Building Impact Across Borders: A Founder’s Journey Through Startups, Setbacks, and Social Change with Justinus Adriaanse Artwork

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Built to Last

Building Impact Across Borders: A Founder’s Journey Through Startups, Setbacks, and Social Change with Justinus Adriaanse

June 21, 2025 • Levi Lawrence and Colby Jardine • Season 1 • Episode 11

In this wide-ranging and deeply personal conversation, we sit down with Justinus Adriaanse—a South African-born entrepreneur whose life journey spans tech startups, social impact, and the pursuit of a more just world. From launching and scaling one of South Africa’s leading real estate platforms to founding a tuition-free coding academy for underserved youth, Justinus shares a remarkable story of transformation shaped by adversity, leadership, and an evolving worldview.

We explore the cultural forces that shaped his early assumptions, the inflection points that shifted his path, and the lessons learned from business success, personal hardship, and moving his family across continents. With honesty and clarity, Justinus reflects on growing as a leader, learning to code at 30, building inclusive organizations—and why happiness might just come down to expectations (and a good meal at Nando’s).

Links and Resources

Justinus on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinusadriaanse/
WeThinkCode – A South African non-profit coding academy co-founded by Justinus https://www.wethinkcode.co.za/
Private Property – Real estate portal he helped grow and transform https://www.privateproperty.co.za/
Tommy Gun’s Barbershop – The Canadian business Justinus now helps operate and grow https://www.tommyguns.com/
Solve for Happy by Mo Gawdat – Book on happiness and expectations https://www.mogawdat.com/solve-for-happy
Crucial Conversations & Crucial Influence – Frameworks that shaped his leadership style https://cruciallearning.com/
Time to Think by Nancy Kline – On creating space for better decision-making https://www.timetothink.com/
The Art of Possibility by Rosamund & Benjamin Zander – A book about mindset shifts and reframing assumptions https://www.benjaminzander.org/the-art-of-possibility/

Quotes Worth Sharing

“You can’t always change the world you live in, but you can change your expectations of it—and that’s where happiness begins.”
“Coding taught me a process for problem solving—without risk. That’s the magic.”
“If we create the right process and work on ourselves, we can make a great partnership with 80% of the population.”
“We’re either building a country that works for everyone—or eventually it works for no one.”
“It’s not about picking the best decision. It’s about picking the best decision people can buy into.”

Chapter Breakdown
02:50 – Growing Up in Apartheid-Era South Africa.
07:00 – Building & Scaling Private Property
20:00 – Turning It Around
28:00 – A New Life in Canada
35:00 – Tommy Gun’s & Canadian Business
40:00 – Tech for Opportunity: WeThinkCode
52:00 – Reframing Identity Through an MBA
69:00 – Partnership Conflict & Crucial Conversations
77:00 – Coding, AI & Problem-Solving
83:00 – Buying vs. Building a Business
88:00 – Entrepreneurial Cultures: SA vs. Canada
94:00 – Long-Term Focus & Leadership Growth
103:00 – On Happiness, Health & Perspective
Finding joy in the simple—Nando’s included.

1:00:00

Welcome to Built to Last, the podcastwhere entrepreneursshare real stories about thetriumphs and challenges ofbuilding enduring success.Hosted by ColbyJardine and Levi Lawrence.Welcome to our newest episode of Built toLast, where we'retrying to have stories withtypically leaders, entrepreneurs who haveboth a professionaland a personal side wherethey're trying todevelop and build strong.And our favorite conversations are thoseones that don'tnecessarily have a right answer.You know, they talked out in theircomplex and we really enjoyfollowing our own curiosity,Colby and I.So we typically come in cold and I knowvery little aboutJustina, so I'm excited aboutto get to know him in this wide rangingconversation, I'm sure.And Colby, you have met Justina, sobefore we pass it off formost of the intro with himhimself, this is your foreshadowing,Justina, so we don't read out the bio.Colby, take it away.Sure, sure.So I've met Justina in Brazil for thefirst time and he wasthe president of EO CanadaBridge and is recently retiring from thatposition as of late.And that's exciting, but I got firstexposed to you in Braziland kind of had an immediateconnection with me living inSouth Africa for three years.And I just thought it was kind of quite acoincidence to havethe president of the EOCanada Bridge chapter being a guy fromalso Pretoria where I wasliving, which was prettyodd. So I thought that was kind of fun.And I just kind of felt like I naturallygravitated towards your leadership style.And what's that?What would you say ismy leadership style?I would say that yourleadership style was.I found that you really leaned on thewhole group and it didn'tnot once did it ever feellike even the slightest bit of adictatorship in a leadershipstandpoint, it felt like themost collaborative space to get to goodsolid answers wherepeople felt like they owned thedecisions that we've all come to.So it was just like I noticed it rightaway, but I couldn'tquite put my finger on it.And either you've done like either you'veyou've always been thatway or you've picked to kindof choose to go down thatroad yourself as a leader.And I just found it fascinating.I noticed it right away and and wanted tolearn more about you.And I was also like similar to JeanFrancois, theprevious conversation we had.I've been confused by the many thingsthat you're involvedwith and would love to knowin more detail what's going on.And and it's just been a realpleasure to get to know you.And we've spent a fair amount of timetogether and had somepretty deep conversations.So let's go just as deep andI'll let you introduce yourself.OK, thanks, man.Let's just pop the leadership stylediscussion because I thinkthere's a lot to unpack there.So intro, yeah, I was born in the late70s in Pretoria East in asystem that was designedto benefit me above all else.It was designed for sort of 80 yearsleading up to that to tryand give people like me thebest opportunities to succeed at life.And it did wonders for me.It gave me everything I ever needed to beable to do things in lifethat that I set out to do.Obviously, the challengeof that system was that.In order to benefit me, it created anadorable hardship for manyother people, which I'm surewe'll unpack today as well.So, yeah, grow up in Pretoria East, lovedsports, grew up withmy dad every weekend.We used to go and watch rugby at Loftus,which is the bigrugby stadium in Pretoria.Our routine would be we'll play rugby inthe Saturday morning atschool, either primaryschool or high school, then go to Loftusin the afternoon, thengo back home and watch thegame on video again.And we would do that on repeat.So so really, from an earlyage, learned to love sports.And one of the sort of characteristics orpersonal traits that Ifeel very like come acrossquite obvious for most people when Iinteract with them is sortof the passion that I feel.And and I definitely realize that Ilearned to be passionateon the pavilion watchingrugby at Loftus, learned how the crowdinteract and all thedifferent people shout that theyopposition all the normal things youlearn in that process.A lot of that of my personalitydefinitely comes from what Isaw and observed and becamepart of there.Grew up wasn't really good at sports as ayoung kid, butprogressively got better at it as Iprogressed through school academically,had all the opportunity to dowell, and did pretty well atschool, went to university and decided tostudy engineering tostart off with that reasonablywell at engineering, but really quicklyrealized that I made amistake and it wasn't really theboss I wanted to go on.So I decided to sort of change tobusiness, but from studyingengineering and having like45 hours of class and labs in a week tostudying business and having15 hours of classes and thingsto do, it felt like now this is notoptimal use of my time.So I grew up in a house by the way thatmy dad would never ask mewhat I wanted to do when Igrew up. He would always ask me what sortof business I would want to start.So he was an entrepreneur for as long asI could remember, got togo to his business overweekends and holidays and started to playwith things therefrom a pretty young age.So when I decided to switch to businessat university, I decided,no, I can't be a full timestudent anymore.So I become part time student, went toclass in the evenings and then starteddoing business in a day.Tried one or two little e-commerce sitesthat went nowhere and didn't work.And then through a friend of mine foundthis website called Private Property,which was a for sale byowner Porto.It had existed for like a year or 18months or two years at thetime and they were looking forfranchisees.So we met my friend, myself and one morefriend for three of ustook the equivalent ofprobably about three thousand dollars intoday's money in Canada and bought thesefranchises in the area we left, which wasPretoria East and very quickly figuredout a bunch of stuff.I mean, the early days was fascinating.So this was probably in 2000 or 2001.We had the Sony Mavica digital cameras,which would take a flippy,a stiffy drive on the side.And we would go to people's houses totake pictures so that wecould list them on the website.And for an hour, like 45 minutes, peoplewill just interrogateus about the camera.How does it work?It had a little LCD screen on the backand people were more fascinated by thecamera than anything elsebecause for most people at that stage, itwas the first digitalcamera they had ever seen.So that sort of worked well and thebusiness started to grow.We ended up buying three or four morefranchises and how wefigured out the business model.I moved down to Cape Town to sort of getthe business going down there.We figured out more about thebusiness model specifically.This was like 2003.We started to make a lot of money aroundthe mortgage origination.So what would happen is a lot of peoplestarted to list and by listing on thewebsite, they would now find a buyerand then they would phone us and say,"Okay, what do I do now? I have a buyer."What most people didn't know is like,obviously attorneys are usually veryeager to help in that processand mortgage originators are very eagerto help because there's lots of money tobe made for both those parties.So we would then help them actually givethem a template agreement, show them howto complete the agreement,send it to an attorney that advertisedwith us and then help thebuyer to get the finance.And very quickly, within three or fouryears, the business just exploded and wewere making 80 or 90% of our moneyfor mortgage origination.So the seller would payus a little fee upfront.We would list it.If it was priced right within a fewweeks, I would getmultiple people interested.They would eventually pick one, phone usand then we would facilitatethe closing of the transaction.So that worked really, really well.And the business just exploded.During that process, I sort of steadilygot involved with the franchisor, becamethe operations director,became, I was added to the board, startedbuying share in that business andeventually really became myselfand another guy called Justin Clark thatwas primarily driving this business.And this is where thestory sort of gets interesting.So in 2007, well, actually 2005, 6, westarted to realize that there was a muchbigger opportunity thanjust what we had done.What we had done, it worked well.The revenue for probably four or fiveyears from 2002 to 2007, we grew anywayfrom 100% to 200% a year top line.So I mean, the business wasjust going completely nuts.But we realized that there was more andthat this whole tech startup thingpotentially can createbigger opportunities.So we started to negotiate with a bigmedia player in South Africa to try anddo a deal because wehad the sort of primaryholding company now had lots of legacypeople who had been involved along theway and wasn't involved anymore.And lots of small minority shareholders.And we wanted to cleanthat up a little bit.So we spent probably the best part of sixmonths to a year negotiating with thismedia company to try and clean up,clean up the cap table and give usopportunity to get a bit of additionalcash injection and then andtry and grow the business.So we negotiated to and fro.And eventually after the longnegotiation, we couldn't find agreement.They wanted things thatwe weren't willing to give.Mindy, Justin and I as the sort ofoperating partners that would be left inthe business, the media company was happyand the exiting shareholders were happybecause they were getting what they want.But they wanted stuff from us that weweren't willing to give.So as Justin and I just said, no, we'renot willing to do the deal.We'll continue to bootstrap.We're not going to even spend because nowwe had spent six months.We're 20 to 30 hours a week.Both Justin and I were spending most ofour time trying to put a deal together.So we realized that itwasn't going to happen.And we took a deliberate decision that weweren't going to spendany more time doing this.As luck would have it, we made thedecision and a weeklater, the phone rings.And it's a friend of ours that had builta very successful Internet business inSouth Africa that had just done a dealwith a private equity fund in New York.And he was talking abouthow great these guys are.They did a deal. And wesaid, oh, that's awesome.We listened and eventually said, well,these guys want to put a lot of money inSouth Africa and they'relooking for a few acquisitions.They definitely want to do one in thereal estate space and the carspace, et cetera, et cetera.We said, oh, awesome. We actually wesaid, thanks verymuch for thinking of us.But we just decided that we're going tobootstrap this thing andwe're going to do it on our own.And he said, OK, no, that totally makessense. But let me ask you this.Why don't you guys give me these fiveKPIs, which was sitetraffic, top line revenue,number of employees, like four or fivemetrics and the price at which you'rewilling to entertain a deal.And then if they're willing to pay thatprice based on thatmatrix, then we'll talk more.But if not, then we can stop theconversation right now.We put down the phone. Wetalk about it for a little while.We decide, OK, well, let's take thenumber we ended and couldn't agree withwith this mediacompany and we'll double it.And if they're willing to talk at thatvalue, then we'll consider.So we phone our friend back.We say, OK, here's the numbers.He has the deal. We put down the phone.He says, OK, no, letme let me go and think.Let me talk to them. I'll get back toyou. Give me a week.He puts down the phone towrite later. He phones us back.He says, OK, they'rewilling to do a deal. No problem.But before you decide, yes, two businessclass tickets to their conference in NewYork, which is next inlike three weeks time,you can come and visit and meet them andmeet all of the investors and and thendecide whether you willing to talk aboutdoing a deal or not.We said, OK, well, we'll take a freebusiness class trip toNew York and have fun.And we got on the plane and I mean, ourold worldview andeverything completely shifted.We walked into this room and there wasabout 100 people at this conference,including like just, I mean, thesebrothers from Europe that had built theE-bay clone and sold the E-bay thatbuilt the Grouponclone and sold the Groupon.The founders of Zullow was there.The founders of the Rightmove, thebiggest portal in the UK, the founders oflike five or six of the biggest realestate and just our entire view of theworld and how things worked in the spacecompletely changed overnight.Luckily, that wasduring the 2007 World Cup.So tickets were through Zurich.So we managed to book the tickets, jumpin a car, go watch the semifinals, SouthAfrica play Argentina on the way back.So so it ended up working out great.To make a long story short, we ended updoing a deal with the Spried Equity Fund.And as part of the deal, we decided wewere going to change from being a fullsale by owner portal to becoming ageneral portal, which would includeestate agents and that we would buy backall of these franchises so that itwouldn't be a franchise.So we concluded the deal, Ithink, in January of 2008.We raised the money.We bought back the franchises and tookthat over in May of 2008.At the beginning of 2008, I also starteddoing my MBA, whichwas a two year project.My wife was pregnant.So my son was born in December of 2008.And in September of 2008, the wholefinancial crisis started.So we were making 80 to 90 percent of ourmoney from mortgage to the donations,which at the time, the banks in SouthAfrica were paying uslike I think 2.5 percent.So we did a million dollar mortgage.We would get two point five percent of amillion dollars in upfront in commissionfor facilitating that.The banks never liked that becauseobviously it was too rich.But in a market that was growing insanelybetween 2002 to 2009, the competitivelandscape basicallyforced the banks to do that.And the credit was so readily availablethat that sort of everybodyhad to do that to keep up.But now, obviously, theconditions completely changed.Credit was very hard to come by.The market was slowing down.And the bank said, well, this probably agood time to bring it down from 2.5percent to 0.6 percent.And the volume goes from hundreds andhundreds of millions amonth to five million a month.So overnight, our sortof revenue disappeared.The only thing that saved us was thatbecause in South Africa, the transferprocess takes about six months from whenyou sign the deal, you getthe mortgage approved until theproperty actually registers in thebuyer's name and the mortgage pays outand we get our commission.That was anywherefrom four to six months.So we knew we had a problem.Four to six monthsbefore we had the problem.We had just raised theungodly amount of money.Most of it was in the business.We had to buy back these franchises.And as I said, so my son was born.And obviously, if you have kids, youknow, the first three to six months afteryour first child isborn, it's complete chaos.I was halfway through my MBA, thefinancial crisis hit.And then every year leading up to thatpoint, myself, Justin, my businesspartner and some other friends used to goskiing every year inEurope, mostly over December.Because my son was born, that was thefirst year that we couldn't go.But Justin and Sue, our friends and mybusiness partner, did go.And it was a Sunday morning.I think early the first Sunday ofJanuary, and it was aboutfive o'clock in the morning.And I was up with my son because he wasup early and my phone rings.And it's Sue, Justin's wife,and she's in a terrible state.After a while, I make out that Justin wasin an accident, a skiing accident inAustria, and he was in intensive care.And he was probably going to be paralyzedfor the rest of his life.So it was sort of the perfect storm ofeverything going wrong that at least youthink at the timecould possibly go wrong.So here we were.We were losing money at a frenetic pace.We were trying to convert the system frombeing a for sale by owner to being ableto list estate agents, real estatebrokers to list theirstock on there as well.And you have to remember this brand wascalled Private Property.And for 10 years, we've been basicallyour main tagline was, youmust be crazy to pay commission.We would like go at agents exclusively.So, for example, our mortgage originationpartner at the time, when I went to themand said, oh, we've decided we're goingto prove it and we're going to allowestate agents to list theirstock on our website as well.They lost me out of the room.They said there's no way now any agentwill ever pay you any moneyto put their stock on here.And we said, OK, well, that's what we'regoing to give it a try.And as luck would have it, the conditionsthat created all the chaos also createdthe need for theservice we wanted to deliver.And so in three months, we built thebasics of a system that would allow themto push the information to us.And in about 18 months, we signed upprobably 50 or 60 percent of the realestate agents in the country.But before we could even do that now, wewere running out of money and we didn'thave enough money to even.Sorry, we didn't even haveenough money to to run payroll.So I was actually one of the things I'msure we'll get to at some point today ismy obsession with Nando's.But it was a Fridaynight in South Africa.And I realized that we didn't we didn'thave enough cash to beable to do this turnaround.So I had to phone Lee wasthe guy's name in New York.So I found Lee and I said, I know you'vejust invested an enormous amount ofmoney, at least in my vocabulary,we qualify as a normal huge amount ofmoney, probably not for him.I said, but you know what we have here iswe've built a system that is reallyfantastic at selling real estate.And we know whatmarket we need to go off to.We know how to do it, but we need twoyears to be able to do it.And we're going to need more money. Andhe listened for about five minutes.He said, OK, no problem.Let me go talk to the guys.I'll phone you back.So I put down the phone.I just want to pause becauseI love that this is a story.Like this seems like we've been goingdown and challenges that I have some ideawhere you're going to get to like 15years in the future.I just want to recognize like I'm justlike, I know you survive this, but.Yes, that's one of thosestories when you look back.You probably feel better about lookingback at it than you feel in the moment.And it becomes a great thing to reflecton, but you never want to do it again.So so I so I literallyfinished the call with him.I put down the phone. I got on my car.I drove to Nando's, which was like nomore than 10 minutes away.And as I stopped at Nando's, my phonering and it was Lee.And he said, OK, no,he spoke to his partner.They'll give us howmuch money do we want?I said this much. He said, OK, fine.They'll give us that. And but they'llobviously take the pound of flesh interms of the dilution.But we basically had no choice.So we closed an additional round offunding, all moneygoing into the business.And my partner, Justin, was out of actionfor about a yearbetween getting to the app.And he still paralyzed it.I actually saw him for the first time ina long time, about two months ago when Iwas in South Africa.But we managed to turn it around.So we turned it around. We signed up anenormous amount of agents.We grew dramatically to the point wheretwo years, three years later,two years later, probably, Lee from theprivate equity came backto us and said, OK, well,we really like what you guys have donehere and we want to do more investmentslike this in Africa.But the check size is too small for us todo. Why don't we give you?I think it was 10 or 15million dollars at the time.And we want to do these 10 acquisitions.You then go and do this acquisition.So by that time, Justin was back and wewere pretty productive.And he sort of took the Africa expansionpart of the business and went and did abunch of amazing acquisitions.And I focused on the business in SouthAfrica and that grew nicely.And so, yes, wemanaged to turn it around.We we grew a lot.But as a result of those events, wediluted quite dramatically.And and very soon the private equity guysbecame the majorityshelter in the business.But but it was a fascinating journey.I think in about 2012, which was fiveyears after that all happened,I just got to the point.I think I think it was part businesspartnerships is always acomplicated relationship.And it felt a little bit likecircumstances had arranged the managebetween Justin and myselfrather than us necessarily choosing it.And there was a bit of agenerational gap and a bit ofsort of probably approach tobusiness that was different.And and I was a little bit at enough ofthe conflict that happened over time.So I actually ended up at anotherconference in New York.So the private equity firm would do aconference every year.And we were actually in New York, whichwas a 2010 when 2011, I can't rememberwhen Steve Jobs died.We were in New York at theconference when that happened.And these conferences, by the way, wasabsolutely insane, like 100 people.And the speakers they would get would beJim Collins, MalcolmGladwell, Seth Godin.I mean, they would spend like three,four, five million dollars on aconference for 100 people.And they would get the absolutely mostinsane speakers you can ever imagine.It was always in fivestar hotel on Central Park.It was just absolutely mind blowing.So the one year we theyear Steve Jobs died, he died.And I think that wasSeptember, October that December.Walter Isaacson's book came out on SteveJobs so that over theDecember, which is the summerholiday in SouthAfrica, I read that book and II realized that life's too short to havethis constant conflict, that it's good tohave a business partner.I knew that I wanted to always dobusiness with a partner and that businessfor me is a team sport,not an individual sport.But the mix wasn't just working.I was way more immature, not that I'mtrying to say I'm not immature now, but Iwas widely even more immature back thenthan I than I that I probably am today.And I realized that Iwanted to change something.So as arrogant as I probably was at thetime, the first day of I think it was2012, I got to the office and I said toJustin, OK, I've just realized that thisisn't working for me.Either you have to leave or I have toleave and we have to figure this out.So that created obviously lots of chaosand tension for a for a little while.Until eventually I decided it wasn'tworth putting thebusiness through it anymore.And and it's probablybetter that I just leave.So I decided to leave.We were actually on a ski trip inMarybelle, in France, just after I madethe decision and we were having a greattime skiing with some friends.And I literally said to my wife, well,why don't we I'm going toleave this business now?What I'm going to sell my shares?Why don't we just go live in a ski townfor a winter and just ski every day?And our kids were four and two, actuallythree and one at the time when we mightstart talking about it.And I literally googledski instructor courses.And the first result that came up was acompany out of Fernie, B.C.And we ended up going there.We ended up doing theski instructor courses.We spent a whole winter for2012, 2013 in Fernie skiing.A hundred and fifty odd days.And it was absolutely mind blowing.And before that point, if you had evereven asked me about Canada, I would I'dliterally knew nothing about Canada.I never been other than to Niagara Falls.So ended up in Fernie, really loved it.Decided we wanted to come back.So we came back the next year.Our kids were five and three by then.And at the end of the second winter, Isaid to her, I really love it.Yeah, why don't we justfigure out a way to come to Canada?So we did. And as luck would have it.As luck would have it, we we went throughthe immigration process.We submitted our papers to apply forpermanent residency in November of 2014.We did our medicals andeverything in February of 2014.And then in about April, wewere camping with friends.And my wife said to me, she thinksthere's somethingwrong with our daughter.She's not completely sure.But she's very clingy and she's likealmost a little bit lazy.And we played Google M.D.a little bit and saidmaybe it's iron deficiency.And we put it on ironsupplements and nothing changed.And my wife said, OK, now she's going totake it to the pediatrician.And South Africa, themedical system is very complicated.There's basically a two tiersystem, one for wealthy people.And then the state run onethat is for everybody else.And if you're in part of the wealthysystem, you you golike if your kid is sick,you don't even go to a GP. You gostraight to a pediatrician.So my wife takes it to the pediatricianand he examines her and he says, OK,he thinks it's thisspecific autoimmune disease.He is going to do some blood work tofigure out to confirm it.But this is his diagnosis.We go do the blood workthe next day at lunchtime.The phone rings and it's a doctor and hesays the blood workconfirms the diagnosis.We have to get in a car immediately.And. And drive to Johannesburg,we have to go see apediatric rheumatologist.There's only two ofthem in South Africa andhe's made an appointment.She's expecting us in an hour. So.So we get in the car,we drive to Johannesburg.This doctor examines her.She says, OK, sheagrees with the diagnosis.We need to admit thatimmediately to hospital.She needs to get some she's going to goon a steroid treatment,but that's going to take sixto ten weeks to take effect.So they have to giveher a biological IVIGimmediately to to try and stall theprogression of the disease.And it's autoimmune disease.But basically what it does is it affectsboth the muscles and the skin.So on the skin, you get all of theserashes on the fingers and the faceand then the musclesbasically become weak.So what happens is mydaughter had an infectionand the body responds tothis and this infection.And even after the infection is gone, thebody continues to operateas if it's still there.And then the body is basically attackingitself and weakening the musclesbefore treatment about a third of kidsthat would search very rare.It's about one in two tothree million kids that get this.But before the sort ofmodern treatment regimen,about a third of kids would die becausetheir lungs would basicallyit's so weak that theyeventually can't breathe.A third of kids wouldsomehow recover themselves.A third of kids would be on some sort ofdebilitating disabilityfor the rest of their lives.So she got admitted, treated, stayed inthe hospital there two days.But now we were in this dilemma becausewe basically alreadywe already had our visas to come toCanada and we already sold the house.We were basically a fewweeks away from flying.But what do we do?So we didn't know what to do.We spoke to the doctor.She said, well, it's obviously adifficult decision, but sheall she can say, she knows the doctor atthe BC Children's Hospital.He's one of the world'sleading experts on this disease.And the care she wouldreceive there would be fantastic.So we ended up deciding to come.We had already entereda house in Fernie, BC.So we we went.We got there in August of 2015.And within the first six weeks, we didthree trips to Vancouver.So this is like a 13 hour drive fromFernie past the Revelstokedown to the Lower Mainland.So again, same type of pattern got to thehospital in Vancouver.Exameter immediately wantedto admit and treat her again.And it's literally it's been now 10 yearsand about two months ago,my daughter finished her lost treatment.So she's in fullremission now after 10 years.And well, all of that was going on.I wanted to store a business in Canada.They didn't know what to do.And that December of the first year, wewere with our friends,a guy who actually did his MBI with meand he was working for Silverstar.And he was complaining about how theywere struggling withthe e-commerce software.And I said, well, OK.Actually, what I should add, which Ididn't say before, is between the twotrips to Fernie between 2012 and 2013 inbetween, even though I grew up in a housewhere I got exposed to computers at theage of seven the first time,I played computer games instead oflearning how to program.And even though I had an Internetbusiness, I never wrote theline of code until I left.And then after the first funny trip, Isaid to my wife, well,I want to do more technology startups, soI'm going to learn how to go.So I literally went to Chicago for threemonths, did a boot camp and learned toprogram in Ruby on Rails.So when my friend then a few months latersaid, well, theystruggling with the e-commerce site,I said, well, why don'twe just build something?He said, well, thatsounds like a good idea to him.Why don't we go talkto the MD the next day?So the next morning on Christmas Day, wehad breakfast with theMD of the ski resort.We said, OK, I want to start thisbusiness, build this.He said, OK, thatsounds like a good idea.You'll be the first guinea pig customer.I said, OK, that's awesome.But actually, I'm looking I want you tobe a shareholder as well in based on athousand dollars so wecan actually start this.So he said, OK, well, letme go talk to the owner.You went to spoke to her and they agreedand we started building it and took meno more than six months to build thesystem and integrate intothe point of sales software,which was the hardest part,but it worked really great.Spent about five years building thatbusiness and found a guy in Colorado thatwas also passionate about it.We became business partners, learned alot of stuff from him.He's a complete enigma and absoluteamazing entrepreneur.But after a while, it became also clearthat that was a businessyou really needed to drive.And the twopersonalities didn't work well.So I decided to leave that actually incovert and sold my shares to him while wewere living in Vernonand building thisinterbene, which is the ski company.We started a chapter in the Okanogan andthe first guy I met, the first prospectwe had was Kenan Fisher from Tomi Gan.So ended up being informed with him a fewyears and really admired the way they dobusiness and what their goals were.So at one point I said to him, well, ifthey ever want to sell the Tomi Gan's inVernon, we would loveto buy that from him.What had happened is mywife is sort of a bookkeeper.But as part of the promise or thecompromise to move to Canada, the dealwas that every year we would go back toSouth Africa for a month.And so every year she would find a job,work for the accounting firm for six totwelve months, and then we would want togo back to South Africa and they wouldn'twant to give her a month leave.So she had to design a job, go to SouthAfrica, come back and look for a new job.And eventually shegot tired of doing that.I said, OK, well, why don't you just buya business so that so that you don't haveto worry about that?And that eventually Kenan said, well,that interested inselling the shop in Vernon.So we ended up buying the first TomiGan's and it just worked really well.So that has grown quite nicely over thelast seven or eightyears that we've evolved.We started with Vernon.Now we have 10 of them.I have a great business partner, twogreat business partners, oneoperational and one financial.And it's really going well.So I think that's been great.The journey has been fantastic.Been in here now for 15 years and reallyloved and learned so much.And I think even today with my businesspartners and specifically with interbeneystaff and private property staff, ifCorby articulated is my learnership styleand the way that at the beginning ofcall, all of thosepeople would not recognizeand know who the hell he's talking about.So, yeah, here we are in 20%I don't think anybody would recognize mypast chef learningleadership style to thelike current company leadership style.Leadership style evolves and it'sdifferent for different types of groups.Right now we've got the Tomi Gan'sbusiness going, which is fantastic.I've continued to do technology startups.So I'm busy with a great partner in NewYork that I've knownfor 10 years now as well.We're building a technology startup.And then my biggest passion is all of thesort of NGO andcharity work that I've doneand spent time doing.I have so many questions.But first, thank you for because we get alot of stories and I,you know, we both aremembers of different peer groups and likethose stories that really articulate thebusiness and family complexity that noteverybody understands.Like at any given time yet, you hadchallenges and you haveproblems and sometimesthey were work and sometimes they werefamily and they werelike, it's just so thank youfor for taking that time because it doesdoes give me lots ofthings I want to follow up on.So awesome, man.Yeah, I'll let you go, Levi, because I'vehad the pleasure oftalking to just a lot.So you go first.If you don't mind, Ijust want to add two things.Sure.Little pause to the story.So in 2013, when Nelson Mandela died, Iwas sitting in acoffee shop with a friend ofmine that I've met through the NBA and wegot talking some Mandela.They have this 68 campaign in SouthAfrica, the idea on sortof Mandela Day, which is hisbirthday that people spend 68 minutesgiving back to the community.And we were talking about it and and wereally wanted to dosomething to have a meaningfulimpact in the country.And we were both in tech businesses andwe both felt like thesystem that we grew upwhen I'd given us all of the in forteachers in life, but itnot done so for the biggestpart of the population in South Africa,which as a result meantthat there were people withphenomenal ability in any given subjectthat never had opportunity to access.So so the assumptions we started with andwe said, OK, if that'strue, then we believethere are people in South Africa thatwould be world classsoftware developers that hasnever even been able to touch a computer.And if that's the case,how do we bridge that gap?So we started talking about that.It took us three years.We met two co-founders.Eventually, the four of us started acoding school called WeThink Code, and it was builtprecisely on that premise that if wecould find all the pricesthat could find the mosttalented people with no access, find thecompanies that would liketo employ them and managethat too with a curriculum that will helpthem develop, then wecan do something special.And we we think that we started in 2015.It's now 10 years old.It is doing phenomenal.It employs about 20 people.It does 500 studentsthat come from complete.I mean, I think the stats are that 80percent of our studentbody comes from householdsthat make.Let me get the calculation right.Probably less than twentythousand dollars a year.Seventy five percent come from householdsthat make less than fivethousand dollars a year.And these kids are absolutely mindblowing the things that they can do.So our goal is to find those kids, exposethem to the rightprocess and then give themaccess. So we do 500 students a year.We start with about 80,000 applicationsand we can whittle thatdown to the 500 kids withthe best aptitude andmost likely to succeed.And we put them through a process and weemploy them at the end of that process incooperation startups andeverything that we can find.So that's been phenomenal.And then just to close the circle.How many students have you put through?Oh, I'll have to check.But I think it's more than two thousandnow if I remember correctly.So we started with 100 students in yearone and now we're doingfive about 400 to 500 ayear. And then the last bitof the story is the RACBI one.So I don't know much you guys know aboutthe history of SouthAfrica and especially inlike in 1995 Nelson Mandeladrove this amazing movie called Invictusthat sort of betrays the story.But it tells the story of how NelsonMandela came out ofprison and wanted to use all ofthe tools at hisdisposal to build the nation.And obviously therewas lots of challenges.And one of the challenges was that for along time RACBI wascontrolled in apartheidera by white Afrikaans men to theexclusion of many otherpeople who were passionate aboutRACBI as well.So one of the first things that that alot of people wanted inSouth Africa after the firstdemocratic elections was to change theemblem of thespringboard RACBI team to be thePratiana set up and Nelson Mandelaresisted that and heused RACBI as a sort ofgalvanizing force.And as it would turn out,we won the 1995 World Cup.And like for most people in South Africa,the four times thatwe've won the World Cup islike seminal moments, one of those dayswhere you can rememberwhere you were, who youworked with. You can literallyremember the whole day playing out.So the interesting thing is that in nowwe like in two thousandand not in 1995, we wonthe World Cup in 2007.We won it again in 95.We had one, I think, only one non-whiteplayer in the team in 2007.We had a few more.But now for the first time in twentythree, twenty twenty three,when we won, we're startingto get to the stage where the team is ismore representative of the whole country.But it's this RACBI isreally this galvanizing effect.So I was lucky enough to be in Paris intwenty twenty three when we won.And after the game, I was on the traingoing back to the hoteland I started to talk tothe other South African, mostly SouthAfrican supporters on the train.And I realized very quickly that many ofthese people are SouthAfrican expats that'sliving somewhere else in the world thaton the moment's noticedecided to be there andwatch the game. And for all of us, thismoment was one of the topfour, like one of the topten moments in our lives.The four times we had won the World Cupis probably all fourin the top ten days thatwe can remember in our lives.So I started asking myself this questionis if we take thatsame principle we had withWe Think Code that we have a countrywhere the poverty negatesthe access to opportunityand we say that the ability is actuallynormally distributed, thatthey still an opportunityin South Africa if enough of us will gettogether, that has themeans and want to contributeto it, that we could really still eventhough at the momentSouth Africa is at the top ofthe world where it is as far as RACBI isconcerned, we still haveonly started to scratch thesurface of really creatingopportunity for everybody.So the goal is to build an NGO that willuse RACBI as thegalvanizing mechanism that willhelp create the path for South Africansall over the world tocontribute back to the countryand create an opportunity for as manypeople as possible withthe goal being that we canwin five of the next ten World Cups andexperience it another fivetimes before my generationpasses the torch to the next one.So that's the biggestgoal in the next ten years.Have you convertedmany Canadians to RACBI?Not enough, but what's nice when youconvert the Canadian is they're prettymuch open to supportany team that wins because the Canadianteam has still got somelearning to do to grow and becompetitive so it's really nice to buildthe support by South Africa.The Canadian women'steam is killing it though.Oh yeah, they're fantastic.So I get it threaded through yourdifferent story and I so I'll lay it up.So I'm this year like I've been a memberof peer group and I've done a lot ofcontinuing education.But for the most part, I would considermyself self self-taughtbootstrap, learn whatever I needto learn at the time.And I'm trying to decide I'd like to dosomething else to stretchmy competency to dive in.And some of the things you've actuallygone and done are on my list.So the idea of likeI've never done an MBA.In fact, I've spent a lot of time in thelast 10 years, pish-pawingthe value of an MBA today.And now I'm coming back to it.The second is I deal with business ownersand how to use technologyevery day and I'm fairlytechnical, but I can't program or codewith anything except for a high levelunderstanding of how itshould work.And then part of my firstpassion was actually languages.I studied seven languages.I've lived in other countries.And so I was like, I'm going to have tomake a decision here soon ifI ever want to learn anotherlanguage ever.So I'm coming up with a decision and I'mjust framing it is like,what's that next thing I'm going toput months or years into really gettinggood at and adding to my skill set.So I'd love to understand how you madethe decision to go back and do an MBA anddid you get what youexpected and how challenging was it as anadult going back in to learn how to code?Because I assume that I have some similarfears or expectationsthat you would have had.I don't think we're thatdissimilar in age either.But you did it earlier.It's a fascinating question.So let me answer it this way.I definitely had significant personalrevelations in the MBA and it changed mylife in the course of my lifecompletely.So if we go back to where I started as Igrew up in a system that was built tobenefit me at the expense of lots ofother people.So with that system came this dogma ofthe reason we are justifying this isthrough religious texts, throughimperialistic dogma, etc., etc.And what we what the dogma was is we'remore intelligent, we're more art workingall of these things that they tryand portray.The problem is when you insight thesystem and you're beneficiary of thesystem and the system then tells you thereason the justification for this ofthese characteristics that you have andthese other people don't then you look atthe world facts that you assume orobserve around you and they seem tojustify those conclusions.The problem is the reason that justifiesthose conclusions is because you haveaccess to all the resources and thepeople you arecomparing yourself to does not.So obviously on average is going to looklike you are more intelligent because youactually have a teacher that shows upthat has textbooks that can teach youwhat you need to learn, etc., etc.And the MBA was the first time in my lifewhere they created an environment thatfelt safe for me to challengeall of those assumptions.Like this was more than 10 years afterthe end of apartheid.I worked and being successful in businessand all of those things happened, butstill deep inside me, those samedogmas still lived and Iprobably still believed it.Then I walked into a class thatrepresented a complete cross section ofsociety in South Africa.Everybody was hardworking.Everybody was intelligent.Everybody was just the same as me and allof a sudden all of that dogma, all ofthose things that I thought wasthe world I lived in came crashing down.So it completely changed my perspective.It built a diverse networkthat I'd never had before.Yes, the knowledge wasawesome and everything.But the value was in the change inthought that created in me and the peoplethat exposed me andthe network I was able tobuild. So I think it's the it'sinteresting you position that because Ithink that's my fear ofan MBA today is I've donethings backwards.I've I went in.So I'm in a peer group called the WallaceMcCain Institute, which is very similarpeer to peer, deep sharingspeakers. I've been on cohort for over 10years and I've been a moderator of sevenor eight other cohorts.And so I feel like I've had all my or alot of my like self reflection punch inthe face with self-awareness, change myperspective.And so I'm worried that I'm going to gointo an MBA and not and not get that.And hold on, though, justto backtrack a little bit.How how going back to how you made thedecision to do the MBA?Yeah, was that thought process?That's a good question.Well, the first challenge I had is Inever finished my undergraduate.So it wasn't easy to get in.I wanted to do an MBAbecause I at this time.I still felt like the problem wasacquiring more knowledge.I think people often fall into that trap.And then what I learned in the processwas it was more about me changing thanacquiring more knowledge.And I probably onlyrealized it now reflecting back.I probably didn't realizeit as much in the moment.And I think that's what really has done atremendous job in my personal growth isI've started to look for the solutioninside my own ability to change ratherthan a silver bullet being out there.So when I enrolled in the MBA, I waslooking for a silver bullet.What I now realize I got was a personalrevelation that really made thedifference, not the silver bullet or thecontent that was used to deliver.And it was it was subtle, but it wasprobably deliberate in the design of thecourse because of whereSouth Africa was, what thecampus was trying to do.But I like the one example was the one ofthe first courses wedid was macroeconomics.And we had a greatprofessor, Professor Adrian Savo.And one Saturday morning, we got into theclass and he said, OK,we're going to talk economics.But first he wants toask a different question.And he asked the question, he said, OK,so who believes that crime in SouthAfrica has gotten worse and and whothinks crime has gottenbetter since independence?And when he said crime got worse, all thewhite kids put up their hands.And when he said crime has got better,like the majority of theblack students put up their hands.And for the next two hours, we had adiscussion just around the point.And the stories, I mean, I still rememberthe one girl telling a story that for along time, the only white people she hadever seen in her lifewere security police coming into thehouse to arrest their mother and fatherfor being a member of the ANC.So so we were doing macroeconomics, butsomehow it changed into this personalrevelation that I think many of thestudents in the room felt that broadenedour view of the world,allowed us to understand what we believeto be the reality we livein completely differently.And that was the mostpowerful lesson I got out of it.Oh, boy, it doesn't help me make mydecision that I do want to.Because I have a question, but it's goingto take us in a tangent, which is fine,but I'll hold off a little bit.And because you mentioned the going tocode and making these kind of really like180 decisions and taking your focus offwhat you're currently doing,like, is that just something that youjust have, like, I'm going to go do thisnow, and that's that.And I'm just going to go andI'm going to figure it out.And that's my personality.Because you mentioned you kind ofdeveloped that trait over the some of thethe kind of in, we'll call itindoctrination, forlack of a better term.But you had this air of confidence aboutyou to go do things.And and then your perspective shifted.But I'm sure you you continue to makekind of those 180 decisions.I'm going to go do this.Now I'm going to leave this company.And I'm I want to continue to learn.And that type of decision making was isthat a quick thing for you or is it likea pros and cons list?Or how do you know you're you're steppinginto the right decision?That's a great question.And you probably made me realizesomething I've neverthought about before.And I think the benefit of being able tochallenge your entire world view is thatyou get less and less attached towhatever your currentworld view happens to be.And probably as a result of those,because I mean, literally, I grew up, wewe went to church every Sunday.And I still remember vividly as a five orsix or seven year old.Like pastors in church talking about howapartheid is great and how it's like allof this beautiful, perceived rationalefor all of thesethings that are happening.And then at some point, whenyou realize it's all made up.It it just gives you such freedom tothink about life in complete.And I mean, I don't know if you guys everread the art of thepossibility and it's a phenomenal book.And one of the rules I talk about inthere is it's all made up.Like don't spend so much energy worryingabout all of these things, whateveryou're worrying about.It's all made up.You can change it completely.So, yes, I think you're right.I think that gave me a lot more freedomto not be bound by whatever my perceivedworld view is at any given time.OK. And so what was it that MBA classthat because you what how old were youwhen you went into the MBA?I was twenty nine.Twenty nine. And thenprevious to that, growing up in.OK, so you were in you were in Pretoriaand, you know, so youwere born in 1970 what?Seventy eight.Seventy eight. And then growing up duringapartheid, your perception of it.And like when that started to crash downthat that that worldview.Can you just tell me a little bit more?Yeah, I think the first time we'reobviously a part of game to an end.But even I mean, post I only finishedhigh school afterapartheid had come to an end.But still, my school Iwent to was over cons.And I think we had one black kid in theentire school of a thousandkids when by the time I left.So I had no interaction with anybody thatwasn't white and African.And I grew up like my grandfather used totell us stories about the Angla Boer Warin the English and the Boer Fort.So even in my mind, growing up, thebiggest enemy was the English.Right. So even just interact like mygrandfather, forexample, never spoke English.He spoke Afrikaans and he spoke Zulu andKosa, but he refused.He never learned or wanted or spokeEnglish whatsoever because his mother andfather was in the in the war,was in concentration camps, et cetera.So he had this enormous deep resentmenttowards the English.So the first expiry even outside of mynormal frame of reference was with prideproperty that was started in KZN andeverybody there was English.So it was the first time I had to startinteracting with people that wasn't evenwhite and Afrikaans like I was.And already there, I think slowly butsurely a lot of my preconceived notionsabout lifestyle to break down and becamechallenged. And then, yes, an MBI was Ithink when I had that ultimate personalrevelation that that I like a lot of thestuff that I assumedto be fact was was not.And it goes even further. Like when westarted, we think code our first year outof the hundred students we had, we hadsix percent was female.And then we said, OK, but we don't wantthat to be the fact.We want 50 percent ofthe students to be female.Everybody thought wewere completely crazy.Nobody in I.T., any tech company in theworld, nobody has gender parity insoftware developers.And we went to the Dow Foundation and weconvinced them to fund it.And three years later, 51 percent of ourstudents is female because we were justwilling to challenge the long outinstitutional belief that it'snot possible. Wow.Wow. Wow. Wow.And fast forward to today.You know, with. How doyou see South Africa now?Oh, that is such a complicated question.I think there's many South Africa's.There's a South Africa.Where the young boy grew up in theEastern Cape, in thepoorest part of the country and.Very little for himhas changed since 1994.He still lives in poverty, multiplegenerations of poverty.He could be.More intelligent, more hardworking andmore gifted than than I am.But he's stuck in a place we have doesn'thave access to anything that he needs toget the best out of it.For him, it's a very, very hard and andit's a massive struggle.And there's a white boy in Pretoria East.That's 15 years old today that still goesto one of the best schools in the worldthat gets the best education where hegets the best coaching and rugby cricket,whatever he's doing. So there's manydifferent South Africa's and each of themhave different challenges.There's no easy solution.But I think the key is to create anenvironment where everybody can have thepersonal revelations to challenge theirworld view and change the way they lookat some of the challenges.Because it's easy when we end up inconfrontation to go back and just try andjustify our own worldview and we don'tactually learn about the challenges onthe other side of the tableand we try and solve them.So I've I see a lot of the challengesfrom all sides andthere's no easy answers.Crime is a problem. Opportunity is aproblem. Poverty is aproblem. There's many things.But I believe through sports and theright process that willgive people the opportunity.I mean, for example, working on thisrugby project, I met a fascinating manthe other day who'sabout 10 years older than me.He grew up in the Eastern Cape. He was avery active politicalactivist in the 90s.And he was one of the guys that tried toconvince Mandela to drop the spring book.He was himself a rugby player, but hesupported the All Blacks, which is theNew Zealand team for most of his life.And he said in 2023 at the World, he wasat the World Cup, is where he decided tonot be an All Blacks supporter anymore,but to be a spring book supporter.And he said he changed his mind for tworeasons. One, well, let me step back.He said that he stayed up to that point.He stayed an All Blacks supporter becausehe was still carrying theburden of what apartheid had done.But he decided to change hismind because of two reasons.One, he saw a son being a spring booksupporter without any ofthe baggage that he had.And two, he saw what Rasi, the coach ofthe national team, had done to transformthat team from being a team who'sfighting transformation to a team who'scompletely embracing transformation andusing it as a tool to equipthe team as well as he can.And that made him put down the burden ofapartheid that even Nelson Mandelacouldn't get him to do.He finally put down and thatchanged his life completely.So there's many stories like that.But the normal conversation in that realmis the white Afrikaans guy trying toenforce a system where only the baseplayers gets chosen.And the black guy not willing to supportthe spring books becauseof the legacy of apartheid.But if we actually sit down and talkabout it and understanding the problemsand understand each other point of view,we realize that we're morethe same than we are different.And that we ultimately want the samething and that we canwork together to get there.But the problem is that Africa is complexand there is no easy solution.I've been a part of an Afrikaans familyfor almost 13 years now.And when we moved there in 2017, I just Ididn't understand until I probably Ididn't understand until likeprobably two and a half years.After I got there and it'sjust how complicated it is.And like just 11 official languages isenough complication,let alone the history.And and my neighbor, you mentioned that,like, you know, there's many SouthAfrica's and my neighbor, I was ravingabout how much I loved CapeTown because I went down there.And I was in Somerset West area andseeing all the wine vineyards and doingall the best of the best.And I was telling her this and she said,oh, you you you went to a different CapeTown than I grew up in.And I'm from the Cape.I'm from the Cape flat.And and I just it kind of stunned me andthe way that she grew up.And because I like where we lived indifferent pockets, you know, we couldn'tafford like super crazy, nice places.So like it was very, very mixed.And I was all of a sudden a part of thissmall community like Johan Ackerman.His daughter lived below us.And then we had actually player.Yeah. OK. Yeah.Big man. Oh, yeah.Big man. Scary man.But and then beside us was there was Ithink there were blacks South African andmaybe somebody from Malawi as well.And and then beside us was the Cape Flatsand then a white Afrikaans guy that wasdating a girl from the Cape Flats.And it was just an interesting mix.And I just yeah, I just I was way toofriendly when I went there,you know, stopping and chatting.Anybody that wanted to chat and quicklyrealized I was gettingmyself in a lot of trouble.But at the same time, it like it willchange change my worldview for forever.And yeah, I keep up more up on probablySouth Africa's politics.Well, there was a stage where I waskeeping up more with thatthan I was with anything else.And yeah, anyway,fascinating, fascinating.Oh, heavy stuff.While we're on theheavy stuff, I do have one.And maybe there's nothing there, but Inoticed it didn't reallygo through the details.You went in with your business partnerand you said, you know,one of us needs to go.But if you don't mind, you can gloss overif you'd like, but I'dlove to know, like, whatwhat did become of that andhow did you navigate that?You know, Colby and I are businesspartners and we're not there.But I I talk to a lotof people who blew upand I talk to some fewerpeople who do really well.But how did you are you still friends andhow did you navigate that?And is there any learning from it?Well, maybe let me start to say that if Ihad to do it now,which if 2025 version ofyes, I had to do it, I would probably doit a little differently.And and I think the way Iwould do differently is.I've just just finished reading thisCrucial Conversationbook for the second time.I don't know if you guys have read that,but it's a fantastic book.So completely changed my life.That book I buy people.It's the it's the mostgifted book I'll give.Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating.So I would definitely do it differently.I would talk earlier, more regularlyabout the issues andspend more time listeningand understanding theother parties point of view.I would because because the way heexplains it isexactly the way it happens.Right. We're in a situation we feeluncomfortable, but we say nothing.Then that keeps building and we keepbuilding assumption based on assumption,based on assumption.And then you get to a point where it'syou can't evenremember what the first thingis you decided not to talk about.And it's super complicated to solve.So if I had to go back and I knew what Iknew now, I would just approach everyconversation.I would be better at recognizing theCrucial Conversations.I would better at having the CrucialConversations instead of avoiding them.And I think even if we end up in the sameplace where I decide to leave in 2012,that divorce would be wayeasier than what it was.The problem with these cases is you endup in a place where you want to divorce,but you can't even talk about the reasonwhy, because it's so complicated and sointegrated in in a in an hour.Both parties has dug the hills into intowhere they are at that that it's veryhard to do the change management, veryhard to get the other party to agreebecause they both parties feel theyabsolutely 100 percent in the right andthe other party opposing parties are 100percent in the wrong.So they're not willing to make anyconcessions or tryingto just just the patternkeeps repeating itself until you changeyour behavior and youprevent those thingsfrom happening. So, yes, it was probablynot as messy as it could have been.We were relatively realistic, spokethrough it and it took mea year probably to unwind completely.But we ended up doing that.And but, you know, if I had to go backand do it all over again,I would just do the crucial conversationsbetter from day one.It's not funny. It's interesting that yousaid, you know, I gottired of the conflictwhere internally our three waypartnership has just beenmaking sure to create spacefor the right conflict.But I think when what I'm hearing is youweren't tired of the contract,you were tired of the waywe handled it. Yeah, yeah.Well, the avoidance of the artificialharmony. Yeah, correct. Yeah. Yeah.That artificial harmony is the biggestkiller. Right. Yeah.It really is. Yeah, it really is.I'm actually thinking about going to dothe cruise or the five dysfunctions.Oh, that's great.I'm seriously considering doing thecrucial conversation training,because I think it's I mean,everything I think it's the key.Yeah. Yeah.Everything you just told us for the past,you know, the past hourthat we've been talking about, I nowunderstand how you got to the leadershipstyle that you're thatyou're because I can see it.And that's interesting. Interesting. Yes.The key, obvious.I actually made a deliberate decisionwhen I became presidentto try and use this as a testing groundfor me to approach itcompletely differently.Like not even in my business have Igotten to this point yet, but withwith EO and being president, like at thebeginning of the year,I literally said to myself, I'd had thetime to think by Nancy Klein.Absolutely fantastic book.And I said, OK, I'm goingto just almost do it exactly.The opposite of what my.Natural approach would be.And I deliberately wanted tomake a few decisions myselfand I wanted to optimize for buy and notfor I wanted wanted to optimizefor the best decision I canget everybody to buy into.Not the best decision.And it's a subtle butvery important difference.And at least in myperception of how it's gone this year,I've learned a lot and Ihave been able to validate that.I think that approachis way, way, way better.So that and when youapproach new partners,are there things you look for or flagsyou look for or tests you think?Is there a because you've had somepartnerships that weren't super negativebut just weren't a good fit?What have you learned that will set youup for success the next time?Or is it kind of aunique situation every time?I think it's a littlebit unique every time.But I mean, if I think out loud, what Iwould do differently,there is work on myself more than tryingto change the other partyand work on the process more than tryingto change the other party.And because if I do that, I can almostmake a successful partnershipwith 80 percent of thepopulation instead of 20.Sure, there's always going to be 20percent that is going to be impossibleto have a good partnership with.But if I change myselfand I change the process,I think potentialpartners can turn out great.Mm hmm. That's probably goes for datingand marriage as well.Yeah, completely agree.Yeah. Yeah.But I mean, you have to again, now youhave to challenge this whole ideaof soulmate and one perfect partner,either in business or romantically.And versus, OK, if wehave the right attitudeand we work on ourselvesand we have the right process,can me and this person have a productiverelationship for one year,five years, 10 years,however, the longer journey would beand build somethingthat's really amazing?And I think that approach gives you muchbetter chance of success.Yeah, agreed.I get a fairly shallowquestion I'd love to ask over here.You ask. Oh, it's OK.You can go back to the code.I find the coding really interesting.As long as it's about thefour most important datesin South Africa,1995, 2007, 2019 and 2023.Yeah, I do. I do have astory on that, but I'll leave.I'm not sure I canmake that connection with.Go for that.I guess it comes back to coding.We're probably at 20 percentof what we end up doing nowin different projects, NGOs, nonprofits,First Nations government for profitis been helping them adaptto an operationalized AI.And how do they if they're notready, how do they get there?What are the steps they need to take?And so a question that'scome up a couple of times is,is it any longer worthsending our team membersor hiring people who can code themselves?Where's that going?And you are teachingpeople a valuable skill set.Do you think there'sstill the same opportunityor are you changingwhat you're teaching thembecause of some of the changes coming?That's a great question.And I pondered about that a lot.I don't know what the answer is, but letme let me give you my view.What is amazing about coding?Is you can learn thisprocess of challenging the.Status quo with almost no risk.When you when you're coding, you can youcan have you can have thisbecause whatever problem you're facingcoding is really an imaginary problem.That needs the imaginary solution.And the and the consequences of making amistake is almost zero.So it learns you this ability to to notworry about the outcome,but build a process thatwill give you the best outcome.The idea of testdriven development of so.So for me, it completely changed the wayI think about problem solving.It changed the way Iapproach problem solving,and it's a fantastic tool to teachsomebody with exceptionally high abilityhow to solve any problem in their lives,because it gives a repeatable processthat you can do over and over again.And with AI, what's happenednow is it giving your abilityyour ability to become better at buildingan application has grown exponentially.But you still need that process.I feel that that that drives the bestoutcome and improving the outcome, etc.It also, although the theimpact is still unclear,but I think theconsensus is it will be dramatic.And I at least in the short term, we whatwe're trying to do is saying, OK,we're still going to needthe most capable people.We still need to put them through aprocess that prepares them to solvethe hardest problems theycan face and coding and I.I. And all of that is a great trainingground for to take very capable peopleand teach them how tosolve really hard problems.Yeah, I love like so I'vebeen telling a lot of peoplethe skills of tomorrow is criticalthinking and problem solving.I wrote I paraphrase everything you justsaid is coding equals a frameworkfor problem solving training like how tobecause problem solving is so broad,giving us some tools and just amethodology of how to approach.Yeah, I like that. That's great.And the key with problem solving is thatevery potentialsolution we often talk about isis baked into our current understandingof the paradigm we're in.And often with coding, the way you needto solve it is you get stuckat this level of solving a problem andyou almost start spinning your wheels.And even with AI, like often when I tryand solve problems like thisand I'm using Chad G.P. now,I get into this infinite loopwhere it suggests asolution that doesn't work.You ask and it gives you five sort ofsteps around down that path.And then eventually it circles back tothe first suggestionthat you've already shown can't use.And then often when youfind yourself in that chamber,the only way to solve the problem is toextract the problem to a higher level.And that's part of the thing that codingreally teaches you is like, OK,when I'm like going around in circles,part of the reason I'mgoing around in circlesis I'm not at theright level of extraction.If I extract the problemone or two levels higher,I'm going to solve it much, much better.And that's also something you reallylearn when you when you learn to code.Now, that's amazing.That's great.You bought into two different franchisesat two different partsof life, or at least two,to the Tommy Ganon private property. Yep.Have you ever boughtany other businesses?I know you've built some.Now, I've never boughtanother business other than that,but I think I definitelywant to do more of that.Both the laws by then built obviously afantastic book as well.And I think the whole idea of there's somany fantastic businesses,especially in North America, that needsto change ownership inthe next decade or so.Mine businesses is a great opportunity.That's where we spend a lot of ourthought and brain power these days.Yeah, I don't know.Sorry, go ahead.I was going to say the comment I have onthat is is one of theinteresting things thatthat we're faced with nowis finding the right fit.And, you know, part of the issue we'rerunning into is a maybea little mix of paralysis by analysis.And because we've you know, we look underthe hood of a lot ofdifferent businesses,we see maybe problems pop upsooner and we're like, well, maybe that'snot a good fit because of XYZ.And the other thing iswe're having a hard time findingbusinesses. It's like weknow they're out there.I think if we narrow it or scope enough,but then we have to commit.Yeah. What I was hoping to chimeties into what you were saying is likeyou bought a barbershop.Unless I completelymissed it in your your bio,you are not actuallyexperienced or have passion about hair.And one of the things internally, are wegoing to buy something that is likecloser to what we do so that we can jumpin or we can extract the most amount ofvalue or do we buy something completelydifferent where we can't help?We really have to focuson our business skills.And we've gone back and forth a few timeson that completely separate diverseoption or like the vertical somethingassociated to the existing enterpriseswere a part of. How did you select?I guess Tommy was somebody you met.So you guys had kind of a decision there.Yeah, we would. Any others?I haven't, but I want to definitely.And I think like many things, that'sgoing to end up being a personal choicewith what you guys decide.And there's no right or wrong answerbecause there's benefits to both sides.I mean, obviously, when you're in abusiness like the barbershopand you're not a barber yourself, you'reforced to figure out other thingsand add value in different ways.And when you are a barber, it's also verytempting to just jump on the floorand start barbering, sowhich could be good or bad.So I don't I don'thave any silver bulletsof of of solution foryou, but I definitely thinkthere's there's many more opportunitiesout there than potentially what youspecifically are looking for or thingsthat you can jump in.And. I think like they sayin a crucial conversation,you have to step back and the higherlevel of extraction is going to bewhat are you ultimately looking for?And is that requirement something thatmakes the ultimate goalmore or less likely in your case?And how would that affect your decision?If your ultimate goalis to like, for example,for me, the ultimate goal of thebarbershop business,I've learned or got into at this point isthat I really want to build a businessthat can help lower theincome inequality in societybecause the next two decades is going tobe challenging and volatile.And there's going to be lots of changes.And the distribution of wealth in mostfirst world countries has gotten worsein the last 20 years, not better.So we have to build businesses that cancounteract that, because ultimatelywhat leads to instability in society isthat income inequalitygoing in their own direction.And like I often say about South Africa,we either have a countrythat works for everybody or nobody.This idea that we can live inour bubble and not be affectedby the challenges in the broader contextthat in which we live is a fallacy.And the same is true for for for for Ithink first world societies.I think part of the reason we are seeingso much instability in societyis that as a result of the inequality.So we have to try and build businessesthat not only rewards the ownersof capital and the intrapreneur, butdistributes the gainsof the business more equally in society.And the barbershop is a perfect vehicleto do that, because it's exceptionallylabor intensive,blue-colored workers that we employ.We can help themfinancially educate them.We can distribute some ofthe earnings back to them.It gives us a vehicleof really doing that.That's an interestingidea of like becauseextracting like up a couple of levels oflike, what do we actually want to doand why?Not just is there a business that cangive us more revenue orsomething that we'd havea little bit of fun at.That's a very interesting.Huh.Because let's take that example, Colby.Let's say you guys say, ultimately, thepurpose of my life in the next 20 yearsis to do X, Y or Z.Then you want to find a business that cangive you a vehicle to achieve that.And then whether it's something you knowhow to do now or not becomes likelyirrelevant, right? Because either thebusiness you findthat can get you to yourultimate goal is something you knowalready or you have to learn.But what's more important, what you cando now or where youwant to be in 20 yearsfrom now?Agreed.That's good stuff.We have to create lots of healthyconversation because we're three.And it's just we alsowant something good.We've decided we want the three of us tobecause it is something I think we've gotthat's working.And so we want to align.At least we always say we like valuealign the complementary skills.But we need that.That North Star, they'llkind of get us all jazzed.Yeah.I'm wondering, so Colby and I have bothhad a chance to leave the country andwork or at least live in different partsof the world and then came back.And so I always like asking people whoare not from Canada but live, work or ownbusinesses in Canada.How would you describe the difference inentrepreneurial culture and businessculture?You want to get me in trouble.So yes, the interesting thing.Let me try your state facts and whatconclusion you draw.On a place like South Africa, that's at amarket disadvantage as far as exchangerate goes.For an average entrepreneur to build abusiness that does a million US dollars ayear, that business ends up being biggerin terms of number of staff you need tomanage because obviously the labor costis potentiallydepending on what sector you'rein, potentially much lower.And the complexity of the market you needto deal with is muchhigher because you don'thave as much of a uniform market withenormous disposable income as you do inCanada.So the result of that is like if I takemy first forum inCanada and I compare it tomy first forum in Johannesburg, theaverage guy in myfirst forum in Johannesburgprobably had 25 plus employees.My first forum in Canada,the average was probably five.So the process, the people who end upbeing able to qualifyfor EO in South Africaversus in Canada isquite a bit different.And the problems they've had to solve isquite a bit different.And the complexity they've had to dealwith is quite a bit different.So for me, that's only thethings I really can compare.But I mean, themarket here is just insane.The disposable income,the size of the market.The ability to take a barbershop businessin a small town fromdoing 400,000 a year todoing 1.6 million a year is justabsolutely I mean, thepotential is just mind blowing.But the adversity and the challenges thatthe average entrepreneur in South Africafaces like createsphenomenal, phenomenal entrepreneurs.And one thing that I noticed thatspending time down therewas that, you know, if you'renot building a business and you want tosecure some sort of future for yourself,there's like those professional careers,accounting, doctor,lawyer, you know, shortlist.And it's there's an extraordinary amountof focus that I see inthose in those peoplebecause it feels like, you know, Canadahas a lot of likesocial, you know, there's a lotof benefits to being here.And there's no safety netin South Africa, seemingly.So I think it does breed a bit of adifferent person, whereit's like, I noticed a lot oflike get up and go mentality there, likepretty, pretty serious.Like I found the business communitypretty serious therefrom my from my experience.And it's like, and I can I can understandwhy it's like you haveto make stuff work in acomplicated environment.Yeah, I did.I did notice that.But also what happens is, because likeunemployment, I mean,officials figure I don'teven know what it is that but let's sayofficial figuresomewhere between 18 and 30percent unofficial, probably 45 percentof the populations areemployed, and they haven'thad access to proper education.So any manually driven employment,there's an enormous oversupply of labor.So anybody with like good quality formaleducation ends upcompeting for a very smallnumber of knowledge based careers, whichmakes the competition insane.So it creates all of this constraints andall of these side effects.It's it's it's a super complicatedenvironment and it's acomplicated problem to solve.Yeah, yeah.Fun times.OK, where do we go next?Do you have any questions for us?So why would you guys say it's been yourbiggest challenge right now?What is what is the one question that ifyou had an answer to your life would bedramaticallydifferent in five years time?I knew I would come with the heat.Jump in, Levi.I'm going to let you go first.I talk first all the time.I know.I know.So the one question if I had answered.That would dramatically affect.I would say.The word focus keepscoming up in my head.Of what I guess, yeah, what to focus onlike we've we've built this thing.And it's somebody made.I don't know who it was.It might have been somebody from Aaron'scamp that said youryour business is an eightyears old.It's actually three years old becausewe've completelychanged our business and, youknow, getting out to the market andtrying to try to makesome noise and grow thisbusiness.And I don't even think we realized Idon't even think I knew what aprofessional servicescompany was when we started this.And I didn't know that wasall category of business.And so there was a lot of like nonintentional growth in that direction.And.If I was to frame it up in a question.Oh my gosh.I guess.Yeah.So if I could.If I could limit limitreframe it to my credit easier.What is the one skill that you need tolearn right now to makeyour life dramaticallydifferent five years from now?Well, I'll throw it out.I think it's probably discipline.If you can call it discipline to skill.Yeah.Well, I think if I was to answer yourfirst question, Ithink the challenge I keepcoming against is we are we docomplicated things and we can work for all kinds ofpeople. We help people do complicated things. But that makes us generalists and hard todescribe slow sales cycle complicated tohire for.But I think it makes us kind of unique.And once we're in there, like we're doingsome really great stuff and I think we'rebringing lots of value.But now we've seen is like, what if wejust specialize singleniche, single vertical,what we're doing more replicable scalefaster financially, it's safer and.And. I just like to focus or to remain reallyflexible and adaptable.One, I think is shorterterm, better financially.And I think there's some magic in uskeeping a little bitof that flexible muscle.That's where we keep going.And I think that we need to make adecision and havediscipline to follow it.So that's I mean, that's a lot of context under the hood of that.But but yes, the key. I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing. There's a lot of contextunder the hood of that, but.But but yes, the key.That is awesome.And like when I just left right property,my big thing is I wanted to learn withdiscipline. So I actuallystarted doing a bit of karate.But have you read the Crucial Influencebook, which is one of the follow up onCrucial Conversations?So what it talks about is that, at leastin my mind, when I framed discipline, Ithought it's all about personal will andpersonally making things.And what he talks about in CrucialInfluence is that there'sactually this matrix of sixboxes.On the side you have the sort ofindividual, societal andcontext and at the top you havemotivation and ability or skill.And I say when you want to make a change,you want to influencethe outcome of each,you have to work onall six of those factors.By default, we all always default back tothe thing we need tochange is the personalmotivation and that's with discipline.But if we really want to influencechange, we have to do all six of them.You have to change the personalmotivation, the societal orthe group social motivationplus the motivation that the contextcreates and then youneed to add the skill.And if you do all six of those things,then things changes.But when you just focus on one and theother five factors isperpetuating the status quo,then there's almost no amount ofdiscipline or willpowerthat will allow you to change.You are going to just run, keep runninginto the wall andhitting your head against thewall over and over and over again.That is not one thathas crossed my plate.I do like a good matrix.Yeah.And I've, you know, for the past, I don'tknow, year or so, Ihave felt this like stuckrut feeling of like, oh man, like I wishI wish that one thingwould pop into my lifethat just hits the switch of, you know,getting out of my own wayand, you know, disciplineis part of that as well.But yeah, I totally agree that I willread that book immediately.Well, and I also want us to do it as athree way partnership.And so we've got to bring each otheralong that same path at a similar time.Like I think we've made, we've gonethrough hard things,we can do hard things.It's just, what's that end?And not even the end,but what's that next stage?I think we've had to redo our strategicplan twice this yearbecause stuff's happened andopportunities happen or a conference witha really big thought has happened.It's like, all right, let'stake it back to the whiteboard.And I can't even imagine what wouldhappen if I didn't havethe three way partnership.I'd be all over the place.Who knows where I'd be?Yeah.So there is at least wehave those guardrails.Yeah.So I would challenge you guys on that.I think from the little bit inside I'veseen is if I had to sayone skill that would likedramatically change the outcome is forme, at least what I want tomake sure I do better is AI isgoing to take away a lotof these other things we do.The one thing we have to make sure we getbetter at as fast aswe possibly can is thisinteracting with other humans, bringingthem along for the ride,being able to influence it.So that's the key is like if you guys canfigure it out how to be the bestperforming three waypartnership in the world, there's noproblem that you cannot conquer.So the most important skill you need totry and acquire is how do we becomebetter every month atdoing this thing together?How do we get better atbeing on the same page?How do we get better at working together?If you figure that out, anyother problem is solvable.Yeah.Yeah.Check.Yeah.Constantly pushing that envelope of howdo we get better as ayeah, that's interesting.Huh?Which I guess in turn would come down tojust more communication skills.I love the quote and I'm stealing it.I don't know where I got it, butcommunication is one of the very fewskills that if you getbetter at it, it amplifieseverything else you can do.I think that's like, that's our wholefocus of our whole company isaround like being more humanthat inter like communicating complicatedthings is most of what we do.And yeah, I mean, like AI is changing,technology is changing, butwe're talking to people 30, 50years in a company and they didn't, youknow, they're still movingfrom facts in some of thecases, right?So like there's,there's a lot of lead time.A lot of people are going to need help onhow to help get to that next stage.So I think there's areal long term play there.But I mean, so that's one thing that Idefinitely learned here inCanada, that quote that says thefuture is already here.It's just not evenly distributed, right?Yeah.Because in the same city, you can have acompany that's adoptedeverything we've spoken about andyou'll have a traditional old schoolbusiness that's donebusiness the same way for 50 years.And they, they're making 15 or 20% eventhough, I mean, those businesses existright here, right now.So, so there's many opportunities untilthey want to go sell it.Yeah.And like those, you know, running thosebusinesses that might be doing $20million and they're stilldoing like post-it notes and, you know,processes in their head and maybe onlyone person can do thequoting for these big, huge jobs andthey're in their sixth.Which works for them until they try tolike, it's harder and harder to bringother people into it.Good.Yeah.Transition ownership or automate it.And the thing is those people runningthose businesses, they've never had areason to, like one of thethings that blew my mind.So I've been, and so Ifinished high school in 1996.I had my like operating bankaccount personally in 1997.I opened my firstbusiness account in 1998.I have never had a personalor a business checkbook ever.I get to Canada in 2015 and everybusiness and individualis still using checkbooks.I haven't used checks.I haven't even seen a check in SouthAfrica in 20 years, but there was noreason to change because itwas working fine.Yes, there was bettertechnology in South Africa.We had to come up with bigger and bettersolutions because ofthe constraints of theenvironment.But some people still use checks todaybecause it solves theproblem it was intended for andthere's no complicationthat's forcing them to change.And in business, it's no different.Yeah.Yeah.Yeah.We still get checks.Only because I haven't been able tochange it more drastically.Uh, I, I, my head's spinning.I, I, I think I've come to the end.I mean, again, I hit this point in theconversation where wecovered so much ground that all theother like checklisty questions just areprobably not in addition.They're a dilution.I have a question.If you're comfortable going there tomaybe, um, to maybe finish on, I mean,you, you touched on it abit with the Steve Jobs book and, and thehealth complications, uh,with your daughter and, andthat journey, how, because things move sofast and, and, you know,we're always onto the nextthing and entrepreneurs have kind of thatsquirrel like mentality of the nextthing, like how has,uh, that health complication with yourdaughter changed the waythat you view your own life inthe world.Um, they said great book by,um, let me go go this quickly.Um, so for happy, um, by Mo go.That he was a keynote speaker at GLC lastyear and he tells this great story.Uh, and this is mysegue into Nando's as well.Um, he tells this great story or not agreat story, a tragic story about how hisson died on the medicaloperating table as a result of a medicalerror when he was 20 years old.And leading up to that point for, I think10 years, if I remember correctly, he hadbeen working on thisformula, coming up with this formula onhow to be happy in life.And then he son died.And then that became the ultimate litmustest of whether this formulathat he came up with could leadhim to have a happy life.And I mean, the book,he goes in great detail.The audio book is absolutely mind blowingcause he reads the book himself.And when he talks about his son dying,you can feel the emotion in his voice.It's just, it's a super movingexperience, but ultimately he says thatwhether we are happy or notdepends on two things.Our expectation of the world we live inand the reality of the world we live in.And since we have very little controlover the reality of the world we live in,the only thing we canchange is the expectation.And if my expectation of a day is I cango and have Nando's and be super happywith it and I can do itonce a week, and I can be happyirrespective of what happens around me.And I can be determined to get where Iwant to be and all of those other things.But is that is that understanding andsetting ourselves up for success and thenexecuting on that isway more likely to give ushappiness than anything else.So I think any, anything like that, whereyou have very little control over whathappens in life forcesyou to reflect on what really makes ushappy and making sure you seek that outand spend your time andeffort making that a reality.Mm hmm.It's not we had a similar conversationand I think all there's all kinds ofgreat ideas in paradoxes andlike more contentment.So contentment with what's happening, butalso ambition and how I can hold thosetwo things together andboth be true is often athought these days is.Yeah, I completely agree.That's the key.Like for so when I started out inbusiness, my first goal was to make amillion rand and then my goal was tomake 10 million rand before I turned 30.And every time I would get to thismilestone, the only thing that wouldhappen is the bigger next biggermilestone would be further down the road.So so you're almost progressively like itfeels like when you embrace that ambitionside that that you have togive up and I think part of the paradoxesthat actually I think you can have bothlike I I realize andunderstand what the life quality of lifeis I want to achieve and how much money Ineed to have to be able tosustain that.But that also gives me then the freedomto really be and be happy with where Iam, but be super ambitious about theimpact I want to have in the world and toboth organizationsthat can have that impact.I don't have to give up the ambition andto be content with where Iam or what I want out of life.I have to try and doboth of those things.It's not a or it's an and.Yeah, small simple things, right?Small simple things.Yeah, for sure.And yeah, that's beautiful.I'm thinking is there is there anythingthat you know if you were to encapsulateright up into this point somethingyou've kind of learned about life thatyou maybe like to send off to to anybodythat might be listening.Is there something that that you feellike people should know or you know juston the approach to life and this wholejourney?Yeah, I think two things for me is one isthat contentment or those simple thingsthat makes me really happy in life likehaving Nando's is everyalways brings a smile to my face.I try and do it as often as I can.And then secondly, alwayslook in the mirror first.There's always finethings that I can do better.I can improve what I can change becauseit's just so easy to default to the otherparty needs to change or the problem isthem. It's in that way talks in thecrucial conversations is those threestories we tell ourselves.I'm either the victim or the other personis the villain or I'm helpless.And none of those threethings is actually true.And none of them is actually related tothe facts of the situation.All three of those are stories we tellourselves to insulate us from theresponsibility of takingaction and changing thesituation.So stop stop stop tellingyourself you're the victim.Stop telling yourself the other person isthe villain and stop telling yourselfyou're helpless becausethose three things aren'treally true and you can change it and youdon't need to listen tothose stories you tell yourself.Great.Amen.Mike, draw.Thank you very muchfor your sharing today.I just love real conversations that coverthe good, the bad, theless the less straightforward.But hopefully we get to see each other inperson at some point.Yeah. Small world.We can figure that out.I'm trying to slowly.Well, Nando's tell me which Nando I'vebeen to 150 Nando's in seven countries.The goal is to go to in a lifetime to allover 1,032 countries.So whenever you see a Nando's let me knowand I'll probably try and meet you there.Okay.Well, you can you open a franchise inAtlanta, Canada is my next question.There isn't one is there?I don't think so.No, no.I think further east you go as Ottawa.Oh, well there's the next opportunity.There you go.We get an end.Great.All right.Thank you very much.Thanks man.That was awesome.Thanks guys.This episode of Built to Last is broughtto you by Ironhouse Pro.Your behind the scenes partner inbuildingorganizations designed to thrive.We specialize in solving the bigchallenges, the small annoyances andeverything in between.So while you're out there dreaming big,we're here making sureyour systems processes andpeople are ready for tomorrow.Ironhouse Pro driven tocreate lasting organizations.Learn more at IronhousePro.com.