By Alex MacPhail
5
77 ratings
The podcast currently has 138 episodes available.
Franz Smit is a pilot and founder of PilotInsure, a leading loss of licence insurance company based in South Africa. Franz grew up in the small town of Tarkastad, in the Eastern Cape. As a young boy, he regularly watched airliners fly overhead en-route to Johannesburg. This captivated his imagination and drove him to pursue a career in flying.
Along the way Franz became a financial advisor and used his knowledge of aviation and insurance to dig deep into the world of “loss-of-license” cover for pilots. Franz is passionate about his alternative career in flying, serving aviation professionals, when they need it most.
After more than a decade Franz has become a well known name in the industry. During the Covid 19 pandemic, Franz used his network to arrange fly-in get togethers to support fellow pilots during the difficult times. The idea was to bring fellow pilots with their new business ventures and product offerings to a central venue, to help pilots sell their goods and services. Some of these businesses continue today.
Franz is passionate about his industry and gets fired up when talking about protecting a pilot’s number one asset, the flight medical and right to earn a living. As the title sponsor of this season of the podcast, Franz is keen to reach out and engage with pilots from all different disciplines of aviation, to ensure financial stability for their families.
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Andre Viljoen studies Accounting in Johannesburg, but shortly after finishing articles, he headed East to explore life and the world of Finance. After spending many years in emerging markets banking, Andre made his way back to South Africa in Cape Town. He was looking for a new business challenge and that is when he began Woodstock Brewery, amidst the craft beer revolution hitting the Mother City at the time.
Andre is a smart and interesting guy who says it like it is. Having been through various versions and visions of business, Andre and the team at Woodstock Brewery have settled down as a landmark venue in Cape Town. They supply great beer to many local restaurants and venues. Woodstock Brewery promotes themselves as venue for getting together socially with some mates, watching live music & sport, and enjoying a great beer with tasty food. What more could you ask for?
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Jon is back on the podcast today! As the Dean and Director of Henley Business School, Africa, Jon has been leading the growth and transformation of the institution for over 12 years, with the vision
"To build the people, who build the businesses, that build Africa."
Jon is also a passionate advocate for ethical and sustainable business practices, as you will hear during the conversation. He is also passionate about creativity and innovation. He is also a regular columnist with the Daily Maverick. Under Jon's leadership, Henley Africa has been ranked as the No. 1 MBA Business School in South Africa for six consecutive years, and the highest ranked international business school accredited in Africa for executive education by the Financial Times.
Jon is a fascinating guest to talk with and I have no doubt you will find this conversation enjoyable.
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Annabel has been flying Since 1999. She earned her Air Force Wings before learning to drive a car. Throughout her career, Annabel has been challenged to jump extra hurdles.
President Nelson Mandela, knew not only her name, but also her parents names. Annabel has that effect on people. Her sparkling personality is warm, friendly and inviting, but don’t her charm confuse you. She is diligent hard-working and capable. Annabel was a Training Captain at the VIP, 21 Squadron of the SA Air Force. She continues to assist at the Squadron on a part time basis. Annabel is also a Captain at South African Airways, after serving the national carrier for 16 years.
We had a frank discussion about the struggles of being a woman in a male dominated environment. While Annabel trained in the same Air Force that I did, we experienced it in a very different way. Small infringements during her training were met with questions about her ability. She regularly came up against the pressure of being female throughout her time serving her country. What changed for Annabel, was she stopped listening to the naysayers and carried on regardless. Easier said than done.
Annabel’s candid story about needing to be ‘extra prepared’, just to do the same job that men have been doing for many years, hits home. Perhaps this is a conversation that needs to reach the public discourse. My sister, Nicola, has faced similar pressures and roadblocks during her aviation career too. We discuss some of these ideas during this episode too.
Above all, Annabel remains a great friend, I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Send me a message with any questions or comments about Annabel, flying, or the podcast.
This episode is proudly brought to you by PilotInsure. Reach out to PilotInsure to keep your destination alternate intact.
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Noah Lieberman was excited by flight from his first experience flying on a DC3 around Mexico as an 8 year old. Affectionately known as the Gooney Bird, the DC3 has found a warm spot in a lot of our hearts. Noah was keen to become an aerospace engineer. He also wanted to learn how to fly.
Shortly after beginning his pilot training as a teenager, he ran out of funds. He later went to university and continued his career in the tech industry, repairing hardware and later delved into software development. He cemented his belief in customer service while working in tech support, which was evident while running Coradine. If you have ever found the need to reach out to Coradine, you will understand what I’m talking about.
With a young family, he needed to make a strategic decisions to chase his dream of working in aerospace. Moving across the country and a new adventure began working, building websites for an Internet Service Provider. After several frantic years in the burgeoning website industry, Noah decided to make a big decision to get back to his dream of flight.
Noah continued his path to become a pilot. He was surprised by the amount of paperwork required to keep track of the flying details. Having been an Apple fan for several years, he decided to make his own database for his flying training. He was sure that other Mac users would be interested, so he posted it on a shareware service and quickly pilots from all over the world began adopting his “personal logbook”.
Pilots began to ask for specifics to their own needs and different logbook requirements for Civil Aviation organisations all around the globe. The launched on day one of the Apple App Store, being one of two aviation apps. This coincided with AirVenture Oshkosh, with hundreds of pilots arriving at his small booth announcing the launch of LogTen, by Coradine.
15 years and more than 150 000 customers later, LogTen has become the most successful logbook program for professional pilots.
I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Send me a message with any questions or comments about Noah or the podcast.
This episode is proudly brought to you by PilotInsure. Reach out to PilotInsure to keep your destination alternate intact. Get in touch:
Get in touch with Alex:
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Marc Priestley is the author of The Mechanic, an insider look at life on the formula one circuit. Marc joined the McLaren Formula 1 team in 1999 while Mika Hakkinen was reigning world champion and later defended his title with McLaren, making it a back to back championship. McLaren we’re on the upswing and about to revolutionise the sport for the next several years.
Marc later work with big names in the sport, such as: David Coulthard, Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen and Lewis Hamilton, who won his maiden World Championship while Marc was a senior mechanic in the McLaren team.
What is fascinating about Marc’s story is the level of commitment he displayed to enter into the realm of Formula 1. For nearly a decade, Marc pursued his goal of joining an F1 team. Each rejection letter was an opportunity to improve himself and become more attractive to an F1 team. Finally, in 1999 Marc got a call up from the McLaren F1 team, the reigning World Champions.
After a successful career in the garage of a winning pit crew, Marc transitioned into media, providing commentary with BBC Radio. Marc’s stories of his life in a cutting edge F1 team is captivating and provides a behind the scenes look at the heart of Formula 1 racing. We discuss some of the stand out points of being a part of the exclusive High Performance Team that is McLaren F1.
I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Send me a message with any questions or comments about Marc or the podcast.
This episode is proudly brought to you by PilotInsure. Reach out to PilotInsure to keep your destination alternate intact. [email protected]
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Calvin is the Founder and CEO of Melon Mobile, South Africa’s newest Mobile Network. While the service is recent on the scene, the team have been building the product for the past two years. Calvin has more than two decades experience combining entrepreneurship, internet service provider and providing efficient simple solutions to everyday life.
Calvin was born into a family of farmers, originally resident in Zimbabwe. During his school years his family moved to South Africa and continued farming in the Northern Eastern corner of South Africa, near Louis Trichardt, also known as “Fightertown RSA”, as this is where the Fighter Squadrons of the South African Air Force are based.
He went straight into business consulting with Accenture, before a family need brought him back to the farming town of Louis Trichardt once more. When Calvin’s father passed away, he was needed to help the family. It was during this period where Calvin put his entrepreneurial mind to the test, combining tech and farming. Calvin quickly made a name for himself solving farming problems with his simple tech solutions. The tech business pulled him back to Gauteng and his journey continued.
Years down the line, Calvin was head hunted to set up a business unit with the mighty MTN brand. The “big yellow machine” as he affectionately refers to MTN, wanted Calvin to set up the home fibre and mobile data division, to run in parallel to their already dominant voice business. Calvin rallied his team and dubbed the new division “supersonic”, and boy did the success come quickly. Within 2 years, supersonic won best Internet Service Provider in South Africa 2019.
Our journey crossed paths when he reached out to me to set up a remote call centre, during the crazy work-from-home and school-from-home era of 2020. Demand for internet rocketed and he needed to scale a team quickly. Digital Care was born to support supersonic with customer care.
Please enjoy this conversation with Calvin Collett. Send me a message with any questions or comments about Calvin or the podcast.
This episode is proudly brought to you by PilotInsure, straight and level insurance. PilotInsure brings trusted insurance solutions to both commercial and private pilots. This includes loss of licence, life cover, disability, investments, and key man insurance. Get in touch with PilotInsure today, to make sure you have your destination alternate intact.
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In this episode I talk to Ricky de Agrela, the first man to ever travel to all the continents in the World using only a Microlight. He speaks about the great memories, of the adventure and also the tragedy that struck during his trip, when his close friend Allan, lost his life to the cause.
We follow Ricky's story to see where he is now years after his big adventure. Ricky still travels the World and helps young adventurers find their way in travelling responsibly.
Let me know what you think? Do you have any listeners questions? Reach out to me using the details below.
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In this episode I chat with Erika Armstrong. She is currently flying in the Business Aviation sector, and through her influence in the Aviation industry is inspiring and training new recruits.
Listen as we talk about the passion needed to be in the Aviation industry and take some tips for yourself.
Let me know what you think? Do you have any listeners questions? Reach out to me using the details below.
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In this episode I chat with Ron Rutland. An average guy who decided to brave the challenge of cycling from Cape To Cairo and his life has never been the same. Rob now officially delivers the Rugby World Cup Game Whistle by hand and gets there on his Bicycle.
Listen as Rob inspires us to take a renewed look at life and shares some of his experiences being out on the road.
Let me know what you think? Do you have any listeners questions? Reach out to me using the details below.
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