Adii Pienaar: Life Profitability: The new measure of entrepreneurial success

Transcript

[0:00:20] DA: What does success mean to you? If you’re an entrepreneur, this probably feels like a straightforward question with a simple answer. You want your business to thrive, you want to make a profit, you want to stand out, you want to be noticed, but then what? When are you done? Are you fulfilled, are you happy? In his new book, Life Profitability. Adii Pienaar provides you with a new perspective for becoming self-aware, recognizing your values and understanding your impact. An enriched life and a successful business are not mutually exclusive. He’ll provide you with the first steps in building a business that is more sustainable with increased options for you, your employees, and your community. Learn how to give yourself some space, measure meaningful output, and live with intention so you can maximize profit that truly counts. Hey listeners, my name is Drew Applebaum and I’m excited to be here today with Adii Pienaar, author of Life Profitability: The new measure of entrepreneurial success. Adii, thank you for joining, welcome to The Author Hour podcast.

[0:01:20] Adii Pienaar: Thanks man, me too.

[0:01:21] DA: Let’s kick this off, can you give us a rundown of your professional background?

[0:01:26] Adii Pienaar: Yeah, totally. I’m Adii Pienaar, I think most important thing is, I live all the way down south in Cape Town South Africa, and in the last 13 years, I’ve built and sold two software businesses, both remote international teams from here, built this national business and have recently started my third software business.

[0:01:44] DA: Now, why was now the time to write this book? Do you have more time in your hands because of COVID? Was there an “Aha” or an inspirational moment?

[0:01:53] Adii Pienaar: I think there’s two things, two passthrough that made the timing right, now. I think they’re the more obvious one is that many of the lessons and the genesis for this idea for life profitability, came to me and crystallized during my previous business. Which I sold and exited in August 2019. I essentially f kicked off the writing process shortly after that, taking all those lessons that I’d learned through that building my second business and I really wanted to put that out, into the world. I think that’s the more obvious thing there. I think the second part is almost more grandiose-wise and in the sense that I knew through that second business, we try to build a business the way that would inspire other businesses because we build software for other businesses and we try to build it in a way that would inspire them to – in our words, be kinder, that was with my team and I spoke about. We never got there. Subsequently, having sold the business, having a little bit of that extra space, like, I still come to that idea that where I don’t think that capitalism in its current form and like the extent to which it influences society as the perfect model, and to a large extent, what I wanted to do was create this new idea, this new concept of life profitability almost as an augmented version of what capitalism is. I think that only comes from I think having first you space in my own life, right? Which is one of those concepts that we – the it that I discuss in the book as well and creating that space. But it just felt like now was the time and then COVID happened in between. I wouldn’t say luckily or fortunately in how it affected it, influence the thinking. Here, even though like many of the concepts in life profitability, certain duplicity, almost dovetails really well with some of the struggles that people have, experienced during the past 12 months.

[0:03:53] DA: Now, did you have the book in your head, you knew you wanted to write or did you have any learnings or breakthroughs during the writing of the book? Sometimes it comes through research, sometimes it comes by looking back at your own history and your own journey?

[0:04:08] Adii Pienaar: I love that question, and yes, like I think, if I think about the concept that I had in my head going into the process of writing a book was all around how to think about building a better business and how to be an entrepreneur of your own life. Many of those things in my mind, the dots that I connected was, inspirations from the stoics philosophy and Buddhism, all those kinds of different things that had impacted me through my journey and those are the things that I took into the writing process. I think the thing that I ultimately discovered most and learned most through the writing process was how much of nature and almost universal laws or universal occurrences in nature actually just shows up and, by doing these things that are supposedly better practices, right? Or more holistic or more wholesome practices, we’re actually just doing what we’re naturally built to do and there are so many other asset examples and, in nature, in the universe of those things and just almost not better fitting that. But imposing that back and superimposing that almost into this concept of life profitability.

[0:05:22] DA: Now, who is this book for? Is it for founders or executives like yourself or can everybody at every level of employment take something from this book?

[0:05:33] Adii Pienaar: Yeah, I think the primary reader that can probably gain most out of the whole book is an entrepreneur, is a founder, it’s someone that runs their own business, regardless of whether they just started, whether they’ve been in the same business for 10 years or whether they have an idea for a business. That’s definitely the primary reader here. I do think that there is, any ambitious individual that works in a team and especially leads a team. They can definitely benefit from the book. Because, that’s what the border concept where the book isn’t just about the person reading the book, right? It’s not just for example, about that executive leader or about the entrepreneur. It very much, the concepts ripple outwards from you as an individual, you as a reader there, to your immediate surroundings and the people around you. In any space that – where individual which literally means all of us, right, operates where there are other people involved like that’s someone that can probably benefit from the idea of life profitability.

[0:06:34] DA: Now, what should readers do to get the most out of this book? You spent a little bit of time talking about “This isn’t the book to skim.”

[0:06:44] Adii Pienaar: Yeah, I think the important thing about not skimming the book is that a big part of just life profitability as a concept is all about this holistic and wholesome nature to our lives. When we think about – a concept that many people are aware of is this notion of, we, as individuals being on this rat race. Constantly running faster and faster. Every year we need to run faster, just keep up with the Jones’, right? In doing that, we neglect so many parts of ourselves, so many parts of our life. For many of us, when we work hard, right? We sacrifice health, we sacrifice hobbies, we sacrifice family and friends, those things. I think that’s a very important part there of why it’s also then important not to neglect certain parts of the book because a big part of what I hope readers get out of this is to take that step back and literally view their whole life as a unit, as a pole thing, right? Not this compartmentalized, fractional thing where we’re constantly shaving parts of ourselves of, to adapt and to fit in.

[0:07:51] DA: Let’s start from the beginning and usually, business leaders in the early days, they make a choice to say, I’m going to live my business, and they give it all of their focus and they put all of their energy into it. What are they missing when they do this?

[0:08:08] Adii Pienaar: Yeah, I think there’s two things that I think is broadly missing there, I think the first part is, this notion of sequencing important life events. That idea of, saying, I will start my business today and I will totally take this short term pain, because there will be long-term gain here. I will make compromises, sacrifices in the short-term and then eventually, there’s going to be a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. The challenge with that is that none of us, like firstly, that’s getting to that pot of gold isn’t a guaranteed outcome. Doesn’t matter how hard you work, doesn’t matter how smart you are. That’s simply not guaranteed like agreeable science does not guarantee that you get there. But more importantly, is, we don’t know how much time we need to get to that point and we don’t know how much time we have as humans on this earth, right? We’re mortal beings. I think that’s the biggest risk of, doing anything ambitious, whether it’s building a business otherwise is – that we take that notion, right? It’s just risky that we run out of time before we really do the things that we want to do. I think that’s the first view part like at the start. The second part of that for me is all around being in alignment with who you are as an individual and what your values are at this moment, at this starting point, if today is the starting point and I said, “You know what? My values are XY and Z.” For me, my highest value is my family. As I take these next steps on my own ambitious journey. If those steps aren’t in alignment with that value, right? With my other values, then, it’s never going to be in alignment and there’s always going to be that friction. The reality of that is that on this journey that we’re all on as individuals, like, we are the only common denominator on that journey. The business can change, the team can change, the idea can change. People get divorced, spouses change, right? Families change, as a result, you can move to a different country, you can make new friends. All of those things can change. The thing that always stays the same though is, “I’m still there on this journey of mine.” Being crystal clear about who I am and why I’m starting this journey of building a business, I think is crucially important. I think the irony in all of that is that many entrepreneurs will tell you that, part of why they start a business is this notion of freedom. They have their own definition of what that freedom is, whether it’s freedom to work when they want, work on what they want, work with whom they want. All of those things. But there is some part of freedom in that and what they ultimately like, what many entrepreneurs do and what I did for so long is I just trade that freedom that I get back from not working for the man, right? I get some freedom and I invested in my own business and it just becomes beholden to that business. In the book, like I speak about this notion that, in many cases, the business becomes this beast that needs to be fed at all times. That’s not freedom either, right? Because you’re just – instead of being beholden to the man, I’m just now beholden to this different beast, right? But hence why, that’s like being very clear about who you are at the starting point. Making sure that you are – like you honor like that, that “You”, that unique magical you, I think is crucially important.

[0:11:22] DA: Now, Adii, I want to put you on the hot seat. Why should folks be listening to you on this subject? And, as you spoke about earlier, maybe since it seems like you did live in both of these worlds, can you tell us about the difference in philosophy between business one and then what happened in business two?

[0:11:41] Adii Pienaar: Yeah, I think the first part in – I’m never one to blow my horn. But I’ll share this story as some credibility to why both my journey, might, and my anecdotes and examples from the journey, as well as the idea of life profitability, might be valuable to to your listeners and readers. I built my first business straight out of university. I spent six weeks in a corporate employment gig before I quit and I bought my first business. That business is with things and WooCommerce which today is, the biggest open-source e-commerce platform in the world, it’s probably second only to Shopify in terms of merchant volume. Really significant business. When I exited the business, I became a millionaire and I left with this notion that I was a one-hit-wonder and I needed to prove that I wasn’t a one-hit-wonder. I immediately started a new business because that’s the only thing that I, as an entrepreneur knew. But I also went into this new thing, thinking that it’s going to be easier, right? I had capital, I had connections, network, friends, right? in the ecosystem in the business world. I had skills and experience that I didn’t necessarily have, starts of the first business. And then, party box, two years into, to my second business Conversio. I ticked that box of saying, what? I’m not a one-hit-wonder, I’ve built another significant business here and I can remember the moment where I realized that meaning, the meaning of this thing, the purpose of building this business just drained from me. I remember this weird sensation of, almost just feeling like I was in a boat, lost at sea. There’s just vast open oceans ahead of me. I’m not clear like I don’t have a compass, I don’t know, like, which direction I should go. I think many of these stories, and that’s why I started by saying, I don’t come in bloated mode here. Because, much of it sounds like, rich person learns lessons after getting rich thing. But in saying that, for me at least, I think that’s exactly how I learned, right? Which was, I did it the first time. Then I learned by failing almost the second time and failing in life because that’s ultimately what happened. Like, after I realized that that meaning in the business got lost, many things happened in my personal life that’s, almost made me lose the things that are most dear to me. That was a change of one, right? Halfway through the period’s business, that’s where I – this idea and I didn’t have the term at that stage of life profitability but at least to see planted there where I realized, I needed to change. Things needed to change. This meaning and purpose of pulling a business and needs to change for me to continue doing this, because otherwise, like, I will burn out and everything around me will probably burn away alongside my own burnout.

[0:14:39] DA: Now, can an entrepreneur still feel fulfilled if they move business from the center stage of their lives and is there a fear that builds as you take a few steps away that something might get lost, something might go wrong?

[0:14:57] Adii Pienaar: Yeah, I think the interesting thing here is that, when we think about building businesses, being an entrepreneur. We constantly think about this, always having a yardstick, always having some benchmark to – which we compare ourselves, right? Because we see all these great success stories in the media, this millionaire, that millionaire, that billionaire, right? These things become benchmarks that we measure ourselves against. I think what is interesting in that, when we look at that and like, if we don’t measure, then we go into this imposter syndrome mode. Irony of build, at least the label of being an entrepreneur is that it feeds that imposter syndrome, right? We say, “You know what? Not to be an imposter.” But we’re an entrepreneur, it’s okay, we’re aspiring, upwards, even though we’re not there, we buy into that narrative. To some extent, being entrepreneur, even if you’re a struggling entrepreneur, is safer than being something else. Like that’s, even for the longest time, that was one of my challenges as well, this notion of like you know, if Adii is not the entrepreneur, who is he, right? I think it’s through talking about my adult life, if we sat down to chat about new for five minutes, we just met today like I would have probably told you, “Listen, I own my own business. I am entrepreneur” whatever words are used but you would know that about me. Sacrificing that for the longest part of me was a big challenge, right? And I think again, that’s part of what I want to kind of, you know challenge with this idea of life probability, which is again like, you know entrepreneurs build businesses because they want to improve their lives and that’s a realistic thing but then somewhere in that journey, like we attach all of this kind of value and the warm fuzzies that we fill our daily lives to the business and we neglect everything else that we actually wanted to achieve, right? Whether it’s kind of you know, this hobby or that kind of your passion project, whatever it is we neglect all of the other things along the way and the business becomes just this bigger, bigger component of our life. I think that’s the irony. I think it’s hard to think about not just being an entrepreneur, not just being wearing this kind of badge of honor of saying like, “My work comes first” kind of thing but once someone makes that shift and explores what that kind of greater life profitability means and shifts their perspective to, “How do I build a business that profits my life” right? I think just in that like that is very small to tweak, right? That kind of the actions, subsequent actions are probably like more, you know kind of involved, more comprehensive but just that mindset change I think already changes the way one thinks about building a business, right? How do I build a business that truly profits my whole life and not just financially because there’s this great Argentinian philosopher that said, “You know, those people that I am…” I am butchering the quote slightly and the philosopher’s name, surname is Narcoski and he said, “You know those people that trade kind of money for happiness can never buy happiness, right? It’s that just notion that once like it’s impossible. Money does not solve all of the things that we want in life unfortunately, which is why we need to take that expanded view on like a business needs to be life profitable and not just financially profitable in the way that we’re used to at this stage.

[0:18:24] DA: Yeah, I’m glad you mentioned that. I would love to dig into the word life profitable. Can you define that for us as you see it and tell me about the life profitable vocabulary that there is?

[0:18:39] Adii Pienaar: Yeah, so I think kind of the simplest way that I explained it firstly is, if you think about any financial investment work for them and generally like I’ll take a step back. My wife always jokes and she says that I can find anyway to kind of bring a financial term into any conversation regardless of the said topic, right? I think that if we speak about vocabulary at least like the starting point here is the typical kind of business vocabulary or financial vocabulary that we would otherwise use, right? Profitable literally here means that the positives outweigh the negatives, right? When I try and explain kind of profitability to anyone, the idea here is kind of yet two-fold. It’s firstly just if you take, you know similar to what you would do with your investment portfolio, if you take your kind of your life portfolio, there is probably, you know many things in that portfolio, right? Whether I have mentioned some of the things, work is one of them, right? Ambition, right? But family, friends, hobbies, passion project, all of those things are – or your health, right? All of those things kind of you put into that portfolio and ultimately, you want to kind of see that portfolio grow, right? You want to see it being successful whatever that kind of your measures. I think that’s the first part of is kind of understanding that life profitability has many – like is a life portfolio with many different components and acknowledging all of those individual components. The second part of it really thinking through the cost of just doing business and doing anything and the philosopher, Henry Thrall said, again I am going to slightly you know abbreviating the full quote but he says you know, “The cost of anything that we do in our life is this thing called life” right? That is the cost of doing anything is life because our time, our energy, our attention, all of those things are finite. Our choice to do anything has a cost and that cost is our lives and in the same way, that’s like we kind of taking a Buddhist mindset that we can only understand light because we also understand dark, right? We understand good because we only we understand bad. I think to understand life profitability, we need to think through the cost, the life costs of building a business or doing things in a certain way because only once you understand that cost to yourself, you can start kind of figuring out. How does that kind of return on your life portfolio actually look?

[0:21:09] DA: Now, how do other people play a role in this transformation and can you Jerry McGuire this and take other people with you in this journey? Is this a whole company thing or is this only a whole self-transformation?

[0:21:25] Adii Pienaar: Yeah, so it is definitely a whole company thing. I love this question, right? A big part of where life profitability started was exactly at that point. So, I mentioned earlier that in my previous business, one of the things that my team and I wanted to do was we wanted to kind of influence our little corner of like the software e-commerce ecosystem in a way that kind of we’d advocate for kinder businesses, right? We never really got there. Whether it was just our size, we weren’t significant enough so that you know, we could get enough people to buy into our mission or maybe the mission didn’t resonate but we didn’t hit that goal and part of my thinking like in almost admitting defeat, right? On admission was going back to the drawing board and saying, “Where can I actually make an impact?” If that’s what the impact that we can make as a business like where can we make an impact and I realized that’s kind of old cliché of charity starts at home. Which means in that case meant that firstly, I can take care, good care of myself and then I could probably take good care of those closest to me, I.E. my own family but then in my team and in the company kind of context, I can probably kind of them, you know build the business in such a way that allows my team members as individuals to be life profitable as well and if I could do that for them then they could probably go back into kind of, you know, do that for their spouse or their kids or within their community. In that sense, it has this rippling outwards effect like we all kind of ripple outwards from our, you know, most magical selves, right? Where I am in line with myself and I am manifesting my truest expression of self, that magic. Then I am rippling outwards but then as soon as I do that for someone on my team and they’re rippling outwards as well and everyone has seen this, right? When you see a pond and there is multiple ripples like that point where the ripples meet there is this exponential bump almost, right? I think that was a big part of that kind of initial inspiration that I had. It has so much momentum in my thoughts about, “What could this look like if it was amplified and it was actually properly kind of facilitated in our team?” That’s kind of the long version there but to that extent, I think kind of the others is core component of life profitability and we also like in that ripples like we define life profitability and three kind of broad concentric circles. Which is like me, myself, right? Others, whether it’s kind of your family friends or your team members, greater society, right? You know the third one, which the third ring was almost the kind of the container or just the manifestation ultimately then it’s the business and the actual commercial tactic. Others kind of play a core part of what life profitability actually means.

[0:24:20] DA: Now you have reflections at the end of each chapter. You ask the reader to almost slow down, pause, take a moment and answer some questions and ponder some things that they might have just read. Could you talk about what these reflections contain and what they ask of the reader?

[0:24:38] Adii Pienaar: Yeah, so when I went into writing the book, I made the decision that I don’t want to write a how-to book and I don’t want to propose, “Hey Drew, here is a 10-step process for you to just build a life profitable business” and the reason for that is I don’t believe that those things exists. I don’t think that there’s this perfect blueprint that you can just kind of take and you can implement in your life and it’s going to give you the exact result that’s kind of the author of that blueprint proposes. I didn’t want to do that and the reason we built in the reflections for every single chapter was essentially kind of inspiring and provoking sometimes the reader to think through what their own version of life profitability looks like. To that extent, I mean I just spoke about kind of life costs. I think like one of the reflections are all about kind of you know, where if you just take kind of, you know took stock of your life at this stage like where are you kind of your bleeding life cost or life losses at this stage? Where are you sacrificing or compromising and it doesn’t feel good anymore? That’s the kind of reflections that we included and it’s ultimately, if the reader went through all of those, by the end of the book, they should have you know, my set of breadcrumbs almost to trace their way to what their version of life profitability should look like and again, the reason for that is like every ready is like a version of life profitability would be super unique to themselves.

[0:26:11] DA: Beyond the chapter reflections, which again like I love it. You just mentioned it, makes you put the work in for yourself and tailors the message for your own life but you also add a lot of resources toward the end of the book as well and worksheets and can you talk about those?

[0:26:28] Adii Pienaar: Yeah, so like in addition to the reflections, the reflections kind of builds up to the final chapter or at least the later chapters in the book where there are multiple worksheets designed to just take you, again, take you through the kind of thought experiment, the thought process to figure out like firstly like where you’re at, at this stage. You know, ideally kind of, what does your – if you would set goals like what is those goals look like with regards to kind of life profitability. Then, we take you through kind of how to break that down, that kind of big vision, break that down into a 90-day plan and then we’ve got a kind of your mechanism to help you kind of track your progress in a new way. That’s not just kind of KPI driven or metric driven, right? It is something as more kind of that you personalized yourself overtime and the key is why we wanted to do this as well is I think as an entrepreneur, I have often been in that space where I felt my to-do list are never ending. Then you read a book and it is a good book, right? The proposals is going to help you with this thing or this is how you solve this marketing challenge or that sales challenge or whatever but what it ultimately does is it just adds more kind of items to my to-do list and I am already, you know demoralized because I can’t get through that to-do list. The way we structured the worksheets for Life Profitability has this very simple notion of, you know do one or two things. Incremental things, small things that create space in your life and again, space is a big – I speak about space in the book often, right? But you create that space and once you have that space, then you can kind of use that space and start reinvesting it elsewhere, whether it is back into the business to create more space or somewhere else in your life but that essentially kind of what the kind of multiple different worksheets allows you to do is just have a bit of process or structure. To how any reader can figure out kind of what life profitability looks like for them, right? What’s more – I wouldn’t say tactical history but just to what a plan could like for them to actually make progress towards greater life profitability.

[0:28:38] DA: Adii, writing a book especially like this one, which is going to help so many business professionals is no small feat so I just want to tell you congratulations.

[0:28:47] Adii Pienaar: Thank you very much Drew.

[0:28:48] DA: Now, if readers could take away only one thing from the book, what would it be?

[0:28:55] Adii Pienaar: That’s a big, big, big question.

[0:28:58] DA: This is the second hot seat question I am giving you. So I apologize but it’s an important one. What would you want someone to take away if it could just be one thing?

[0:29:08] Adii Pienaar: Yeah, I will take the moon shot here and I’ll say that if there’s just one thing that readers takes away from the book, it should be that there is actually an alternative to building a business or building a career to the one that we’re kind of – that often gets tilted and advocated in the mainstream there is definitely a different way. It doesn’t have be as hard as it mostly is at this stage.

[0:29:33] DA: This has been a pleasure and I am so excited for people to check out this book. Everyone, the book is called Life Profitability and you could find it on Amazon. Adii, besides checking out the book, where can people connect with you?

[0:29:44] Adii Pienaar: Yeah, the best place is either the book’s website, which is just lifeprofitability.com kind of one word or connected words. Otherwise, my personal website, adii.me has all of the book details, has loads of things that I did and the boss wrote in the past as well. I am also building my current startup in public, so I am sharing all the behind the scenes, you know almost kind of gremlins as I build that and I also started my own live daily podcast a couple of months ago. That is all on adii.me as well.

[0:30:16] DA: Very cool. Adii, thank you so much for coming on the show today and best of luck with your book.

[0:30:20] Adii Pienaar: Thank you so much Drew.

[0:30:22] DA: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Author Hour. You can get Adii Pienaar’s new book, Life Profitability, on Amazon. Also, you can also find a transcript of this episode and all of our other episodes on our website at authorhour.co. For more Author Hour, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite subscription service. Thank you for joining us, we’ll see you next time. Same place, different author.