Adii Pienaar: "The ego beast was chasing me"
Welcome to the first episode of the Life Profits podcast. This is a podcast about entrepreneurship. But rather than being yet another how to get rich quick show, this one focuses on how people have used entrepreneurship to live interesting and enriched lives. Far too many entrepreneurs fail to measure the extent to which their businesses are actually enriching their lives. So rather than celebrating a $100,000,000 entrepreneurs, we're gonna celebrate those that live a $100,000,000 lifestyles powered by entrepreneurship.
Geoff Roberts:Financial profits are great, but life profits are even better. Alright, Adi. So I'd like to start our very first episode here by actually reading your quote from you and asking you to respond to it. When I read this, it was something that really stood out to me. It's sort of a a haunting quote in a lot of ways.
Geoff Roberts:You said, my mental and emotional well-being was not fantastic. I was under immense and constant stress. The ego beast was chasing me, telling me I couldn't fail publicly. I struggled with that idea, but I couldn't convince myself that all of those nice goals I'd set for myself and the hopes I had for the business were worth pursuing if I had to endure continuing stress. And because of business pressures, I felt isolated.
Geoff Roberts:I think a lot of entrepreneurs, including myself, have had those feelings before, but probably haven't captured them in such descriptive words. Can you bring me back to the point in your life that you're talking about when you wrote that sentence?
Adii Pienaar:It's interesting, Geoff. So, I mean, those the sentiment and the emotion at least in those words and and this idea of the beast really came about in late 2017, early 2018. And it came through interesting enough, it came out through me exploring poetry and writing poetry as a as a way to make sense of what I was experiencing at the time. What was happening kind of beyond that was during kind of late stages of 2017, Convergeo, the company I founded off through WooCommerce, I found out that I'd made a mistake and that we were essentially over reporting revenue by 10, 15%. And, effectively, what that meant was we weren't growing as well as we thought we were, and it also meant that we suddenly didn't have the money to pay people.
Adii Pienaar:Right? And this is just sort of a hammer blow because I've got a degree in accounting. I was the intel bookkeeper. I was solo founder of Convergeo, and I should have never made the mistake. And the consequences thereof was that I had to lay off team members.
Adii Pienaar:I didn't pay myself for a couple of months. I can remember the 1 month, it was October or November of that year, we ended up with 7 ks in the bank, when we were doing multiple millions in ARR, right, to give everyone the perspective of the kind of the tightrope that we were we were on. It was such a weird sensation for me because, a, I felt responsible for the mistake, which I was. But it became this bit of a kind of existential thing, which is I started questioning everything about entrepreneurship, and I started blaming myself because I kinda chose that path. Right?
Adii Pienaar:So it's kinda like I chose the path that led to me making a mistake, which created this very kinda weird loop, which was was really, really, really tough. And that's I said that that's why the kind of the the emotional and mental well-being I was really struggling with that. I was questioning loads of those things, and I did feel like there was a beast chasing me. And the last thought that I'll that I'll share there is there the part of not, you know, confiding publicly was I, you know, I I I left WU at the end of 2013. Like, I personally left this idea in my head that, you know, I I don't wanna be a 1 hit wonder, and I wanna kind of go out and I wanna conquer.
Adii Pienaar:I wanna learn. I wanna do more things. I wanna prove to myself that I can do it again. All very intrinsic kind of, you know, motivators. And then about a year and a half after I left, you know, WU has this amazing exit to automatic That just fuels that narrative.
Adii Pienaar:Because now I'm telling myself, like, Eighty left the company to go do something else, something better, whatever. So now I used to prove this. Right? And the the weird thing is when things happen, what I tell myself is other people care. Other people look at this.
Adii Pienaar:And, like, you know, well, Eighty can't screw this up now. Right? Eighty should go do this. Anyway, that that was very hard. Like, it was very hard making all those decisions and being intentional about them and then making mistakes and, as I said, going off from that kind of existential path of really questioning this path that I was on.
Geoff Roberts:I and I love that image of of the beast, whether it's, you know, literal or or figurative. I think we all have that beast to an extent, and it manifests itself for for different reasons and in different ways, but it's just a a powerful image. And one of the things I love from reading your book was I was brought through the whole journey. So you're a a 3 time founder. You started 3 different companies, and something we'll talk about is how you took a different approach with with each.
Geoff Roberts:But because this is our our first episode and and we haven't talked a lot about this ourselves, I would love for you to just kinda bring me through the story arc of those 3 companies. And with the benefit of hindsight, how do you reflect on on each and sort of what was unique about each?
Adii Pienaar:The more prevalent things, at least in hindsight for me across the company, Jeff, is is we need the the intentionality that came at each of those curves steps, you know, from one to the next. Because your woo was, to some extent, was such a lucky success in the way that, you know, I don't think myself or Magnus and Mark, my cofounders, neither of us set out to create such a you know, it's to this day, you know, a category defining kind of product. Right? Like, that was not our ambitions at that stage. But it happened very quickly to us.
Adii Pienaar:Success came quickly. Cash flow was, you know, kind of was was quick to follow. Profits were quick to follow.
Geoff Roberts:You were young, correct? How how old were you at the time?
Adii Pienaar:I was 22 at the time. 22 when I built the first product. 23 when when Magnus, Mark, and I started, like, really when we launched Wu in 2008. So really, really young, and this was the first rodeo for all 3 of us. And the key there was that, you know, whilst it was a really fun journey, like fast moving journey, we really learned as we went.
Adii Pienaar:Right? Like there were very little kind of best practice, and I think the kind of the if I were to shape some of the context for listeners there, you know, back then, what I can remember were there, like, the only blogs that we could read for companies that we could aspire to kind of emulate were the kind of likes of 37 signals back in the day. A little bit of Campaign Monitor. Yeah. I think Rob Walling came shortly after that.
Adii Pienaar:Right? And then a few others came, but it was very early days. Like, we like, there weren't that many people kind of teaching and sharing online. Right? So those are the things that I learned as an entrepreneur, as a business owner.
Adii Pienaar:Like, we just had to go through. And I think, you know, the biggest thing or some of the biggest, like, the biggest bucket of things that I learned wasn't as tactical as it was the nuances around kind of, you know, team culture, the way one works, how that relates to me. And I think, like, that's in saying, like, there was an intentional kind of evolution of one company to the next, I I remember going from woo into conversion. I had this very clear set of ideas of these are the things that I wanna evolve. Right?
Adii Pienaar:Where the thinking is like, let me take the things that worked and replicate that to some extent. Doesn't have to be verbatim. And then really kind of evolve some of the things. And one of the things that was crucial in at least conversion, and then it became such a passionate pursuit after that, was this notion of what are my values and how should they show up in in this new business? Because you you kind of build that awareness as well over time.
Adii Pienaar:Like, as you like, as I built Woo, I also learned more about myself, and I want to make sure that I could honor that, maximize that, optimize for that, etcetera, in the next ventures.
Geoff Roberts:Yeah. It's interesting. My cofounder, his name is Dimitri at Outseta, founded the company that we worked at prior. It's a business called Buildium, and Outseta is completely sort of Dimitri taking the things that he wanted to from the Buildium experience and all of the things he wished differently and bringing them into Outsetta. And the reason that we ended up working together aside from having complementary skill sets, I'm a marketer, he's a developer, Was he saw that those sort of same values and ways of working were things that I aspired to as well, and that's kind of the whole reason we got together and and founded outside of Together.
Geoff Roberts:So I think it's totally normal. Dimitri, like you, had a pretty big success pretty early in his career and sort of got dragged through that same period that you did, and then looked up and said, what do I wanna do differently next time? And and here we are, trying to execute on some of those ideas.
Adii Pienaar:It's it's interesting, though. And, I mean, you and I, Jeff, can I think there's a things to be said about relationships, and how we work? But the thing that actually comes to mind there, when you say significant success, right, like, I can tell you this. So 3/13, when I ultimately sold my shares to Magnus and Mark, well, I sold it back to the business, right, and they were the remaining shareholders. I sold it on a kind of a EBITDA multiple, right, and a conservative multiple because back then, I mean, we were a South African company as well, even though, you know, 99% of our revenue was international and dollar based.
Adii Pienaar:Really significant business. And I was perfectly happy with that outcome at the time. Right? Like, it allowed me to move on and do my next thing. You know, my wife and I bought our family home, which we are still in, you know, almost 11 years later.
Adii Pienaar:It's been a fantastic you know, at that stage, it was a bit of a stretch. Grew into it, and it's been, you know, fantastic centerpiece of our life. And all that's amazing. And then 15, 16 months later, you see the news in TechCrunch that Wu gets acquired by Automattic. For a vast some reports that I don't know what the actual number was.
Adii Pienaar:For some, significantly more than what I sold for. And then the mine does a few little mental tricks. Like it played a few mental tricks on you, right? Even though these were all decisions that I made, was happy with at the time. I mean, at that time as well when we had sold, Convergeo just closed.
Adii Pienaar:Like, we had just had product markets fit and really, like, artistic initial traction just raised the pre seed round. Like, doing a bunch of new things in Entrepreneur, I was fired up, and I still got the views, and I was still like, maybe I should have stuck around. Right? How
Geoff Roberts:could you not? I think that's, you know, the most human reaction ever.
Adii Pienaar:And when you talk about the kind of the that arc through different companies, right, like, these are like, there's some things that we pick that we're very intentional about and try to be. And then some of these things that, at least mentally and emotionally, there's still curveballs when they happen. Right?
Geoff Roberts:I'm just excited to pull more out of the experiences you've had because what struck me in reading your book, what struck me in reading your personal website is just the highs and lows that you've had throughout your career. You've you've had more than most, and I think part of what's fallen out of that that is very clear to me from reading your book is values. And you probably had those values before, but I'm sure the roller coaster that you've been through has sort of brought those things to the forefront, maybe more so than they would be if everything was just always up into the right. And for the sake of the the audience, I wanna hit on a few of those sort of perceived values that I I pulled out of of some of your writing and dig into a couple of them because they're things that really matter to me or reflect my own experience as well that aren't always seen in the the best light or maybe are surprising. So the first one I wanna mention is you say, you want to craft life and business with the highest value in mind, my family.
Geoff Roberts:That is not unique at all. I think, you know, there's tons of people that value their family at the the absolute highest level, But the line you said after that stood out to me. You said, showing up for my family is much more fulfilling than I considered in the past. That is actually something that I have sort of similarly grown into. I've I've always cared about my family.
Geoff Roberts:I've always loved my family. They've always been a a high value for me. But I'm four and a half years into being a father now, and I'm almost surprised at how much more important to me that has become, how much more sort of elevated in my life and fulfilling that has become than it was even a year ago or 2 years ago or 3 years ago. So just curious, your experience and sort of comments on that.
Adii Pienaar:You know, when I think about values, and if I at least look back at what I would now describe as my personal values, there's really 2 buckets. The 1 bucket are things that, like, they were definitely there before. And I just weren't, like, I wasn't as aware or as eloquent about them. Right? And there were things that I think came afterwards and evolved.
Adii Pienaar:And when I think about family, it's definitely that former. Right? I got married pretty young. My wife and I were also, I think we were together for like 6 months. Got engaged.
Adii Pienaar:Got married like 8 months later, and then shortly thereafter conceived, and then we met 9 months later, we we had AD Junior. So all of those came very quickly. And I shared that because I've always wanted to be a dad. I've always wanted to have a family, for example. So with this idea of building a life with kind of and prioritizing family, that was always part of the picture.
Adii Pienaar:And I think that coalesced very nicely with Wu's initial success. I mean, one of the things that I truly believe that enabled that pursuit at a very young age was the fact that, you know, I didn't have financial stress, which meant that I only had to go through the stress of adapting to be a parent. Right? Like, didn't have the financial stress. What is interesting though is, you know, in the in the early years of being a parent, the business still sucked me in.
Adii Pienaar:Like, the kind of the worst, but it's most truthful, which is, you know, back then we had a small little office for our Cape Town based team. And I would often use the the office as a way to escape home and escape parenting, to be honest. The way that's evolved over time though, kind of your most recently, again, my my daughter is now 2 years old, is, like, the the longer I go on this journey, the more fulfilling it is for me to figure out, like, what is the version of Adi that needs to show up as a dad today for all of my kids, right? With their various needs, desires, and challenges that they present at this age and stage of life. And it's become a, like, they're a challenge in that, because it also means that they're pushing me to evolve.
Adii Pienaar:Meaning, the way I parented a kind of a 2 year old should be different from parenting a, you know, a 13 year old. And the real meaning in that and I think, like, as I say, like, part of that is just that challenge, that that that push to evolve and to learn and to adapt. And many of those things probably replaces where I did that in business in the past, which means I don't have to go run away to an office to have those sensations or have that kind of ambition. That ambition is now coupled with that initial goal of showing up as a, you know, as a dad and a family man.
Geoff Roberts:Two other ones I want to to pull out just so people understand who they're who they're talking to here. You describe yourself as a a seeker, and, again, that that is a word that I would use to describe myself. It is a word that I think is not always or a trait that is not always perceived to be positive. I think sometimes there's even, like, a aspect of if you're constantly seeking, there must be some malcontent there. Why do you describe that way?
Geoff Roberts:How does that manifest itself in in your life?
Adii Pienaar:I am just infinitely curious about all the things, and I think that there there's a energy and emotion to go down rabbit holes. That's been very interesting. Whether it's people, whether it's cultures, whether it's philosophies, whether it's religions, I think all of that is interesting. And I would add exactly what you said there. I think the challenge there is always to to not have that motion inherently kind of become discontent.
Adii Pienaar:Right? Like, because it is it is sometimes, like, depending on how it shows up, it can just be like my this is my inability to just be in this moment and, like, lie on my back on the floor and look at the ceiling. Right? I should be perfectly content just with that. And being a seeker shouldn't be contrary to that.
Adii Pienaar:So sometimes that, like, that is the impetus. Right? I'm trying to get away from boredom. I'm trying to get away from discomfort, and hence I kind of seek and I'm curious. But I think generally for me, it's just that there is just that curiosity.
Adii Pienaar:I appreciate the curiosities and diversity, right? Like, I've always found that, you know, even though business is one of the cases in which I've probably pushed that furthest, right, and gone deepest, even then it's normally like finding adjacent things. So it's slightly squirreling off to kind of in a different direction and being curious about that versus like, I I I can't imagine myself doing a single thing for 30 years, for example. Right? Like, I'm I'm too curious about other things.
Geoff Roberts:Yeah. I've I've always told people since we started outside of that, I committed up front very seriously to spending 15 years on this business, and our mindset was, it's an idea that's not going away. People need billing systems and CRM tools and email tools. If we sit down and we execute this and we make it better every single day for 15 years, we will end up with something in value. For better or worse, that's that's been our mindset.
Geoff Roberts:We're about halfway through that 15 years right now, but people ask me all the time, what are you going to do after this? And my answer is something completely different, and everybody seems surprised by that. But prior to to starting outside, I worked in SaaS startups and tech companies for 7 or 8 years. If I do this for 15, that's 22, 23 years of my life. I'm the 1st person to tell you I I love tech.
Geoff Roberts:I love start ups, but I just feel like if I didn't do something else, that would be very one dimensional of me.
Adii Pienaar:Yeah. Exactly right, Lily. I think that's the curiosity. Right? It's almost like a we don't know what we don't know.
Adii Pienaar:So we need to, like, at least continue looking and seeing, like, what else is out there. It doesn't mean necessarily pursuing, you know, those things, but I think being curious is is just fun.
Geoff Roberts:Absolutely. Last one, and then we'll we'll get into to talking about the book here. But you say less science, more art. How does that manifest itself in your life? Was that the other way around at some point previously?
Adii Pienaar:I'm such a petite, Jeff. When whenever, like, any influencer or expert proposes that here's a blueprint and just follow this blueprint and it will play perfectly, 3 steps, 9 steps, whatever it is, and it gets you to x, y, z outcome. I just really dislike that. I think, like, we're all too unique for that to be true. It doesn't mean that the blueprint isn't helpful, but I think selling it as just do this perfectly, I think that lacks some of the nuances on the reality.
Adii Pienaar:And that the idea of less science, more art. I think business is often in that, because it's quantifiable, we often put it in that bucket of saying, well, this is science. And especially, like, you know, being a serial repeat entrepreneur, it's just a science, right? The second, 3rd, and 4th businesses, are easier and better, right? And I personally found that, for example, I mean, I wrote those words way before before this happened, but, you know, COGSI, my last startup, was the one that didn't work out.
Adii Pienaar:The first two worked out really well. The third one didn't. Right? And I think there's just it's not too again, I have a pet hate with these blueprints. But what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to acknowledge that there are probably parts of it that is science.
Adii Pienaar:There are best practices that one can take from the one thing to the next, and you can learn from others. But then there is still some art to this. And the art is the subjectivity. It's the part of ourselves that we infuse into the thing that we do. And if we don't find a way of honoring both those perspectives, I think we're missing a beat and we're probably being too hard on ourselves.
Adii Pienaar:I think if we kind of ignore the art part and we say it's just science and things don't work out, I think it's doubly hard effectively. Whereas I think that the art is just that acknowledgment that there's there's some randomness in the system that we always need to account for.
Geoff Roberts:And that's a a perfect segue into the the topic of life profitability and the the book that you wrote. I will start by by summarizing it the way that I describe this concept to other people who ask ask me about it. And the language comes largely from your book. But what stuck out to me is as entrepreneurs, we have the the science down when it comes to how we measure the success of our companies. We we look at revenue.
Geoff Roberts:It's financially oriented. That is the scoreboard. Everybody understands it. Everybody, including myself, can tell you exactly where their business stands at any point in time. But the whole notion of life profitability is we're missing, a major opportunity to reconsider or reorient how we measure the success of our companies.
Geoff Roberts:And the idea is building a business should enrich your life, and we don't have any way to measure to what extent your business is actually or isn't actually enriching your life. So that's kind of the the concept of life profitability distilled in in my own words. But bring me into your your headspace. You you had these 3 different companies, different set of experiences at each. Where were you at mentally, and what sort of pushed you to write this book and and put language to this concept?
Geoff Roberts:How did it get sucked out of you?
Adii Pienaar:Yeah. The free three parts to to answering that. The the motivation, firstly, came from my experience in building Convergeo, which was that first intentional kind of, you know, pursuit of how do you define culture and, you know, both mix the personal and collective values. Right? And the way my team and I at Convergeo described was we described Convergeo as being life and family first.
Adii Pienaar:That was the kind of the the precursor in language, at least, to to life profitability. And I had such a mostly you know, I shared some of the lows as well earlier in Convergeo, but I mostly had such an amazing experience in building the business and just learning more about what business could be. Right? Because I think a lot of that, when you tell yourself you wanna build a life and family first business, it throws up a bunch of edge cases that you need to discuss as a team. And you need to think through it, and you need to find new solutions for it because there certainly isn't off the shelf solutions or traditional models to use there.
Adii Pienaar:So that was the first impetus. The second part was very much personal. I ultimately wrote the book after I sold conversion. I had some time. And what I wanted to do was I really wanted to at least, you know, leave my boys didn't have my daughter at the time, but leave my boys some bread crumbs for if something were to happen to me, and they never got to know me, and they wanted to get to know me.
Adii Pienaar:I wanted to give them some artifact of of some of the things that I contributed to this universe that made me unique. And the third one is is kind of something that I have recently and literally, like in recent weeks, figured out in therapy, which is, you know, this notion that something that is critically important to me is, you know, not just being known for the things that I've done, but for who I like the person I was whilst I was doing those things. And there's there's a little nuance there, because you can say like actions, speech, and words, etcetera, but that's not the the full case, at least. Like especially in our world when, you know, a lot of what we we do and especially achieve is public knowledge. But it kinda misses the story, and then comes to the why, and the, you know, the there tends to be different and better.
Adii Pienaar:You don't tell all of those things, right? Especially if they didn't necessarily succeed, right? They just say, well, AD sold a company for x. Like, that was really important to me. Like putting something into physical form that at least shares some of that color and context, and hopefully inspires others to think about what that uniquely means to them, that's that's compelling.
Adii Pienaar:That's that's meaningful.
Geoff Roberts:Thank you thank you for doing so. I mean, the the book,
Adii Pienaar:as I I mentioned
Geoff Roberts:to you, put put language to concepts that I had been thinking about personally for a long time. And I know your your sons are 10 and 13, but as they get that much older and move into their own careers, I can't imagine they would be anything but proud about the book that you wrote.
Adii Pienaar:K.
Geoff Roberts:So I wanna actually transition now into some of the things that I sucked out of the book. So we've talked about it sort of a high level, what life profitability is. There are some sentences that I jotted down that are not just pithy, but the ideas behind them are awesome. And I'm just gonna read you a couple and ask you to sort of unpack the idea. I think they're a little bit self explanatory, but there's clearly some some thinking that went into coming up with these.
Geoff Roberts:So the first one is my favorite, and it is your life is the cost of doing business. What do you mean by that?
Adii Pienaar:Yeah. It's it's based on an Annie Thoreau quote that says say something similar. But the idea there is just that as entrepreneurs, what I did is I often glorified all of this ambition, that I had in building a business. And it's mostly a great experience. It's a great experience whilst you're doing it.
Adii Pienaar:It's rewarding when it works out, etcetera. But I think the thing that we just miss there is that the opportunity cost in all those decisions is the life we could have had if we didn't do that thing. Right? Which is a very simple concept. I think, you know, most of the entrepreneurs understand the notion of opportunity cost, but we don't think about it because the ambition is such a strong pull.
Adii Pienaar:And once you get sucked into it, especially, you know, kind of when it's I think when it's working and not working. When there's motion in the business, like it's very easy to forget about these the opportunity cost of this. And I think that crucially what is important there is, I think the opportunity cost matters less when the journey mostly worked out for you. I think where it becomes really hard is when you're trying to build a business that's not serving your life. And then I think at that stage, it becomes less an ideal outcome if you're not comparing that status quo with the opportunity cost of not doing this.
Adii Pienaar:Because I don't think at that stage we should continue glorifying this pursuit. Because at that stage, like, you're literally just paying your life for this thing that's not serving you. And I think that's like, there's a ironic fallacy in that. Like, that's that's not the outcome that we should aspire to.
Geoff Roberts:Yeah. If the business is taking off, it's easy to justify the costs, and and maybe the benefits are you know, the juice is worth the squeeze to an extent. If the business is not working out, one of the other concepts I I really liked that you mentioned is this notion of a business is a temporary thing. It's an idea. If you can shut it down, you can respawn.
Geoff Roberts:You can't respawn your life. One of the things we'll talk about in the next episode a little bit in my own journey, which I think is particularly challenging, is when you're somewhere in the middle, when the business is not a huge success, but the business is not struggling either, and you're still kinda grinding to get the business to work to the extent that you want it to, there oftentimes is an opportunity cost, and you need to sort of to grind that wheel knowing that it comes with some some cost and you don't know which direction the business is ultimately going to head. So that it's a place I've been.
Adii Pienaar:Exactly right. And the and I think, Jeff, like, you know, I I can't be a hypocrite here and and propose that, you know, because the other thing alongside kind of you having blueprints is these very binary states of things. And I don't think, like, on the surface saying, you know, your life is the cost of doing business, you can lead to a very binary outcome, which is either like you do it or you don't do it. I I think it's less about that. I think for me, you know, that notion is more around the self awareness and using that as a point, that opportunity cost, that life cost, as a point of reference that you least evaluate what you're doing.
Adii Pienaar:Right? I think there's some intellectual or at least personal honesty in that and say, you know what? Given what I know about the costs involved, I will still grind this out. Right? The important part there to note is, like, for a long time as an entrepreneur, I was totally oblivious about the costs that I was incurring along the way.
Adii Pienaar:Like, whether it was in my marriage, whether it was in my home life, whether it was with friendships, whether it was with my health. And I didn't consider that. And I think that's the the key part there, Rob. It's not about saying you should or shouldn't build a business. It's just about being aware of the the costs involved.
Geoff Roberts:Yeah. And that that's the most tangible way your book has been helpful to me after reading it. We were at a particularly difficult point with Outsider. We'd been grinding for 3, 4 years. We didn't have a lot to show for it at that point.
Geoff Roberts:And, definitely, outside, it was detracting from my life in many ways. And that has largely flipped and and gotten better, but I don't do it with any particular cadence. But I find myself reflecting monthly, quarterly, certainly, annually, even more than that, just on what are the ways this business is contributing positively to my life? What are the ways that it is not? And I I also think everybody kinda hears this concept of life profitability, and they assume that if everything isn't great in the business, it's not contributing in a positive way to your your life profits.
Geoff Roberts:But any entrepreneurial journey is going to be difficult. There's going to be, hopefully, high points, but lots of low points too, and it's not gonna be all rainbows and and butterflies, and and that's okay. You have to learn to endorse some of that and also appreciate the things that entrepreneurship can provide.
Adii Pienaar:Exactly right. I I don't think, you know, pursuing life affordability takes away from the kind of risk reward nature of being an entrepreneur. Right?
Geoff Roberts:Yeah.
Adii Pienaar:I think, like, risk reward is is what makes the entrepreneurial journey such a fulfilling fun journey to be on. But in the same way that you can say, well, I have a 10% net profit margin or a 30% net profit margin. Both of those are profitable. Right? But profitable to various degrees.
Adii Pienaar:Right? Or varying degrees. So I think that's the first thing to acknowledge there. And the second thing is when you have profits, you should ask yourself the question of, how do you then reapply those profits in a way within your life that gets you those life profits that you want. Right?
Adii Pienaar:Like business profits into kind of life profits. Because that's what we would do in business. Right? We would essentially evaluate, like, well, this marketing campaign is happening, you're kind of working, that engineering initiative is working. Let's find resources to invest in those.
Adii Pienaar:And I think this just applies to flipping that and doing the same in one's life. Right? But the crucial part there is acknowledging, like, where are those costs? Where are those opportunities for investment? Like, if you don't have the awareness or the discipline to at least be introspective or reflective about those things, like, it's impossible to to nurture those parts of yourself or your life.
Geoff Roberts:The next one I I wanted you to respond to is the idea that you should be the entrepreneur of your life. What do you mean by that?
Adii Pienaar:Entrepreneurs are some of the kind of the the most gutsy, most creative people that I've met. And there's a beauty, and there's such great opportunity in in in saying, what would happen if an individual essentially applies that same creativity, that same gutsiness that they do to your business, but they do it in their life. Right? Because again, like, it's almost like we're somewhat confining it by placing it in this container that's a legal entity that has to do x y zed, sort of this ideal customer building this product, you know, with with these people. Whereas I think life inherently is more expensive, than that.
Adii Pienaar:So like, it's essentially saying, like, you can do all the things that you do within your business, and you just apply those characteristics to your life. Because like the entrepreneur you are in your business, that same person is gonna show up in your life. And I think when you do that, you essentially get some kind of exponential order of magnitude, kind of your difference in the return or the benefits, of doing so. Because you're not just confining it to like, this business you're working on right now and you're expanding that to to your whole life.
Geoff Roberts:Honestly, it's it's amazing to me how few people do that. I I think I look out my window, and and I know I run-in entrepreneurial circles and whatnot. But I I see no shortage of people that have a massive amount of ambition when it comes to work specifically and when it comes to entrepreneurship. I do not see that many people out there with ambition to live the greatest life they possibly can. Those people exist, but it seems that that is not as accepted of a way to display your ambition.
Geoff Roberts:And I think that's that's super disappointing. I think that's ultimately part of the reason I wanted to do this podcast is to kinda highlight people that have taken similar ambition to entrepreneurship and their their lives and have really interesting stories to tell as a result.
Adii Pienaar:And I like, what I'm really curious about in terms of those stories that we uncover, Jeff, is that I think what what the 2 of us are gonna find and what all the listeners are gonna find is that those stories ultimately touch on something very qualitative. Right? And I think that's why individuals, they almost revert back to being ambitious in their business because it generally has a quantitative outcome. They can quantify, like, am I being successful in applying my ambition, my creativity, my energy, etcetera in this thing. Whereas, when it comes to life, we're gonna hear so many different stories about how individuals are pursuing life profit.
Adii Pienaar:I mean, I can tell you, for me, it is all about whether it's family, whether it's about wine, whether it's playing FIFA, whether it's supporting Manchester United. Like, that might not resonate with anyone else. Right? Very qualitative things. I also can't tell you that I'm actually getting better at kind of investing or spending time doing those things.
Adii Pienaar:Right?
Geoff Roberts:Sure.
Adii Pienaar:How do I need to prove that I'm kind of a more passionate Manchester United fan than I was last year? Right? It's hard to do so. But I think that's why entrepreneurs, I think we somewhat get stuck in that kind of world of measurement. Whereas kind of the rest of our life is more about the kind of world of possibilities.
Adii Pienaar:Right? So that's why I think we gravitate there. That's just a hunch.
Geoff Roberts:Yeah. And I'll I'll leave I'll leave you with the last quote here, which I think perfectly sums up that that point. You said you don't have to give up your entrepreneurial journey. You just need to expand your ambition to include your life lived now. I think that's a perfect takeaway.
Adii Pienaar:Exactly.
Geoff Roberts:Alright. So that's the that's the book. I hope for anybody listening to this, that was a good introduction to Eighty and the the life profitability book. If you haven't actually read it, go go check it out. It's ultimately the impetus behind this entire podcast, so I think you'd enjoy it.
Geoff Roberts:I I do, before we get out of here, I want to just dive into some more personal stuff. Again, just to help our audience get to know you and also just me being curious getting to know you myself. So I know you live in South Africa, and you said you love and collect wine. I like wine myself. If I'm gonna buy a bottle of South African wine that's reasonably priced but really great, what are you what are you drinking, or what are you sending me?
Adii Pienaar:Yeah. Crucial tip for anyone interested in South African wine, if you buy it abroad, the thing to avoid is buying wine that says wine of origin Western Cape. That's generally kind of so Western Cape is a whole province, and it's generally like they'll blend whatever from anywhere. Right? So there's there's no, like, there's no tourir.
Adii Pienaar:There's no specificity. Like, it's just random. Like, that often happens exponentially. What I would say is you can't go wrong with any Cabernet from the Stellenbosch area. You also can't go wrong with, like, very new, oldy, like, light Shirazes from the Swartland area.
Adii Pienaar:And if you really wanted to be edgy, I'll tell you to buy buy wine from an estate called Seine, s I j double n. And it's it's outside of the normal kind of wine region. It's almost on the coast. It's like a border, very harsh conditions, very Rhone like. The vineyards need to be work really, really hard.
Adii Pienaar:And they plonk varietals that you don't often get in South Africa, but they make very, very distinct wines that rival some of the best in the world. So if you keep your hands on it, go for it.
Geoff Roberts:Good good tips. Are you born and raised, in South Africa? Or
Adii Pienaar:Yeah. Born and raised Chthonian with no kind of your foreseeable plans to to move away anytime soon. Awesome.
Geoff Roberts:Sticking on the South African theme, I so there's an artist named Ryan Hewitt that you like, and you've got a couple of his original works. Tell me about him as an artist. Anything I should know?
Adii Pienaar:He is an African gentleman. So African artist. When my wife and I started buying some art, it was 10 years ago now. We found 2 of his works that came just after his, kind of, your debut exhibition. I purchased both works, and we somewhat I can't remember why or how, and we connected with him and had a brief chat with him.
Adii Pienaar:And then for my 30th birthday, my wife surprised me with a commission that Ryan, made in his style at the time. And it's just titled The Entrepreneur. It's not a like, it doesn't look like me, but has, like, a it's a a portrait of of a male that's pondering something, I think. And it's titled The Entrepreneur. And it's just, like, it's very, very sentimental.
Adii Pienaar:And I guess the cool cool thing beyond the kind of style, which, like, his style has evolved over time as well. But in years gone by, the likes of Justin Bieber, the Jonas Brothers, and a few other celebrities have actually bought his works. Which also means, like, it's like his new works is now out of price range. Like it is now proper art. But it's fun.
Adii Pienaar:It's I think it's very fun and sentimental to both have some of his original works or like his early works, and then have a kind of a original commission that was kind of your purposely designed for, you know, for me, at least.
Geoff Roberts:Very cool. Final bit, and then we'll we'll get out of here. So I know right now you're a little bit in in limbo in terms of your professional life and your job and what you're focusing on and and whatnot. But given this is all about life profitability and you've spent so much time and so many cycles thinking about this concept, what does a great day look like for you? Not not necessarily in terms of how it's structured, but if you're, you know, putting on your your flowery hat and you're you're thinking about this is a day that feels like a rich day in my life, what does that look and feel like?
Adii Pienaar:I, I really like calm days. And, Jeffrey, calm day is is mostly days when, like, my calendar is not full. In fact, like, I love to have days where there's nothing on my calendar. I'm not a, like, I'm not a planner there. Like, I love the flexibility of being able to, you know, get to my desk somewhere in the morning and just plan the day on the fly.
Adii Pienaar:Right? Like, that's the more I'm able to do that, like, I I really appreciate that. Most of my days, though, will follow this similar pattern, which is I'll do some work in the mornings. My mornings are normally kind of there for urgent and or deep work. And I also like the idea of I start work, and then somewhere during the morning when it feels like there's a natural break, then I'll go out and I'll exercise.
Adii Pienaar:And then my afternoons, due to my time zone, is normally when I have meetings, if I have to have meetings. Right?
Geoff Roberts:Sure.
Adii Pienaar:So that's become very natural structure and flow for me over time. Crucially, as I've gotten older, I now try and not do any calls in the evenings. I used to compromise myself and say, well, there's this great opportunity, exploratory call. I should have this call with someone on the West Coast at, like, 11 PM my time. Like, I I do that very, very rarely these days.
Adii Pienaar:Right? So I try and be kind of disciplined around that. And then something that's that's kind of your at least on a weekday that, I don't get to every day, because having kids at different ages, their schedules and stuff makes it hard. But we truly try and do family dinner every night. Even if it's just for 10 or 15 minutes, and there's just that, you know, kind of almost simultaneous check-in, like that's a good night.
Adii Pienaar:For the rest of it, like I'm not too dogmatic about having certain things. The key thing is that flexibility and then making sure that there's some family in there, there's some deep work in there. And deep work is, like, it doesn't have to be that thing that I'm working on. It could just be, like, going deep and reading a big chunk of the book that I'm reading, right? Sure.
Adii Pienaar:And then trying to avoid as as many calls as I can, to be honest.
Geoff Roberts:I think that's, the the new norm for a lot of people, myself included. And that's the first episode of the Life Profits podcast. At the end of each episode, we're gonna send you off with a question to contemplate, and this week it's simple. You're already acting as the entrepreneur of your business, but to what extent are you acting as the entrepreneur of your life? See you next time.
