Risk & Rise

Erica's background in theatre is where she learned about being an entrepreneur. She also ran an organic deli which helped her fine tune her business skills and crowdfunding knowledge. And it is from the challenges and failures she experienced that she now talks about the gems that she learnt from that challenging time. Erica shares on when to quit, when to persevere, and how to build a culture and deal with staf...

Telana asked eleven of the guests on Risk & Rise this one question: How do we find a business idea, if we want to be entrepreneurial, but have no idea what business to start? She shares their varied, practical, useful and inspiring responses, tools and exercises, which we can use straight away to explore our next business idea.

Guests are: Adri Neuper, Allon Raiz, Anne Gray, Dr Chomba Chuma, George Scola, Jonathan Smit, Kerryne Kra...

Whenever we start something new there is a strong likelihood that the Imposter Syndrome will be triggered. This is a phenomenon where we experience such fear of being exposed as a fraud, and it is heightened when there's any chance of us failing.  It can stop us from starting anything new or taking any kind of risk.

In this episode Telana explains how the Impostor Syn...

Serial entrepreneur Richard Nilsson explains how he dealt with rejection in his journey of raising around $6M for his current business MyPetGo. He also describes how he's been dealing with anxiety as an entrepreneur, and what he calls ‘near death experiences’ in business, and how those lows have resulted in learning and pivoting, which have taken his businesses forward.  Richard shares a wealth of ideas from how to raise capital, t...

Jonathan Smit, entrepreneur and angel investor, shares how he went from seeing a gap in the market that he knew nothing about, to building (and then successfully exiting) one of South Africa's top fintech businesses called Payfast.

Jonathan shares his experience and learnings around building a culture of innovation and teamwork, as well as the mindset we need in order to tackle mistakes and challenging times as an entrepreneur and ...

Craig Lubbe has moved up the ranks and is now a director of the Bob Group. He shares his failures and fears along his corporate journey, as well as what he has learned from bringing his intrapreneurial flair to the businesses he has worked in.  We explore how he creates a culture of innovation and how he sees risk and failure with his forever learning mindset.

Resou...

Graham Coetzer is an award-winning investigative journalist and has just published his book “Hunting with the Hawks”. He shares with Telana how he handles the fear of finding himself in life threatening situations for his work, as well as how he deals with the fear of how his book might be received and the judgment that comes with creating his work. In this episode they touch on managing fear, dealing with con...

Anne Gray brings a unique perspective from her background in the corporate world, to owning and selling a business, to now running a startup. She shares how important self-awareness is as a leader of a business, as well as her approach to experimenting, and taking risks, as well as creating a culture that is innovative and manages mistakes well.  She also explains a number of practical tools that we can use in our quest to fail fas...

"The ashes of failure are the best fertilizer for your next business idea.
Failure is hard but don't let it hurt you more than it needs to. Failure is just a hard teacher and not a reflection of who you are. Learn, adapt and go for round two."

- York Zucchi

This episode ...

There is a difference between good failure, and useless failure.  Telana unpacks the difference, and explains a practical process to turn those mistakes and failings into learnings, that will turn that failure into a good and productive one. This is how we can make a difference going forward, turning failure into feedback, then learnings and future actions.

If you would like a PDF about the reflective exercise explained in this epi...

Paul Smith has a background in academia, running his own businesses, and in supporting high growth entrepreneurs. He shares with us some strategies to follow instead of being concerned about learning from failure. And he explains the concepts of a growth entrepreneur, disruptive entrepreneurship and the role of mentorship and education in helping us to grow entrepreneurs.  Paul also touches on the biological process of fear and anx...

Renier is an example of the entrepreneurial spirit that we are looking to grow within ourselves.  He tackles the risks just one little step at a time. And he plays in the space of not knowing so that he's always open to learning, and encourages us to fail as many times as we need to in order to learn what it is we're trying to do.  In this episode Renier shares about his own entrepreneurial growth, as well as wh...

Dealing with our fears and understanding what they are telling us, is a life-skill that can help us deal with failure. Telana shares some frameworks from the cognitive behavioural sciences for looking at our emotions, and fear in particular, including the Plutchik model and Tony Robbin's view, that are most useful. She explores how this mindset of using our fear as a signal relates to the way we deal with risks, and thus how we can...

What would happen if we celebrated entrepreneurship more? Dr Chomba Chuma shares his ideas around celebrating entrepreneurs and how this will grow more businesses (and through that, more job opportunities). He also shares his own personal experience coming from a winning culture and then learning how (and why it is important) to fail early and fail forward.  He describes the process of failure that will help us learn from it, as we...

Is there much difference between being an entrepreneur and being self-employed? Adri has been both, and she shares her ingredients that make for a successful entrepreneur and business owner.  She's an example of seeing opportunities and making them happen with her just do it kind of attitude.

She talks with Telana about: how she deals with fear in business, as well as the imposter syndrome; the skill of asking and offering as an en...

Is the "stigma of failing" what we fear, more than the actual failure? Kerryne Krause shares her thoughts, experience, and useful tips to overcome those moments when we fail.  We explore redefining success, detaching our value from our doing, making decisions, the negative effectsof complacency on business, and the fear of rejection.  The discussion also touches on sexism and ageism, as well as the differences in raising funds in t...