It's Not Over

Building his online learning platform, 42 Courses, turned into the literal fight of his life when Chris Rawlinson was diagnosed with cancer.

Chris used to build smart homes in London, fly planes commercially in Africa, make wine in Cape Town and looked after innovation for ad agencies Ogilvy and WPP.

He survived his personal near-death experiences while his business boomed through lockdowns and talks to us about the impact that had on his startup, his personal life and his co-founder relationship as they were scaling the business.

Shawn Johal worked in his wife's growing family business until the tides turned and the listed company went bust.

From the broken and bruised remnants of this business, he built a new business from the lessons learned the first time around.

Shortly after growing, gaining ground, taking out loans and fighting for survival, his ex-employees launched a copy of his business. In this gripping episode of It's Not Over Shawn talks about his mental health, working with his family, learning from his father-in-law and rebuilding a better business after failure.

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One day out of nowhere one of Ethan King’s licensed partners tried to enforce the fine print of an agreement that had gone unnoticed and unenforced for years by the partner. This agreement and the fine print left Ethan and his business partner shocked and confused as they believed the relationship with the partner was profitable and amicable.

Ethan is the next guest on It’s Not Over and breaks down how he managed a broken partner relationship and horrific legal council to overcome a lawsuit that cost him sales, one of his top brands and many sleepless nights.

Sean Riley is the CEO of Ad Dynamo, the African advertising inventory behemoth. While fighting to stay alive, Sean was one month away from signing a deal with one of the largest social networks in the world.

In this episode we cover sales tactics, the difficulty of business travel, personal sacrifice and how to scale a business to allow the founder to work on the business and not in the business.

Andrew Haeg is the founder of the mobile engagement platform GroundSource and co-founder of the Minneapolis news site Southwest Voices.

Haeg is a crowdsourcing pioneer in the world of journalism, having worked for 20 years to help newsrooms more effectively engage their audiences but this experience wasn't enough to help him avoid a pivotal and potentially business-threatening event which we discuss in detail.

In his pursuit of the freedom to call his own shots, he took on grant funding that dried up shortly after he started scaling his business.

Haeg's attempt at blending non-profit and for-profit business is as exciting as it is gut-wrenching and the pain he has endured for his business is palpable.

My name is Nic Haralambous and I won't keep you waiting any longer to hear from Andrew Haeg. So remember, It's not over until it's over.

Thin margins, a recession and the ego of youth can destroy any business. Howard Mann is a business turnaround expert but once toiled away in his own logistics company.

In this episode I talk with Howard about firing clients, tough conversations with partners and staff as well as mental health, personal struggles relating to business struggles and a lot more.

The Daily Maverick is an important business. It’s a bastion of objective journalism in South Africa, a country that battles evil politicians, rampant unemployment, systemic corruption and myriad other social, political and economic issues.

Building a news organisation is no small task, especially in the age of social media, the duopoly of Google and Facebook trying to dictate how media organisations disseminate their news and make money from this news.

In the first episode of my new show, It’s Not Over, I spoke with Styli Charalambous who is the CEO and co-founder of The Daily Maverick.