Your Happy Hour - Doing Business with...

Episode Date: April 5, 2025

Welcome back to Your Happy Hour with Friday Feels!Welcome to April and a new theme in “Doing Business with…” and this week, we sat down with executive producer, serial entrepreneur and changemaker, Simon Makwela who took us on a journey of his life and work experience. Simon shared intimately the intricate dynamics and challenges of doing business with friends and family, being an empath in professional contexts, the importance of resilience and knowing oneself in navigating a world of dual identities and what the concepts of trust and harmony have come to mean to him.Who are you doing business with?Friday Feels is all about having those honest conversations, the power of community for personal growth and taking those actionable steps towards being our authentic selves.Thanks for tuning in! Keep it raw and real out there xYHH is produced.by swartkat.co - captured via riverside.fm & shared via rss.com.

It's the Friday feels and we're back with your first sip of the weekend. You're now tuned in to this week's episode of your happy hour. I'm your host Nicole Carmine and it's amazing to have you here joining me this week as we uncover the truths about being a human and a working professional. What are you up to this Friday? Well whatever it is, this moment is just for you. A very big welcome to the month of April. And if you're like me, feeling the shifts of energy in the air,

you may have been feeling a little strange, but it seems the whole world is feeling a lot of crazy changes at the moment. And it's wonderful then to know that between it all, there is this. There is you, there is me and the Friday Fields community, the place and space where we can come and be raw and real together and talk about some journeys as we navigate all the goodies that life is throwing us as working professionals. And so we thought that at this pivotal point of the year, let's take a look at who is around us, who we are engaging with, when we do the things

we do. Because as someone told me this week, life is not so much transaction based as we might think. It's so relational. And I truly agree with that. You would have heard me speaking a lot about energy exchanges, about building different kinds of connected communities centered around nature or crafts or whatever it is that you fancy.

And so let's take a little moment and think about how we do business and very much importantly, who do we do business with as we go through our days. So it doesn't really matter whether it's with friends or family, acquaintances, maybe in different cultures, different industries, different countries. Every working professional journey includes finding your gang that you hang out with and we as we know this very much shapes who we become and how we work in the world. So this month's theme is doing business with... so helping me kickstart this discussion. I'm very, very excited today to have a very cool human join me.

Simon McCoyler, a founder, a director, an executive producer, a non-executive director, and to me also just a really great friend who I don't get to chat enough to at all. So Simon, very big welcome to the Your Happy Hour, the Friday Feels podcast in space. Thank you, Nicole. Very blessed and happy to be here. And yeah, you don't see enough of each other. So hopefully this conversation will also be a catch up for us. Actually, hello to the audience as well. I'll miss them. them, as part of this

wonderful podcast series that you've got going here. Thanks so much and I know you've walked a crazy journey so far in being a human but also a working professional and I feel like you can do it a lot better justice than I can explaining where you've come from and also just a little bit about what this topic maybe means to you the idea of doing business with and how that's played out for you. Yeah sure thank you so much. My journey I guess it starts from the beginning as every journey does. I was blessed enough to be raised in a family of entrepreneurs. My dad had a very entrepreneurial spirit and he was in the education space. My brother was an economist who ended up in the hospitality space and my brother-in-law

was an accountant that ended up in the software space. So we all have these very dynamic career paths that were taken. I think that, you know, growing up in South Africa at the time, you know, from the 80s up until the 90s and then the whole change that happened in the country also had a lot of influence on how, establishment of, first of all, finding one's identity in those types of spaces because I was adopted and I was raised actually in a Jewish family, which is a very stark contrast from many other black children, black kids, black people in the country around about that time, born 10 years before apartheid ended, but also seeing us through that transition and like I said my dad being a very strong business person

leading one of the JEC listed companies at the time had a lot of influence on how I saw the world is a very strict person and you know instilled a lot of principle and then like I said my brother also guiding an approach into business he started off in music and then he ended up in hospitality and then he went into retail and there was such a he's a wonderful person to also reflect on and how that has inspired my diversity in my own portfolio at the current time. So yeah, let me start from the beginning. I think it's important to also sort of look at the foundation of how identity in its construct can define an approach to risk, which is what essentially business really is.

It's a whole bunch of risk that you take on a day-to-day basis. And I tend to say that every day you're presented with two things, choices and opportunities. And at the end of every opportunity is a choice. At the end of every choice is an opportunity that you can explore. I'm proud to say that I was a CES boy, CES being King Edward VII school, so I attended a very strong boys school which also formed a lot of my identity but also gave me a bit of independence because I was a boarder. And being in boarding school, as much as I was one of the naughtiest persons in my group,

I got gated for three weeks in the first three weeks of being a boarder. It built character. I think that that's one of the first things that was character and resilience in approaching the world know, the world of business and the world of entrepreneurship especially. So I spent five years at King Edwards, then I left and I went and studied at BSc in computer science, which at the time I was doing only because my father, who was a very principled person, he actually was a principle himself, and he said you need to have a plan B before you go into what I really enjoyed, which was media. And media at the time was obviously a, still is a very fickle environment. One day you're

doing great, the next day you might not be. Especially, you know, breaking into the industry where we know that there's a lot of scarcity in the market. Post-COVID has also been a challenge, but he definitely said to me, have a Plan B, which helped me a lot. My Plan B actually had to come into play later on in my life. Yeah, I left, went and studied a four-year degree, and then I did not enjoy it so I jumped straight back into media.

Or let me say rather I jumped into media at that point because I hadn't started that. And I spent 22 years in the media industry as a filmmaker learning from the bottom. At least I'd done drama and photography. as a filmmaker, learning from the bottom. At least I'd done drama and photography. So that really laid a good foundation for me to jump into this career. But because I was always trying to innovate and always trying to do more,

I started my first business when I was 21 years old, not really knowing how to do business. Although I had studied business management as a module, I wasn't quite in tune with what was the environment of running a business. And in those 22 years in the media industry, running my own business, got through the hurdles, we did very, very well. In the first four years, we were already making seven figures. And then, again, scarcity and instability from the industry comes into play. But I think one of my most fortunate aspects of being in the industry was when I was recognized

for my leadership abilities after a couple of nominations and demonstrating my skill set and my prowess in leading the projects that I did. And I was pulled into assisting in the launch of one of the top television channels in the country. And that also then inspired me to then further myself and go and study more of the business environment and embark on a journey to become a business professional, whatever that means, because even as a professional, it's always try and error. But I think that that's what led to the plan B coming into play, because then I pivoted into the software environment where we now have an amazing tech solution that is going into markets and we started that

from the ground up and you know we've got a United States patent on it. Much as that's hard work to build a startup especially in an economy such as South Africa's economy we have made amazing strides to get to where we are where we actually supplying to government on that project. I've now ended up becoming an advisor and a person that advises government is a lobbyist and an advocacy person, an advisor, advocacy. The words aren't coming to me right now, but essentially I head the South African Guild of Editors. I sit with the South African Screen Federation and we talk about the issues in the industry that led to the scarcity and the instability of the industry. And I'm now

part of, you know, trying to find those solutions. And that's part of me saying, you know, I wish to give back to an industry that kept me safe for many years and raised me. And now I really want to allow for the next generation to pick up and have something better if we can lay that foundation for them. So that's in a nutshell my journey without over embellishing some aspects of it. Yes, we've dabbled in hospitality ventures there, I used to sell wine at wine fairs, I was a waiter at one point, but essentially I think the main trajectory has led me to where I am today and you know if I was to talk to me 20 years ago I'd say this is not where we expected to be but that's a very good place to be. Thank you for taking us on that journey and yeah it was reminding me of all the amazing things that you've done and it's

really great that you are being able to enjoy the space that you're in now, I think, after dabbling in so many different things. And I always think life takes you where you need to go in some way. It sounds like that's kind of been the journey for you. And I really wanted to have you on in this topic and theme because you have walked a doing business with journey in so many different industries and so many different ways. And you've also, I remember when we just started speaking about this and you said, well, I don't do business with family anymore.

So I think you've obviously had this journey of, you know, sometimes we have interesting people that we do business with along the way and every industry or environment that we find ourselves in, whether that is like with family or with friends, because sometimes we do go into business with friends and we always hope that it goes well. So yeah, how have you found that part? The people that you work with, that you've worked with, what has been the dream business with the interesting stories that you feel that you may have walked away from or that you remember fondly, anything that comes to mind for you? Sure. You know, on a normal day that would be a very tough question to answer because I guess I always say people will be people but those people that you hold close to you,

you sort of put them up on a pedestal and want them to be perfect and you want to see them as perfect and you know everybody is perfectly imperfect. We all have our own way of doing things, we all have our lived experiences that inform where we are right now, we have our existential experiences that impact us highly in terms of how we see the world, how we engage the world, how we engage each other, how we engage ourselves, how we treat ourselves. And it's very important to keep those things in mind. So I'm an empath and you know I have this level of adoration for people where I see their potential and I want to grow people. Hence, I'm proud to say that I've mentored people into their career paths that are still doing very, very well. And in that level of mentorship, I've lost many people as well because of other personality

differences or, you know, different environments that we grow up in. And growing up in a very diverse environment gave me an opportunity to exist in two very, very different worlds at a time that was highly contrasted in that. So it took me a long time to find my true identity. And in searching for that identity, I had to go back and think about why it is that I feel like I don't know myself. Also having issues with my biological father

whom I had an abandonment complex, but being raised in such a wonderful and warm family also allowed me to nurture that empathy that I had for people. So when it comes to working in a family environment, we were blessed to be, I was more blessed because I think a blessing was handed down to me by virtue of me being part of this family that was entrepreneurial. And my brother had started a restaurant that was growing and it was one of the most influential restaurants

in the country at the time. I'm not going to mention its name now simply because I don't think that's relevant to the story but it was a restaurant that brought Africa in its diversity and complexity to South Africa and it served an international clientele with the authenticity of being an African restaurant. Those that understand that will pretty much know what that restaurant was and I was raised in that environment in such a way that we as a family were part of developing not only the strategy but the trajectory of that restaurant. My dad was involved in it, I was involved in it to a point where I went from being a

waiter to being a manager in that restaurant at a very very young age. I must have been 23, 24 at the time where I was you know working with the most incredible floor managers and executive chefs, you know, running this international restaurant, which became a restaurant chain across the entire country. And that's where I was, you know, sort of baptized in fire to understanding that as much as you can grow something, that same thing that you've nurtured can be taken away from you as well. So in 2014, unfortunately that restaurant collapsed due to certain administrative issues and we maintained a certain portion of that

restaurant as a franchise and, we were all involved. My office was in that restaurant. My media company office was moved to that restaurant. I did business from there, hosted meetings there, but I also would get involved in eventing and dealing with large customers because we had functions that were like 500 seats of functions at that restaurant.

And from a family environment, when that transition happened, it devastated and shifted the family dynamic in such a way that as a family, you start to see the effects of being overly empathetic or overly conscious of a close family member's opinion on something that if it wasn't that family member, you would see it critically and you'd be able to ask the right questions in order to solve that problem because that's essentially what it is. You've got to solve a problem and then that problem is solved. Great. What's the next problem?

You've got to solve that. But when you look at it through an empathetic eye, you will say, that's okay, I'm going to forgive that problem. It's a small problem to deal with. But as you forgive that small problem, the next problem will arise. And just to save the relationship, that's what leads to the biggest problem. And then when you're trying to solve those big problems, you're not sure whether you solve the first problem or the big problem because

It's too big to handle at that point and there's actually a theory that goes with this. It's called the broken windows theory. So When that happened there was a fallout in the family it became Uncomfortable, but we pushed on I mean we're all great now. Everything's wonderful. But you're challenging yourself. You're challenging, do I still want to talk to this person? But you can't ignore them because that person is family. Can I still be angry at this person? To a limit, that person is still family. And I guess those are extreme examples, you know, those broken windows that go unfixed and then they become bigger problems. We forgive, we forgive, we forgive and then there's a break.

It's like everything can just shatter there and then it becomes somewhat like a marriage that becomes a divorce which again is the danger of getting into business with friends as well because you in a one way want to sacrifice the friendship but at the end of the day if you don't focus on the principles and forget about the sensitivity of the relationships, you know, then one of them has to go. And unfortunately, in most circumstances, the business will fail to save the family.

And then, I mean, I hate to think that family doesn't fail to save the business as well. I hate to think that family doesn't fail to save the business as well. But having a strong family, we stuck together. But I definitely stopped doing friends with business as well because of that. And it's the inability for some people to separate the friendship from the business that makes it very hard for us to have an argument now and then go and have a drink and laugh at each other later. But then come back tomorrow morning

and not be sensitive about what we spoke about yesterday, what we thought about yesterday. Still be able to look each other in the eye and engage clients and strategy and allow yourself to disagree but not lose any love or any feelings towards each other simply because you disagree on a principle or a way of doing things etc. And a lot of people struggle with that. Again, I would like to say that I am an empath it does affect me a lot but there's a point where you have to put it to the back of your mind and say it's business at the end of the day. Thank you for sharing so openly about that because I

think a lot of people will be able to resonate with what you experienced and probably not speak about it so openly and that's great. And I'm so glad to hear that you guys are all cool now. And also the beauty of our family is that you always kind of unconditionally love one another, right? We hope. It doesn't always work like that. But I have an issue with unconditional love though.

We can go into that now. But I'm glad that you keep bringing it back to identity because I'm also quite empathic. I've been through my own marriage and divorce because of that. And I can so resonate with what you're saying in the sense that it is the small things that become the big things. And it's that I want everything always to be in social harmony and be okay, that ends up making it not okay in the end. So I'm really grateful that we could kind of delve into that a little bit.

And I think it's really important to choose your tribe and who you're doing business with. And a lot of people who listen to the podcast are entrepreneurs and are in startups. And it's such a vulnerable time when you're trying to bring this idea off the ground. And so when things aren't solid in that and then you can't be yourself, like you say, you can't disagree, then that's really difficult. So I am curious though, quickly,

obviously you've had quite a lot of like business challenges and this was one of them. And I'm sure there've been many others. What has been like your carry-through like your someone said something, your advice, your mantra like what what do you hold true to you that makes you kind of be resilient or is it that you've kind of went and found that identity you were talking about that it took you a long time? What a powerful question that is. You know it comes back again it comes back to upbringing and identity. I carry a duty not only through heritage or lineage but

definitely through legacy. I'll talk about it from the gains of my existence, bequeath them in posterity, because I'm a first. And being a first is quite a complicated thing that you're carrying a big weight on your shoulders and maybe mine is twofold because I'm actually directly named after my maternal great-grandfather which would make me the second of my name but I'm also the lastborn child of another family.

So what does that mean because I'm the first in my family to finish school, I'm the first in my family to go to university. I'm the first in my family to start a business. I'm the first in my family to earn over a certain threshold. I'm the first in my family to engage the world in the way that I engage the world. But then on the other side, I am the last born. So I'm the last in my family to start a business. I am the last in my family. So I carry this incredible burden on my shoulders and you know from a mental health perspective, there's a point at which you have to rest otherwise you tend to go insane because I deal with a multitude of stress-related issues

because of this heavy burden that I carry but through professional intervention I discovered some of the issues that I'm dealing with were actually related to my identity and past traumas because you're still dealing with those abandonment issues so you say to yourself that I don't want to start something that I am going to quit and give up on because my biological father quit and gave up on me. But again, you say to yourself, I don't want to be that type of a father to my children. So I don't have children yet. I don't want to start that journey until I know

that I'm gonna be in a position where I won't be either forced to quit, because that happens as well, or quit by my own volition. So that's kind of what keeps me going because not only do I walk or traverse this world by myself, but I carry the name. I carry the token of being first. I carry the token of being the last person, like the wolf that is walking at the back of the pack

that makes sure that the pack is also going to be okay. I still carry that burden as well. And that also comes with being blessed with opportunity because being raised in a, I'd say in a privileged environment and then you look at the contrast of what the rest of either the country looks like or the rest of the world, what the world looks like and you say to yourself, I'm blessed to be where I am, I wake up and I'm grateful. There's a guilt of gratitude that happens. And that guilt of gratitude sits on you and says, you have to be grateful for this. Because if you're not grateful for this,

then, I mean, why did God or your ancestors give you this honor or give you these blessings to walk this world with, because you carry the name, you know, because you were given these incredible opportunities in life. So those are the things that keep me going, those are the things that make me reflect on myself almost daily. It's become like a meditation or a mantra to have to look back and say, who am I, where am I and where am I going? I love that. That's really powerful.

I do these things called mirror moments and I'm going to bring that into mine. If you don't mind, I'll steal it from you. It's really powerful to kind of go through that reflection every day. On the topic of, I mean, I won't ask you 10 years ago, did you think you'd be where you are now because as you said, you didn't think you'd be where you are now. The journeys looked very different. But what is kind of on the horizon for you? Like a year from now, where do you see yourself?

What are you working on, what can we celebrate with you from a Friday feels perspective? I guess I'm the type of person that doesn't like to celebrate until I know the job is done which I always tend to be a little bit tough on myself about because you know you should always celebrate the small wins as well. I'm going to answer your question about 10 years ago and I think that in a 10 year span so much happens. Relationships start, relationships die and indeed I didn't think I'd be here to be in the rooms that I'm in with the people that I hold those spaces with and I'm incredibly and profoundly grateful for that. We idolize people and in idolizing those people you don't realize when you become one of

those people. I'm not saying that I am exactly where those people are that I looked up to and said, I want to be that person. But I can't deny through self-introspection and reflection that there's a younger version of me that looks at me and says I want to be where he is. I know it sounds incredibly pompous when I say it like that but when I realize that people will either gravitate towards you because, not because they need you, but because you serve a purpose for them in their lives just by virtue of you struggling through your life or you make what they're going through look easy and they turn to you for that support so ten years ago I was

in a position where I'd given up on the film industry in fact I was working with one of my most wonderful mentors at the time and I had just done a massive show for an international brand I bumped into my mentor at a film screening and he said, I haven't seen you in years. And I realized that at that point, I hadn't actually done any work in the film industry for about two years. And all I can say to him is I'm taking a break but that wasn't the case. I had been shattered by not being able to work, losing a relationship, having to confront the idea of abandonment issues. I actually went out and I found my biological father. I had to go and find him to find that identity,

to understand who this man was before he departed from my life. And that was 10 years ago, almost to the day. That's when I started selling wine. And I did drink a whole lot of that wine as well. But it also taught me how to be an amazing salesperson. And I think that, like I said, answering that question, I had lost hope. And what's interesting is that you look at the world and you now realize why it was so hard for you to

engage this world because you were so stuck in your own mind and you know you you were finding it incredibly difficult to engage with people authentically because would they accept the real you? And it still came back to that contrast of growing up as a child in two worlds, where being a black child in South Africa that grew up in the northern suburbs of Johannesburg in a very privileged environment was not something that you speak about when you're dealing with issues of the leading political party and you know you

have to still you know hold the fist because you've also got your own personal struggles that are related to your blackness and you don't realize that those are the things that keep you up at night simply because you still have to deal with the external world and then at the age of 34 I started, you know seeing a professional that unpacked this all for me and Now I'm able to say that I understand myself a whole lot better. Hence I'm open to have these discussions

and I'm free to express my voice because I'm true to self. What would I say to my 10 year old self is just keep going it gets better. As much as there's a lot of worse it gets better because it's those meaningless things the small things that you do that just compound themselves practicing to a point where you're closer to perfect, like I said, perfect imperfections all the time. You building every single day on things that you learn and people that you meet and the true reality of it all is that I would

never have predicted anything that had happened, South Africa or in the world 10 years ago, coming off of that 2010 high and then going into this eight years or so of slow steady economic decline to the massive crash that happened five years ago in 2020, to the slow sort of economic rebuild that's happening now. But in that, as much as you've lost, you've gained. Because you've gained insights, you've gained introspection, you've gained knowledge, you've gained experience, you've gained value, not just in monetary value and wealth but you've

gained value in friendships, relationships, encounters and that's all in the space of 10 years. Like it just passes like that and when you ask me the question it just seems like yesterday. It does go so quickly and so much has happened in the last 10 years. I mean, who knows what the next 10 years or even just the next year holds in for all of us. What you were saying about resilience, what you were saying about the fact that when you delve into yourself and you give yourself that space to know yourself, which is not easy. I think that has always been and will be the hardest struggle

of being human. But knowing yourself and appreciating where you come from, acknowledging it, giving words to it, like you said, that's the most important part. And that's why we have these conversations. That's why we come here on your happy hour to talk about these things and about being a working professional in between all of that because Work is life and life is work, you know, and it all is intertwined in so many ways and on that note I Actually wanted to quickly do a little shout out these conversations wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for our partners which is Riversidefm and RSS.com. So in the capturing of great conversations,

in the reminiscing of how far we've come and where we are going, we say thank you to them. We have gratitude for the fact that we can walk a road with Riversidefm and for anyone out there for the fact that we can walk a road with Riverside FM and for anyone out there who's keen to be in the media space or to capture some cool content, be a podcaster, live stream, they have so many cool new features, do check them out. Even if you just want to capture some of your meetings in an efficient way, I know you also use Riverside FM, Simon, so it's cool to meet a fellow Riverside FMA. Yeah check them out and they've also given our community a really cool discount both those platforms so if you want to reach out to us on the socials

at fridayfields.co and we'll send you the discount codes and then on that also what we've been doing every week is doing a little bit of a shout out to the people, places or spaces that have the fields. And my shout out this week on the topic of mentorship that you mentioned Simon, I wanted to give a shout out to a mentor who means a lot to me in my life. Probably around 10 years ago, maybe a bit more now in Cape Town. And being here, I've been reminiscing about my life in the last, the journey. And I just want to give a big shout out to Dale Williams, who is an incredible coach,

incredible human, incredible mentor, has given me so much time and just has incredible feels. So for anyone in Cape Town or internationally that want to connect with him, we'll put it in the details. And then I want to move swiftly along to a little section called the Gems. So every week we talk about, you just mentioned gratitude Simon, but every week we do the thing called the Gems and it's really just about what you've learned this week, what you've gained or what's been hard. But my Gem this week has been really being back in Cape Town in South Africa, being able to spend some time with friends and family here has been really wonderful, but also bit too sweet in the most beautiful way because two years ago when I left I just took a few suitcases but this time I'm actually packing up some stuff as I moved back to

Paris for the long term. Well who knows how long as we were just saying you never know what the universe will sweep you but yeah it's just been that's been kind of like a bittersweet dream for me this week and just taking in the mountain remembering all the good memories that I've been here and knowing that when I come back it will be with different new eyes. Yeah that was my gym. What's yours been this week? It's so hard to to to express it because it sounds like a negative thing that I learned but for me it's positive because it gives me peace. I learned not to trust without understanding. And if I do decide to trust,

it comes back down to that thing that we said earlier, that I don't believe in unconditional love. Yes. I think that conditionality plays a big role in how we see things. Because if you don't do that, think of doing your checks and balances and verifying to yourself that where you are and what you are getting yourself into is subjectively morally good for you. Then you will deal with those repercussions later.

And I think that, you know, talking about global politics again and how they've influenced the way that we as South Africans are living our day to day lives. The impact of mere words and in making decisions or let me say understanding the impact of words in influencing decisions. And it sounds so rudimentary but it hit me so hard that the utterance of a single sentence through a country back 30 years, everything is now disrupted. So what I learned this week is take responsibility, accountability for knowing not to trust without understanding what you're

trusting. I love that. They say trust but verify, right? I love that and it's such an important thing. And thank you for sharing that. I appreciate that. And then I have one more question for you. But before I go in there, I just want to ask everyone who's listening out there, what has

your jam been for the week? What are you feeling about doing business with people and doing business with yourself? Perhaps you're still getting to know yourself in some way. And yeah, what are your feels? We want to hear all about them. So let us know. And we love reading your messages. And then before we do ask one more question, I want to make sure everyone knows how to find you Simon

and connect with you. So is the best way on LinkedIn and we'll put it in the socials. If you go to Google and you just type my name, I will come up. I'm fortunate enough to be profiled by Google. I'll come up as a film producer but then you'll find my LinkedIn and then we'll list everything else that I'm up to, pending updates. Social media I'm available on most the social media

platforms but yeah I'm quite easy to find if you just type Simon Marguella M-A-K-W-E-L-A. But I want to touch on something Nicole that you said. You spoke about harmony. When you spoke about relationships and working together, there'd be working with family or working with friends. You spoke about the word harmony. And the most important thing that a lot of people don't realize about harmony is that harmony is not resonating with

someone at the same frequency but it's resonating at a frequency that can complement you. Just like singing in a choir there's soprano there's alto there's tenor there's bass they don't all sing the same melody and they don't all sing at the same resonant frequency and it sounds beautiful and it's harmonious. The same way that on a piano key you can play a white key and you can play a black key together and it can sound beautiful as a chord, as a harmony. I love that. And the big thing that is very important from a culture perspective, from an identity perspective, in the complexity of everything that we're going through in the world today is to understand that just because you don't sing the

song at the same tempo as somebody and just because you don't sing the song at the same tone as somebody it doesn't mean you can't sing it together. Yeah I love that. That's the same tone and that's the same thing that I'd echo in business as well, you don't have to be agreeable to everything. In fact, the most successful businesses have stemmed from disagreements. Businesses that challenge each other grow because a difference in opinion can be the disruption that you need in a business to innovate in that business, to do better in that business.

Seeing that we're talking about the business of. And it all comes back down to knowing yourself and being able to, these days, I mean not our generation, but the younger generation will say, stand on business. And you're able to do that if you understand what that business is, you understand yourself in that business. We have

a culture that people will start a business and call themselves CEOs without having a board. Who are you a chief executive of? But it's only because you want to rush. You want to rush to the top before you start at the bottom and understand what everything is. And then you want everybody to trust you, but you don't have the understanding of where you are in the business. And I remember once did that and I was like, but who's my board?

Like who am I chief of? Chief needs a tribe. The tribe is the board and the employees and all that. It was just me. I was a one man show in a little business. And I mean, I'm the chief of my own tribe. It didn't make sense. So you're building a wonderful new chapter in France,

and France is known very well for its cuisine. And one of the nice things about food, coming from a restaurant and hospitality background myself, is that a good dish is not just one flavor alone on a plate. A good dish is made up of sometimes savory, next to a sweet, next to umami, next to you know a little bit of a salty but that's what makes a meal a great meal it's a mixture of flavors that's what having harmony is about having those moments where you're like, wow, this is great.

Wow, I love that. Which then brings me back to the to that whole thing of understanding the journey and then saying to yourself, OK, so where am I going to be in 10 years time? You don't know. No, you have no clue. But if you're a person of faith, have the faith, act on it. And the one thing that we always say as entrepreneurs is start today.

We all struggle with it. I mean, we're not all Ashton Hall that wakes up and plunges his head in a ice ball, you it. Brand stocks go up. And, you know, but, but also, you know, he started one day and it took him seven years or whatever it was to get to where he is now. You don't have to be consistent by other people's standards, but start today. Do one thing every day that scares you. That's what Baz Luhrmann said. Everybody's free to wear sunscreen, which is an amazing song. I still live by it to this day.

But that's, if this is the last time you ever hear my voice, I'm gonna say to you that don't lose hope in what could be possible in the future. But most of all, don't lose hope in yourself to be impactful in the future. I love that so much. And thank you for sharing that because and reminding us also that manifestation is real. Because, you know, in the end of the day,

where we are sitting today, where we are as present human beings, we have the ability to change tomorrow. We have the ability to change 10 years from now. And I also believe that there's a beautiful play, a magical play between human free will and the flow of life. You know, and like you say, 10 years ago, you don't know where it's gone, where it's going to be.

And 10 years from now, we might be having a very interesting conversation about everything that's lying ahead for us. And a year from now, I'm sure. So I hope this is not the last time that we have a conversation. And like we were saying, we have to have these more often but I did have one more question for you and we do this thing at the end of our show called the stack and it's our reading list so we put on our website and if you have any books that have been lying on the pile or have you've read and have changed your life

or just that you've heard about that you would like to recommend and what is in your stack Simon? Besides textbooks and research so I have a number of stacks one specifically sits next to my bed those types of books that if I wake up at two o'clock in the morning I'll pick up a book and read. So I don't necessarily read fiction. In fact Stephen King was my fondest fiction writer. I religiously only read Stephen King books. It influenced my writing as a writer, It influenced my writing as a writer, you know, in film, in television. So that stack of books is Sansu's Art of War. It is Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers.

And it is Atomic Habits. I'm not sure who the author is of atomic habits, but it's atomic habits. Then there's another bookshelf that sits on the side of my bedroom. And those are books that I like to pick up and reference. And in that pile is a book that is written by one of the most prolific authors that South Africa has ever experienced. He himself wrote 10,000 manuscripts in Isisulu. And of those manuscripts, one in particular was

translated into Japanese before it was translated into English. And it sits as a UNESCO heritage book. And he was then later awarded a Nobel Prize in poetry and he was our first Nobel laureate

and it's a book called Emperor Shaka the Great that's written by Masisi Kunene that sits next to to a book called Baptized by Fire which is written by a man called Msimile Lo Baltina and that book is inspiring because Mr. Baltina was burnt, third degree burns on his whole body as a, in his young age, a hut, the lining of a hut falling on him when it was on fire and the plastic dripping all over him and how he struggled as a child through his life and then at 28 he experienced a car accident that crippled him from the shoulders down. So he's a double disabled person but in all of his trials and challenges he has become an accountant. He's an amazing accountant and he is also a new father recently. So it's a very inspiring book for me to, again, that gratitude of saying, if there's people

in this world that are going through these struggles, then who are you to complain about what you have, the abilities that you have, you know? So that's one book on a warrior, that's one book on a person that is, I would say, physically less fortunate than I am. And then next to that, there's a book called Indala My Children, which was written by a very profound African sage called Ubabakredo Mutua. Then there's like a whole lot of other books, like Steve Jobs, Walsmick, and you know, but they all sit next to the bed.

But the three, the six that come up are those. Thank you. Thank you for sharing all those. Gosh, there's a lot to add to our stack and I'm definitely going to be delving into some of those that I know I've heard about and I haven't actually picked them up. So thank you and just yeah, I guess we've mentioned the word gratitude a lot today, but I want to say thank you to you for coming on, for sharing so honestly,

for giving us your time today and yeah, just it, it's just a pleasure to have this conversation. And like you say, a wholesome one that may be in a different space and time wouldn't have been. So we really appreciate that we can. So thank you for joining us today. Nicole, it's been an absolute pleasure. And, you know, I thank everybody that listened to my you know endless ramblings about my own life experience. If you want to ask me any questions find me and I'm happy to answer some of those questions but

definitely blessed to have a friend like Nicole who has inspired a podcast like this and I wish nothing but the best and more and more stories to be told on this platform that you've openly given yourself to and that's kudos to you. Thank you. Oh thanks so much Simon. If you haven't just yet follow Friday Feels on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and LinkedIn. You can share with us all your feels this week by tagging us at fridayfeels.co and you can also find the website at that handle. And now as you ease into this weekend, take a moment, celebrate who you've become, what you've overcome and what is yet

to come as you do the crazy and cool things that you do as the authentic you. You know the truth about life and work is that it's hard but the beauty is this global working experience that you're in while we are in it together. So keep connecting, empowering and inspiring this week and of course keep it raw and real. Until next time.