Episode 170 | Adii Pienaar | Entrepreneur, Family Man, Author

David
And it is what's involved. And I got to tell you, for this particular edition, when this book first came across my desk, I got incredibly excited. And then I thought, I have to talk to this man. So we managed to make it. He's kinda agreed to have a chat to us. Who am I talking about? I'm talking about Adii Pienaar.

David
His latest book, Life Profitability The New Measure of Entrepreneurial Success. And you can see why that title got me straight away. Welcome, Adii Good to have you along with us.

Adii Pienaar
Thanks so much for having me this morning, David.

David
So you've you've fitted quite a lot of living into your life so far, yet you don't look like your 120 in the shade and that you are stressed out of your mind. So let's let's talk a little bit about your journey. Tell me a bit about Adii

Adii Pienaar
Yeah, I mean, and that's actually an interesting place to start, right? I think. You know, the one thing before I, you know, just get into a bit of my backstory and how I got to where I am today. I think in David, there's if I've learned one thing when we look at other people around us, we never know the full story.

Adii Pienaar
So, like in your perception, I don't think you're entirely wrong, right? I am not. You know, as I sit here today chatting to you, I'm not the most stressed person ever. It's I think there's many more people around me in this world that's more stressed but that doesn't mean that the last couple of years, you know, for me just personally, right.

Adii Pienaar
In my unique experience with this world, didn't have its own challenges. Right. And I think the reason I always say that is it's easy for for an idea that sometimes while I look at other people and say, you hold it, they're so successful, they've got everything figured out and it's I don't think it's always the case. Right. We only we only know light because we only know dark.

Adii Pienaar
And there's there's always a flip side to that story. As well. So I, I always wanted to, I said you mentioned it, and I thought I would take things aside slightly. But for anyone listening that doesn't know me, kind of a proudly South African firstly, born and bred, capetonian I now live in the kind of outs in the Winelands of Cape Town with my, with my wife and two boys who are six and nine and most people would know me as someone that has bought and sold two software businesses over the years.

Adii Pienaar
The kind of that the biggest success was probably my first business, which I kind of built the first product for in my final year at Varsity while studying accounting at Stellenbosch and has a company called WooThemes and WooCommerce and WooCommerce today is probably off to Shopify as they're kind of the most widely used e-commerce platform in the world.

Adii Pienaar
And we built that from Cape Town, South Africa, which I think is is a really fun story to tell at least. And then I think there are kind of important parts. There is kind of along that journey going from, you know, the first successful business to the second how to be kind of a failure and stumble in between.

Adii Pienaar
I've since kind of gotten to, you know, starting a new business again because I've learned that that's just the thing that I do again in the software realm. And just before that, I got stuck into writing the book, which is Life profitability. And the biggest part of why I wrote that book was, as I mentioned initially, is just starting auditing the the non-business, the nonprofessional, the non ambitious things that I kind of only got to realize much later on.

Adii Pienaar
My life was a challenge along the way. So even though I had all this business success, there were many things in my kind of personal life that didn't work out in the way that I hoped. And I created a lot of collateral damage there, which is, why I got to kind of this notion of thinking through like if I start a new business, what how can I build a better business and essentially not build a better business, but essentially kind of live a better a better life whilst building that new business.

David
Fantastic, I mean, you're right, you've glossed over some of the hard times and everything. And I haven't spoken to one entrepreneur that has not failed a couple of times, that has not had challenges, problems. First and foremost, congratulations on being a reformed accountant. I think that's quite good but second is, you know, one of the inspiring things about talking to people like yourself is the fact that you are proudly South African born and bred, live in South Africa, and yet you managed to create two amazing businesses which which you sold.

David
Was that your intent right from the beginning to create something, you know, add massive value and then sell it on?

Adii Pienaar
No, not at all. I think it's what you do with with themes and WooCommerce right there. And I think this notion firstly that or taking a step back, you know, within the software realm, we often hear about venture capital and all the capital flowing into kind of your tech companies. And when I built the first product back in 2007 and even as a kind of accounting, you know, accounting kind of pre grad graduates and then did my honors in business management, the notion of venture capital, for example, was a it was part of my intellect or academic understanding of the world.

Adii Pienaar
This is how kind of business works. And even though it was the case for my co-founders and I, we never thought about raising venture capital for WooCommerce. We just thought about how do we build a business that's profitable? How do we build a business that allows us to work on things that we want and can you can pay us a salary instead of us having to work for someone else.

Adii Pienaar
So I think to that extent, like even though there was a kind of a trend for companies to raise capital, to focus on building something and selling it to someone else, that wasn't part of what we did. And I think I don't mind I don't mind, you know, kind of entrepreneurs selling their businesses. I think, in fact, I think it's an amazing experience to do.

Adii Pienaar
So there are many, many benefits that go with it's what I just kind of always deter, you know, kind of new or first time entrepreneurs to think about is don't build purely to sell, because I think that focuses you on the wrong goals. I think the goal of kind of you're building a business should always be about how do I of about that journey right about from day one when you start something to when you eventually kind of you sell your move on.

Adii Pienaar
And I think if you are so focused just on the end you're going to gloss over important bits and crucially not necessarily just in the business but the important bits and life as you go on that journey.

David
Sound advice there. Now a question that I would I would like to ask is, you know, WooCommerce let's have a look at that. And I know one of the things that we need in this country is we need more entrepreneurs, No one and even people who are self-employed, maybe they only employ two, three, five other people, but we need them.

David
And we hear so much about this fourth industrial revolution and going online. And, you know, you can make yourselves an absolute fortune online. And yet very few people seem able to do that. Now, you've created the software, and it's it's done fantastically well. In fact, in the other side of our business, we use WooCommerce as well. So you know, in terms of people that are thinking about this, because in this country at the moment, there's a lot of people that are kind of lost.

David
They're a bit in-between. They've either been retrenched, COVID has missed them around, whatever the case may be. And they're sitting here wanting to start and wanting to do something. And if you listen to some of the Internet gurus, it's quite easy. You buy their little product and its point and click. You sit back, you'll make yourself a fortune.

David
That's not true. Is it possible to make money online still these days?

Adii Pienaar
Definitely. I think there is you know, every day worldwide, there's new businesses popping up and, you know, six months, 12 months down the line there're significant new businesses because they've had all of that growth. So I think that is definitely the case. I think two things probably that I will add there David is that I think there's a lot of romance about starting a business in general, which I think is inaccurate.

Adii Pienaar
I like one of the first things that I tend to do and can have when I chat to someone that wants to be a first time entrepreneur is I actually deter them from doing it. I actually stress test their motivation for it because I actually think that, you know, most individuals are better served to work for a really great company and a really great team.

Adii Pienaar
You know, working on a really interesting part, you can have a problem or or project for them because that path is for most people is more guaranteed way to succeed in life. We all know the stats around entrepreneurship and how difficult it is for for business to fight to survive. So I think that romance is inaccurate. Firstly, and that the caution there always is for anyone that wants to buy a book on entrepreneurship and especially these I know about many of these gurus that you refer to, but please don't do that.

Adii Pienaar
Right. Like many of those people, they have not. They make money by telling you how to make money, which is not the way unless you do the exact same thing, you're not going be able to learn from them. So I deter people from from doing that. The second part is probably easier, which is it is really hard to get attention for a new business.

Adii Pienaar
That's I think the biggest difference from when I built the first product for WooCommerce in 2007 compared to, you know, launching a new product with a digital physical today in 2021. It is much, much harder to get attention because and part of it is because it is so easy to start a business today. So in every single space, in every single niche, there is just more people trying to sell, you know, and customers are things.

Adii Pienaar
So if you want to do that, I think it really, really, really gets intimate about solving a really specific problem for a really specific type of customer. And what that typically means is find one person to pay you for something and then find a second person where you can replicate what you did with the first one. And take on that learning.

Adii Pienaar
Oftentimes when I chat to such a young entrepreneurs, they have these grandiose ideas and visions and it might be viable, but they kind of almost starts at step number ten when they still have to figure out how to how do I go from step one to ten? So I can say like the mismatched surgeon is like, can this thing, this idea that I have does it drive real commercial value for someone and can I find more of those someones over time to create a viable business out of this idea that I have?

David
Yeah. Once again, very sound advice and you know, you can hear that that comes from the heart. This is Watts Involved. My special guest is Adii Pienaar. We're talking about his latest book, Life Profitability The New Measure of Entrepreneurial Success. More from Adii when we come back. And we're back with what's involved and my special guest, Adii Pienaar, Life Profitability, the new measure of Entrepreneurial Success.

David
That is the book. And it's one that I thoroughly enjoyed going through. And I think we're going to dive into this a little bit. We might meander because I tend to meander a bit in the book. You know, you state right on the cover, the new measure of entrepreneurial success. Now, I know a lot of people who are in the entrepreneurial space.

David
And according to them, if you want to be an entrepreneur, yet you give up on everything that's fun and that you enjoy. And it's this hard grind. 24, seven, and one day you might reach this mythical goal that you've set for yourself. You don't feel that way.

Adii Pienaar
No. In fact, I think, you know, a big part of you know, I think a big part of being an entrepreneur is really going inwards for me., right. And trying to figure out like why, you know, why do I do these things? And I think just my realization that even though that kind of money still makes the world go round, why is I think, you know, capitalism is the predominant, you know, methodology or system that we use worldwide, especially in the Western world in terms of how we run our societies.

Adii Pienaar
So I can't ignore the money part of this, but I think being an entrepreneur is about much more than that. And the biggest part of it is about, you know, if you if anyone is familiar with Maslow's hierarchy is ultimately about that self-actualization. And I think money is just a small part of that to other parts, really, you know, is you know, for me, for example, is about, you know, being able to make things being able to create things, you know, having an opinion about those things that I put out in the world or ultimately kind of you're doing things in my business that helps me kind of live, live the kind of life that I

Adii Pienaar
want, which should include things like my family, my rights and my and my home life and making sure that I can make do investments there. So that's that's the kind of thing that I that I'm trying to flip the conversation or add to the conversation about entrepreneurship is that it's not as as narrow as just saying, you know, work really hard for years and years and years and there's going to be financial reward and trying to figure out how how can you still do that whilst also in the kind of interim have a really great life journey that doesn't neglect all those other important parts of ourselves.

Adii Pienaar
And our lives.

David
Yeah, but you see this is now the $20 million question because as I said, it's one of those growth at all costs. And in a lot of times the guys wake up when they've hit what they determine as success. And there's just all of this collateral damage lying around them and most of most of their life is kind of gone by.

David
So we are looking in terms of what you're suggesting, and it's a trend I've noticed over the last year or so, businesses, people are becoming more conscious, they're becoming more aware, they're becoming more human. So this is the premise of your book. So so where would we start Adii?

Adii Pienaar
I think kind of perhaps this is defining, you know, where the term life profitability comes from. David and the very simple definition there is, you know, if we consider profitability in the way that most of us would understand it, which is financial profitability, what I really want to think through is, you know, how would I build a business that is not just financially profitable in that kind of narrow sense of the word, right.

Adii Pienaar
But it's also kind of profit life profitable in the broadest, most diverse, most holistic sense of the world. And when I say that, I said I think I start thinking about my my own life portfolio. So in the same way that I think about a kind of investment portfolio and you want to have different asset classes and things in that investment portfolio, that's how I think about my life portfolio.

Adii Pienaar
As well and do everything I think, you know, kind of my my work, my financial success, that is just one of those assets or stocks in my life portfolio. But there are many other things there, whether it's my my estimate of my family or my home life, my family being my highest value right, or whether it's about creating space for me to kind of geek, geek out about wine or, you know, play some Fifa on my PlayStation, that's the only game that I play these days as an adult, at least or whether it's kind of you exercising regularly and making sure that I stay healthy and I sleep well, etc. I like all of those things are

Adii Pienaar
in there in that life portfolio. And I need to figure out like how do I simply run and build and grow my business in a way that's kind of not just doesn't detract from that life portfolio, but actually empowers that life portfolio because I think your life comes first. Work is merely part of life. Like, I don't think, you know, I don't think we live to work and neither do I think we we work to live.

Adii Pienaar
I think work is just part of life. So the thing I should be optimizing is life, not work.

David
Yeah. And this is the challenge because, you know, you end up as an entrepreneur very often. And I know one of my shortcomings is there's only one person that can do it right. And that's me which is a challenge in and of itself. But also that that burnout, that sort of lack of sleep and lack of being healthy what that can do in the long term, you know, it's all good and well if you have a business that's making money, but if you're an absolute emotional and physical wreck, what's the point So so then, Adii if I understand you correctly, we start to decide what is important in our lives.

David
And the nice thing is in the book, you've got in those various chapters that you go through, you talk about it. It's very much, I think, a roadmap. So we've now decided okay, you know, this is this is what we want to do. We want to break this this traditional mold of what an entrepreneur is. But how do you then go about doing this?

David
What are your steps that you follow?

Adii Pienaar
Okay. So I think like in that in that kind of you mentioned roadmap by David, I think the way I kind of visualize this for people firstly is and this is on the book cover itself. It's not as evidence of the book cover. It's slightly so it's a bit of a metaphor in that kind of a visual attached to it.

Adii Pienaar
But is this idea of concentric circles and the concentric circles? There are three layers to that. And at the core you have yourself and then the kind of next, you know, circle outwards from that is the others in our lives. So whether that's kind of your family, friends you know, our employees, our team members or customers, all of those stakeholders would play into that realm of others, our society as a kind of broader community, as a whole, for example.

Adii Pienaar
And then only that last layer is almost the kind of the business which becomes more of a a canvas for the other things to kind of you play outside. And as a manifestation of doing the first or getting the first two concentric circles, why it's right that self and the other. So I think if I kind of gave someone that kind of roadmap, my first kind of advocacy almost for anyone is to to really go kind of sit, you know, take a step back from life.

Adii Pienaar
I go and I said, you know, go inward again and start with your own personal values. And the reason I say that is, you know, regardless of age, many of us have those things that are kind of deeply important to us. And those things like if we cut away the clutter, we will probably come to a few things that have been very important for us for a long, long time.

Adii Pienaar
And those things are unlikely to change significantly going forward. But yes, something that is crucially important today might not be as important in ten years time, but it's not going to change on a week to week basis. i.e. it's not me saying listen here, I know the tires of my car like they need changing and I'm going to need to change them on a kind of on a monthly basis or whatever the case is.

Adii Pienaar
Maybe I'm a heavy driver like these values are things that are kind of more persistent and the kind of in the medium to long term. And the reason I suggest that everyone gets clear about what their personal values are is I don't believe it is possible to to build a business or to start any kind of professional endeavor.

Adii Pienaar
So I don't think this just applies as if you're you know, kind of employed working somewhere else and you're truly ambitious. Like the same thing would apply here if you aren't in alignment with your own values at the start of that journey. There is almost zero chance that you're going to kind of you grow your way into alignment of those values and kind of two or three, four or five years time in future.

Adii Pienaar
So and the reason why that is the case is if you're already out of alignment, if this opportunity that you're pursuing and you're kind of in your own business or professionally is already misaligned with who you are. Right. But that misalignment, misalignment, it's going to stay there. And on that journey, there's only going to be one common denominator and that's going to be yourself, right?

Adii Pienaar
Everything else can change the go. The product can change, customers can change, team members can change. You know, people get divorced, families change. You can move country. So your surroundings change. Everything else can change, but you're still going to be there. And I think facing that, I wouldn't say it's a hard truth maybe initially, but the truth about who you are already and trying to work with, that's like that's I think is as crucially important as as anyone starts and again, hence why I mentioned earlier, like depending on what that you know, what that clarity kind of brings for any individual, the the best answer might be that A, this you know, this entrepreneurial path is

Adii Pienaar
not congruent with what you want to achieve or it's not the best way to achieve and serve those highest values. There might be alternative routes to actually doing that.

David
Okay. I'm laughing a little bit now because just before we started, I said to you, I might tend to go off on a tangent. And the interview is quite selfish for me because I'm fascinated about what you do. This is now become even more unprepared and more of of me just, you know, flying off the cuff because my cat has just come and sat on my notes that I've read that I've sort of made.

David
And he's laying right on them. So from now on, we're flying without a safety belt, just saying, perfect, perfect. Anyway, it is what's involved my special guest is Adii Pienaar, author of Life Profitability The New Measure of Entrepreneurial Success. More from Adii when we come back. And we're back with Adii Pienaar, and we're talking about his new book and about life and all sorts of things in general.

David
His new book, of course, Life Profitability. The new measure of Entrepreneurial Success. I suggest you go out and get the book if you are in any way, shape or form, entrepreneurially minded. Now, Adii just the other day, I was chatting to Pepe Marais about his new book, Ten Habits That Break Habits, and we got into a very interesting space where he said, What is your purpose and what is your business purpose?

David
And he said, it can be broken down into one word and him and I were chatting afterwards, and when I came to my one word, I've literally been gobsmacked since then and I'm still trying to figure out my way around that one. But you mentioned now that you've started these two very successful businesses, you've sold them, you've moved on.

David
You're now in the process of launching another one. Are we are we in a place where you can talk about that?

Adii Pienaar
Oh, yes, totally.

David
Well, so there you are in the Winelands. I could think of worse places to be. What sort of said to you, Adii I need to start another business. And how did you decide what that business was? Because now you're basing it, I assume, on your definition of life profitability.

Adii Pienaar
Yes so I think, crucially kind of that is what I was hoping to do here, is we start a business and do so in a way that I can kind of prove out this this hypothesis that it is possible to build a business that is life profitable. And I think as a as some context, there is many of the ideas as for like profitability kind of came to me and it was learnings from building my previous business conversion.

Adii Pienaar
And I did that very collaboratively with my my team there. So I think we kind of again, that was the kind of the precursor at least to coining the term life profitability as well as is really the culture that my team and I created. So they deal with new business of these days, like how do I how do I now do that?

Adii Pienaar
And you not be not be a complete hypocrites about the things that you're trying to advocate for. I think the kind of what the business is there is that it's another software product that's aimed at e-commerce brands. So which would make it the third. Right. It's just I think to that extent it's probably hits two boxes for me, which is it's an intellectually stimulating challenge, A and B, it's in a space that I know well.

Adii Pienaar
So that's the kind of designing the idea itself. The the why for starting your business is probably more interesting. And for me there, I think there's a few things there, right? I think that are very close to two to my heart in terms of why I want to start a new business. So I mentioned like one of them being I'm a, I'm a creator and a maker at heart.

Adii Pienaar
So I really wanted to do that. I wanted to create something again and put it out in the world. And my way of doing that is just the business right? I think there are many other ways to do that, whether it's kind of writing a book, whether it's arts, but there's many other ways to to create something and put it out in the world that my mind is just building businesses The second part of it is that I really love and we love building teams.

Adii Pienaar
And my, my co-founder and I, we are very passionate about trying to, especially within tech, which is generally very homogenous, right very, very white. For example, and I say that in a, in the most sincere way that I can. You're trying to build a team that is very diverse and starts changing the kind of complexion of what's the kind of your greater tech ecosystem looks like.

Adii Pienaar
And again, like that, that really plays into my love for building and leading a team as well as finding those truly unique, magical individuals and, you know, creating opportunities for them to to grow that magic effectively. So those are three things that were top of mind for me and building new business, much more so than the financial success because initially and again, I say that from a privileged position, if, you know, if this business does not work out, I have the space to to reset and try something else, which means I am in that fortunate position that I can optimize for other things in in that business, which, as I said, is creating something new and

Adii Pienaar
building a really, really diverse team.

David
Now, just whilst you're doing this, give me an example then of a life or day life in a day. Sometimes I feel I live that a day in the life of Adii Pienaar, I mean, are you now as Tim Ferriss liked to say you know, able to do the four hour workweek? Or is that a myth, as I suspect it is?

Adii Pienaar
I think I think if you even if you asked him, I don't think he ever worked only 4 hours, at least initially. I think he does today. But I think the kind of four hour workweek was just to prove a point. And I think I only ever skimmed through the book, by the way, I read the abbreviated version. So I understand the gist of it.

Adii Pienaar
And you know, ultimately, again, I would take that with a grain of salt. Like no significant successful business was built on only 4 hours a week. But what that means for me and my kind of your work day and work week, David, is that I have flexibility at least. Right? I, I have the space to decide how, how urgent and how important some things are, which ultimately means if I, I tend to my best example probably you know, if I take my Fridays, I tend to never have scheduled meetings on a Friday to clear my calendar.

Adii Pienaar
And on some Fridays by lunchtime I tap-out I, but I don't do work right. I, you know, start my weekend early almost whether that's kind of, you know, with a little lunch catching up with a friend and then that just rolls into a braai, you know, on a on a Friday kind of early evening. Right. And then on other Fridays, I have one of my most productive kind of your deep work sessions that I had that week.

Adii Pienaar
And I think like for me, when I think about the way I work and in a kind of in a very small sliver of how I would define life profitability is to be able to work in a way where I can follow my own natural energy and have that flow states and not have the business dictate this year.

Adii Pienaar
80 like you need to push through 80 hours this week because that's the only way to make progress in the business. I think that kind of you that binary thinking that when we get ourselves into a bit of a kind of a you know, between a rock and a hard place about how to how to move this thing forward that we're creating so that my my weeks tend to I like the flexibility, I like the newness every week I obviously have habits, but I don't cling to them habits and routines, but I don't cling to them, you know, too tightly.

Adii Pienaar
I prefer the slightly looser approach and, you know, literally playing playing every week as it as it happens.

David
Sir, that's quite incredible. I mean, you know, just the fact that you talk about taking your Fridays off weekends as well. I mean, you often hear if you're an entrepreneur, there is no such thing as a weekend. On a fundamental level. I disagree with that because I think when I'm not stressing about the business which is I think any entrepreneur or business person, self-employed does all the time.

David
You know, they wake up in a cold sweat at 2:00 in the morning but when I'm most creative and when the ideas come to me is when I get out of my own way. And that often is when I am relaxing and enjoying time with family and friends. Do you find this?

Adii Pienaar
Yes, totally. Right. So I think that the most recent example is I had a really fun stretch of work last night from eight to about ten when I went to bed nights, because that's when, you know, many of my international friends in the States and customers were awake and things like there was just a lot of energy there.

Adii Pienaar
And I followed that. Right. And similar to what you said, there is I often on Saturday mornings, you know, maybe the family and I kind of, you know, we spend some time together, you know, having breakfast somewhere, going for a hike or whatever. And then when we come back, like mid-morning on a Saturday, everything is calm I've got kind of mental space, it's mental calmness.

Adii Pienaar
And then I often have an hour or so of work right where I am, just kind of, you do calmly and proactively, you know, thinking through what the next week looks like. And oftentimes that just means, you know, catching up on a few emails, moving the kind of you, the needle forward and a few smaller things. So like, I don't think and again, I think it's that that that binary notion that we need to try and isolate kind of work from life and again, I think work is just part of life.

Adii Pienaar
And I think the better answer here is how can we ensure that we're kind of present in the most optimal way in whatever we're doing right now because then we're not trying to fix time. So, you know, what do I need to be present at work from nine to five? And then I you know, outside of that, I need to be present elsewhere.

Adii Pienaar
But instead of the question, just like, what is the most important thing in this moment, and how am I, you know, how can ensure that I kind of honor that moment and just be present? I think that's a much better kind of compass to figure out like should I be thinking about work or should I be thinking about playing Legos with my kids in this very moment.

David
Off the top of my head, Lego with the kids would win, hands down. But anyway, this is Watts Involved. My special guest is Adii Pienaar. We're talking about his book, Life Profitability The New Measure of Entrepreneurial Success. It is an incredibly well thought out book and incredibly well written. And if you are, as I said earlier, of the entrepreneurial mindset, this needs to be on your bookshelf.

David
We'll be wrapping it up with Eddie when we come back. And we're back with Watts Involved and my special guest, Adii Pienaar, talking about the book Life Profitability, The New Measure of Entrepreneurial Success so Adii, you mentioned this new business that you that you're busy with and you're busy creating. How far along the road are you with that business?

Adii Pienaar
Yes. So we we raised the kind of what the what sequence you call a pre-seed round of funding. About two months ago, I was actually excited, by the way, to to actually have a bunch of kind of friends and founders in our space that's participating increasingly you know, for many people listening to me about saying, it is probably had too much of his own Kool-Aid.

Adii Pienaar
You're, as you know, one of the investors who still runs his business was a direct competitor, literally direct competitor of ours in my previous business. And even though we were competitors, we were still friends and so much so that's kind of, you know, now and a new venture he is willing to kind of, you know, to to back me and participate in this journey.

Adii Pienaar
So just the kind of small little tidbits to prove that, you know, many of these ideas that I share in life profitability isn't just, you know, isn't just the Kool-Aid right and and me trying to propose something that is completely not feasible. But so we raised that kind of that piece funding and have been slowly building the first version of our product whilst trying to be around kind of hand-in-hand that working with a handful of pilot customers essentially.

Adii Pienaar
And I'm happy to report that we have our first revenue now and the first version of the product should be publicly available to kind of more users also there to a pilot group in the next two or three weeks, depending on how quickly we manage to kind of build the last few bits.

David
Fantastic now, is this something you said it's in the in the digital space again, is this something that is going to help people that have the online presence in the the shops or whatever the case may be? Is that what it's targeted at?

Adii Pienaar
Yes. And probably for slightly more, we're targeting a slightly more mature kind of e-commerce store at this stage. So the product is called COGS which is derived from the acronym COGS, which is cost of goods sold. And essentially what we want to help those brands do is help them make smarter inventory purchasing decisions. And for those that are financially inclined, what it effectively means is how can we help how brands to just optimize the working capital that they need to put into holding physical inventory.

Adii Pienaar
Right? Because the biggest difference between a software business where you don't have to hold physical inventory to any kind of other business, where you do have physical inventory is that if you if you get the decisions to go to inventory wrong with physical inventory, there is significant cost involved. Whereas if you kind of write a bargain code, for example, on software, it is like, yes, there might be costs involved, but it's generally much easier and much quicker to actually rectify that.

Adii Pienaar
So that is that is what we're kind of working on at this stage and very much is I think the biggest thing, David, is again talking about at least having clarity around, you know, my personal values is, you know, all the way from the first kind of product I built with with teams that then became WooCommerce to my second business conversion.

Adii Pienaar
And now with COGS, he is the one recurring theme there for me has always been how how can I help small businesses and this very much falls into that realm. Interesting that for anyone that's that is wondering what a small business means. SMB unites small to medium sized businesses, whereas some small to medium sized enterprises, the Internet defines it as one to 300 employees.

Adii Pienaar
Right. Which anyone that has run a business knows that you know, five or ten team members to 300 like are vastly different beasts, but they're all considered SMB right So I've always tended to focus on the lower end of that and just have a huge passion for kind of ultimately creating solutions. And again, the way I create solutions is mostly through building software, but building software that helps those businesses be slightly better.

Adii Pienaar
And you know, with COGS, the hypothesis is there is that if we can help you make smarter inventory purchasing decisions, we probably help you create additional cashflow and profits which, you know, ultimately gives you optionality. You know, you can either reinvest that into growth initiatives is that's kind of what's best aligned with your journey, or you can kind of distribute that as profits and reinvest that.

Adii Pienaar
That's in kind of other words, in your life outside of the actual kind of your business or work.

David
Fantastic it sounds like something sounds like something that's going to be much needed in terms of of you being a South African and being a proud South African. Is this business going to have a positive impact on South Africans? Says South Africans.

Adii Pienaar
That's always a really great question. And the answer is probably no. That's not what I'm necessarily optimizing for, though. It is you know, we are building a kind of a remote business and team and opinion, and I, I recommend that every business if you can do that like do that's, you know, tap into the global workforce. It is, is a much better way of building a diverse team and doing so in a cost efficient manner because you can essentially, you know, be creative with the composition of of the team by leveraging different different economies, different geographies, different time zones, all of those things can be beneficial.

Adii Pienaar
So to that extent, no, my focus isn't South African and that's not because I'm not kind of patriotic I think it's just, you know, the first the first goal we are should be to create a business that's economically viable and the second part should be that kind of patriotism. What I do hope, though, is that as I mean, I started off introducing myself and saying that I am proudly South African.

Adii Pienaar
And I think the you know, what I do try and do is when I told the story, when we told it, when we co-founders and I tell the story of WooCommerce right you know, few people in the world know that it originated in South Africa and it is actually South African success. So we try and fly the flag to that extent and, you know, kind of you're trying to build will build brand South Africa to that extent.

Adii Pienaar
Right. That's the first part of it. And the second part is, is I hope in telling my story and the way that I've managed to build two kind of global businesses while still being in Cape Town, I hope to inspire other entrepreneurs in South Africa ultimately and say, you know what? You don't have to move to Silicon Valley to build a successful tech company.

Adii Pienaar
Right. You don't like you can do things from South Africa. And in fact, I think South Africa is such a great place to do it because we have such a unique culture and way to think about life. I think that's one of the benefits of being in South Africa whilst building my businesses is the fact that I never subscribed to the echo chambers that we often find and kind of your major kind of major cities, major tech hubs.

Adii Pienaar
And I had a different perspective, I think, which is which has been a competitive advantage. So I would say double down on that, double down to the fact that we live in a country that offers a lot and has a generally low cost of living. Right. And do that arbitrage. And by all means, if you if you can build a global business or at least international business from South Africa, then, you know, that makes even even more sense.

Adii Pienaar
So I think those are I don't think the business itself has a direct impact or benefit to South Africa. That's not what I'm optimizing for. And I, I wouldn't pretend that that's the case. But I said I still hope that there is that halo effect where, you know, I said I wear my South African, my South African nature and nationality on, you know, proudly on my sleeve.

Adii Pienaar
And I hope that that has kind of effect of building brands in Africa and inspire inspiring others and Africans to to do things that, you know, are aligned with their unique, magical selves.

David
I think you are doing it, and I think it most certainly will. And certainly it's such an inspiring story. Adii just another another question. If you were to give anybody that's listening to this that's thinking about being in a business or that are already business owners, what piece of advice would you give them?

Adii Pienaar
So similar, I would want to think through some of the kind of answer. The question would be slightly different, whether it's someone that wants to get into business or someone that wants to kind of has it in business and is finding them in a little bit of a tough spot in that business. Right. And I think the the question I would go back to is like, what why like why do you want to start a business?

Adii Pienaar
Why are you and why did you start this business if you started it a while ago? And I think crucially it is that if you ask many entrepreneurs why they want to be in business or why they started the business, they tell you kind of a version of freedom, why it's so something that's sounds like I want to be in business for myself because I want the freedom to work when I want with whom I want on what I want, how I want, etc. So there's a definition of freedom there.

Adii Pienaar
But what we often neglect and you're being honest and transparent about is as soon as you get into business for yourself, you start trading many of those freedoms. And I'll never forget when I only spent six weeks in corporate post university before I started working on resumes full time and I sat down like I remember, like it was an hour in our living room, old dated, you know, so I can remember I had this floral pattern to it.

Adii Pienaar
And I sat him down in my kind of corporate attire that I only used for six weeks. And I said, you know, in the context of my dad, you know, since I was kind of a young adult at least, or a teenager for that matter, and I had some kind of intellectual kind of memory here, my dad was entrepreneur himself.

Adii Pienaar
And I said, my dad down. I said that I want to quit my job. This thing I'm doing on the side is kind of making me the same are money that I'm getting from my corporate salary. I think it's safe to say that there's something there and I can make the jump. And he said, Son, I don't think you should do this, but if you do, do this, just remember one thing.

Adii Pienaar
And it's that's the kind of the toughest boss that you'll ever have is the boss that you'll beat yourself. And I kind of laughed it off at that stage because I didn't understand what he meant. And I, I now understand more of that and I'll connect the dots too. Why is that kind of why tell that story in relation to sacrificing freedoms, right?

Adii Pienaar
If we take the state of the world today and we take the fact that all of us, most of us listening here have smartphones that we carry around in our pockets, we are super connected and we are more connected than we've ever been. And if you're a business kind of owner, then you're constantly connected to your business. There is so much, by the way, of my work that I can do purely for my phone.

Adii Pienaar
But yes, I can't necessarily kind of, you know, create a massive Excel spreadsheets. Right but I can have so many conversations, do so many kind of smaller things, keep the business machine moving forward just for my phone. But in saying that that's a massive freedom that I've exchanged my it's for these are the freedoms that I've gotten. Someone that has a nine to five corporate job generally closes their office door at five and only think about work again next morning at night when they get to office or, you know, they don't thank me.

Adii Pienaar
You mentioned thinking about work and stressing about it, you know, 2 a.m. or of a weekend people that are employed generally don't have this similar level of stress. So that's why I think like go back to what that initial reason is for starting a business. And that's initial version that probably involves some kind of freedom that you want to attain by doing this thing.

Adii Pienaar
And then ask yourself if you're starting out, does do you kind of what is it like? Do you review achieving those freedoms? Right. And what do you need to be aware of as you go in the journey? And if you're in business and you kind of feel stuck and you feel like you don't have the freedoms like this has not been as great as you figured this journey as an entrepreneur would be, you figure out how how you can perhaps realign your business to start giving you those freedoms that you that you wanted to kind of pursue and achieve at the start of your journey.

David
Wonderful stuff. And some great advice there from Adii Pienaar. He is the author of Life Profitability The New Measure of Entrepreneurial Success. Adii this is this book is available in bookstores and also online, isn't it?

Adii Pienaar
Yes. All major physical bookstores, though, still exist. Exclusive books, the likes should carry still carries it. It was a recent kind of recommended read and exclusive books as well, which is a which is a nice achievement. And then otherwise, I think it would Takealot or Loot. The other major online retailers also carries it and can get it to you within 48 hours.

David
And then on Amazon, as well, I assume.

Adii Pienaar
Yes. For international readers it's on Amazon or if you prefer a digital copy Kindle it is on Amazon store Amazon Kindle Store as well.

David
Fantastic stuff go out get it. It is a fantastic book well-worth the read well worth having it on your bookshelf Adii Pienaar, thank you so much for taking the time out and having a chat to us and we wish you all the best and go from strength to strength with your new project.

Adii Pienaar
Awesome. Thanks so much, David.

David
There we go. That wraps it up for what's involved this particular edition of it to each and every one of you. Look after yourselves. Take care and thank you for listening.