps. But I will say this. I think for bigger businesses, where it really is just a spreadsheet of who they owe money to push it out, you should absolutely be paying it on 30 days. If you have 30 days or whatever, why put your balance sheet under pressure? But I think where you are and the way you've built your business and just who you are as a person, you create infinitely more value by actually having those relationships with your suppliers than you would by handing onto the cash a little bit longer. So it's still at the end of the day about building a more valuable business and just a more richer life, not necessarily measured in money, just the people, the quality of people you engage with, the type of people you get to work with. It's a snowball. It absolutely is a snowball. And, and that point you made about, it's a small place, you know, if you do unethical business. Yeah. You know, that. That is absolutely how it works. That lady will continue running that little business for the rest of her life if she's lucky, because she's unethical. That's, that's who she is as a human being. Whereas ethical, hardworking people who solve problems get rewarded over time. They get to live a fantastic life. Look at what you've achieved in a short space of time. I mean, heaven only knows what the next few years will hold for you. So, yeah, it's been a very inspiring chat. I think if you're listening to this, I will say, not every entrepreneur is like you, Ranier. I think you're a particular problem solver and everything else. But I will also say this. Every person like you should probably be an entrepreneur, because I'm really not sure what else they would do. You're doing what you were born to do, which is cool. It's always nice to see that. And it resonates well with me because I feel much the same. I left corporate because I was so depressed and over it that even if I failed in my own business, that still felt like a better outcome than staying in corporate. You know, that's how bad it was. So it wasn't this, like, brave decision. And people say to me, like, oh, how are you so brave? There's nothing brave about it. I had no choice. It was actually quite selfish, you know, to be honest.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: And the question is, I mean, what have you got to lose? You can always go back, you know? So if you do leave and you try something out, you don't. The time is now. You know, what you are going to lose is time, and time is exceptionally valuable. You're going to look back five years, and you can be like, damn it, I should have done that. You know? So if it does fail, so what? Go back to where. To where you came from, or do. Or do. You can do that. You can go back. That's the. That's the beauty of it. You know, you can find another job easy, especially if you bet on yourself. If you're all in yourself, you can find jobs, especially now, after Covid, you can work international companies wherever you. It's. There's so much work out there, it's crazy. So people, if someone says to me, oh, you know, there's no work. I've applied. I'm like, you're clearly looking at the wrong place. So you haven't. You haven't created value, you as a valuable person to. To be wanting to go work for another company. So, yeah, I think that's where we may leave it.
[00:39:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I think. Renee, thank you so much. It's been. It's been a really rare conversation. Very hard hitting, I think, but also very real world. You know, there's no sugar coating here. And also, I think, no excuses, which I like about you. It's very easy to find 100 reasons why something went wrong or did go wrong or could have gone wrong or whatever. But actually, there's that optimism in you that I think is common among all or all entrepreneurs should have it. It's not as common as it should be. It's that belief that you're going to figure it out, because if you don't have that self belief, then you're never going to start. So, Renea, thank you so much. This was supposed to be a 20 Minutes podcast. We had 40 minutes, but it's brilliant. I really enjoyed it, and we'll do another one at some point. So thank you for your time.
[00:39:58] Speaker B: Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Yeah. To the next one. Cheers to.
