The Founder Files

As a founder, being focused on a clear strategy and direction is hard enough, but when you're the founder of 2 businesses then it becomes critically important to make sure you're using your time well. This is a topic we discuss with Steve Pinto as he explains how clear values, goals, strategies and decision-making frameworks have helped grow 2 businesses side by side. Steve is the Founder and CEO of New Reality and CTRL Robotics. New Reality is a VR company that helps businesses train their employees in ways they have never experienced before. CTRL Robotics is a company that provides a platform and team of robots to help businesses optimise their operations.This is a high-energy episode with an incredibly driven entrepreneur that will surely inspire you to get up and get focused.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This podcast is brought to you by Metavolve. We help entrepreneurs structure their businesses for growth. We take the chaos out of scaling businesses by turning entrepreneurial intuition into aligned and committed leadership teams with clear strategic direction. We optimise the execution of strategy by helping people adapt to the inevitable change that strategy creates. Working with us to define or execute your strategy means you get access to experienced experts in business strategy and organisational psychology. You get the benefit of a blend of people-centric and commercial perspectives that can understand your context from every angle. And you get the benefit of not being dependent on us for the long term because we share our knowledge and tools with your people to improve their ability to solve future problems. To get in touch with one of our experts, head over to our website. If you would like to get in touch with our host, Cameron Coutts, then you can connect with him on LinkedIn.This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!

How do you get your employees to be motivated and driven in the right direction? How do you ensure that your sales and marketing efforts are deliberate and build momentum? How do you make sure you're connecting with the customers you want to be connecting with? How do you ensure that what you become known for is what you WANT to be known for?These are all questions that were answered when Tristan Van Moerkerken decided that a rebrand was needed for his business. Even though it was a big investment, he's felt more clarity on the direction of his business than ever before and is seeing the results to prove it. Tristan is the Founder and CEO of Optimized, an e-commerce platform on a mission to give you everything you need to unlock your full potential through products improving health, wellness, and physical and mental performance.In this episode, we get insight into clashes with previous founders, rediscovering a new identity, setting and directing strategy, and how this all gets tied together through the brand.This is the first episode of the new season where there is now a greater focus on topics. Enjoy!----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This podcast is brought to you by Metavolve. We help entrepreneurs structure their businesses for growth. We take the chaos out of scaling businesses by turning entrepreneurial intuition into aligned and committed leadership teams with clear strategic direction. We optimise the execution of strategy by helping people adapt to the inevitable change that strategy creates. Working with us to define or execute your strategy means you get access to experienced experts in business strategy and organisational psychology. You get the benefit of a blend of people-centric and commercial perspectives that can understand your context from every angle. And you get the benefit of not being dependent on us for the long term because we share our knowledge and tools with your people to improve their ability to solve future problems. To get in touch with one of our experts, head over to our website. If you would like to get in touch with our host, Cameron Coutts, then you can connect with him on LinkedIn.This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!

When you're the sole founder of a business, how do you know that you're doing the right things and moving in the right direction? What do you do if you feel like you don't have all the skills needed to get your business to grow? How can you get someone to help hold you accountable to do the important but not urgent things?These are all questions that Samantha Hogg-Brandjes - the Founder and CEO of GinjaNinja, a PR company for tech and ICT businesses - asked herself before she decided that a business coach is what she needed to take her business forward. And it turns out that she was right. In the 12-18 months after her decision to get a coach, her business grew by 46%. This is especially noteworthy when you consider that interest in PR and Communications has dropped from about 26% of enrollments to 1%.Sam has a passion for PR and demonstrates the importance of this profession in helping businesses in this day and age. Her passion is also what fuels her growth, which is a topic we also get into when discussing how she translates her personal philosophy into that of the business.This is the first episode of the new season where there is now a greater focus on topics. Enjoy!----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This podcast is brought to you by Metavolve. We help entrepreneurs structure their businesses for growth. We take the chaos out of scaling businesses by turning entrepreneurial intuition into aligned and committed leadership teams with clear strategic direction. We optimise the execution of strategy by helping people adapt to the inevitable change that strategy creates. Working with us to define or execute your strategy means you get access to experienced experts in business strategy and organisational psychology. You get the benefit of a blend of people-centric and commercial perspectives that can understand your context from every angle. And you get the benefit of not being dependent on us for the long term because we share our knowledge and tools with your people to improve their ability to solve future problems. To get in touch with one of our experts, head over to our website. If you would like to get in touch with our host, Cameron Coutts, then you can connect with him on LinkedIn.This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!

After publishing 13 episodes, we realised that we had just done a full quarter of the year in interviews. Just like quarterly strategy reviews, we thought that this was ideal timing to pause and reflect on our learnings from each episode we've done so far. This is a special episode where Cameron and Brett (the Founders of Metavolve) discuss everything they learned from each guest and what stood out to them as unique about their stories. Enjoy this special episode because the format of future episodes is going to be a little different from now on!----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This podcast is brought to you by Metavolve. We help entrepreneurs structure their businesses for growth. We take the chaos out of scaling businesses by turning entrepreneurial intuition into aligned and committed leadership teams with clear strategic direction. We optimise the execution of strategy by helping people adapt to the inevitable change that strategy creates. Working with us to define or execute your strategy means you get access to experienced experts in business strategy and organisational psychology. You get the benefit of a blend of people-centric and commercial perspectives that can understand your context from every angle. And you get the benefit of not being dependent on us for the long term because we share our knowledge and tools with your people to improve their ability to solve future problems. To get in touch with one of our experts, head over to our website. If you would like to get in touch with our host, Cameron Coutts, then you can connect with him on LinkedIn.This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!

Having clarity on your Mission, Vision and Values is critical to the successful growth of your business because these philosophical elements define the direction you're headed in and provide clarity as to what your stakeholders should expect from you. This lesson is lived, learned and taught by Lauren Dallas (the Co-Founder and CEO of Future Females), who explains that the clarity Future Females has on its own identity is one of the main reasons they have been able to grow into 55 countries in less than 5 years.Future Females is a business network that exists to empower and support female entrepreneurs to start and grow businesses effectively. They do this using 3 main offerings: a business school, a founder's club and monthly speaking and networking events all over the world. What sets Future Females apart from other business or entrepreneurial networks is how they live their values: to be collaborative, inclusive and community-driven, and to give first and take action.In this episode, we talk about how the courage to be authentic can transform your business and your life. Thanks for listening and enjoy the episode.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This podcast is brought to you by Metavolve. We help entrepreneurs structure their businesses for growth. We take the chaos out of scaling businesses by turning entrepreneurial intuition into aligned and committed leadership teams with clear strategic direction. We optimise the execution of strategy by helping people adapt to the inevitable change that strategy creates. Working with us to define or execute your strategy means you get access to experienced experts in business strategy and organisational psychology. You get the benefit of a blend of people-centric and commercial perspectives that can understand your context from every angle. And you get the benefit of not being dependent on us for the long term because we share our knowledge and tools with your people to improve their ability to solve future problems. To get in touch with one of our experts, head over to our website. If you would like to get in touch with our host, Cameron Coutts, then you can connect with him on LinkedIn.This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!

Building strong relationships is at the core of Iridium Business Solution's ethos and this holds true in their approach to customer-centricity. This value is so strong that they gave up proportions of up to 100% of their fees to help their clients weather the storm of COVID. This in turn built a reputation of trusting relationships in the market, which was the launchpad of Iridium's growth.Iridium was able to do this proactively because they're a cloud accounting firm. This means that they already had access to the financials of their clients, and due to their advisory unit, they were able to foresee the impact that lockdown would have on their clients and therefore provide them with consultation and reducing their fees. Besides cloud accounting services and financial advisory, they also provide automation support for businesses by utilising platforms like Xero (with whom Iridium was nominated for partner of the year in 2021 and 2022) and Dext.This story of strong client relationships is just one of many that Peter Magner (the Co-Founder and Director of Sales and Marketing) shares in our conversation. Peter's background is accounting and audit through and through, but he started Iridium with his brother shortly after finishing his articles. Since then, he's shown a strong mix of entrepreneurship and altruism by being a member of an SMME investment committee and a director of an NGO. In this episode, we talk about how a business can be truly customer-centric, navigating complex people problems as you scale and reducing customer relationships' dependency on the founders. Thanks for listening and enjoy the episode.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This podcast is brought to you by Metavolve. We help entrepreneurs structure their businesses for growth. We take the chaos out of scaling businesses by turning entrepreneurial intuition into aligned and committed leadership teams with clear strategic direction. We optimise the execution of strategy by helping people adapt to the inevitable change that strategy creates. Working with us to define or execute your strategy means you get access to experienced experts in business strategy and organisational psychology. You get the benefit of a blend of people-centric and commercial perspectives that can understand your context from every angle. And you get the benefit of not being dependent on us for the long term because we share our knowledge and tools with your people to improve their ability to solve future problems. To get in touch with one of our experts, head over to our website. If you would like to get in touch with our host, Cameron Coutts, then you can connect with him on LinkedIn.This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!

The concept of failure is almost spoken about too much in entrepreneurial circles, but our next guest - Kimberley Taylor - brings it home in quite a relatable way by being compassionate with herself when she fails to meet her own high expectations in relation to her mental health goals like waking up at 5am or meditating for 40 days in a row. The same principles apply to initiating change and experimentation in your business because the whole point is to be kind to yourself when you do inevitably fail. Because let's face it, if you don't fail then it wasn't an experiment, it was a prediction.This was an in-depth topic we discussed with Kim in her journey as the Founder and CEO of Loop, a custom-fit delivery app and platform that helps delivery and logistics companies optimise their last-mile deliveries. They've grown rapidly over the past few years and are part of the reason why apps like Checkers Sixty60 are so successful.In this episode, we talk about everything from the "how" of mental health to the need for leaders to receive empathy. Thanks for listening and enjoy the episode.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This podcast is brought to you by Metavolve. We help entrepreneurs structure their businesses for growth. We take the chaos out of scaling businesses by turning entrepreneurial intuition into aligned and committed leadership teams with clear strategic direction. We optimise the execution of strategy by helping people adapt to the inevitable change that strategy creates. Working with us to define or execute your strategy means you get access to experienced experts in business strategy and organisational psychology. You get the benefit of a blend of people-centric and commercial perspectives that can understand your context from every angle. And you get the benefit of not being dependent on us for the long term because we share our knowledge and tools with your people to improve their ability to solve future problems. To get in touch with one of our experts, head over to our website. If you would like to get in touch with our host, Cameron Coutts, then you can connect with him on LinkedIn.This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!

When you're a founder and/or a leader of a small business, the state that you're in becomes directly reflected in the business. What this means is that if you are positive, energised and optimistic then you will see positivity, energy and optimism in your business performance. The same goes for negativity, doubt and stagnation. And this is why mental health is so important for leaders and entrepreneurs. This is a lesson shared by Takalani Madzhadzhi, the Founder and CEO of Ashanti AI, a data science and artificial intelligence lab that helps businesses become more profitable by solving their most complex inefficiencies. Takalani is an Actuarial Scientist by profession but a Data Scientist (he unpacks the difference in the episode) and entrepreneur at heart. He left the world of product development in financial services to have more autonomy in how he solves problems, which is what started Ashanti AI. The business has been growing smoothly since 2018. They now have 10 full-time specialist professionals working on (currently) three different business units: bespoke consulting and AI solutions, Value Chain Optimisation and labour market skills analysis (called Skills Blackboard, which just raised funding in a seed round). In this episode, we talk about everything from the difficulty in hiring someone you can trust to the importance of mental health. Thanks for listening and enjoy the episode.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This podcast is brought to you by Metavolve. We help entrepreneurs structure their businesses for growth. We take the chaos out of scaling businesses by turning entrepreneurial intuition into aligned and committed leadership teams with clear strategic direction. We optimise the execution of strategy by helping people adapt to the inevitable change that strategy creates. Working with us to define or execute your strategy means you get access to experienced experts in business strategy and organisational psychology. You get the benefit of a blend of people-centric and commercial perspectives that can understand your context from every angle. And you get the benefit of not being dependent on us for the long term because we share our knowledge and tools with your people to improve their ability to solve future problems. To get in touch with one of our experts, head over to our website. If you would like to get in touch with our host, Cameron Coutts, then you can connect with him on LinkedIn.This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!

"It gets exponentially more complex having to deal with a big team rather than one, two or three people, as you have to adapt your leadership style to individuals rather than taking a blanket approach." Now, this is a lesson that I got from our next guests, the founders of DealersOnline,  William Miller and Renaldo De Jager.So DealersOnline is a SaaS business in the automotive industry that helps dealerships respond to rapid changes in markets and consumer behaviour. DealersOnline started because William - who worked in the dealership environments in many sales roles - had enough of the problems related to corruption, stock management and transparency in dealership-to-dealership car sales. He partnered with Renaldo - an IT Specialist and Software Developer, who at the time was actually a client of William's - to come up with an auction platform that provides a more transparent and efficient transaction of stock between dealerships at a higher return.Since implementing that first solution, DealersOnline has evolved into a business of 136 people that doesn't only facilitate these online auction sales in multiple environments, but also does fleet disposals for corporates and banks, and provides new software to dealerships to help them stay relevant in rapidly changing markets.In this episode, we're going to talk about how the importance of adapting to rapidly changing technology is the key to staying relevant and growing up. Thanks for listening and we hope you enjoy the episode.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This podcast is brought to you by Metavolve. We help entrepreneurs structure their businesses for growth. We take the chaos out of scaling businesses by turning entrepreneurial intuition into aligned and committed leadership teams with clear strategic direction. We optimise the execution of strategy by helping people adapt to the inevitable change that strategy creates. Working with us to define or execute your strategy means you get access to experienced experts in business strategy and organisational psychology. You get the benefit of a blend of people-centric and commercial perspectives that can understand your context from every angle. And you get the benefit of not being dependent on us for the long term because we share our knowledge and tools with your people to improve their ability to solve future problems. To get in touch with one of our experts, head over to our website. If you would like to get in touch with our host, Cameron Coutts, then you can connect with him on LinkedIn.This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!

Welcome to The Founder Files! In this week’s episode, we chat with Simon Ellis, the Co-Founder and CEO of SmartWage. SmartWage is a cloud-based HR & Communications platform that focuses on making deskless workplaces in Africa more efficient and engaged. Through WhatsApp, SmartWage helps employers connect with their deskless employees digitally, giving them the ability to digitise payslip delivery, leave management and employee communications. Although he is a qualified accountant, having worked at Deloitte London in the Equity Capital Markets team for almost 4 years, he is an entrepreneur at heart. He's worked with multiple start-ups to help them raise capital, has tried (and failed) to start a number of his own businesses before Smartwage and is also the co-founder of Nutbrook Property, a property development company in London. However, we’re focusing on SmartWage in this episode and how built it into a company that recently attracted $2 Million in investment. Simon shares his challenging experiences in having to pivot the business and change the people that are part of the team. His hardest journey was having to split ways with his original founding team to find a new Co-Founder. However, he's managed to maintain strong and healthy relationships with all parties. Simon also provides some insight into some of the cliched lessons that we hear about entrepreneurship and how he learned to actually apply them in reality.Thanks for listening to this week’s episode and we hope you enjoyed it! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------This podcast is sponsored by Metavolve. We help make business growth easier through strategy and people development. We take the chaos out of scaling businesses by turning entrepreneurial intuition into aligned and committed leadership teams with clear strategic direction. We optimise the execution of strategy by helping people adapt to the inevitable change that strategy creates. Working with us to define or execute your strategy means you get access to experienced experts in business strategy and organisational psychology. You get the benefit of a blend of people-centric and commercial perspectives that can understand your context from every angle. And you get the benefit of not being dependent on us for the long term because we share our knowledge and tools with your people to improve their ability to solve future problems. To get in touch with one of our experts, head over to our website. If you would like to get in touch with our host, Cameron Coutts, then you can connect with him on LinkedIn.This episode is brought to you by Metavolve. Metavolve is a team of focused experts who want scaling entrepreneurs like you to succeed 👉 contact our team Do you have a scaling business and valuable insights about your industry? Be our next guest!