David Fick went from gym bro to 2:35 marathoner. Running saved his life after addiction his cousin dragged him to a run club in Durban and everything changed. Seven years later, he's the team captain of ASICS Front Runners South Africa, coaches over 20 athletes, and is chasing sub-2:30 at Berlin with a newborn due weeks before the race.

But this conversation is really about what he thinks SA runners are getting wrong. His take: we're chasing distance when we should be chasing speed. Everyone wants Comrades but nobody wants to run a fast 5K first. We're building the roof before the foundation.

We also get into what it takes to become an ASICS Front Runner, how to train while being a full-time dad, why he quit a marathon on purpose because of wind, and the illegal shoe debate for everyday runners.

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Instagram: @daveyontherun

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Michael Tones has been building brands since he was 10 labeling bottles in his family's factory in Durban. His dad was a serial entrepreneur who risked everything and lost everything more than once. Michael watched and took notes.

Years later, a mate said "toss me a naughty water" on a Friday evening. By Monday he'd trademarked it. No plan, no product. He sold his house, went R700K in, spent a year getting the flavour right, then had 375,000 cans banned by the government because the can size was illegal. R1.5 million scrapped. He started over.

In this conversation we get into the real side of building a product brand in South Africa why he does the opposite of what every other brand does, the partner who demanded R1.4 million for worthless shares, why giveaway competitions kill your brand, why he didn't take a salary for two years, and why he thinks consumer products in SA are the biggest opportunity nobody's taking.

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Instagram: @michaeltones / @nawtywater

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Michael Larter's girlfriend Amiee took her own life in 2017. After years of depression and healing, he founded the Amiee Howard Foundation to get teenagers access to therapy the group who can't afford it and don't have medical aid.

Then he ran across countries to fund it. First South Africa to Namibia, 772km in 14 days. Then the entire length of Japan 3,300km, solo, self-funded, pushing a baby pram with all his gear. No team, no physio, no support van. Just him.

In this conversation, he takes us through all of it the viral video he posted before his first marathon, the visa denial that rerouted him from the US to Japan, what it's like to run through a country where you don't speak the language with nobody around for days, and why every kilometre was for someone else.

🔗 Follow Michael

Instagram: @michaeluncharted

Foundation: amieehowardfoundation.org

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Shaka started rugby at 14 five years behind everyone else. He came from a school with 90 boys, studied mathematics at Stellenbosch, and did 1,000 passes a day during COVID because he couldn't pass with his left hand.

Now he coaches rugby performance and works at one of the top schools in the country, bridging the gap between what team coaches expect and what individual players can actually do.

In this conversation, we get into why rugby players are the original hybrid athletes, the difference between being fit and being game fit, a high-intensity workout structure that would break most gym users, what HYROX and fitness athletes can learn from rugby training, and why you can't coach heart. We also talk about why South Africa's rugby content creator space is wide open.

🔗 Follow ShakaInstagram: @shakacoachingTikTok: @shakacoaching🔗 Follow ATHCOInstagram: @athco.ccYouTube: ATHCO🔗 Follow UsDaniel: @dannyjd_Jannis: @itsjaaannis

Laura Kirkpatrick spent four years in med school, started a vegan business that landed in 30 UK stores, did three years in management consulting, and then quit everything to ride bikes and make films.

She left with 10,000 followers, no brand deals, and one consulting bonus as her safety net. She came to Cape Town on a whim after a stranger on a training camp suggested it instead of Mexico.

This conversation is different from most we've had. Laura thinks about content like a filmmaker story arcs, conflict, feeling. She talks about why she hates Instagram, why her worst content gets the best metrics, and the difference between chasing views and making something that actually connects with people.

We also get into the breakup that triggered everything, bikepacking from Annecy to Nice with someone she'd met once, building a van, and what it really means to be all in versus all consumed.

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YouTube: @lauradoessportsInstagram:

Instagram@lauradoessports

Strava: Laura Kirkpatrick

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Kuba Nowosiński quit his sales job in June 2024 with three months of savings and one bet: what happens if I put 100% into content creation?

Two years later, he has 116K followers on Instagram, works as head of business development at one of Poland's biggest social media agencies, and gets flown out by brands across Europe.

He sits on both sides of every deal. He's the creator and the person writing the brief. In this episode, we get into what most people never hear about social media. Kuba breaks down how brands actually choose which creators to work with, why most South African influencers don't know how to do a proper brand integration, and what Poland's creator economy (which is about a decade ahead of South Africa's) can teach us about where things are going.

He also gets real about the darker side. His girlfriend is Poland's biggest TikToker and won Dancing with the Stars. Their first photo together brought death threats. He got bullied in high school for making content. And he still shows up every single day because, as he puts it, if you don't post, you didn't come to work.

We also talk about why being cringy is free, why your friends will never be the ones to make your posts go viral, and why he thinks the best social media advice is the one nobody wants to hear: there's no hack, you just have to show up.

One of our favourite episodes. This one's packed.

🔗 Follow Kuba

Instagram: @kubanowo

TikTok: @kubanowo

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Gerrit Knein was leading a 120-million-euro company with 100+ employees. 13-hour days. Multi-six-figure salary. Managing director by 28.

Then his son was born and he remembered a promise he made at 18 to be the kind of dad who's actually there. So he left. What came after wasn't what he expected. The freedom he'd dreamed about came with an identity crisis nobody warned him about.

Now he makes cinematic cycling vlogs on YouTube his fifth channel, after four that never took off. The one that worked started because his best friend called him out on Christmas Day. He grabbed the camera the next morning and hasn't stopped since.

We talk about corporate ladder climbing, the emptiness after quitting, why he chose YouTube over Instagram, and how he structures life as a dad-first creator making six figures from long-term brand deals.

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YouTube: Gerrit Knein

Instagram: @gksieben

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Nika Bedeker has no content strategy. No pillars. No calendar. She edits on her phone, posts when she feels like it, and still doesn't think she's an influencer.

But somehow, a lot of the good things in her life came from social media. Her fiancé. Her job. Her flat in Cape Town which she got by sending her Instagram to the landlord. Even her Milan Marathon ambassadorship, which she was convinced was a scam until she checked who followed the account.

This one's a fun one. We talk about the Cape Town running community, toxic fitness phases, why she makes five content calendars a month for work but refuses to make one for herself, and why the best content advice she can give is just don't overthink it.

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Instagram: @nikascamerarolll

YouTube: @nikabedeker

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Seb Prentice was 24 when his mom passed away. She was in London, he was in Cape Town. Three weeks from hospitalization to gone.

At the time, he was earning R70-110K a month in tech sales, living rent-free in Sea Point. He quit, took his savings and his mom's life policy, and opened a gym. He moved out of his flat and into the gym itself to keep costs down. He started every single month in the red.

Three years later, Horizen Gym is arguably the most talked-about fitness space in Cape Town. He has 15 employees, a second location in the works, and a vision to become the world's number one lifestyle strength brand by 2040. The gym still ran an accounting loss this year.

In this episode, Seb gets real about everything why opening a gym is a financially terrible idea (and why he did it anyway), what it actually costs to run a brick-and-mortar fitness business, the ego death that comes with learning to manage people, and the radical accountability lesson from his mom that became Horizen's foundational value. Her words "cry me a river" and "don't be a victim" still run through everything he builds.

We also talk about running a sub-3 marathon and a 100-miler while building a business, why the fitness industry is over-optimized and under-trained, and what it means to do for strength training what run clubs did for running.

This one hit different for us. Hope it does for you too.

🔗 Follow Seb & Horizon

Instagram: @sprenna @horizenza

Podcast: Beyond Physical Podcast

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She had no personal Instagram account. No following. No connections in the creator world. Just a consulting job she didn't love and a dream of hosting her own travel show.

Three years later, Aakanksha Monga has 1.4 million followers on Instagram, nearly a million on YouTube, and was the first travel content creator on the cover of Forbes India.

In this conversation, she walks us through everything the personal brand framework she built her entire page on, why most people treat their content like a diary when it should be an autobiography, and the hook strategy that makes or breaks every piece of content in the first five seconds.

She talks about landing brand deals, pushing back on scripts, building digital products, and why she started selling to her audience way too late. She also breaks down what she'd do if she had to start from zero with just 90 days to grow.

This one's a masterclass disguised as a conversation.

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Instagram: @aakanksha.monga

YouTube: Aakanksha Monga

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