February 6, 2026 • 49 mins
On this weeks Money Show, Amanda Cromhout discusses how loyalty, CRM and data‑driven customer strategy translate insight into revenue and retention; Advaita Naidoo explains why traditional management structures are weakening and how leaders can better guide modern teams; Adrian Maizey reflects on expanding Starbucks across sub‑Saharan Africa alongside a high‑powered global finance career and elite endurance sport; and Ian Mann reviews Money by David McWilliams, unpacking its lessons on economics and society.
The Money Show is a podcast hosted by well-known journalist and radio presenter, Stephen Grootes. He explores the latest economic trends, business developments, investment opportunities, and personal finance strategies. Each episode features engaging conversations with top newsmakers, industry experts, financial advisors, entrepreneurs, and politicians, offering you thought-provoking insights to navigate the ever-changing financial landscape.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Seven. You're listening to the best of The Money Show.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
The Money Show.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
Welcome to the Best Bits of the Money Show, a
digest of some of the most important interviews, thoughts, comments
and insights that we've had from our guests this week.
If you'd like to hear more, please go to our
website or go to any of the podcast apps and
search for The Money Show. It would be nice. I
think for people in your life, your community, maybe your household,
maybe your street, WhatsApp group, if there's something going on
(00:29):
that you think they might benefit from one of these conversations,
maybe just stick it on a WhatsApp to them so
they can have the benefit of The Money Show as well.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Well.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
To start some of the news stories that we thought
were important this week and South Africa week, finally, after
a very long time, becoming a full member of the
African Export Import Bank. It's the largest trade institution and
our continent and as a result we qualify pretty much
immediately for an eight billion US dollar financing package. Three
(00:57):
billion of that we'll go to the transformation front kick
that off. But certainly so many years after the end
of A Part eight, we finally joined that bank. Our
Trade Minister parks taous in China at the moment, supposedly
to sign the China Africa Economic Partnership Agreement that will
see all of our exports getting access to the Chinese
(01:17):
markets duty free, a lot of trade with China at
the moment. Partly I suspect because you have the White
House to thank for that. And our national minimum wage
increasing to just over thirty rand for the first time.
That's thirty round an hour. It's an increase of one
rand and forty four cents. It starts becomes into force
at the beginning of March. Tonight, we bring you a
(01:39):
mixture of stories from the world of money, from the
week that has been and how I make my money
this week. Amanda Cromhot, the founder and CEO of Truth
It's a loyalty CRM and customer strategy consultancy. How you
run a really good loyalty program? Why is it that
when you walk into some stores you feel welcome, you
feel part of it, in some store you don't. It
(02:01):
really is that intersection between data, money and then a
little bit of art in there as well.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Amanda, as a consumer, that's exactly what you think of, like,
what is this going to do? For me, shall I
swipe my card? Is it worth it? And at the
end of the day, all the brands that we work
with in the loyalty industry have to make sure that
that's the first and foremost criteria, to make sure that
customers are happy and that it's worthwhile for them, because
if it makes sense for their business but doesn't make
(02:29):
sense for the customer, then ultimately it's not going to survive.
So we spend a lot of our time helping the
brands in South Africa or around the world who we
assist in loyalty programs and so forth getting the balance
right between what is fabulous for the consumer, what's going
to make a difference for the consumer, and also then equally,
(02:50):
what is commercially viable for the brands who are operating
these loyalty programs, Because if one is great for the
consumer but actually is sinking the brand, it's not going
to But if it's great for the brand and not
good for the consumers, equally not going to last. So
it's a balance and I think that's where you said
the science and the soul. It's very scientific from an
(03:11):
economic point of view, from a mathematical returnal investment point
of view, but it's also there is a there is
a soul to it in terms of is this going
to work, is the consumer going to like this? Is
it going to really make a difference versus the competitors
because virtually every brand out there now has a loyalty
program of sorts, so you have to differentiate somehow, and
(03:33):
that's a little bit of the soul coming through. So
it's very scientific, though, don't you know, not to let
that loose.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
I'm going to come back to that because I find
that interesting, but I do want to just focus on
the soul for a second. I mean, what is the soul?
I mean you look at a retail chain and you
think it doesn't have soul, and yet people walk into
it or speak to the workers, interact with people, kind
of know where the sweet counter is, and I think
they they come out of that shopping experience. They do
(04:02):
come out of it moved in some way. I mean,
shopping has become so much less frustrating than it was
twenty years ago.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
Yeah. So, I mean I've had the luxury of working
as a retailer within the retail industry, and I always
that I've heard the best retailers in the world refer
to the retail industry as science and soul, and I
think that's exactly right. There's a very scientific approach to
merchandising and pricing and so forth, but there's a very
the soul of a retailer. So I had the privilege
(04:32):
of working for Wallers South Africa for three years and
we used to you know, the Simon Susman was the
CEO at the time, and he used to talk about
the soul of retailing, like the smell of the strawberries
or the feel of the fabric in woman's fashion and
so on. And it's true, right, like if you smell
a beautiful strawberry in the grocery store, you're more likely
(04:54):
to say I want that, rather than just if it's
based on price and more scientific methods. So and I've
just I mean, a lot of the work that we
do at TRUTH is working with brands around the world,
and I've just had the privilege of working not working
so much so, but visiting a retailer in Australia who
(05:14):
really excelled at the soul of getting close to their
customers and making them, getting their customers to love, love,
love their brand and that's something that's you know, just
data alone or scientific analysis can't create. There's a soult.
There's a soul behind that approach, without doubt.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
It's so interesting to sort of think about how it
works because I sometimes wonder can a brand with a
soul make a mistake that affects the soul but not
the science. And I'll give you an example. There is
a particular British shift that I cannot stand. I haven't
been able to stand him. I couldn't stand Jamie Onlomano
when I lived in the UK thirty years ago. I
(05:56):
can't stand him now now I might be the only one,
but I think, frankly, that's a huge mistake. And sending
me a WhatsApp thing with him actually saying my name
before hitting the drums, I tell you what I wanted
to do with the drumsticks, Amanda. But can you get
the soul wrong?
Speaker 4 (06:13):
Yeah? No, you're making me laugh because I've used that's
a good example of where you're picking up on the soul,
but I pick up on the science because the science
of that is very much that they pick up on
how loyal you are to the brand, and that we're
talking about the famous Checkers sixty sixty and their Simple
Truth brand, and they've used that campaign very cleverly from
(06:37):
a science point of view in terms of understanding what
I shop and talking to me about what I shop.
And I am a simple Truth you know, I do
buy the Simple Truth brand. So they're getting it right
from a science point of view without question. Here in
your case, maybe they're just unlucky that you don't like Oliver,
but you're right, you know that's a brand preference. But
(06:59):
that is and if it completely missed the mark for you,
But for me, that's a great example of a scientific approach,
but the execution maybe is missed the mark for some consumers.
And how they would predict that. I have no idea.
I don't know why you don't like him, but that's
your personal soul.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Well, there's a long list of reasons, but we don't
need to go into that now. I mean, I'm sure
he's sure, he's perfectly nice.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
To do all of this.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
To make it work, To make the science work, you
would need to have data, and I would imagine a
ton of it, and you would need to know who
your shoppers are. You'd need to know how they came
across you, they would need to know if they grew
up coming to your stores. I mean, if you look
at our big retailers, most of them will have customers
who grew up going to them in some way. You
need to know who you're aiming for. The data must
(07:49):
be key to the whole thing.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
It is, of course, but I'll correct you maybe on
one thing is you actually don't need heaps and heaps
of data. So obviously a big national retailer like a
WALLW sort a check or one of the big retail
banks and so forth, they have gogantuum amounts of data
and do amazing things with it with permission obviously from
the customer. With and that's the best news is in
(08:13):
the last five years or more globally but also here
in South Africa, the legislation really does protect the consumer.
So it's if they're not then they're absolutely incomplete breach.
But it's not just the big boys that can can
use the data effectively. We've you know, we're starting to
see and help brands that are tiny organizations that may
(08:35):
just be a corner florist for example. They can collect
data very simply from whether it's signing up for email receipts,
whether it's signing up for a newsletter, and can effectively
as well hopefully change how customers feel about their brand
because they're starting to create this relationship. But obviously with
the big global players or the big national players, they
(08:56):
are collecting rows and rows and rows and rows of
data against millions and millions of customers. And we've seen
the South African loyalty players be recognized globally for the
work they're doing in loyalty and with the use of
their data. So brands such as F and B, E Bucks,
TFG Shop right, they've all been recognized globally for the
(09:21):
work they're doing. And that doesn't just come because they're
good brands and they sell nice merchandise. To be recognized
on the global stage for their data analytics capability. They're
doing so responsibly, so the consumer is always protected, and
so they're adding value to the customer's life and obviously
they'n a commercial return for themselves. And that's what I
started off by saying, it's got to have almost like
(09:43):
a seesaw effect, that it's got to be a balanced
seesaw that the consumer benefits whilst the brand benefits. It
can't be heavily weighted one against the other, Otherwise it
has no sustainability.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
When you're trying to start one of these systems. Let
me go back a little bit to get the customer loyalty.
Does it all boil down to price in the end? So,
I mean, if you look at the two big pharmaceutical
chains that we have, they both have massive loyalty programs.
Does it boil down to who is getting their goods
(10:17):
for cheaper at the end? Or is there more to
it than that? Is that like the be all and end,
or is it just one of the factors.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
Steven, I think you're raising a very good point here
around price sensitivity in the role loyalty place. So we
issue every annual white paper for South Africa. It's called
the Truth and Brand Map white Paper. It's based off
data that it's called a Brand Map study, and we're
about to we're literally writing now and creating the new
(10:45):
white paper for twenty twenty six. So in twenty twenty
five's white paper, we saw the emergence of the power
of loyalty to help the consumer get through month end.
So there were three main concerns in this data by
the South African consumer saying, my biggest concerns in life
(11:07):
are one crime, corruption and money. I don't have enough
money cost of living. So the third reason for people
stay awake at night was cost of living. And then
this study asked, well, what helps you get through the
cost of living crisis and they said, number one, I
(11:29):
cut back on clothing clothing spend, Number two, I cut
back on going out to restaurants, and number three I
use loyalty programs. So loyalty programs have become not so
much a luxury or sort of add on to how
consumers survived, but part of their every day, everyday method
(11:52):
of shopping and making ends meet. So the data last
year was eighty two percent of South Africans use loyalty programs.
And that's not just eighty two percent might think about it,
eighty two percent might have a lorty card, but eighty
two percent actively use loyalty programs, and without giving away
the data for this year's white paper, that number definitely
(12:13):
hasn't gone down, is all I can say at this stage.
So so South Africans. It is one of the most
mature markets in the world, and the South African consumer
is one of the most engaged consumer in loyalty programs,
probably because they need it. And also it's a combination
of needing it and wanting it and enjoying it. But
(12:34):
the needing it is a real big thing here. We
do see that globally as well, but we see it
a lot more here. And I've had I've done interviews
with Clicks or F and B E Bucks, Clicks club Card,
F and B E Bucks who all confirm the same.
They can see how consumers are using their points, whether
it's Kapitech, whether it's Ebucks, whether it's Clicks, whether it's disc,
(12:57):
all of the big loyalty players, they can all see
by the way customers are using it that it's helping
them make ends meet, I mean, clicks go. Milani, Doctor
Milani Van Roy gave a wonderful example of how maybe
a decade ago, customers used to use their Clicks club
Card points on luxuries like perfume or lipstick or you know,
(13:20):
a treat, whereas now it's being used on basics like
soap or toothpaste or toilet roll. So there's a shift
and that we see in the data, you know, and Ebucks.
I've got on record an interview I did with EBU
with F and B E bucks where they say, you
know that our redemption rate is one of the highest.
(13:41):
That's definitely one of the highest in South Africa, Like
over ninety percent of all ebucks issued are used and
that's enormously high. And a lot of the time it's
on essentials like utilities or just getting through month end.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Speaking to Amanda chrom Ho tonight found it CEO of
Truth on how I make my money expert in consumer loyalty, Amanda,
I have a couple of questions about about the level
of engagement that you talk about and how engaged South
Africans are with loyalty programs. Are they differences among along
gender lines? Do you find on one side is more
(14:21):
one side? Are women more engaged by men? There I've
spat out what I'm really asking.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
I love.
Speaker 4 (14:29):
If you'd asked me four years ago, I'd have said absolutely,
and I think the predictable answer would have been lady
women's shoppers, female shoppers or consumers are more engaged in
using loyalty programs more.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
But the very.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Interesting thing is now it's marginally if it's either the
same or just marginally different. And we saw that shift
after COVID. So during COVID, I think with the balance
of folks working from home and then probably more of
a balance of the every day like buying groceries or
popping out to buy nappies or whatever. We saw the
(15:06):
chef change and male consumers becoming much more engaged. So
female consumers didn't drop their engagement, but male consumers have
caught up. We do see a slight difference if you
take it category by category. So typically fashion shopping is
more female dominated by females. In the lordty engagement or
(15:28):
fuel purchases and retail banking is more male consumers are engaged.
But if you take overall in across all South African
lorty programs at South African consumers is pretty much like
for like in an age. If you look at age differences,
we see a younger consumer. By younger we say between
eighteen and twenty five, they are very much less engaged,
(15:52):
and I think it's a reflection of their ability to spend.
You know that either just starting out in life or
still students or unemployed, so they have less disposable income,
less need of using lorty programs. But that's that catches
up we're not seeing that gap get bigger every year,
(16:12):
but we're not seeing the catch up to the average
South African consumer.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
You talk, I know, you speak internationally and you've spoken
in many places and very big events too. Are our
consumer programs different to what happens in other countries? I mean,
I mean, I would think the Americans must have sort
of built this. I mean maybe they didn't have no idea,
but that's just my presumption. I mean, are our programs
different to other places?
Speaker 4 (16:39):
So I'm going to absolutely correct you there. So we
are one. I really am saying this without any bias.
And I'm originally I'm British, so I'm originally from the UK.
So I love the South African market not just because
I love living here, but because I feel that this
market is very advanced and mature in the loyalty industry. Now,
(17:01):
why is that it wasn't necessarily I'd say ten years ago,
I'd say they're still catching up to do. But there's
been this huge explosion and there's no way, you know,
if I look if I look at just from my
experience and talking to brands and working with brands around
the world, and then working with the South African brands.
We are most definitely one of the best markets. But
(17:23):
that is also proven by I'm a judge on the
International Loyalty Awards. I'm also the chair of the South
African and African Layalty Awards, and we see the South
African brands on the global stage outperforming the other countries.
So other retailers are the financial services brands, So it's
not just me saying it. It's not just a bias
(17:45):
as a judging panel of I think there's about thirty
judges of which I'm one of them on the International Awards,
and last year the South African brands as a country,
we took home more awards than anywhere else, USA, UK
and so on. Now there's still elements where I feel
we could catch up in terms of delivery in the marketplace.
(18:10):
But if I look at what some of the brands
are doing, and some of them we've mentioned already tonight,
they are definitely ahead or on a par with international progress.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Amanda Cromhache, they're the founder and CEO of Truth looking
at data analytics that attention about how you've got to
manage how much money you give your customers and how
much they'll give you in return.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
The best of the Money Show and two two.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
This is unusual This week Advita and I do the
Africa Managing director at jack Hammer Global looking at traditional
management structures and how they're becoming less effective and why
that is so much change. I mean, change has always
been an issue with management, obviously all the time, but
so much seems to be moving at the moment, and
Adita suggesting that one of the reasons maybe is that
(18:57):
managers don't get to spend enough time being managed themselves
and as a result aren't rarely sort of given the
right role models to actually lead teams. Is something shifting
that's making management harder, And I think management's been getting
harder for quite some time, but now you've got lots
of other factors, including AI, which I think scares everybody.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
Is that having an impact?
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Maybe?
Speaker 6 (19:19):
I think there are but one hundred things having an impact,
But I don't know if you know this a Gallop
research It says it's usually simplified to people don't leave companies,
they leave managers. And I think that shows that the
manager is the strongest determinant of whether people are going
to stay engaged or not. And it's something we see
daily at Jackhammers. So personally, I think two of the
biggest things that leads to management degradation actually indicate that
(19:43):
it's a structural problem, it's not an individual or personal one.
And the first is that traditionally management was learned through
kind of like an informal apprenticeship, like you observe a
senior leader, how they made decisions, how they exercise influence,
how they manage conflict, and the trade offs that they made.
And now when people step into management roles without having
had that exposure, they start relying on policies, they become
(20:05):
a little bit efficient, they escalate issues more, and that's
because they don't trust their own discretion yet. So it's
not really weak leadership, it's just underdeveloped judgment. And then
the second thing is, you know what's disappearing in this
this corporate quest for efficiency and rationalization is the layers
organizations are just flatter. So promotions are happening faster, layers
(20:27):
are being removed because we're trying to retain high performers
or there's a technical or operational competence that must be rewarded.
And so you know the lack of the leadership apprentice
and the greater hierarchy, or rather the leadership apprenticeship and
the greater hierarchy meant that junior managers used to strengthen
a muscle by having graduated responsibility, and the structure was
(20:50):
the scaffolding for them to learn management in a safe
way rather than what we have now is kind of
like a bolderplane while flying it with.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
I mean, we see our managers less and less, even
if we're working in an office. You know, so much
happens on WhatsApp rather than in a phone conversation. I
love a phone conversation, mate, All of those things, and
I mean the lessons, the ability to see how to
deal with something. I just think that we've lost something
(21:17):
about being human and that's one of the consequences of
everything that's changed, and that means worse management, absolutely.
Speaker 6 (21:24):
And it works two ways, right, So one, being able
to observe your manager making those decisions and grapple with
those things and understand the thinking behind it helps you learn.
But also from a managerial point of view, the remote
work or the hybrid work has shifted management itself away
from observation to you know, kind of like assumption and
inference about what people are doing, and managers see outputs
(21:45):
but less of the process that produces them. And sometimes
that means managers disengage and they just trust that whoever
is doing what they're doing is getting on with it,
which is fine. But then there are others who compensate
by overmeasuring or overcontrolling, and you know, neither of the
both are particularly effective. And what they're missing is that judgment,
the context, and the trust, which are really hard to develop.
(22:06):
When you don't see the process unfolding, you don't see
how people respond under pressure. You can't give real time
feedback on what they're doing and how they could improve.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
It's also managers not having enough time with other managers.
I mean, they also don't see their managers if you
see what I mean, So you know, I will see
a manager and think they're not doing this properly and
wasn't like that in my day. But actually that manages
battling too because they're not being managed effectively either.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
That's exactly right. And again it comes to the lack
of exposure and the flattening of the structures because you know,
as much as we want to call kind of like
the old school way of doing things, bureaucratic, or you know,
there were too many barriers to entry, or people used
to talk about, oh, well, this is the way we
do things around here, and this is the way it's
always been done. There was a certain learning capability that
was built into that structure, and new structures haven't accommodated
(22:56):
or compensated for what is missing there. Yet.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
I wonder if this is just how things are going
to be and it's not going to change because the
push for efficiencies is relentless. I wonder also that even
though Joebergs traffic will tell you that more and more
people are spending more and more time in the office,
in the end, it's just not going to be like that,
and so management isn't going to really get better.
Speaker 6 (23:23):
I mean, I think they're probably ways that they could.
And just you know, to pick up on your point
about efficiencies, and you know, you mentioned AI and automation earlier,
I think you know the risk there is that AI
and automation take over the coordination part of work, and
this drive or efficiency is really unintentionally stripping out some
of the work which managers used to learn about how
(23:46):
organizations hung together, how they functioned, and how to get
the best out of their team. And you know that
coordination work is scheduling, the tracking, the routing of information.
We dismiss it as low value, but it's there where
people learn prioritizations. I think in order to make the
new system work, we need to find ways that builds
that decision making back in without sacrificing on the efficiency,
(24:07):
and also appreciate that automation compresses time. Yes, we want
decisions to happen faster, but we also need to appreciate
that it also means that tolerance and room for error decreases,
which is wonderful for execution. But future leaders, they're not
getting the chance to make mistakes. They make mistakes, learn
from them, and then correct them.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
People will talk about, oh, well, we could change the
culture of this organization. We can change the organizational values.
None of them are talking about let's spend more money
on more managers spending more time with their workers and
watching each other.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (24:40):
Absolutely. I think when companies think about cultural interventions, they
think about the symbolic workshops and the pretty websites. But
that's not how you sustain good culture. Like you say,
it's building in more managerial capability and it's sustained by
those everyday managerial decisions like how the feedback is given,
how the conflict is handled, and that consistent over time,
(25:02):
so that the decisions were consistent and rather than letting
people become avoidant or overly procedural and policy driven, you
have you start to build faith and strong culture in
the way your business is run.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
I'd read than I do there speaking about the changing
nature of management and what leaders need to do to
try and lead teams in the current era.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Seven notes The best of the Money Show from this week.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Our shape shift to this week. Adrian Maisie. We're a
fascinating career, going from a Pretoria Boys High winning a
tennis scholarship to the US and going from there to
work in a couple of hedge funds and then buying
the license for Starbucks across South Africa. You go into
a Starbucks here, you're drinking his product. He had so
(25:50):
much to say about the coffee business, how interesting it
is and what's changing within it. You took over the
license for Starbucks here, it was twenty nineteen. I mean
things were a little different back then. It wasn't doing
quite so well. Why were you so Keen. I mean,
did you spot an opportunity Did you think, actually there's
a way to make money out of us?
Speaker 7 (26:11):
Yeah, you know, that's actually I'd like to invote that question.
I think the brand was doing very well back then.
The brand that was associated with the prior owner that
company got.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Itself into trouble. That was Taste Holdings, but the brand itself.
Speaker 7 (26:22):
The thirteen stores we bought in twenty nineteen were flagship,
beautiful stores, some of the most beautiful in the world,
and they had great sales. What I saw in it
was potential and an opportunity to get something that we
could grow and build a dream around for South Africa
and in South Africa, and that's when we stepped in.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
At the time, obviously with Taste, there's a lot of
things you had to sort out, and you did all
of that. Did you feel that there were many changes
you need to make to the Starbucks brand there? Look
the feel of going into a Starbucks in South Africa?
I mean in South Africa, as you know, we like
to think we're very different to everyone else, and we
aren't always, But were there things you felt you needed
(27:03):
to change about the feeling of walking into one?
Speaker 7 (27:08):
You know, they did a great job Tasseholdings to building
these beautiful flagship stores that set the brand up for
success in the country. What they didn't have and what
they needed was time to build a diversified portfolio that
could sustain whatever variable came over time. And we got
hit right within two months of earning the business with COVID,
and that dramatically increased any need to diversify, and the
(27:28):
learning lesson there was we needed smaller stores in locations
outside of malls, inside of grocery stores, etc. And that's
what they needed and it required a longer view or
longer a larger balance.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Sheet for them to get there. So they set up
nicely for success.
Speaker 7 (27:43):
So we picked it up from there and then we expanded,
and that was the primary change we did, was getting,
you know, getting outside of just simply being the primary malls,
being more of an habitual brand than a destination.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
And we're sort of grown along the way doing that.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
I mean, I've had to so many shape shift. Is
what their COVID experience was like for a coffee shop
like yours. I mean, your first thought must have been
this is going to be brutal, and yet you came
out of it quite nicely. It seems.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Yeah, we were lucky.
Speaker 7 (28:12):
We've just capitalized the business, and so we leant forward.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
We had no choice.
Speaker 7 (28:17):
We were in and there was no chance to pull out,
and I said, listen, let's see how let's grab land
while we can.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
So while the tide was out.
Speaker 7 (28:25):
We dove in and in the first year, the first
eighteen months when covid started, we built thirty three stores
from a base of thirteen that had been built over
five years. It was quite a rapid expansion that gave
us a lot of market check, gave us scale that
we desperately needed for a brand of the size, and
for an international brand with the quality that is a Starbucks,
you do require a significant amount of overhead, and that
(28:46):
overhead has to get funded one way or the other.
And if you aren't using somebody else's money, you need
a bunch of stores to generate the cash flow to
do that.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
And the scale helped us.
Speaker 7 (28:55):
Not only cover that overhead, but get a lot better
seat at the table with our suppliers and stakeholders who
involved the business.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
So that was the key.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
I mean, coffee can sound simple, but I know it's not.
I mean, I'm a relatively simple coffee drinker. I'll have
an Americano with a touch of milk, please, And if
you don't have the milk, that's fine. But some people,
I mean, it can be incredibly complicated. And I read
I think there's something like eighty thousand combinations of drinks
that you can get at a Starbucks in South Africa.
I wasn't sure if i'd read that right. Frankly, Now
(29:26):
does that make it difficult to sort of manage? I mean,
you have to make sure you have everything you needed
every branch and you don't want to have too much
of it in any one place either.
Speaker 7 (29:35):
Yeah, at Risk have been been called out on us.
I think it's one of the most complex businesses to run.
The number of line items we have to procure, most
of them are imported. In sure the stock levels are correct, training, etc.
Is complex. Now you've got to also explain that to
the customer on the other side, the combination does actually
amount to something like eighty thousand whatever a variation you have.
(29:58):
And when I look at businesses, other business today has
been a great learning ground or for us to learn
how to run a supply chain. We're primarily a limit
logistics business and a front end hospitality business today, it
is a lot that goes into it, and it's months
and months of planning. My procurement team, my logistics team
are outside of the frontline employees that are serving the customer,
(30:20):
the central part of our organization.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
It's so interesting. I mean, I sometimes wonder if a
coffee chain might just make a lot more money by
just being a bit simpler. Yes, you can have a cappuccino,
but not a half whatever. And yet I also know
that over time, I mean, coffee drinkers are becoming like
tea drinkers. They become quite finicky.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, you know the cork coffee offerings.
Speaker 7 (30:46):
You sort of con'traperentiate yourself, and you do need labor's expensive,
rents expensive. And yeah, you could simplify your business, but
you're not going to have much in top line because
only so many coffee is a person could drink per day.
So how do you attract the broader audience or customer base?
You need to grow and develop as your menu needs
to change, as the market changes, and the answers of
today certainly don't drink the coffee that you and I
(31:07):
may be drinking.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Or it's called it's called.
Speaker 7 (31:10):
Brew and iced teas and every variation of preppaccino, and
that keeps changing. And the innovation part that Starbucks are
so good at is really differentiated for us.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
So our revenue is generally far higher than any of the.
Speaker 7 (31:23):
Coffee competitors that you may reference that they've been brilliant
at what they do, but we've got the cloud of
a very very large machine behind us that can innovate
and stay in touch with what's going on in the market,
and a lot larger scale and anther quality that's pretty
hard for others to replicate, given the logistics function that's
required to procure this and all these ingredients around the world,
meeting global standards that that are on par with the Starbucks.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
It's been interesting. I mean, there's a big Reuters report
a couple of weeks ago about some of the major
problems for Starbucks in the US with their supply chains.
No milk at some stores, not enough food and others
too much food in some places. I mean, I know
you won't necessarily want to comment on the parent company,
but one of the things that I thought was interesting
was it seemed in the US is a very different
(32:09):
market to US much much bigger that they basically had
too many suppliers and they should have had sort of
a fewer bigger supplies. Are their lessons and what's happening
there for here. I've never heard of a supply problem
at Starbucks in South Africa. I have to say, so.
I don't know if we're much easier or if you've
just kind of got it down pattern some way.
Speaker 7 (32:31):
I'd love to say that would be true, but I
tell you, Stephen, we spend night and day trying to
figure out how to get that product through the through
the ports, in on time, making sure it doesn't expire.
It's twelve weeks on the ocean. It's not an easy one,
but it's fundamental to our business. A lot of capitals
tied up in your supply chain. You've got to get
it right, you've got to be consistent. And then we've
got a very very big country. The rest of the
world and including the people we report into, don't realize
(32:54):
how big South Africa is. And logistics between getting tough
on Durbin to health Tang, from Parting down to Cape Town, it's.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
A big effort.
Speaker 7 (33:00):
And yes, supplier supply relationships are key and over concentration
into a single supply is very dangerous for your business.
So you also have to think about diversifying there and
making sure you're not like I said, not making sure
you're not too small, because if you're too small and
they decide to turn turn the key on you, you can
really get yourself into trouble. Fortunately, most of our product
comes comes from the parent parent company.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
That does mean.
Speaker 7 (33:24):
We've got a lot of a lot of our capital
sitting on the ocean, but they did the procurement and
then we procure from them. We have demand planning side
that we have to get right, and that's making sure
in South Africa, given the variability in the various towns,
that we've got the supply right because we're thinking six
to nine months out every time we place an order.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
So the business of running a coffee shop right as
star back. So I mean, there's some people who I'm
sure go to you once or twice a day and
they will literally go. They'll have their branch, they will
probably know I hope they'll know the barista. They will
just want they order. They might want two or three
for the rest of the office. And if they go
there are plenty of other people, and I'm guilty of
(34:05):
this from time to time who go into a coffee shop,
have one drink, but linger for hours be meet. I mean,
you know, sometimes you can go into a coffee shop
and come to this person in that person and this
person and that and it's great, but you're not making
much money out of me. How do you sort of
make money when people do linger and you want them
to linger in a way, but you also don't want
(34:27):
them to, you know, use all of your electricity charging
their laptop.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah. Look, I take a long view on that.
Speaker 7 (34:35):
I think the more time people can spend in US store,
become familiar with it, love the brand, love the product,
I think for the long term that boats very well
with us.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
We're privately owned business.
Speaker 7 (34:43):
It's me and the few of my friends that I've
got to know me over time as either a somebody
who cycled or.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Worked and wherever I've been. You know, we've got to
make make this thing work.
Speaker 7 (34:52):
And I think building their rapport and connection with the
customer is more important. I never like going into a
restaurant and feel and to feel rushed, and I know
why they need does HEAs to turn over?
Speaker 2 (35:01):
But I don't think that.
Speaker 7 (35:02):
Bills longevity and loyalty with your customer, and so yes,
I recognize any Starbucks you go into, in particular the
one in Rosebank or sitting in Sepoint here there's a
playful lot of people sitting using our electricity and spending
time there. But I actually don't mind it at all
because over the time of time they will become long
term customers and that's the ultimate goal.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
Adrian Mayzie is your shape shifter of this evenings with
us until eight o'clock. Plenty more to come.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
The Money Show Shape Shifters.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
The CEO of Rand Capital Coffee, Adrian Maize or shape Shifter.
Tonight they held the Starbucks license in South Africa. Adrian,
Who've spoken a lot about coffee, and I have many
more questions. I do want to ask a question or
two about you, if I may, Because you grew up
in Pretoria. You went to the same school as what
was that guy's name? I'm sure you asked that all
the time.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Yeah, I heard he went to my school.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Well, I mean, obviously my fault noticing that Elon Musk.
Then you went to the US and you actually went there,
I rate to play tennis. Was that a scholarship. I mean,
I mean that must have been quite an experience. You
would have gone on your own to play a particular
sports and you must have done very well at it.
Speaker 7 (36:12):
Yeah, I'm the nineteen ninety two Tickiest Tennis Champion and
from there I that was my height of my career.
And then I got a scholarship to go to the
University of Nebraska, where I spent three years playing Division
one tennis. We were the nineteen ninety six Division eight champions.
I was in doubles at number one doubles, and then
I quit and then I went to work for Cooper's
(36:32):
librand de Lloyte Intuitions and private equity hedge Fund and
that was the end of my tennis career. But it
was it's to what I am to the court to
this day. It's how I identify it.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
I mean, the idea of going to another bigger country.
It wasn't like now where you could WhatsApp your parents,
you know, where you could you know, be on the
phone to them every day. I mean, it was a
very different time, the sort of early nineties. What was
that experience like, I mean, you must have learned a
huge amount you'd ever had no one else to rely on.
Speaker 7 (37:05):
Yeah, you know, and when I talked to my kids, it's,
you know, the story about how hard we had it
as children and compared to how they have it today.
But I left on the second of January nineteenninety three,
went to what is twenty below zero.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
No connections.
Speaker 7 (37:20):
No Friensis was pre apartheid, end of apartheid, right, so
it wasn't exactly a large connection to the United States.
No Internet, no long distance calling, no What'sapp. I used
to send videos to my mother on a VCR reporter
that I at one point bought, and that came later years,
but otherwise it was postcards. It was very difficult. That
had no network. And I think I went there with
eight hundred rand and everything I owned today comes from
(37:41):
that eight hundred rand, which, by the way, I spent
the first week I got there, but different conversation. But yeah,
I had to form relationships. I couldn't get a job
like I could year or anywhere. Like I watched kids
that they get jobs in America and their parents help
them get jobs. I get people coming to me asking
me to help place them. I don't know which university
(38:02):
to go to. I got three offers to go different schools.
I had no idea what the difference is between one
or the other. And it wasn't like a good just
look it up on the interlet alone on chet GBT.
So it was me and my own. But I figured
it out and it probably made me what I am today.
I was eighteen years old and I had to make
friends and figure out how to just get a driver's license,
how to even figure out where classrooms were.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
So we were all old enough to know what that
was like. But it certainly made me grow up very quickly.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Was there a drive that you had? I mean, you
went to Cooper's in Librnder as you say, then you
went from you know, from one business to another business,
and you clearly learned a lot from some of the
people you saw. But you clearly they saw something in
you too, obviously.
Speaker 7 (38:43):
Yeah, I don't know what they saw on me a
different perspective, but I've always been highly ambitious, but ambitious
from it in security perspective. I always have high desire
to grow up and be something in somebody someday and
I'm still trying to do that.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
And I've always tried to excel at what I'd do.
Speaker 7 (38:57):
And I knew that by giving I do my best
every day, I'd be better the next day, if that
makes sense, And certainly putting my best foot forward, I
would impress somebody along the way. And I'd always thought
to be friends with older individuals who are more experienced,
and I learned from them. And it probably was also
because of one of the youngest in my classes. Even
at primary school, at Springvale Primary or Boys, I was
a year younger than most folks, and so I was
(39:19):
surrounded by people with more experience and it sort of
stuck with me all my life. I'm now getting to
a stage where I turn out to be the oldest
in the crowd, which is quite weird. But I did
that and I think that helped me and a lot
of people open doors for me. It didn't come on
my own. Maybe I earned it, but you couldn't get
there on your own.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
I mean, there's so much to it. Is there a
particular philosophy or sort of writer that's maybe influenced you.
I've read somewhere Anne Ran perhaps, I mean she influences
She's influenced quite a few generations of people. I mean,
would she be one, would there be others.
Speaker 7 (39:54):
Yeah, and Ran without a Doubt, and Rand Group is
named after Oran Capital is named after and Rand Shrugged
fountain Head. But my former boss, Eddie Lampert is the
one who sort of indoctrinated me into that. Yeah, Elan
inspires the heck out of me. And I sit and
watch his work ethic and his desire and drive, and
(40:15):
that's somebody I'll look up to. Now that's not an author,
but Anne Rand has been certainly the most influential in
my life. And Elon at the moment that someone inspires
me to be better and get up and do something,
and it's sort of highlighting at this point I'm turning
fifty two. Short is how much time we have left
and how much time you have to be productive and
get things done. So I'm trying to ramp up my
(40:36):
work ethic and hopefully I'll get enough done in my
lifespan that I can accomplish something.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
Adrian Maizie, the founder and seer of Rand Capital collection
the Starbucks licensee in Africa, talking about his journey around
Starbucks fascinating. Seven.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
You are listening to the money shows the best bits.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Your business book review this week. Ian Man, the managing
director of Gateways Business Consultants. Looking into Money by David McWilliams,
talking about how money played a role in making us human.
Speaker 5 (41:10):
Probably the most extraordinary book I've read. I cannot remember
since when. Really it's written by an economist. That's not
his fault. Most economists are really very dry. He is,
he can't write a paragraph without being entertaining. What he's
done is he has taken the history of money from
from the from the very beginning when hunter gatherers, we're
(41:30):
using grains as a medium of establishing value which they
could share with other people because it had a value.
We know that two handfuls of this can be equal
to one of that, and then we saw He leads
that right through up to we we are now with cryptocurrencies.
And his book is built on simply giving you insights
(41:52):
and the most extraordinary things that happened along the way,
and I like to share some of them with you.
So he goes back the very very oldest where if
you take the Somemerians in two thousand BC, they were
there a civilization where they were writing and writing in
their accounting that the legal system that sophisticated financial architecture,
(42:14):
and they were, but the whole thing was anchored by
interest rates. There was a clear interest rate. Everybody in
you were trading was because that was interest rate. But
was the Lydians that developed a coin. Now before them,
the Babylonians always loved gold jewelry. But to say that
this is worth an ounce of gold means that you've
got to be sure that the ounce that your weights
(42:34):
are correct. That's fine. The problem with that is you
can also put a stone in the middle or something
was some dirty in the middle. But once you start
putting in print, printing a coin that's regulated by some
major authority like a country, you know that that's tradeable.
All of a sudden, trade completely completely changed. And that's
what happened with the Lidians. And there they stamped, they stamped,
(42:55):
validated piece of gold was really worth what they said
it was.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
The Greeks go.
Speaker 5 (43:01):
Then he gets into it takes everything in between that.
Then you get to the Greeks, and the Greeks had
an enormous empire. The only problem was that they they
couldn't feed themselves, so they really needed to trade. And
what they started doing was they they had to import
three quarts and that's amazing had to import three courts
of their food, so they had to have some word
(43:22):
of trading, and they developed a coin and which the drama,
which lasted seven hundred years as the basic as a
basic form of trade. And that made that made them
completely different to anybody else. But that that that coin
actually had other effects. And what he does shows the
effects on humanity and human beings, effect on on on
(43:43):
on money, and how the world evolves from that. The
the in in in in Athens, if you had two
drama and you were a lowly level person, you could
buy exactly the same amount of goods as a princess
with two drama. There was very democratic and very very unusual.
Well then it wasn't like that. Then you move into
(44:05):
places like Florence and everything in between. Right, get to
Florence's most incredible city. Even though it's incredible, it was
an incredible trading city, was probably the greatest trading hub
of its time. And they were structured the way the
structure was unusual. Firstly, they set up guilds, which meant
groups of people got together and by getting together they
(44:26):
could get better prices, they could sell better and their
trade routes literally around the world, and these guilds facilitated
as trade. But more interestingly, the wealthy people there were
very civic minded, and the wealthy people were all built parks,
but not for themselves, huge houses with big parks. They
bought parks for the people. And so he had a
(44:47):
city where which attracted intellectuals, which attracted open thought, and
which actually became an extraordinary, extraordinary city until the Black Plague.
There was an extraordinary, amazing, amazing achievement.
Speaker 3 (44:59):
So the idea really is that money currency brings people together,
and brings people together who would not otherwise be together.
Speaker 5 (45:07):
Absolutely it has. It has all sorts of effects. One
that brings people to get also allows them to trade
with each other in ways that they couldn't have done otherwise.
And he weaves all sorts of lovely stories together. One
of the stories I enjoyed most was his story about Gutenburg.
We always think of him as printing the Bible, but
Gutenburg was down and out. He was a goldsmith, saying,
(45:28):
you're at craft things. And he realized that I could
make a printing press. And he didn't make a printing
press for books. He went the best person to be
employed by at the time was the church. Because the
Church had the real money. I think they still have
enormous amount, and they they were the one.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
To really work for.
Speaker 5 (45:46):
And they were had a really nice scheme you could
get get out of hell free and all that. You
could get out of hell if you if you bought
your way out indulgences. But they were printing writing out
indulgences by and that took too much time. So he
went in and Sot's like to help you guys out,
I can print these things in mass and that made
(46:08):
a huge amount of money for the church. Bolso made
a huge amount of money for him. And you have
all these incredible stories, the the how, how how money
led to something else, and you can see the effect
of the Protestant Revolution was the result of him having
going to business, building printing press and going on. But
the idea of money was used for all sorts of things.
(46:29):
When when the states after the War of Independence, they
had a whole bunch of states who were separate, the
South and the North, and they couldn't come together. They
used money to get people together in a very very
interesting way. They had one the first thing they said,
the central government will take care of all the war
debts for the site. The problem was that they said,
(46:49):
we've just left the Brits. We don't want to we
don't want to be governed by anybody else, and so
we'll give you we'll take care of all your debts,
but we're going to have only one currency called the dollar.
And all of a sudden, every time you took your
money out of your pocket. You remember there was the
United States of America and they had a dollar, and
it was things like that. The money had impact in
(47:12):
other ways that you couldn't have expected it. But we've
also had we've also had we meant to fear the
currencies where where money was based on who said it was.
And in the American dollars is in God we trust,
but it's really in the Fed that we trust. And
the money is a very interesting way of just developing
and growing at extraordinary rates.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
And so I said I hadn't finished the book. You
said that that was strange because it's written so well,
and certainly, I mean all of the reviews make that
point about this book too. That's something you would recommend
very strongly.
Speaker 5 (47:47):
I would definitely recommend it very strongly. I think that
it leads you not only into what money has done
and what money it can do, but it allows you
to understand what money is, how it moved from dollar
asset based like gold, to where we can have money
that was delinked from from gold and was just based
(48:09):
on the economy. And then we move further and he
ends a book by he was in the Bank of Ireland.
He understands national banks and he asks whether banks control
the money or money controls the central bank. I'll just
give you a quick example. If you want to buy
a house this asset called a house. I'd come and
(48:32):
I go to the bank and I borrow money. They
give me money, So now I have money, but the
bank has an asset called the house. All of a sudden,
the value we've just put the value of a house
just because they're nothing structured into the economy and it
grows like that. You gets some wonderful insights into business,
into the economy and into money. I found it fascinating.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
Yeah Man the managing director of Gateways Business Consultants, sharing
his take on the book Money. David McWilliams.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
The best of The Money Show from this week.
Speaker 3 (49:07):
You've been listening to the best bits of The Money Show.
Just a digest of some of the most important comment thoughts,
one or two of the best jokes that you heard
on the show this week. If you'd like to hear more,
please go to our website or your podcast app and
search for The Money Show. I really do appreciate you
being with us this week. Thank you so much for that.
We'll be back with you at six o'clock on Monday.
I really do hope you have a good and a
(49:28):
safe weekend.
Seven. You're listening to the best of The Money Show.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
The Money Show.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
Welcome to the Best Bits of the Money Show, a
digest of some of the most important interviews, thoughts, comments
and insights that we've had from our guests this week.
If you'd like to hear more, please go to our
website or go to any of the podcast apps and
search for The Money Show. It would be nice. I
think for people in your life, your community, maybe your household,
maybe your street, WhatsApp group, if there's something going on
(00:29):
that you think they might benefit from one of these conversations,
maybe just stick it on a WhatsApp to them so
they can have the benefit of The Money Show as well.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Well.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
To start some of the news stories that we thought
were important this week and South Africa week, finally, after
a very long time, becoming a full member of the
African Export Import Bank. It's the largest trade institution and
our continent and as a result we qualify pretty much
immediately for an eight billion US dollar financing package. Three
(00:57):
billion of that we'll go to the transformation front kick
that off. But certainly so many years after the end
of A Part eight, we finally joined that bank. Our
Trade Minister parks taous in China at the moment, supposedly
to sign the China Africa Economic Partnership Agreement that will
see all of our exports getting access to the Chinese
(01:17):
markets duty free, a lot of trade with China at
the moment. Partly I suspect because you have the White
House to thank for that. And our national minimum wage
increasing to just over thirty rand for the first time.
That's thirty round an hour. It's an increase of one
rand and forty four cents. It starts becomes into force
at the beginning of March. Tonight, we bring you a
(01:39):
mixture of stories from the world of money, from the
week that has been and how I make my money
this week. Amanda Cromhot, the founder and CEO of Truth
It's a loyalty CRM and customer strategy consultancy. How you
run a really good loyalty program? Why is it that
when you walk into some stores you feel welcome, you
feel part of it, in some store you don't. It
(02:01):
really is that intersection between data, money and then a
little bit of art in there as well.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
Amanda, as a consumer, that's exactly what you think of, like,
what is this going to do? For me, shall I
swipe my card? Is it worth it? And at the
end of the day, all the brands that we work
with in the loyalty industry have to make sure that
that's the first and foremost criteria, to make sure that
customers are happy and that it's worthwhile for them, because
if it makes sense for their business but doesn't make
(02:29):
sense for the customer, then ultimately it's not going to survive.
So we spend a lot of our time helping the
brands in South Africa or around the world who we
assist in loyalty programs and so forth getting the balance
right between what is fabulous for the consumer, what's going
to make a difference for the consumer, and also then equally,
(02:50):
what is commercially viable for the brands who are operating
these loyalty programs, Because if one is great for the
consumer but actually is sinking the brand, it's not going
to But if it's great for the brand and not
good for the consumers, equally not going to last. So
it's a balance and I think that's where you said
the science and the soul. It's very scientific from an
(03:11):
economic point of view, from a mathematical returnal investment point
of view, but it's also there is a there is
a soul to it in terms of is this going
to work, is the consumer going to like this? Is
it going to really make a difference versus the competitors
because virtually every brand out there now has a loyalty
program of sorts, so you have to differentiate somehow, and
(03:33):
that's a little bit of the soul coming through. So
it's very scientific, though, don't you know, not to let
that loose.
Speaker 3 (03:41):
I'm going to come back to that because I find
that interesting, but I do want to just focus on
the soul for a second. I mean, what is the soul?
I mean you look at a retail chain and you
think it doesn't have soul, and yet people walk into
it or speak to the workers, interact with people, kind
of know where the sweet counter is, and I think
they they come out of that shopping experience. They do
(04:02):
come out of it moved in some way. I mean,
shopping has become so much less frustrating than it was
twenty years ago.
Speaker 4 (04:09):
Yeah. So, I mean I've had the luxury of working
as a retailer within the retail industry, and I always
that I've heard the best retailers in the world refer
to the retail industry as science and soul, and I
think that's exactly right. There's a very scientific approach to
merchandising and pricing and so forth, but there's a very
the soul of a retailer. So I had the privilege
(04:32):
of working for Wallers South Africa for three years and
we used to you know, the Simon Susman was the
CEO at the time, and he used to talk about
the soul of retailing, like the smell of the strawberries
or the feel of the fabric in woman's fashion and
so on. And it's true, right, like if you smell
a beautiful strawberry in the grocery store, you're more likely
(04:54):
to say I want that, rather than just if it's
based on price and more scientific methods. So and I've
just I mean, a lot of the work that we
do at TRUTH is working with brands around the world,
and I've just had the privilege of working not working
so much so, but visiting a retailer in Australia who
(05:14):
really excelled at the soul of getting close to their
customers and making them, getting their customers to love, love,
love their brand and that's something that's you know, just
data alone or scientific analysis can't create. There's a soult.
There's a soul behind that approach, without doubt.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
It's so interesting to sort of think about how it
works because I sometimes wonder can a brand with a
soul make a mistake that affects the soul but not
the science. And I'll give you an example. There is
a particular British shift that I cannot stand. I haven't
been able to stand him. I couldn't stand Jamie Onlomano
when I lived in the UK thirty years ago. I
(05:56):
can't stand him now now I might be the only one,
but I think, frankly, that's a huge mistake. And sending
me a WhatsApp thing with him actually saying my name
before hitting the drums, I tell you what I wanted
to do with the drumsticks, Amanda. But can you get
the soul wrong?
Speaker 4 (06:13):
Yeah? No, you're making me laugh because I've used that's
a good example of where you're picking up on the soul,
but I pick up on the science because the science
of that is very much that they pick up on
how loyal you are to the brand, and that we're
talking about the famous Checkers sixty sixty and their Simple
Truth brand, and they've used that campaign very cleverly from
(06:37):
a science point of view in terms of understanding what
I shop and talking to me about what I shop.
And I am a simple Truth you know, I do
buy the Simple Truth brand. So they're getting it right
from a science point of view without question. Here in
your case, maybe they're just unlucky that you don't like Oliver,
but you're right, you know that's a brand preference. But
(06:59):
that is and if it completely missed the mark for you,
But for me, that's a great example of a scientific approach,
but the execution maybe is missed the mark for some consumers.
And how they would predict that. I have no idea.
I don't know why you don't like him, but that's
your personal soul.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Well, there's a long list of reasons, but we don't
need to go into that now. I mean, I'm sure
he's sure, he's perfectly nice.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
To do all of this.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
To make it work, To make the science work, you
would need to have data, and I would imagine a
ton of it, and you would need to know who
your shoppers are. You'd need to know how they came
across you, they would need to know if they grew
up coming to your stores. I mean, if you look
at our big retailers, most of them will have customers
who grew up going to them in some way. You
need to know who you're aiming for. The data must
(07:49):
be key to the whole thing.
Speaker 4 (07:50):
It is, of course, but I'll correct you maybe on
one thing is you actually don't need heaps and heaps
of data. So obviously a big national retailer like a
WALLW sort a check or one of the big retail
banks and so forth, they have gogantuum amounts of data
and do amazing things with it with permission obviously from
the customer. With and that's the best news is in
(08:13):
the last five years or more globally but also here
in South Africa, the legislation really does protect the consumer.
So it's if they're not then they're absolutely incomplete breach.
But it's not just the big boys that can can
use the data effectively. We've you know, we're starting to
see and help brands that are tiny organizations that may
(08:35):
just be a corner florist for example. They can collect
data very simply from whether it's signing up for email receipts,
whether it's signing up for a newsletter, and can effectively
as well hopefully change how customers feel about their brand
because they're starting to create this relationship. But obviously with
the big global players or the big national players, they
(08:56):
are collecting rows and rows and rows and rows of
data against millions and millions of customers. And we've seen
the South African loyalty players be recognized globally for the
work they're doing in loyalty and with the use of
their data. So brands such as F and B, E Bucks,
TFG Shop right, they've all been recognized globally for the
(09:21):
work they're doing. And that doesn't just come because they're
good brands and they sell nice merchandise. To be recognized
on the global stage for their data analytics capability. They're
doing so responsibly, so the consumer is always protected, and
so they're adding value to the customer's life and obviously
they'n a commercial return for themselves. And that's what I
started off by saying, it's got to have almost like
(09:43):
a seesaw effect, that it's got to be a balanced
seesaw that the consumer benefits whilst the brand benefits. It
can't be heavily weighted one against the other, Otherwise it
has no sustainability.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
When you're trying to start one of these systems. Let
me go back a little bit to get the customer loyalty.
Does it all boil down to price in the end? So,
I mean, if you look at the two big pharmaceutical
chains that we have, they both have massive loyalty programs.
Does it boil down to who is getting their goods
(10:17):
for cheaper at the end? Or is there more to
it than that? Is that like the be all and end,
or is it just one of the factors.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
Steven, I think you're raising a very good point here
around price sensitivity in the role loyalty place. So we
issue every annual white paper for South Africa. It's called
the Truth and Brand Map white Paper. It's based off
data that it's called a Brand Map study, and we're
about to we're literally writing now and creating the new
(10:45):
white paper for twenty twenty six. So in twenty twenty
five's white paper, we saw the emergence of the power
of loyalty to help the consumer get through month end.
So there were three main concerns in this data by
the South African consumer saying, my biggest concerns in life
(11:07):
are one crime, corruption and money. I don't have enough
money cost of living. So the third reason for people
stay awake at night was cost of living. And then
this study asked, well, what helps you get through the
cost of living crisis and they said, number one, I
(11:29):
cut back on clothing clothing spend, Number two, I cut
back on going out to restaurants, and number three I
use loyalty programs. So loyalty programs have become not so
much a luxury or sort of add on to how
consumers survived, but part of their every day, everyday method
(11:52):
of shopping and making ends meet. So the data last
year was eighty two percent of South Africans use loyalty programs.
And that's not just eighty two percent might think about it,
eighty two percent might have a lorty card, but eighty
two percent actively use loyalty programs, and without giving away
the data for this year's white paper, that number definitely
(12:13):
hasn't gone down, is all I can say at this stage.
So so South Africans. It is one of the most
mature markets in the world, and the South African consumer
is one of the most engaged consumer in loyalty programs,
probably because they need it. And also it's a combination
of needing it and wanting it and enjoying it. But
(12:34):
the needing it is a real big thing here. We
do see that globally as well, but we see it
a lot more here. And I've had I've done interviews
with Clicks or F and B E Bucks, Clicks club Card,
F and B E Bucks who all confirm the same.
They can see how consumers are using their points, whether
it's Kapitech, whether it's Ebucks, whether it's Clicks, whether it's disc,
(12:57):
all of the big loyalty players, they can all see
by the way customers are using it that it's helping
them make ends meet, I mean, clicks go. Milani, Doctor
Milani Van Roy gave a wonderful example of how maybe
a decade ago, customers used to use their Clicks club
Card points on luxuries like perfume or lipstick or you know,
(13:20):
a treat, whereas now it's being used on basics like
soap or toothpaste or toilet roll. So there's a shift
and that we see in the data, you know, and Ebucks.
I've got on record an interview I did with EBU
with F and B E bucks where they say, you
know that our redemption rate is one of the highest.
(13:41):
That's definitely one of the highest in South Africa, Like
over ninety percent of all ebucks issued are used and
that's enormously high. And a lot of the time it's
on essentials like utilities or just getting through month end.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
Speaking to Amanda chrom Ho tonight found it CEO of
Truth on how I make my money expert in consumer loyalty, Amanda,
I have a couple of questions about about the level
of engagement that you talk about and how engaged South
Africans are with loyalty programs. Are they differences among along
gender lines? Do you find on one side is more
(14:21):
one side? Are women more engaged by men? There I've
spat out what I'm really asking.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
I love.
Speaker 4 (14:29):
If you'd asked me four years ago, I'd have said absolutely,
and I think the predictable answer would have been lady
women's shoppers, female shoppers or consumers are more engaged in
using loyalty programs more.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
But the very.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Interesting thing is now it's marginally if it's either the
same or just marginally different. And we saw that shift
after COVID. So during COVID, I think with the balance
of folks working from home and then probably more of
a balance of the every day like buying groceries or
popping out to buy nappies or whatever. We saw the
(15:06):
chef change and male consumers becoming much more engaged. So
female consumers didn't drop their engagement, but male consumers have
caught up. We do see a slight difference if you
take it category by category. So typically fashion shopping is
more female dominated by females. In the lordty engagement or
(15:28):
fuel purchases and retail banking is more male consumers are engaged.
But if you take overall in across all South African
lorty programs at South African consumers is pretty much like
for like in an age. If you look at age differences,
we see a younger consumer. By younger we say between
eighteen and twenty five, they are very much less engaged,
(15:52):
and I think it's a reflection of their ability to spend.
You know that either just starting out in life or
still students or unemployed, so they have less disposable income,
less need of using lorty programs. But that's that catches
up we're not seeing that gap get bigger every year,
(16:12):
but we're not seeing the catch up to the average
South African consumer.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
You talk, I know, you speak internationally and you've spoken
in many places and very big events too. Are our
consumer programs different to what happens in other countries? I mean,
I mean, I would think the Americans must have sort
of built this. I mean maybe they didn't have no idea,
but that's just my presumption. I mean, are our programs
different to other places?
Speaker 4 (16:39):
So I'm going to absolutely correct you there. So we
are one. I really am saying this without any bias.
And I'm originally I'm British, so I'm originally from the UK.
So I love the South African market not just because
I love living here, but because I feel that this
market is very advanced and mature in the loyalty industry. Now,
(17:01):
why is that it wasn't necessarily I'd say ten years ago,
I'd say they're still catching up to do. But there's
been this huge explosion and there's no way, you know,
if I look if I look at just from my
experience and talking to brands and working with brands around
the world, and then working with the South African brands.
We are most definitely one of the best markets. But
(17:23):
that is also proven by I'm a judge on the
International Loyalty Awards. I'm also the chair of the South
African and African Layalty Awards, and we see the South
African brands on the global stage outperforming the other countries.
So other retailers are the financial services brands, So it's
not just me saying it. It's not just a bias
(17:45):
as a judging panel of I think there's about thirty
judges of which I'm one of them on the International Awards,
and last year the South African brands as a country,
we took home more awards than anywhere else, USA, UK
and so on. Now there's still elements where I feel
we could catch up in terms of delivery in the marketplace.
(18:10):
But if I look at what some of the brands
are doing, and some of them we've mentioned already tonight,
they are definitely ahead or on a par with international progress.
Speaker 3 (18:18):
Amanda Cromhache, they're the founder and CEO of Truth looking
at data analytics that attention about how you've got to
manage how much money you give your customers and how
much they'll give you in return.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
The best of the Money Show and two two.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
This is unusual This week Advita and I do the
Africa Managing director at jack Hammer Global looking at traditional
management structures and how they're becoming less effective and why
that is so much change. I mean, change has always
been an issue with management, obviously all the time, but
so much seems to be moving at the moment, and
Adita suggesting that one of the reasons maybe is that
(18:57):
managers don't get to spend enough time being managed themselves
and as a result aren't rarely sort of given the
right role models to actually lead teams. Is something shifting
that's making management harder, And I think management's been getting
harder for quite some time, but now you've got lots
of other factors, including AI, which I think scares everybody.
Speaker 5 (19:17):
Is that having an impact?
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Maybe?
Speaker 6 (19:19):
I think there are but one hundred things having an impact,
But I don't know if you know this a Gallop
research It says it's usually simplified to people don't leave companies,
they leave managers. And I think that shows that the
manager is the strongest determinant of whether people are going
to stay engaged or not. And it's something we see
daily at Jackhammers. So personally, I think two of the
biggest things that leads to management degradation actually indicate that
(19:43):
it's a structural problem, it's not an individual or personal one.
And the first is that traditionally management was learned through
kind of like an informal apprenticeship, like you observe a
senior leader, how they made decisions, how they exercise influence,
how they manage conflict, and the trade offs that they made.
And now when people step into management roles without having
had that exposure, they start relying on policies, they become
(20:05):
a little bit efficient, they escalate issues more, and that's
because they don't trust their own discretion yet. So it's
not really weak leadership, it's just underdeveloped judgment. And then
the second thing is, you know what's disappearing in this
this corporate quest for efficiency and rationalization is the layers
organizations are just flatter. So promotions are happening faster, layers
(20:27):
are being removed because we're trying to retain high performers
or there's a technical or operational competence that must be rewarded.
And so you know the lack of the leadership apprentice
and the greater hierarchy, or rather the leadership apprenticeship and
the greater hierarchy meant that junior managers used to strengthen
a muscle by having graduated responsibility, and the structure was
(20:50):
the scaffolding for them to learn management in a safe
way rather than what we have now is kind of
like a bolderplane while flying it with.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
I mean, we see our managers less and less, even
if we're working in an office. You know, so much
happens on WhatsApp rather than in a phone conversation. I
love a phone conversation, mate, All of those things, and
I mean the lessons, the ability to see how to
deal with something. I just think that we've lost something
(21:17):
about being human and that's one of the consequences of
everything that's changed, and that means worse management, absolutely.
Speaker 6 (21:24):
And it works two ways, right, So one, being able
to observe your manager making those decisions and grapple with
those things and understand the thinking behind it helps you learn.
But also from a managerial point of view, the remote
work or the hybrid work has shifted management itself away
from observation to you know, kind of like assumption and
inference about what people are doing, and managers see outputs
(21:45):
but less of the process that produces them. And sometimes
that means managers disengage and they just trust that whoever
is doing what they're doing is getting on with it,
which is fine. But then there are others who compensate
by overmeasuring or overcontrolling, and you know, neither of the
both are particularly effective. And what they're missing is that judgment,
the context, and the trust, which are really hard to develop.
(22:06):
When you don't see the process unfolding, you don't see
how people respond under pressure. You can't give real time
feedback on what they're doing and how they could improve.
Speaker 3 (22:15):
It's also managers not having enough time with other managers.
I mean, they also don't see their managers if you
see what I mean, So you know, I will see
a manager and think they're not doing this properly and
wasn't like that in my day. But actually that manages
battling too because they're not being managed effectively either.
Speaker 6 (22:33):
That's exactly right. And again it comes to the lack
of exposure and the flattening of the structures because you know,
as much as we want to call kind of like
the old school way of doing things, bureaucratic, or you know,
there were too many barriers to entry, or people used
to talk about, oh, well, this is the way we
do things around here, and this is the way it's
always been done. There was a certain learning capability that
was built into that structure, and new structures haven't accommodated
(22:56):
or compensated for what is missing there. Yet.
Speaker 3 (23:00):
I wonder if this is just how things are going
to be and it's not going to change because the
push for efficiencies is relentless. I wonder also that even
though Joebergs traffic will tell you that more and more
people are spending more and more time in the office,
in the end, it's just not going to be like that,
and so management isn't going to really get better.
Speaker 6 (23:23):
I mean, I think they're probably ways that they could.
And just you know, to pick up on your point
about efficiencies, and you know, you mentioned AI and automation earlier,
I think you know the risk there is that AI
and automation take over the coordination part of work, and
this drive or efficiency is really unintentionally stripping out some
of the work which managers used to learn about how
(23:46):
organizations hung together, how they functioned, and how to get
the best out of their team. And you know that
coordination work is scheduling, the tracking, the routing of information.
We dismiss it as low value, but it's there where
people learn prioritizations. I think in order to make the
new system work, we need to find ways that builds
that decision making back in without sacrificing on the efficiency,
(24:07):
and also appreciate that automation compresses time. Yes, we want
decisions to happen faster, but we also need to appreciate
that it also means that tolerance and room for error decreases,
which is wonderful for execution. But future leaders, they're not
getting the chance to make mistakes. They make mistakes, learn
from them, and then correct them.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
People will talk about, oh, well, we could change the
culture of this organization. We can change the organizational values.
None of them are talking about let's spend more money
on more managers spending more time with their workers and
watching each other.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (24:40):
Absolutely. I think when companies think about cultural interventions, they
think about the symbolic workshops and the pretty websites. But
that's not how you sustain good culture. Like you say,
it's building in more managerial capability and it's sustained by
those everyday managerial decisions like how the feedback is given,
how the conflict is handled, and that consistent over time,
(25:02):
so that the decisions were consistent and rather than letting
people become avoidant or overly procedural and policy driven, you
have you start to build faith and strong culture in
the way your business is run.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
I'd read than I do there speaking about the changing
nature of management and what leaders need to do to
try and lead teams in the current era.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Seven notes The best of the Money Show from this week.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Our shape shift to this week. Adrian Maisie. We're a
fascinating career, going from a Pretoria Boys High winning a
tennis scholarship to the US and going from there to
work in a couple of hedge funds and then buying
the license for Starbucks across South Africa. You go into
a Starbucks here, you're drinking his product. He had so
(25:50):
much to say about the coffee business, how interesting it
is and what's changing within it. You took over the
license for Starbucks here, it was twenty nineteen. I mean
things were a little different back then. It wasn't doing
quite so well. Why were you so Keen. I mean,
did you spot an opportunity Did you think, actually there's
a way to make money out of us?
Speaker 7 (26:11):
Yeah, you know, that's actually I'd like to invote that question.
I think the brand was doing very well back then.
The brand that was associated with the prior owner that
company got.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Itself into trouble. That was Taste Holdings, but the brand itself.
Speaker 7 (26:22):
The thirteen stores we bought in twenty nineteen were flagship,
beautiful stores, some of the most beautiful in the world,
and they had great sales. What I saw in it
was potential and an opportunity to get something that we
could grow and build a dream around for South Africa
and in South Africa, and that's when we stepped in.
Speaker 3 (26:41):
At the time, obviously with Taste, there's a lot of
things you had to sort out, and you did all
of that. Did you feel that there were many changes
you need to make to the Starbucks brand there? Look
the feel of going into a Starbucks in South Africa?
I mean in South Africa, as you know, we like
to think we're very different to everyone else, and we
aren't always, But were there things you felt you needed
(27:03):
to change about the feeling of walking into one?
Speaker 7 (27:08):
You know, they did a great job Tasseholdings to building
these beautiful flagship stores that set the brand up for
success in the country. What they didn't have and what
they needed was time to build a diversified portfolio that
could sustain whatever variable came over time. And we got
hit right within two months of earning the business with COVID,
and that dramatically increased any need to diversify, and the
(27:28):
learning lesson there was we needed smaller stores in locations
outside of malls, inside of grocery stores, etc. And that's
what they needed and it required a longer view or
longer a larger balance.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Sheet for them to get there. So they set up
nicely for success.
Speaker 7 (27:43):
So we picked it up from there and then we expanded,
and that was the primary change we did, was getting,
you know, getting outside of just simply being the primary malls,
being more of an habitual brand than a destination.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
And we're sort of grown along the way doing that.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
I mean, I've had to so many shape shift. Is
what their COVID experience was like for a coffee shop
like yours. I mean, your first thought must have been
this is going to be brutal, and yet you came
out of it quite nicely. It seems.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Yeah, we were lucky.
Speaker 7 (28:12):
We've just capitalized the business, and so we leant forward.
Speaker 2 (28:16):
We had no choice.
Speaker 7 (28:17):
We were in and there was no chance to pull out,
and I said, listen, let's see how let's grab land
while we can.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
So while the tide was out.
Speaker 7 (28:25):
We dove in and in the first year, the first
eighteen months when covid started, we built thirty three stores
from a base of thirteen that had been built over
five years. It was quite a rapid expansion that gave
us a lot of market check, gave us scale that
we desperately needed for a brand of the size, and
for an international brand with the quality that is a Starbucks,
you do require a significant amount of overhead, and that
(28:46):
overhead has to get funded one way or the other.
And if you aren't using somebody else's money, you need
a bunch of stores to generate the cash flow to
do that.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
And the scale helped us.
Speaker 7 (28:55):
Not only cover that overhead, but get a lot better
seat at the table with our suppliers and stakeholders who
involved the business.
Speaker 2 (29:02):
So that was the key.
Speaker 3 (29:04):
I mean, coffee can sound simple, but I know it's not.
I mean, I'm a relatively simple coffee drinker. I'll have
an Americano with a touch of milk, please, And if
you don't have the milk, that's fine. But some people,
I mean, it can be incredibly complicated. And I read
I think there's something like eighty thousand combinations of drinks
that you can get at a Starbucks in South Africa.
I wasn't sure if i'd read that right. Frankly, Now
(29:26):
does that make it difficult to sort of manage? I mean,
you have to make sure you have everything you needed
every branch and you don't want to have too much
of it in any one place either.
Speaker 7 (29:35):
Yeah, at Risk have been been called out on us.
I think it's one of the most complex businesses to run.
The number of line items we have to procure, most
of them are imported. In sure the stock levels are correct, training, etc.
Is complex. Now you've got to also explain that to
the customer on the other side, the combination does actually
amount to something like eighty thousand whatever a variation you have.
(29:58):
And when I look at businesses, other business today has
been a great learning ground or for us to learn
how to run a supply chain. We're primarily a limit
logistics business and a front end hospitality business today, it
is a lot that goes into it, and it's months
and months of planning. My procurement team, my logistics team
are outside of the frontline employees that are serving the customer,
(30:20):
the central part of our organization.
Speaker 3 (30:23):
It's so interesting. I mean, I sometimes wonder if a
coffee chain might just make a lot more money by
just being a bit simpler. Yes, you can have a cappuccino,
but not a half whatever. And yet I also know
that over time, I mean, coffee drinkers are becoming like
tea drinkers. They become quite finicky.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah, you know the cork coffee offerings.
Speaker 7 (30:46):
You sort of con'traperentiate yourself, and you do need labor's expensive,
rents expensive. And yeah, you could simplify your business, but
you're not going to have much in top line because
only so many coffee is a person could drink per day.
So how do you attract the broader audience or customer base?
You need to grow and develop as your menu needs
to change, as the market changes, and the answers of
today certainly don't drink the coffee that you and I
(31:07):
may be drinking.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Or it's called it's called.
Speaker 7 (31:10):
Brew and iced teas and every variation of preppaccino, and
that keeps changing. And the innovation part that Starbucks are
so good at is really differentiated for us.
Speaker 2 (31:21):
So our revenue is generally far higher than any of the.
Speaker 7 (31:23):
Coffee competitors that you may reference that they've been brilliant
at what they do, but we've got the cloud of
a very very large machine behind us that can innovate
and stay in touch with what's going on in the market,
and a lot larger scale and anther quality that's pretty
hard for others to replicate, given the logistics function that's
required to procure this and all these ingredients around the world,
meeting global standards that that are on par with the Starbucks.
Speaker 3 (31:49):
It's been interesting. I mean, there's a big Reuters report
a couple of weeks ago about some of the major
problems for Starbucks in the US with their supply chains.
No milk at some stores, not enough food and others
too much food in some places. I mean, I know
you won't necessarily want to comment on the parent company,
but one of the things that I thought was interesting
was it seemed in the US is a very different
(32:09):
market to US much much bigger that they basically had
too many suppliers and they should have had sort of
a fewer bigger supplies. Are their lessons and what's happening
there for here. I've never heard of a supply problem
at Starbucks in South Africa. I have to say, so.
I don't know if we're much easier or if you've
just kind of got it down pattern some way.
Speaker 7 (32:31):
I'd love to say that would be true, but I
tell you, Stephen, we spend night and day trying to
figure out how to get that product through the through
the ports, in on time, making sure it doesn't expire.
It's twelve weeks on the ocean. It's not an easy one,
but it's fundamental to our business. A lot of capitals
tied up in your supply chain. You've got to get
it right, you've got to be consistent. And then we've
got a very very big country. The rest of the
world and including the people we report into, don't realize
(32:54):
how big South Africa is. And logistics between getting tough
on Durbin to health Tang, from Parting down to Cape Town, it's.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
A big effort.
Speaker 7 (33:00):
And yes, supplier supply relationships are key and over concentration
into a single supply is very dangerous for your business.
So you also have to think about diversifying there and
making sure you're not like I said, not making sure
you're not too small, because if you're too small and
they decide to turn turn the key on you, you can
really get yourself into trouble. Fortunately, most of our product
comes comes from the parent parent company.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
That does mean.
Speaker 7 (33:24):
We've got a lot of a lot of our capital
sitting on the ocean, but they did the procurement and
then we procure from them. We have demand planning side
that we have to get right, and that's making sure
in South Africa, given the variability in the various towns,
that we've got the supply right because we're thinking six
to nine months out every time we place an order.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
So the business of running a coffee shop right as
star back. So I mean, there's some people who I'm
sure go to you once or twice a day and
they will literally go. They'll have their branch, they will
probably know I hope they'll know the barista. They will
just want they order. They might want two or three
for the rest of the office. And if they go
there are plenty of other people, and I'm guilty of
(34:05):
this from time to time who go into a coffee shop,
have one drink, but linger for hours be meet. I mean,
you know, sometimes you can go into a coffee shop
and come to this person in that person and this
person and that and it's great, but you're not making
much money out of me. How do you sort of
make money when people do linger and you want them
to linger in a way, but you also don't want
(34:27):
them to, you know, use all of your electricity charging
their laptop.
Speaker 2 (34:32):
Yeah. Look, I take a long view on that.
Speaker 7 (34:35):
I think the more time people can spend in US store,
become familiar with it, love the brand, love the product,
I think for the long term that boats very well
with us.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
We're privately owned business.
Speaker 7 (34:43):
It's me and the few of my friends that I've
got to know me over time as either a somebody
who cycled or.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
Worked and wherever I've been. You know, we've got to
make make this thing work.
Speaker 7 (34:52):
And I think building their rapport and connection with the
customer is more important. I never like going into a
restaurant and feel and to feel rushed, and I know
why they need does HEAs to turn over?
Speaker 2 (35:01):
But I don't think that.
Speaker 7 (35:02):
Bills longevity and loyalty with your customer, and so yes,
I recognize any Starbucks you go into, in particular the
one in Rosebank or sitting in Sepoint here there's a
playful lot of people sitting using our electricity and spending
time there. But I actually don't mind it at all
because over the time of time they will become long
term customers and that's the ultimate goal.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
Adrian Mayzie is your shape shifter of this evenings with
us until eight o'clock. Plenty more to come.
Speaker 1 (35:28):
The Money Show Shape Shifters.
Speaker 3 (35:30):
The CEO of Rand Capital Coffee, Adrian Maize or shape Shifter.
Tonight they held the Starbucks license in South Africa. Adrian,
Who've spoken a lot about coffee, and I have many
more questions. I do want to ask a question or
two about you, if I may, Because you grew up
in Pretoria. You went to the same school as what
was that guy's name? I'm sure you asked that all
the time.
Speaker 2 (35:50):
Yeah, I heard he went to my school.
Speaker 3 (35:53):
Well, I mean, obviously my fault noticing that Elon Musk.
Then you went to the US and you actually went there,
I rate to play tennis. Was that a scholarship. I mean,
I mean that must have been quite an experience. You
would have gone on your own to play a particular
sports and you must have done very well at it.
Speaker 7 (36:12):
Yeah, I'm the nineteen ninety two Tickiest Tennis Champion and
from there I that was my height of my career.
And then I got a scholarship to go to the
University of Nebraska, where I spent three years playing Division
one tennis. We were the nineteen ninety six Division eight champions.
I was in doubles at number one doubles, and then
I quit and then I went to work for Cooper's
(36:32):
librand de Lloyte Intuitions and private equity hedge Fund and
that was the end of my tennis career. But it
was it's to what I am to the court to
this day. It's how I identify it.
Speaker 3 (36:45):
I mean, the idea of going to another bigger country.
It wasn't like now where you could WhatsApp your parents,
you know, where you could you know, be on the
phone to them every day. I mean, it was a
very different time, the sort of early nineties. What was
that experience like, I mean, you must have learned a
huge amount you'd ever had no one else to rely on.
Speaker 7 (37:05):
Yeah, you know, and when I talked to my kids, it's,
you know, the story about how hard we had it
as children and compared to how they have it today.
But I left on the second of January nineteenninety three,
went to what is twenty below zero.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
No connections.
Speaker 7 (37:20):
No Friensis was pre apartheid, end of apartheid, right, so
it wasn't exactly a large connection to the United States.
No Internet, no long distance calling, no What'sapp. I used
to send videos to my mother on a VCR reporter
that I at one point bought, and that came later years,
but otherwise it was postcards. It was very difficult. That
had no network. And I think I went there with
eight hundred rand and everything I owned today comes from
(37:41):
that eight hundred rand, which, by the way, I spent
the first week I got there, but different conversation. But yeah,
I had to form relationships. I couldn't get a job
like I could year or anywhere. Like I watched kids
that they get jobs in America and their parents help
them get jobs. I get people coming to me asking
me to help place them. I don't know which university
(38:02):
to go to. I got three offers to go different schools.
I had no idea what the difference is between one
or the other. And it wasn't like a good just
look it up on the interlet alone on chet GBT.
So it was me and my own. But I figured
it out and it probably made me what I am today.
I was eighteen years old and I had to make
friends and figure out how to just get a driver's license,
how to even figure out where classrooms were.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
So we were all old enough to know what that
was like. But it certainly made me grow up very quickly.
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Was there a drive that you had? I mean, you
went to Cooper's in Librnder as you say, then you
went from you know, from one business to another business,
and you clearly learned a lot from some of the
people you saw. But you clearly they saw something in
you too, obviously.
Speaker 7 (38:43):
Yeah, I don't know what they saw on me a
different perspective, but I've always been highly ambitious, but ambitious
from it in security perspective. I always have high desire
to grow up and be something in somebody someday and
I'm still trying to do that.
Speaker 2 (38:55):
And I've always tried to excel at what I'd do.
Speaker 7 (38:57):
And I knew that by giving I do my best
every day, I'd be better the next day, if that
makes sense, And certainly putting my best foot forward, I
would impress somebody along the way. And I'd always thought
to be friends with older individuals who are more experienced,
and I learned from them. And it probably was also
because of one of the youngest in my classes. Even
at primary school, at Springvale Primary or Boys, I was
a year younger than most folks, and so I was
(39:19):
surrounded by people with more experience and it sort of
stuck with me all my life. I'm now getting to
a stage where I turn out to be the oldest
in the crowd, which is quite weird. But I did
that and I think that helped me and a lot
of people open doors for me. It didn't come on
my own. Maybe I earned it, but you couldn't get
there on your own.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
I mean, there's so much to it. Is there a
particular philosophy or sort of writer that's maybe influenced you.
I've read somewhere Anne Ran perhaps, I mean she influences
She's influenced quite a few generations of people. I mean,
would she be one, would there be others.
Speaker 7 (39:54):
Yeah, and Ran without a Doubt, and Rand Group is
named after Oran Capital is named after and Rand Shrugged
fountain Head. But my former boss, Eddie Lampert is the
one who sort of indoctrinated me into that. Yeah, Elan
inspires the heck out of me. And I sit and
watch his work ethic and his desire and drive, and
(40:15):
that's somebody I'll look up to. Now that's not an author,
but Anne Rand has been certainly the most influential in
my life. And Elon at the moment that someone inspires
me to be better and get up and do something,
and it's sort of highlighting at this point I'm turning
fifty two. Short is how much time we have left
and how much time you have to be productive and
get things done. So I'm trying to ramp up my
(40:36):
work ethic and hopefully I'll get enough done in my
lifespan that I can accomplish something.
Speaker 3 (40:41):
Adrian Maizie, the founder and seer of Rand Capital collection
the Starbucks licensee in Africa, talking about his journey around
Starbucks fascinating. Seven.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
You are listening to the money shows the best bits.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Your business book review this week. Ian Man, the managing
director of Gateways Business Consultants. Looking into Money by David McWilliams,
talking about how money played a role in making us human.
Speaker 5 (41:10):
Probably the most extraordinary book I've read. I cannot remember
since when. Really it's written by an economist. That's not
his fault. Most economists are really very dry. He is,
he can't write a paragraph without being entertaining. What he's
done is he has taken the history of money from
from the from the very beginning when hunter gatherers, we're
(41:30):
using grains as a medium of establishing value which they
could share with other people because it had a value.
We know that two handfuls of this can be equal
to one of that, and then we saw He leads
that right through up to we we are now with cryptocurrencies.
And his book is built on simply giving you insights
(41:52):
and the most extraordinary things that happened along the way,
and I like to share some of them with you.
So he goes back the very very oldest where if
you take the Somemerians in two thousand BC, they were
there a civilization where they were writing and writing in
their accounting that the legal system that sophisticated financial architecture,
(42:14):
and they were, but the whole thing was anchored by
interest rates. There was a clear interest rate. Everybody in
you were trading was because that was interest rate. But
was the Lydians that developed a coin. Now before them,
the Babylonians always loved gold jewelry. But to say that
this is worth an ounce of gold means that you've
got to be sure that the ounce that your weights
(42:34):
are correct. That's fine. The problem with that is you
can also put a stone in the middle or something
was some dirty in the middle. But once you start
putting in print, printing a coin that's regulated by some
major authority like a country, you know that that's tradeable.
All of a sudden, trade completely completely changed. And that's
what happened with the Lidians. And there they stamped, they stamped,
(42:55):
validated piece of gold was really worth what they said
it was.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
The Greeks go.
Speaker 5 (43:01):
Then he gets into it takes everything in between that.
Then you get to the Greeks, and the Greeks had
an enormous empire. The only problem was that they they
couldn't feed themselves, so they really needed to trade. And
what they started doing was they they had to import
three quarts and that's amazing had to import three courts
of their food, so they had to have some word
(43:22):
of trading, and they developed a coin and which the drama,
which lasted seven hundred years as the basic as a
basic form of trade. And that made that made them
completely different to anybody else. But that that that coin
actually had other effects. And what he does shows the
effects on humanity and human beings, effect on on on
(43:43):
on money, and how the world evolves from that. The
the in in in in Athens, if you had two
drama and you were a lowly level person, you could
buy exactly the same amount of goods as a princess
with two drama. There was very democratic and very very unusual.
Well then it wasn't like that. Then you move into
(44:05):
places like Florence and everything in between. Right, get to
Florence's most incredible city. Even though it's incredible, it was
an incredible trading city, was probably the greatest trading hub
of its time. And they were structured the way the
structure was unusual. Firstly, they set up guilds, which meant
groups of people got together and by getting together they
(44:26):
could get better prices, they could sell better and their
trade routes literally around the world, and these guilds facilitated
as trade. But more interestingly, the wealthy people there were
very civic minded, and the wealthy people were all built parks,
but not for themselves, huge houses with big parks. They
bought parks for the people. And so he had a
(44:47):
city where which attracted intellectuals, which attracted open thought, and
which actually became an extraordinary, extraordinary city until the Black Plague.
There was an extraordinary, amazing, amazing achievement.
Speaker 3 (44:59):
So the idea really is that money currency brings people together,
and brings people together who would not otherwise be together.
Speaker 5 (45:07):
Absolutely it has. It has all sorts of effects. One
that brings people to get also allows them to trade
with each other in ways that they couldn't have done otherwise.
And he weaves all sorts of lovely stories together. One
of the stories I enjoyed most was his story about Gutenburg.
We always think of him as printing the Bible, but
Gutenburg was down and out. He was a goldsmith, saying,
(45:28):
you're at craft things. And he realized that I could
make a printing press. And he didn't make a printing
press for books. He went the best person to be
employed by at the time was the church. Because the
Church had the real money. I think they still have
enormous amount, and they they were the one.
Speaker 1 (45:45):
To really work for.
Speaker 5 (45:46):
And they were had a really nice scheme you could
get get out of hell free and all that. You
could get out of hell if you if you bought
your way out indulgences. But they were printing writing out
indulgences by and that took too much time. So he
went in and Sot's like to help you guys out,
I can print these things in mass and that made
(46:08):
a huge amount of money for the church. Bolso made
a huge amount of money for him. And you have
all these incredible stories, the the how, how how money
led to something else, and you can see the effect
of the Protestant Revolution was the result of him having
going to business, building printing press and going on. But
the idea of money was used for all sorts of things.
(46:29):
When when the states after the War of Independence, they
had a whole bunch of states who were separate, the
South and the North, and they couldn't come together. They
used money to get people together in a very very
interesting way. They had one the first thing they said,
the central government will take care of all the war
debts for the site. The problem was that they said,
(46:49):
we've just left the Brits. We don't want to we
don't want to be governed by anybody else, and so
we'll give you we'll take care of all your debts,
but we're going to have only one currency called the dollar.
And all of a sudden, every time you took your
money out of your pocket. You remember there was the
United States of America and they had a dollar, and
it was things like that. The money had impact in
(47:12):
other ways that you couldn't have expected it. But we've
also had we've also had we meant to fear the
currencies where where money was based on who said it was.
And in the American dollars is in God we trust,
but it's really in the Fed that we trust. And
the money is a very interesting way of just developing
and growing at extraordinary rates.
Speaker 3 (47:33):
And so I said I hadn't finished the book. You
said that that was strange because it's written so well,
and certainly, I mean all of the reviews make that
point about this book too. That's something you would recommend
very strongly.
Speaker 5 (47:47):
I would definitely recommend it very strongly. I think that
it leads you not only into what money has done
and what money it can do, but it allows you
to understand what money is, how it moved from dollar
asset based like gold, to where we can have money
that was delinked from from gold and was just based
(48:09):
on the economy. And then we move further and he
ends a book by he was in the Bank of Ireland.
He understands national banks and he asks whether banks control
the money or money controls the central bank. I'll just
give you a quick example. If you want to buy
a house this asset called a house. I'd come and
(48:32):
I go to the bank and I borrow money. They
give me money, So now I have money, but the
bank has an asset called the house. All of a sudden,
the value we've just put the value of a house
just because they're nothing structured into the economy and it
grows like that. You gets some wonderful insights into business,
into the economy and into money. I found it fascinating.
Speaker 3 (48:54):
Yeah Man the managing director of Gateways Business Consultants, sharing
his take on the book Money. David McWilliams.
Speaker 1 (49:03):
The best of The Money Show from this week.
Speaker 3 (49:07):
You've been listening to the best bits of The Money Show.
Just a digest of some of the most important comment thoughts,
one or two of the best jokes that you heard
on the show this week. If you'd like to hear more,
please go to our website or your podcast app and
search for The Money Show. I really do appreciate you
being with us this week. Thank you so much for that.
We'll be back with you at six o'clock on Monday.
I really do hope you have a good and a
(49:28):
safe weekend.
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