The Dylan Kohlstadt Show

If you run an SME and have written off tendering as a game rigged for big corporates, this episode will change how you see it. Governments and buyers are actively looking for smaller businesses to bid, and with the right system and some smart use of AI, you can compete for contracts that once felt out of reach.

Jay Tikam returns to The DK Show to talk about his second passion, helping SMEs bid smarter. Jay has tendered internationally for development agencies, most recently building the national fintech strategy for Montenegro, and trains SMEs through Westminster City Council. He now runs Profitable Tenders, built on his 11-pillar Tender Smart framework, which covers everything from finding the right opportunity to scoping, pricing and delivering at a margin. After our first conversation, Shift ONE submitted three bids in three months, so I wanted Jay back to go deeper.

In this episode:

• Why mindset is the biggest barrier stopping SMEs from winning tenders
• The six channels of tendering, from public and private to hybrid and international
• Where global opportunities sit, from development agencies to the booming Middle East
• How to differentiate your proposal through delivery detail, risks and social value
• Using AI as a research intern to extract requirements and brainstorm delivery
• When to walk away from a bid where the budget can’t support the scope
• The pitfalls of joint ventures and how to build trust before partnering

Connect with Jay Tikam:
Website: https://profitabletenders.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaytikam/

Connect with Dylan Kohlstadt:
Website: https://dylankohlstadt.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylankohlstadt
Shift ONE: https://shiftone.co.za

#TheDKShow #Tendering #SMEGrowth #Procurement #AIinBusiness

If you run a business, lead a team or carry the financial weight of an extended family, this conversation will change how you look at every policy on your payslip. Mathabe Mlilo has spent more than a decade helping South African individuals, families and companies make practical financial decisions designed for long-term security. He has strong views on where the industry keeps getting it wrong.

I sat down with Mathabe, co-founder and director of MapheQ Financial Solutions, to unpack his journey from Standard Bank, Liberty and Discovery to building his own firm with his wife. He shares how his mother’s payslip, five overlapping funeral policies and a childhood of school fee struggles shaped a practice grounded in education. We also get into why a home-town network can take years to trust you, and how solid systems made it possible to expand from Durban into the Eastern Cape, Johannesburg and Cape Town. He also explains why MapheQ grew on referrals and partnerships long before it touched LinkedIn.

In this episode:

• Why Mathabe left corporate after years at Standard Bank, Liberty and Discovery
• What co-founding a financial firm with your wife looks like day to day
• The payslip lesson from his mother that still drives MapheQ today
• How emotional selling pushes families into duplicate funeral policies they don’t need
• Why an emergency fund can cover far more than a person-specific policy
• The hidden downside of building a business inside your home-town network
• How systems and a strong culture powered MapheQ’s growth across four provinces
• Where referrals and strategic partners fit into a founder-led growth model
• Three pillars for generational wealth: protect it, multiply it and plant seeds

Connect with Mathabe Mlilo
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mathabe-matt-mlilo-15409763/
MapheQ Financial Solutions: https://www.mapheq.co.za/

Connect with Dylan Kohlstadt
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dylankohlstadt
Website: dylankohlstadt.com
YouTube: @DylanKohlstadt
Shift ONE: shiftone.co.za

#TheDKShow #FinancialPlanning #GenerationalWealth #SouthAfricanBusiness #Entrepreneurship

If you’re building a tech startup, scaling a SaaS platform or preparing for your next VC round, this episode covers the risks most founders only discover once something breaks. AI now lets anyone code in days what used to take years, yet positioning, security, documentation and succession planning still decide which businesses survive the jump to scale.

I’m joined by Bertram Richards, who mentored me in the early Bandwidth Barn days when Shift ONE was still in incubation, and his wife Beverley Knoesen, an IT executive who learned to code in DOS and has spent her career implementing technology at corporate scale. Together they run Maven Solutions, where Bertram has coached more than a hundred startups over 28 years. We unpack the developer talent gap agentic AI is quietly creating, how VCs now profile investment by sector, why clean data has become a valuable digital asset, and the sovereignty risks every African builder should understand before scaling.

In this episode:

• The junior developer pipeline problem that will surface in five years
• Why human adoption still lags far behind the speed of code
• What VCs look for in due diligence beyond the financials
• Why fintech still attracts over 40% of VC funding, and the rise of health, edtech and agritech
• How enterprises are adopting AI cautiously as platform partnerships shift
• AI abuse case studies, security spend and why your data is now an asset
• Africa’s infrastructure opportunity and why geopolitical sovereignty matters for founders

Connect with Bertram and Beverley:
Maven Solutions: https://mavensolutions.co.za/
Beverley Knoesen on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beverley-knoesen-9b2a20a3/

Connect with Dylan:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylankohlstadt
Website: https://dylankohlstadt.com
Shift ONE: https://shiftone.co.za
Listen on iHeart: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-the-dylan-kohlstadt-show-49576817/

#TheDKShow #VentureCapital #AIStartups #SouthAfricanTech #Entrepreneurship

Freddie Mitchell, Chief Economist at Aluma Capital, joins me again to unpack the global economy, and this conversation could not be timelier.

We cover the conflict in the Middle East and its knock-on effect on oil prices and the Strait of Hormuz, why the rand has gained ground despite South Africa's own economic challenges, and what rising energy costs are doing to earnings and margins for companies worldwide.

Chapters:
0:00 – Welcome back: Freddie Mitchell, Chief Economist at Aluma Capital
1:04 – The global economy in three words: uncertainty, Hormuz, conflict
1:50 – Oil price swings and why the rand is gaining strength
2:52 – The knock-on effect on global business earnings and margins
3:45 – How fuel costs are hitting services and inflation
5:14 – Are we moving away from globalisation?
6:29 – What multinational and local businesses should watch for
8:32 – Tariffs, subsidisation and the social cost of cheap imports
10:28 – Which regions are best positioned for growth
12:36 – How businesses can prepare for a volatile global economy
16:13 – AI, data centres and the risk to jobs
19:00 – When should governments step in with regulation?
20:12 – How vulnerable is the global economy to the next shock?
25:01 – Where the next big opportunities lie: energy, rare earths and AI
27:27 – Closing thoughts and thank you

LinkedIn:   / freddie-mitchell-economist  
Aluma Capital: https://aluma.co.za

Over November and December we submitted six tenders and didn't land a single one. I blamed price, so I asked Larissa Cornelius, CEO and Chief Win Strategist, where we really went wrong. Her answer changed how I'll approach every bid from here.

Larissa Cornelius, the CEO of Nfold and her team help companies win more proposals, tenders and pitches, and she has sat across the table from enough procurement teams to know exactly what gets a bid binned. It was the most practical half hour I've spent on business development this year.

In this episode:

• Why compliance still knocks out more bidders than price ever does
• The mistake of treating your proposal like a company profile
• The difference between pricing to compete and pricing to win
• Price-sensitive, functionality and quality buyers, and how each one decides
• Why win rates are falling even as AI-written proposals multiply
• The quickest way to lift your win rate by bidding on fewer opportunities

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:45 Winning Proposals and Tenders
4:11 Common Tendering Mistakes
9:09 Pricing and Value Strategy
14:31 Read and Filter Tender Requirements
17:14 Planning and Proposal Presentation
22:40 Services and Training Packages

If your business chases RFPs, RFQs or tenders, this conversation will save you weeks of wasted effort.

Get in touch with Larissa Cornelius: https://www.linkedin.com/in/larissa-cornelius-winbusiness-proposals-salescollateral/n

Nfold: https://www.nfold.com/

Get in touch with Dylan Kohlstadt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylankohlstadt/

Shift ONE B2B: https://shiftone.co.za/

#TheDKShow #Tenders #ProposalManagement #B2BSales #BusinessDevelopment

Everyone sees the finished home, the successful developer, the published author. Nobody sees the years Jose Berlanga spent worse than broke, more debt than assets, wondering if he'd ever make money again. In this episode, the real estate developer behind Tricon Homes and Onix Residential (2,000+ homes built) gets brutally honest about what building a business actually costs.

Jose Berlanga and Dylan Kohlstadt talk about why "success is never linear," why the less you have the more you should be willing to risk, and why chasing money instead of purpose is one of the fastest ways to fail. Jose also opens up about his own struggle to delegate, why he thinks he might be the reason his businesses stay dependent on him, and the difference between building a business and building a practice that can't survive without you.

If you've ever felt like everyone else has it figured out and you're the only one struggling, this conversation is the reality check you need.

In this episode:

Why "how bad you want it" matters more than any business plan
Debunking the myth that hardship as a child guarantees drive as an adult
What it actually means to go "backwards to negative," not just back to zero
Jose's philosophy on risk: the less you have, the more you can afford to lose
Why his early motivation was money, and what eventually replaced it
Choosing business partners like you'd choose a spouse
The addictive trap of becoming the business instead of building one
Why writing four books hasn't made the process any easier

Connect with Jose Berlanga:
Website: https://joseberlanga.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jose-berlanga-900a9518/ 

Connect with Dylan Kohlstadt:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylankohlstadt/ 
Website: https://dylankohlstadt.com/ 

Contact Dylan Kohlstadt for consulting:
[email protected]

Work with Shift ONE to outsource your B2B marketing:
shiftone.co.za 

#TheDKShow #Entrepreneurship #RealEstateDevelopment #BusinessLessons #Resilience

Subscribe to my channels / @dylankohlstadt

Connect with me on all my social platforms:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dylankohlstadt/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylankohlstadt/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dylankohlstadt/   
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dylankohlstadt
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DylanKohlstadt/

If you think personal branding is about bragging, this episode will change your mind. Andre Du Toit, "The Big Positive Guy," went two years without a single speaking booking after declaring himself a professional speaker. What he did next built him a career spanning nearly 20 years and a personal brand so strong that people recognise his wife from his posts alone. In this episode, Andre breaks down what actually separates speakers who get booked from speakers who don't, and why most CEOs are sitting on a thought leadership opportunity they're too nervous to use.

Andre and Dylan dig into why authenticity beats polish every time, how to figure out your personal values instead of confusing them with goals, and why giving content away for free is the fastest way to build trust that converts into business. Andre also shares his personal content model, the "silent majority" mindset that's shaped his public voice, and practical advice for any CEO or founder wondering how to step into the spotlight without losing themselves in the process.

In this episode:

Why Andre went two years without a booking, and what he did with that time
The difference between personal brand as self-promotion and personal brand as authenticity
How to identify your real values instead of chasing goals
Andre's content ratio for balancing personal and business posts
Why giving content away builds more trust than selling ever will
The "silent majority" approach to staying positive in a noisy world
Practical starting points for CEOs ready to build a public profile

Connect with Andre Du Toit:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bigpositiveguy/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/GoodNewsSouthAfrica

Connect with Dylan Kohlstadt:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dylankohlstadt

#TheDKShow #PersonalBranding #ThoughtLeadership #B2BMarketing #PublicSpeaking

Subscribe to my channels / @dylankohlstadt

Connect with me on all my social platforms:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dylankohlstadt/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylankohlstadt/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dylankohlstadt/   
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dylankohlstadt
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DylanKohlstadt/

What's really happening to the South African economy – and what businesses must do now.

Dylan Kohlstadt sits down with Freddie Mitchell, Chief Economist at Aluma Capital, for an unfiltered look at the economic forces shaping South Africa in 2025 and beyond.

Freddie has advised government, worked inside SARS, and spent years analysing what drives (and stalls) economic growth. In this episode, he breaks down what business leaders in industrial, manufacturing, and capital-intensive sectors need to understand right now – from interest rate trajectories and infrastructure constraints to AI adoption and the role of government in enabling (or hindering) growth.

This is the conversation South African business owners and executives need to have.

In this episode:
– The real state of the South African economy
– Interest rates: relief or false hope?
– Infrastructure gaps and what they mean for industry
– AI adoption in an emerging market context
– What government is getting right – and where it's falling short
– Key risks for industrial and manufacturing businesses in the year ahead

🔗 Connect with Freddie Mitchell:   / freddie-mitchell-economist 

🔗 Connect with Dylan Kohlstadt:   / dylankohlstadt 

Check out Aluma Capital to elevate your investment strategically: https://aluma.co.za

🎙️ The DK Show is hosted by Dylan Kohlstadt, founder and CEO of Shift ONE Digital – Africa's #1 ranked SEO and AI visibility agency.

🔔 Subscribe for weekly conversations with the business leaders, economists, and innovators shaping the future of B2B in South Africa and beyond.


#SouthAfricanEconomy #TheDKShow #DylanKohlstadt #B2BMarketing #ShiftONE #Economics #SouthAfrica #Manufacturing #IndustrialBusiness #InterestRates #AIinAfrica #BusinessGrowth #AlumaCapital #EconomicOutlook #FounderLife

Subscribe to my channels / @dylankohlstadt

Connect with me on all my social platforms:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dylankohlstadt/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylankohlstadt/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dylankohlstadt/   
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dylankohlstadt
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DylanKohlstadt/

Peter Shankman only has two speeds: namaste, and out the door before you can stop him. As founder of Help A Reporter Out, a six-time bestselling author, and a leading voice on neurodiversity in the workplace, he's built an entire system around a brain that never idles.

Dylan sits down with Peter to unpack the life rules, the environments he engineers to kill decision fatigue, and the discipline behind writing a bestseller on two flights to Tokyo.

In this episode:
– The "life rules" that remove friction and protect focus
– Playing the tape forward: the technique that keeps discipline honest
– How gamification and algorithms are rewiring attention spans
– The stoplight system that made an office more neuro-inclusive
– The 50-minute rule for deep work without losing the plot to FOMO

Connect with Peter Shankman:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/petershankman
Website: shankman.com

Connect with Dylan:
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dylankohlstadt
Website: dylankohlstadt.com
Shift ONE: shiftone.co.za

#TheDKShow #PeterShankman #ADHD #Neurodiversity #Productivity #DeepWork #Neuroinclusion #DylanKohlstadt #ShiftONE #B2BMarketing

Subscribe to my channels / @dylankohlstadt

Connect with me on all my social platforms:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dylankohlstadt/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylankohlstadt/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dylankohlstadt/   
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dylankohlstadt
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DylanKohlstadt/

Gordon Henry spent years on the other side of the table – as a procurement manager deciding which agencies made the cut and which didn't. Now, as co-founder of IAN (Independent Agency Network), he's using that insider knowledge to help independent agencies stop underselling themselves, compete with the global giants, and finally take their seat at the table.

Shift ONE is a proud member of IAN, and in this episode Dylan sits down with Gordon to talk about what's really holding agencies back – and what it takes to turn things around.

They get into rate cards, repositioning, differentiation, and the uncomfortable truths most agency owners avoid. If you run an agency – or work in one – this conversation will challenge how you think about your value.

In this episode:
Why so many agencies are stuck – and how to diagnose it
What procurement managers actually look for (and what disqualifies you immediately)
How to build a rate card that reflects your real worth
What it means to be distinct in a crowded market
How IAN helps independent agencies compete on a global stage
And so much more you'll just have to watch!

Connect with Gordon Henry & IAN:

Independent Agency Network – https://ianetwork.co.za
Gordon Henry on LinkedIn –   / gordon-henry-189b6726 

Connect with Dylan:

LinkedIn:   / dylankohlstadt 
Website: dylankohlstadt.com
Shift ONE: shiftone.co.za

#TheDKShow #AgencyGrowth #IndependentAgency #IAN #GordonHenry #AgencyLife #B2BMarketing #MarketingAgency #AgencyBusiness #DylanKohlstadt #ShiftONE #RateCards #AgencyDifferentiation #MarketingLeadership #AgencyTurnaround

Subscribe to my channels / @dylankohlstadt

Connect with me on all my social platforms:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dylankohlstadt/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dylankohlstadt/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dylankohlstadt/   
Twitter: https://twitter.com/dylankohlstadt
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DylanKohlstadt/