Winning The Away Game

A safari romance brought SJ Botha to America. A small butcher shop in Tennessee eventually brought him into business with Jack Link’s. In between came a granite business started with a $5,000 credit card, a move back to South Africa, an American barbecue restaurant in Upington, and another fresh start. SJ joins Justinus and Flip to talk about building businesses with his wife, Virginia, finding a...

"I am a refugee. That's part of my identity now." Lianda Alkema, known online as Lily van die Plaas, grew up in Mooinooi, ran a beauty salon in Port Edward, and in late 2025 moved her family to Fate, Texas, through the US refugee programme. It took three months from decision to plane. They gave away almost everything they owned. A year later she is a recruitment, marketing and talent community spe...

Too much work, not enough people. That is how Marinus Ferreira sums up the American job market, and why a staffing career that started in Secunda now places South Africans in jobs across the US. In this episode of Winning the Away Game, Justinus Adriaanse and Flip van der Merwe talk to Marinus about a career that runs from building sites in Israel and the bars of London to Sasol shutdowns, the Mid...

Damien Dossin has started from nothing twice. He left East London for Belgian military service without a word of French or Flemish, then followed his American wife to New Jersey in 1997 and built a career of more than two decades in beauty packaging, starting with a bag of samples and a calling list. In this episode he tells Justinus Adriaanse and Flip van der Merwe why the moves that shaped his c...

Glen Grundy spent 27 years building a Bearing Man Group business in Witbank, starting in the stores on a first paycheque of R750. Then his partner walked into his office with a number on a piece of paper, and he said yes in 24 hours. In this episode he tells Justinus Adriaanse and Flip van der Merwe how a family gap year turned into a second business in Utah, sealed by a franchise agreement that i...

Honorata Nel spent eleven years chasing a South African pole vault title. She left corporate and built a business so she could train, then moved her family from Pretoria to Cape Town, New York and Amsterdam. Only after all that did she realise the achievement was never going to give her what she expected. In this episode she tells Justinus Adriaanse and Flip van der Merwe how a denied green card,...

What does starting over look like when you have already built a business across five continents? John McLoughlin founded J2 in South Africa in 2006, working from a shared desk in a Honeydew warehouse. The company now serves more than 800 customers. But when John moved to London in December 2022, breaking into the UK market felt like building a start-up all over again. He says it was “a hundred tim...

After a tough first year at boarding school, Sean Temple wrote a ten-page letter to Arnold Schwarzenegger — and the signed bodybuilding encyclopaedia that came back set the direction of his life. Decades later, after a career in banking and a humbling encounter with a kettlebell, he opened his own gym in Durban, trained some of the country's leading rugby players and found himself on morning TV, u...

Kemp Swanepoel is the CFO of Ford Motor Company in Canada, and his career turns on a day he didn't have to show up: a finance guy who volunteered to smash car windows at a product demo for Volvo, and met the executives who would later call him out of the blue. In this episode he takes Justinus Adriaanse and Flip van der Merwe from seven schools before the age of ten, to walking away from the audit...

Lazola Tutani grew up in the Eastern Cape raised by his mother, worked weekend night shifts at a petrol station to pay for the half of his engineering degree his bursary didn't cover, and now runs a 245-person business unit for Continental in Sumter, South Carolina — where he is the only African and the only foreigner in the building. In this episode he tells Justinus Adriaanse and Flip van der Me...

Jason English was 21, wearing a vest, and standing between a light and a silhouette when the bullet hit him — and that was still not the closest he came to dying in uniform. Thirty years later he runs an ecosystem of more than 5,500 people across the Middle East and the United States, built through acquisition, a forensic investigation that made his hair fall out, and a run of yeses he had no idea...

When colleagues in London asked Brett Belinsky whether he was going home for Christmas, his answer was immediate: 'I am home.' That response became a personal philosophy - there are no away games, only home games. Brett's career has crossed Johannesburg, Melbourne, Sydney, Hong Kong, London and Los Angeles, taking him from telecommunications entrepreneurship to senior roles across global media and...

Jason Zehmke left Uitenhage for Charlotte, North Carolina on a six-month rugby stint and never came back — twenty-six years, a law degree turned banking career, and one of America's largest youth rugby clubs later. This episode is for anyone building something from scratch in a place that has no reason to want it: the operators, the emigrants, the coaches and the parents. Jason breaks down how the...

In 2011 a stranger messaged Greg Martin on LinkedIn asking if he would cover an IOC session. He had to Google what the IOC was, quoted for the job anyway, and has covered every Winter, Summer and Youth Olympic Games since London. This episode is for anyone building a career out of chances they are not yet qualified for — and for every South African abroad who is trying to work out how much of home...

Wayne Hendricks was the most junior member of Nelson Mandela’s protection team when he walked into the President’s office wearing a novelty lapel pin he had not read properly. Thirty years later he runs global security for MetLife, has worked across Goldman Sachs and Macquarie, and has landed in more countries than most people can name — and the lesson from that first exchange still sets how he hi...

Gary Boddington represented South Africa at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, then built a business intelligence company out of a Durban garage that was eventually acquired by Sage — a journey that landed him in a ski resort in British Columbia. Wayne Fyvie played three tests for South Africa, captained the Sharks, and walked out of a change room in Cardiff knowing his body was finished and his income wa...

This episode is for founders, operators, and anyone rebuilding an identity after a chapter of life ends. Deon Gouws, Chief Investment Officer at Credo in London, and Alistair Hargreaves, former Springbok and Saracens captain turned Wolf Pack co-founder, sit down with Justinus and Flip to talk about judgement under pressure and reinvention without a script. The core tension: rugby careers and inves...

This episode is for anyone who has had to lead people without the authority, language, or home-field advantage they used to rely on. Andre Pretorius went from Springbok flyhalf to head coach in Japan, coaching players through a translator and rebuilding his entire leadership style from the ground up. Hank van der Merwe emigrated to Australia, lost most of his wealth in the process, and had to lear...

What happens when the biggest decision of your life looks completely irrational to everyone around you? Former professional rugby players Jonathan Mokuena and Ernie Kruger share how faith, identity and purpose shaped the defining moments of their lives. From walking away from rugby dreams to rebuilding life in America, this conversation explores what it really means to succeed when success is no l...

This episode is for athletes, founders, operators, South Africans abroad, and anyone trying to turn credibility into something useful after the spotlight moves on. Keegan Daniel shares the hard reality of life after professional rugby: identity, purpose, financial planning, and the uncomfortable question of what value you can offer once the title no longer opens doors. Sven Boermeester brings the...

This episode isn’t about what happens after success. It’s about what you do while you’re in it. Adriaan Strauss was building businesses while playing at the highest level. Stephan Weyers started as a mascot—and never stopped stacking opportunities until he built a high-performance coaching business. Two completely different journeys. One shared principle: they never waited. If you're a founder, op...

In this episode of Winning The Away Game, Justinus Adriaanse and Flip van der Merwe sit down with Jan Pieterse and Ollie le Roux to explore life beyond elite performance. From Springbok rugby and international athletics to business leadership and coaching, this conversation dives into the uncomfortable transition from being known for what you do to discovering who you are. If you're a founder, exe...

What happens when the identity you’ve spent decades building suddenly changes? In this episode of Winning The Away Game, Justinus and Flip are joined by former South African international cricketer, Pat Symcox, and filmmaker, Desmond Denton, for a powerful conversation about identity, community, immigration, purpose, and reinvention. From Pat’s extraordinary decision to risk his career to play for...

What does it really take to leave South Africa and build a new life abroad? In this episode of Winning The Away Game, Kirsten and Marc share the highs, lows and unexpected lessons from rebuilding their lives in North America. From Olympic-level mental toughness to navigating identity loss, family separation and starting from zero, this conversation goes far beyond immigration. It’s a masterclass i...

What happens when the thing that defined you no longer defines you? In this episode of Winning The Away Game, Justinus Adriaanse and Flip van der Merwe sit down with rugby international and Behind The Ruck co-host Rudy Page, alongside former banking executive, helicopter pilot, and Relocated South African founder Jan Higu. From professional sport to entrepreneurship, from executive leadership to i...