The Business Culture Podcast

Good Good, Bad Break: The Callaway Collapse | Business Culture Podcast

One ad. Six days. Hundreds of millions in enterprise value gone.

In August 2026, a sixty-second commercial from YouTube golf giant Good Good — meant as a comedic parody — depicted co-founder Garrett Clark shoving pro golfer Alexis Miestowski to the ground over a new Callaway driver. What followed wasn't a bad news cycle. It was total structural collapse: a PGA Tour title sponsorship dropped, a Golf Channel series cancelled, national retail shelf space pulled, and a multi-year manufacturing partnership terminated — all within a week.

In this episode of the Business Culture Podcast, we run a full forensic autopsy on the breakdown: how a deeply integrated, omnichannel partnership turned a single creative misstep into a chain reaction across four industries, why Callaway's own "approved" ad reveals a governance failure hiding behind compliance, and why secondary stakeholders — not the primary partners — are always first to pull the plug.

We also pull in a contrasting case: Pepsi's 2017 Kendall Jenner ad crisis, a viral misstep that looked nearly identical on the surface but stayed contained. The difference wasn't the severity of the mistake — it was how many other companies had quietly been made dependent on it not failing.

Finally, we lay out the four-phase Restorative Crisis Framework RCA Group believes could have saved the Good Good–Callaway partnership without compromising anyone's values — and what it means for any executive building a high-growth alliance with a creator brand.

In this episode:

About the Business Culture Podcast

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This Business Culture Podcast episode, titled "Decoding Adrian Gore’s 4 Principles of Exponential Impact," breaks down the key strategies from Adrian Gore’s book, The Four Principles. Join host [cite: Host Name] as they explore Gore's concept of how some individuals can achieve dramatically greater impact than others, despite having similar resources.

The episode examines the human brain's evolutionary biases toward linear thinking and risk aversion, and how Gore's principles can counteract these innate tendencies. The four core principles discussed are:

The Pareto Tail: Focusing on high-impact, non-linear activities that drive disproportionate results.

Disciplined Optimism: Embracing a positive outlook as a strategic advantage while maintaining realistic judgment.

Declared Goals: The power of setting clear, ambitious, and widely shared objectives to create accountability and fuel action.

Focused Urgency: Cultivating a mindset of focused, efficient action to make tangible progress.

Listen now to learn how to apply these principles to your daily life and leadership, and start making a measurable, exponential impact. Discover the behavioural science-backed methods Adrian Gore has used to build a global health and behaviour powerhouse. Tune in for practical tips and examples of how to override evolutionary biases and unlock your potential for transformative influence.

Platō Coffee: The Origin Story

In December 2019, two brothers from Free State mining towns opened a shipping container in Irene and named their coffee shop after a Greek philosopher. Six years later, Platō Coffee has grown to over 130 stores, a roastery, a bakery, its own training academy, and a London launch on the horizon.

This isn't the version of the story you've read a dozen times. On this episode of the Business Culture Podcast, we take a fresh look at the rise of Platō through the lens of the philosopher they named it after — Plato, and his idea of the ideal Form. Because when you look closely, every strategic decision Stephan and Petrus Bredell have made is really about closing the gap between the ideal cup and the one actually in the customer's hand.

Along the way, we unpack the eight failures before Platō (including the one that killed Stephan's first business a month after his honeymoon), the café hidden inside King Price Insurance that quietly wrote Platō's DNA four years early, the COVID loophole that revealed what the brothers were actually building, and the small-town masterclass that most South African chains never bothered to learn.

Eight lessons for anyone building a business that has to deliver the same promise in more than one place.

Brought to you by the RCA Group.

The Open Championship looks like tradition — tweed, links golf, unpredictable weather. Underneath it, it's a finely tuned commercial operation. As the tournament returns to Royal Birkdale in 2026, we dig into how the R&A actually runs the numbers: sponsorship deals worth tens of millions, a split broadcasting strategy that plays both premium and free-to-air, ticket demand in the millions, and the hundreds of millions in economic impact a single week can generate for a host town. Expect real figures, a few surprises, and a dry look at why golf's oldest major still pays out the smallest prize purse of the four.

From a childhood treehouse dinner party in Johannesburg to a loan-shark-funded first café and now restaurants across South Africa, the UAE, the UK and Saudi Arabia — this episode traces how Natasha Sideris built Tashas into one of South Africa's most recognisable hospitality brands. We dig into the market gap she spotted, why she deliberately refused to mass-roll-out her franchise, what she learned from selling — and later buying back — a 51% stake to Famous Brands, and how she took the brand global without diluting it. It's a story about scaling culture without losing soul, and why, twenty years and nearly fifty openings in, she says the work never actually gets easier.

In this episode, we explore the grit and philosophy behind the meteoric rise of Freedom of Movement, a brand born not in a boardroom, but in a chaotic South African home where freedom was a reward for discipline. Join us as we follow brothers Roal and Léan Boezaart from their stable corporate careers into a tiny, ten-square-meter "cupboard" office, where they risked everything to turn a childhood ethos into a leather empire. From surviving the "Valley of Death" with a daring pivot into footwear to forging a groundbreaking equity partnership with rugby icon Siya Kolisi, this story proves that authenticity isn't just a marketing strategy—it’s the ultimate currency for building a legacy.

In this episode, we look past the mining giants and tech startups to uncover the true South African business success story of the last decade: Checkers Sixty60. We take listeners back to the retail stagnation of the late 2010s—a time when online grocery shopping was dismissed by experts as a "logistical nightmare" and a quick way to lose money.

Join us as we explore how the ShopriteX innovation team defied the "Big Four" status quo to solve the impossible math of sixty-minute delivery. We dive into the strategy that turned a tentative pilot into a multi-billion rand cultural phenomenon, rewiring how an entire nation values their time and convenience.

In this season premiere of the Business Culture Podcast, host Joe tackles a common frustration among leaders: why team members often lack initiative and fail to act like owners. This episode explores the structural reasons why companies claim to want "owners" but accidentally build systems designed for "renters".

For more information, visit www.rcaconsulting.biz

In this RCA Short, we unpack the power of hospitality for any business. The concept and notion of hospitality beyond an industry. 

This podcast is brought to you by RCA Consulting, a specialist in staff training and market research. 

For more information, do visit www.rcaconsulting.biz

In this episode, Rob had the wonderful opportunity to engage with Mark Wernich, General Manager at the TAJ Hotel in Cape Town.

Mark has enjoyed a remarkable career in the hospitality industry and become an industry leader in turnaround strategy. An individual willing to get his hands dirty, Mark speaks to us about the lessons he has gleaned from environments like the Protea Group (now Marriott) and now the TAJ group. 

Having come through the pandemic, Mark is hugely optimistic about the new resiliency and problem-solving capabilities acquired by those who have stuck things out in the industry. 

This episode is brought to you by RCA Consulting, a leading blended learning and performance provider in Africa. For more information, please visit www.rcaconsulting.biz.