The Founder Files

Why should the Founder of a B2B business care about their personal brand on LinkedIn? Surely the brand of the company is more important than the brand of the Founder? Yes and no. The yes part is that you want the company brand to become bigger and more encompassing than your personal brand within your target market, but that's relevant when you're a scale-up not a start-up. When you're a start-up,...

We all know the "what" of customer centricity, but not many Founders are well versed in the "how." That's why we're speaking to Marie Whittington, a designer extraordinaire and the Co-Founder of Pepperplane, a design studio that specialises in UI/UX design. In this episode, we chat about how customer experience has evolved in the digital age and why many business leaders still struggle to see thin...

In this bonus episode, we chat with our host, Cameron Coutts, about hiring. The reason we chose this topic is that it's come up frequently in recent episodes. Being an Industrial Psychologist, Cameron has expertise in the hiring space and provides some valuable insights to help Founders and leaders make better hires. Tune in to this bonus episode to find out more about this specific topic!--------...

If you had to choose only one episode of The Founder Files to listen to, then this is the one. Whether it's decisions, prioritisation, time management, habits or approaches, there are certain things that the best Founders do that put them a cut above the rest. This includes everything from hiring and delegation to prioritisation and personal productivity habits. Paul Smith and Ryan Osher are our g...

As a founder, being focused on a clear strategy and direction is hard enough, but when you're the founder of 2 businesses then it becomes critically important to make sure you're using your time well. This is a topic we discuss with Steve Pinto as he explains how clear values, goals, strategies and decision-making frameworks have helped grow 2 businesses side by side. Steve is the Founder and CEO...

How do you get your employees to be motivated and driven in the right direction? How do you ensure that your sales and marketing efforts are deliberate and build momentum? How do you make sure you're connecting with the customers you want to be connecting with? How do you ensure that what you become known for is what you WANT to be known for? These are all questions that were answered when Tristan...

When you're the sole founder of a business, how do you know that you're doing the right things and moving in the right direction? What do you do if you feel like you don't have all the skills needed to get your business to grow? How can you get someone to help hold you accountable to do the important but not urgent things? These are all questions that Samantha Hogg-Brandjes - the Founder and CEO o...

After publishing 13 episodes, we realised that we had just done a full quarter of the year in interviews. Just like quarterly strategy reviews, we thought that this was ideal timing to pause and reflect on our learnings from each episode we've done so far. This is a special episode where Cameron and Brett (the Founders of Metavolve) discuss everything they learned from each guest and what stood ou...

Having clarity on your Mission, Vision and Values is critical to the successful growth of your business because these philosophical elements define the direction you're headed in and provide clarity as to what your stakeholders should expect from you. This lesson is lived, learned and taught by Lauren Dallas (the Co-Founder and CEO of Future Females), who explains that the clarity Future Females h...

Building strong relationships is at the core of Iridium Business Solution's ethos and this holds true in their approach to customer-centricity. This value is so strong that they gave up proportions of up to 100% of their fees to help their clients weather the storm of COVID. This in turn built a reputation of trusting relationships in the market, which was the launchpad of Iridium's growth. Iridiu...

The concept of failure is almost spoken about too much in entrepreneurial circles, but our next guest - Kimberley Taylor - brings it home in quite a relatable way by being compassionate with herself when she fails to meet her own high expectations in relation to her mental health goals like waking up at 5am or meditating for 40 days in a row. The same principles apply to initiating change and expe...

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 entrepre...

"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...

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 deliv...

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 cur...

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 f...

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...

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 pro...

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....

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 busine...

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 less...