The Founder Files

When you're a founder and/or a leader of a small business, the state that you're in becomes directly reflected in the business. What this means is that if you are positive, energised and optimistic then you will see positivity, energy and optimism in your business performance. The same goes for negativity, doubt and stagnation. And this is why mental health is so important for leaders and entrepreneurs. This is a lesson shared by Takalani Madzhadzhi, the Founder and CEO of Ashanti AI, a data science and artificial intelligence lab that helps businesses become more profitable by solving their most complex inefficiencies. Takalani is an Actuarial Scientist by profession but a Data Scientist (he unpacks the difference in the episode) and entrepreneur at heart. He left the world of product development in financial services to have more autonomy in how he solves problems, which is what started Ashanti AI. The business has been growing smoothly since 2018. They now have 10 full-time specialist professionals working on (currently) three different business units: bespoke consulting and AI solutions, Value Chain Optimisation and labour market skills analysis (called Skills Blackboard, which just raised funding in a seed round). In this episode, we talk about everything from the difficulty in hiring someone you can trust to the importance of mental health. Thanks for listening and enjoy the episode.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This podcast is brought to you by Metavolve. We help entrepreneurs structure their businesses for growth. We take the chaos out of scaling businesses by turning entrepreneurial intuition into aligned and committed leadership teams with clear strategic direction. We optimise the execution of strategy by helping people adapt to the inevitable change that strategy creates. Working with us to define or execute your strategy means you get access to experienced experts in business strategy and organisational psychology. You get the benefit of a blend of people-centric and commercial perspectives that can understand your context from every angle. And you get the benefit of not being dependent on us for the long term because we share our knowledge and tools with your people to improve their ability to solve future problems. To get in touch with one of our experts, head over to our website. If you would like to get in touch with our host, Cameron Coutts, then you can connect with him on LinkedIn.This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!

"It gets exponentially more complex having to deal with a big team rather than one, two or three people, as you have to adapt your leadership style to individuals rather than taking a blanket approach." Now, this is a lesson that I got from our next guests, the founders of DealersOnline,  William Miller and Renaldo De Jager.So DealersOnline is a SaaS business in the automotive industry that helps dealerships respond to rapid changes in markets and consumer behaviour. DealersOnline started because William - who worked in the dealership environments in many sales roles - had enough of the problems related to corruption, stock management and transparency in dealership-to-dealership car sales. He partnered with Renaldo - an IT Specialist and Software Developer, who at the time was actually a client of William's - to come up with an auction platform that provides a more transparent and efficient transaction of stock between dealerships at a higher return.Since implementing that first solution, DealersOnline has evolved into a business of 136 people that doesn't only facilitate these online auction sales in multiple environments, but also does fleet disposals for corporates and banks, and provides new software to dealerships to help them stay relevant in rapidly changing markets.In this episode, we're going to talk about how the importance of adapting to rapidly changing technology is the key to staying relevant and growing up. Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy the episode.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This podcast is brought to you by Metavolve. We help entrepreneurs structure their businesses for growth. We take the chaos out of scaling businesses by turning entrepreneurial intuition into aligned and committed leadership teams with clear strategic direction. We optimise the execution of strategy by helping people adapt to the inevitable change that strategy creates. Working with us to define or execute your strategy means you get access to experienced experts in business strategy and organisational psychology. You get the benefit of a blend of people-centric and commercial perspectives that can understand your context from every angle. And you get the benefit of not being dependent on us for the long term because we share our knowledge and tools with your people to improve their ability to solve future problems. To get in touch with one of our experts, head over to our website. If you would like to get in touch with our host, Cameron Coutts, then you can connect with him on LinkedIn.This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!

Welcome to The Founder Files! In this week’s episode, we chat with Simon Ellis, the Co-Founder and CEO of SmartWage. SmartWage is a cloud-based HR & Communications platform that focuses on making deskless workplaces in Africa more efficient and engaged. Through WhatsApp, SmartWage helps employers connect with their deskless employees digitally, giving them the ability to digitise payslip delivery, leave management and employee communications. Although he is a qualified accountant, having worked at Deloitte London in the Equity Capital Markets team for almost 4 years, he is an entrepreneur at heart. He's worked with multiple start-ups to help them raise capital, has tried (and failed) to start a number of his own businesses before Smartwage and is also the co-founder of Nutbrook Property, a property development company in London. However, we’re focusing on SmartWage in this episode and how built it into a company that recently attracted $2 Million in investment. Simon shares his challenging experiences in having to pivot the business and change the people that are part of the team. His hardest journey was having to split ways with his original founding team to find a new Co-Founder. However, he's managed to maintain strong and healthy relationships with all parties. Simon also provides some insight into some of the cliched lessons that we hear about entrepreneurship and how he learned to actually apply them in reality.Thanks for listening to this week’s episode and we hope you enjoyed it! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This podcast is sponsored by Metavolve. We help make business growth easier through strategy and people development. We take the chaos out of scaling businesses by turning entrepreneurial intuition into aligned and committed leadership teams with clear strategic direction. We optimise the execution of strategy by helping people adapt to the inevitable change that strategy creates. Working with us to define or execute your strategy means you get access to experienced experts in business strategy and organisational psychology. You get the benefit of a blend of people-centric and commercial perspectives that can understand your context from every angle. And you get the benefit of not being dependent on us for the long term because we share our knowledge and tools with your people to improve their ability to solve future problems. To get in touch with one of our experts, head over to our website. If you would like to get in touch with our host, Cameron Coutts, then you can connect with him on LinkedIn.This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!

Welcome to The Founder Files! In this week’s episode, we chat with Ilse Dippenaar, the Founder and CEO of Up.Ed. Up.Ed is an Edtech company that was founded to help high-school children engage in deep learning. Besides their easy-to-use platform, their pedagogy is their differentiator because it uses a baseline assessment to measure where the learner is rather than starting them in a generic curriculum. Secondly, the platform is able to detect where in one's learning journey there was a mistake, misunderstanding or gap in knowledge so that it can specifically help you learn what you don't know rather than practising what you do know. Ilse saw an opportunity to pivot during COVID by providing the platform to B2B training providers so that they can upload their content to an existing interface and ensure that their training is based on rigorous and effective learning methodologies. This was the start of Up.Ed Immerse. They also found an opportunity to move into another adjacent market in providing standardised Occupational Health and Safety training through various SETA's via their own platform and pedagogy. Ilse provides an inspiring story of personal transformation and growth as a person and as a leader. She started off as a school teacher at some of the most privileged schools in the country before realising the need to create access for students who are excluded from quality education due to circumstances of birth. She is vulnerable and courageous as she shares the emotional journey of being an entrepreneur and how stepping into her power and creating clear boundaries around her gave her the confidence to begin authentically leading in a male-dominated arena.Thanks for listening to this week’s episode and we hope you enjoyed it! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This podcast is sponsored by Metavolve. We help make business growth easier through strategy and people development. We take the chaos out of scaling businesses by turning entrepreneurial intuition into aligned and committed leadership teams with clear strategic direction. We optimise strategy execution by helping people adapt to the inevitable change that strategy creates. Practically speaking, we do this through the optimisation of organisational structures and HR practices.Working with us to define or execute your strategy means you get access to experienced experts in business strategy and organisational psychology. You get the benefit of a blend of people-centric and commercial perspectives that can understand your context from every angle. And you get the benefit of not being dependent on us for the long term because we share our knowledge and tools with your people to improve their ability to solve future problems. To get in touch with one of our experts, head over to our website. If you would like to get in touch with our host, Cameron Coutts, you can connect with him on LinkedIn.This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!

Welcome to The Founder Files! In this week’s episode, we chat with Theran Knighton-, the Co-Founder and Chief Humanising Officer of Mygrow. Mygrow is a web- and app-based emotional intelligence development platform. Through a combination of rigorous neuroscience, positive psychology, e-learning pedagogy and user experience design, Mygrow helps individuals to be more emotionally healthy, teams to function more effectively and cultures to develop into more powerful environments. Theran is a self-proclaimed creative and academic, although what he does will justify his proclamation! Theran is a filmmaker by trade and an academic/philosopher by heart. What this means is that he worked on the pedagogy of Mygrow to ensure effective learning for people going through the journey, and brought his filmmaking and creative skills to enhance the user experience and make Mygrow a really engaging learning journey through the quality of content.Theran chats about the other side of the founding journey and shares the immense amount of commitment, purpose and passion that he and Mark shared to launch Mygrow and get it to where it is now. He provides some progressive insight into Organisational Character, which is a critical component of what companies of the future need to have - authentic and honest trust. He also shares his experience in the different roles of executives vs management in a business and what it's like to transition from one to the other.Thanks for listening to this week’s episode and we hope you enjoyed it! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This podcast is sponsored by Metavolve. We are Strategy Coaches and Partners for B2B founder-led businesses. We take the chaos out of scaling businesses by turning entrepreneurial intuition into aligned and committed leadership teams with clear strategic direction. We optimise the execution of strategy by helping people adapt to the inevitable change that strategy creates. Working with us to define or execute your strategy means you get access to experienced experts in business strategy and organisational psychology. You get the benefit of a blend of people-centric and commercial perspectives that can understand your context from every angle. And you get the benefit of not being dependent on us for the long term because we share our knowledge and tools with your people to improve their ability to solve future problems. To get in touch with one of our experts, head over to our website. If you would like to get in touch with our host, Cameron Coutts, then you can connect with him on LinkedIn.This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!

Welcome to The Founder Files! In this week’s episode, we chat with Mark Baker, the Founder of Mygrow. Mygrow is a web- and app-based emotional intelligence development platform. Through a combination of rigorous neuroscience, positive psychology, e-learning pedagogy and user experience design, Mygrow helps individuals to be more emotionally healthy, teams to function more effectively and cultures to develop into more powerful environments. Mark is an Organisational Psychologist who spent 15 years consulting and facilitating the development of leadership and culture through emotional intelligence in organisations of all sizes and complexities before coming to the conclusion that he needs to build a more accessible, scalable and effective way of developing EQ. This led to the birth of Mygrow with his Co-Founder Theran Knighton- (whom we will be talking to next week). Mark gets into some of the science of psychology and the development of EQ and shows how his knowledge and experiences apply practically to being an entrepreneur and being a leader. He takes us through the journey of bootstrapping his start-up similar to many other tech businesses. He shares some powerful insights into how he and his executives lead the people and culture of Mygrow and how even a healthy humanistic culture powered by EQ can still learn and grow in other ways. Mark’s insights are useful to anyone wanting to know more about entrepreneurship, leadership and psychology. Thanks for listening to this week’s episode and we hope you enjoyed it! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This podcast is sponsored by Metavolve. We are Strategy Coaches and Partners for B2B founder-led businesses. We take the chaos out of scaling businesses by turning entrepreneurial intuition into aligned and committed leadership teams with clear strategic direction. We optimise the execution of strategy by helping people adapt to the inevitable change that strategy creates. Working with us to define or execute your strategy means you get access to experienced experts in business strategy and organisational psychology. You get the benefit of a blend of people-centric and commercial perspectives that can understand your context from every angle. And you get the benefit of not being dependent on us for the long term because we share our knowledge and tools with your people to improve their ability to solve future problems. To get in touch with one of our experts, head over to our website. If you would like to get in touch with our host, Cameron Coutts, then you can connect with him on LinkedIn.This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!

Welcome to The Founder Files! In this week’s episode, we continue the conversation with the other half of the Co-Founding team of PetroCONNECT: Sbonelo Mbatha. PetroCONNECT is a professional services business in the fuel retail industry that does 3 main things: facilitate the transition of ownership of service stations, develop entrepreneurial readiness in fuel retail through their academy and provide management accounting services to service stations. We discuss race relations and ways to navigate sensitive social issues in business. Sbonelo shares his experiences and learnings in having to adapt to macroeconomic shifts in an industry and environment that is highly sensitive to macro changes. He shows that with grit, determination and a willingness to lift stones, one can move mountains. Thanks for listening to this week’s episode and we hope you enjoyed it! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This podcast is sponsored by Metavolve. We are Strategy Coaches and Partners for B2B founder-led businesses. We take the chaos out of scaling businesses by turning entrepreneurial intuition into aligned and committed leadership teams with clear strategic direction. We optimise the execution of strategy by helping people adapt to the inevitable change that strategy creates. Working with us to define or execute your strategy means you get access to experienced experts in business strategy and organisational psychology. You get the benefit of a blend of people-centric and commercial perspectives that can understand your context from every angle. And you get the benefit of not being dependent on us for the long term because we share our knowledge and tools with your people to improve their ability to solve future problems. To get in touch with one of our experts, head over to our website. If you would like to get in touch with our host, Cameron Coutts, then you can connect with him on LinkedIn.This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!

New week, new episode! In this week’s episode, we chat to Mark Harper. Mark is the Co-Founder of PetroCONNECT, which is a professional services business in the fuel retail industry that does 3 main things: facilitate the transition of ownership of service stations, develop entrepreneurial readiness in fuel retail through their academy and provide management accounting services to service stations. Mark shares how COVID, riots, government regulation and war affects his industry and business, but more interestingly he shares an optimism and self-belief around his own resilience and adaptability. In his words, “if there are no challenges, there are no opportunities.” Mark balances a sharp strategic mind with an awareness of servant leadership and shares what it means to lead from the front and sometimes be the “punching bag” in order to help and protect your people. Mark’s experiences and insights are inspiring and shares a lot to learn about entrepreneurship and leadership.We hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we do. You can visit PetroCONNECT’s site here: https://petroconnect.co/ You can connect with Mark on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-harper-482a4098This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!

Welcome back to The Founder Files! In this episode, we're chatting to Ian Saker, the owner of Mineware Consulting. Mineware is a SaaS business specialising in the mining industry that collects, verifies and interprets data from mining operations in order to build business efficiencies, make processes more transparent, predict risky events through AI and even save lives. Ian shares how rapid business growth isn't as glamorous as people think it might and how quickly (and painfully) they had to pivot during COVID. This sharp rise in success catalyzed a shift in perspective for him as a leader, which allowed him to embrace not knowing all the answers (i.e. vulnerability) and leaning on the people around him for support. His lesson from this was that opening up and admitting you don't know everything actually led to his people being more committed, more productive and taking more accountability within his business. Ian's journey is an eye-opening story of adapting to change and evolving as a leader - 2 critical factors for any successful founder.  We hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we do. You can check out Mineware's website at https://www.mineware.co.za/You can have a look at Ian's LinkedIn page here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ian-sakerxlr8er/This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!

Welcome to the very first episode of The Founder Files!We're kicking off with Francois de Villiers, otherwise known as Cois or by his alias Rhepuls. Francois is a Drum & Bass producer and DJ, and the Co-Founder of Sognage. Sognage is a nightclub, entertainment venue and recording studio. Francois shares his journey of founding Sognage during the hard lockdowns of COVID and the leadership lessons he learned on the way. During the chat, Francois explained how he learned to allow others in the business to critique existing ways of doing things, which allowed the whole organisation to improve. As a leader, he discusses the importance of culture fit when starting a business, as well as the basic psychological contract of how we should interact as human beings.You can have a look at Sognage's website here: https://www.sognage.com/You can follow Francois on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/4uPIJHPXPyPPedlGNDiVjmAnd on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rhepuls/Please be advised that this podcast contains explicit material.This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!