It's Not Over

How many near-death experiences can one business survive?

My next guest is putting that question to the test!

Jonathan Kropf decided to leave his successful corporate career when he jokingly suggested that a friend of his give him startup capital instead of investing it in an ice-cream business.

Kropf took that million-rand investment and started Velocity Group fifteen years ago. The business turned a profit almost immediately and Kropf and his partners decided to expand into Africa through a single large client.

As the profit rolled in, so too did his confidence and his hunger to start new businesses and continue to prove himself as a seasoned repeat entrepreneur. These distractions continued over the years and each one ended in a different disaster and new lesson for him and his business.

Jonathan’s story is one filled with determination, imposter syndrome and many repeated failures that led him to the successful business that he is now expanding globally.

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Subscribe to It's Not Over:

Apple: https://apple.co/37gY2I6

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3E4wUbm

Google: https://bit.ly/3KBQgqG

Website: https://nicharalambous.com/its-not-over

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Find Jonathan online:

Company Socials and web:

South Africa: Https://www.linkedin.com/company/velocity-group_2

UK & Europe: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/velocity-managed-services

www.velocitygroup.global

Personal Social:

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathankropf

Twitter: @cloudJkay

Insta: @realjayk

After accidentally falling into the banking world, Gitanjali Trevorrow-Seymour likes to say that she accidentally fell out of it too when the department heads at her bank were all axed in one fell swoop.

As her career in the banking sector ended, she was left wondering what she actually wanted to do with her life.

After much reflection and consideration, she started a training and coaching company. A few years into the business, Gitanjali realised that having 80% of her revenue sitting with a single client was a mistake when over a single phone call, that relationship ended.

She has spent the past few years rethinking how a time-based service business should charge clients and building a business that is not dependent on herself to grow.

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Apple: https://apple.co/37gY2I6

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3E4wUbm

Google: https://bit.ly/3KBQgqG

Website: https://nicharalambous.com/its-not-over

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Find Gitanjali online:

https://highdefinitionyou.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/linkinwithgitanjali/

Innocente Burger left her comfortable job of 13 years to start a business. 7 weeks later, her husband died, and in the same year, she lost both her beloved dogs.

How do you pick yourself and build a business when a multi-decade-long relationship crashes to an end? How do you motivate yourself to make a sale, to send an email, to put a proposal together or even just brush your teeth?

In this episode, Innocente and I discuss the brutal situation she found herself in, and how she put herself back together and built a thriving business as a first-time entrepreneur.

Find Innocente online:

https://www.innocentewithane.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/innocenteburger/

In an attempt to diversify a successful office equipment business, Ted Bradshaw ended up losing millions of dollars.

He built a video game company that was beaten by the mobile gaming revolution, he built a home rental company that was beaten by a supplier who went bankrupt and invested in building a novel technology to produce a radioisotope called technium when he knew nothing about nuclear technology.

Ted's story is one filled with a desperate need to build something innovative coupled with an entrepreneurial desire to prove himself and diversify his business skills and financial interests.

The more Ted's business partners helped him diversify their core business, the further Ted found himself from the daily operations of the home office supply cash cow, which led to a nasty exit and a lifetime of business lessons.

Over ten years, Marina Byezhanova built her first business into a solid seven-figure business. Then in a single weekend, her revenue fell from seven figures to zero thanks to Covid restrictions and hiring freezes at all of her clients.

There's nothing like a crisis to test your mettle as an entrepreneur but up to this point in her entrepreneurial journey, Marina had felt like a one-hit-wonder imposter.

She and her business partner realised they had lost their love for their business, her staff had turned on her after cuts had to be made to keep the business afloat and in general, Marina says that she struggles to ask for help so her near-death business experience had compounded complexity.

In this episode Marina and I discuss anxiety, tough conversations, being an immigrant entrepreneur, a mother, a CEO and pivoting towards success.

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Apple: https://apple.co/37gY2I6

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3E4wUbm

Google: https://bit.ly/3KBQgqG

Website: https://nicharalambous.com/its-not-over

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Find Marina online:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bmarina/

https://www.brandofaleader.com/

After taking on investment from Stripe, Josh Pigford realised he was running out of money in a matter of weeks and not months.

What followed for Baremetrics was a period of salary cuts, general cost-cutting and a slow march towards break-even, stability and ultimately profitability.

As a founder, Josh earned enough goodwill with his team that they didn't up and leave but instead stuck with him and helped move the company forward towards an exit.

In this episode of It's Not Over, Josh and I discuss raising money when you aren't trying to, building a fully transparent software business, using content marketing to generate more income and how Josh convinced his investors to take a hit on their investment when they sold.

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Apple: https://apple.co/37gY2I6

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3E4wUbm

Google: https://bit.ly/3KBQgqG

Website: https://nicharalambous.com/its-not-over

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Josh's links:

https://twitter.com/Shpigford

https://joshpigford.com

https://maybe.co

Kay Shaytanov is the founder and owner of 3RC, an edutainment and training company that she has been operating for 21 years.

What started out as a career in IT and a hopeful rockstar evolved into a business helping kids figure out their future.

Over the past 21 years, Kay's business has grown and shrunk multiple times. She has survived corporate partnerships going under, she has survived retrenchments and most recently, the global COVID pandemic which has helped jettison her company into the future of edutainment for teenagers.

Kay's story is one of grit and determination, of learning fast and failing faster and I can't wait for you to hear from her.

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SUBSCRIBE TO IT'S NOT OVER:

• Apple: https://apple.co/37gY2I6

• Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3E4wUbm

• Google: https://bit.ly/3KBQgqG

• Website: https://nicharalambous.com/its-not-over

Follow Kay:

• www.3RC.co.za

• https://www.linkedin.com/in/kay-cheytanov-aab4769/ / https://www.instagram.com/kaycheytanov/

• https://www.facebook.com/3RCSA

• https://www.instagram.com/3rc_sa/

• https://www.tiktok.com/@rockingfuture/

• https://twitter.com/3RCSA

Phil Tillman is a corporate man turned entrepreneur – To him, this is proof that an entrepreneur can learn the skills and doesn’t have to be “born that way”.

Phil believes he sleep-walked through his first 35 years and only woke up to his real-life at the age of 35 when he started his first business.

A single clause in his shareholder's agreement led to an unfortunate situation that cost him millions of dollars.

He put his personal wealth on the line to save his business from the grip of a listed entity.

In this episode of It's Not Over, Phil discusses his decision to get divorced and sell all of his assets to start a business which was nearly taken away from him at a ludicrously low price.

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Subscribe to It's Not Over:

Apple: https://apple.co/37gY2I6

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3E4wUbm

Google: https://bit.ly/3KBQgqG

Website: https://nicharalambous.com/its-not-over

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Phil's links:

Personal

https://www.linkedin.com/in/philip-tillman-a514193/

Business

https://za.linkedin.com/company/surtech-solutions

https://www.facebook.com/surtech1/

https://mobile.twitter.com/surtechza

https://www.instagram.com/surtech.life/?hl=en

https://m.youtube.com/c/SurTechGroupofCompanies

On the way back from a party in London, Bridget Harris turned to her business partner and said: "I don't think we can do this". That bus ride home was the end of their survey app but not the end of their product-building journey.

Bridget and her husband have launched, tested and shut down many products on their way to creating the wildly successful YouCanBookMe service, which is now a $5m a year business with over 20 000 customers and more than a million users.

Her story is one of consistent building, iterating and failing in the hunt for real traction.

In this episode of It's Not Over, I talk to Bridget about raising funding, working with your partner, viciously shutting down products with no traction and building a sustainable lifestyle company.

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Apple: https://apple.co/37gY2I6

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3E4wUbm

Google: https://bit.ly/3KBQgqG

Visit Youcanbookme now - https://youcanbook.me/

Stress can take many forms and destroy a person in a variety of different ways, for Kim Whitaker, that stress came at her from every angle and worked its way through her life.

Kim was the Co-founder of Once Travel, Khwela Woman, and she founded Ubuntu Beds during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

In recent years, Her hotel business faced protests and riots, an impending drought, loadshedding, a difficult business partner relationship and finally the COVID 19 pandemic.

In this episode of It's Not Over I talk to Kim about losing her teeth, being one of the first people in South Africa to get Covid, how she managed to sell a hotel business with no tourists and so much more.

Subscribe to It's Not Over:

Apple: https://apple.co/37gY2I6

Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3E4wUbm

Google: https://bit.ly/3KBQgqG

Website: https://itsnotover.show

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Follow Kim on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bravelykim/

Kwela: https://khwela.org.za/