My Story

I was born in South Africa to musician-artist parents who were always on the road. They played music together and took me everywhere they went. I went to ten different primary schools in the Middle East, West Africa and Europe and learned Spanish and Arabic. Regularly encountering new cultures was completely normal for me and it shaped so much of how I think about the importance of communication, community and what it actually takes to make a group of people want to rise to a challenge together, contribute their very best energies and do some real, meaningful work.

I studied philosophy, English literature, media studies and journalism at the University of Cape Town, where I discovered that I had the heart of a poet but the insatiable temperament of an entrepreneur who wanted to make an impact. Instead of living in a world of theories, I wanted to build things. The day after my final undergraduate exam, I got hired at my first job at a sales and marketing agency. It was to be the only conventional employment I would ever have.

The year I turned twenty-five, my wife and I had our first child and I started my first business. Becoming a father and entrepreneur was the dual initiation into purpose and direction my life needed. Since then I have worked with some of the world's best visionaries, thinkers, founders and leaders on the kinds of projects that bring out my very best gifts. I am not someone who fits neatly into a single category and I have learned to stop trying.

Along the way, I have embraced my lifelong creative side. I am a published poet and a contributing writer to AwareNow Magazine. I am a musician and songwriter and composed music for the South African film No Place Like Home. I produced a documentary about the culture of music in Vietnam, which led me to start Lake Productions, a video production agency supporting brands and organisations around the world to tell their stories, which still runs today.

Over the last 15 years, my business adventures have taken me across the world to found four companies. In that time, I have delivered seven-figure campaigns and engagements across SaaS, energy, travel and events. I have advised international boards and executive teams on AI and helped to shape investment strategies, raising millions for healthtech and blockchain ventures.

I did well. I travelled the world and delivered keynotes. I worked with incredible people. I was living the dream. But something didn't feel right. I realised I was having the wrong conversation.

I changed countries and decided I didn't want to do that anymore. I had created an elaborate identity about being the go-to problem solver in the business world. It wasn't really me. It took a few years to strip myself down to who I really am and get to know that guy again.

Along the way I reacquainted myself with my true essence. I rediscovered my creativity and writing. I discovered mythopoetics and embodiment practices. I discovered rites of passage and initiation rituals.

Since then, I have found the work I am meant to be doing, which weaves together my content creation and deep business building expertise with my continued study of human psychology, facilitation, community, customs and culture. People from all over the world work with me to lend clarity in articulating their larger vision in bolder, more imaginative terms.

This means that the way I work changes to fit the environment and the problem to be solved. I do not arrive with a framework or a tired slide deck. I arrive with questions and clarity. I work with the body as much as the mind. The pause before the answer, the shift in posture, the moment the room goes quiet - that is often where the actual work begins.

Much of this helped me to found Humble Mind in 2023, where I wanted to make a practice of bringing together smart, capable, unusual people into a room to deliberate on a question or challenge together. What I found over the last few years of running this community of over five hundred people from thirty different countries led me to the seeds of social learning and the power of what it means to work with difficult questions in the company of like-minded individuals in an intimate virtual or physical space. This is how I facilitate leadership summits, innovation retreats and community-building programmes to restore the signal of human collaboration at a time when it is most desperately needed.

Being able to curate the space as an active participant in the way that the community or group comes together and works together is the heart and soul of what Humble Mind does. What we are seeking to achieve is to cultivate open hearts and minds.

These are the real human skills for the future. It is not just how to prompt AI or engage in productivity theatre or follow cookie-cutter advice, but rather the skills of discernment, embodiment and willingness. This is at the heart of what I teach and facilitate within individuals and organisations. This is the human technology of the future because it has always been a technology accessible to us. We have been building communities, telling stories and making sense of the world for hundreds of thousands of years. AI does not change this. It makes it more urgent. These human premiums become exponentially more valuable as everything else gets cheaper and noisier.

The future of work is uncertain because we are feeling uncertain about it. However, what it requires from us as a civilisation is not. It is quite straightforward. It requires individuals, communities and organisations to think clearly under pressure. Communicate honestly. Embody their emotions responsibly. Find common ground for a new story to be told about how we can align not just strategies or output, but our values, down to the point where we can feel differently about what it means to be human. That is what builds trust and creates the kind of experiences that make life worth living and business worth growing.

Much of this study is at the heart of a body of work I call The Relational. It weaves together conscious, deliberate attention to the conversations each of us are in the process of having with the main features of our lives: our relationships, money, language, our bodies, our conscience, the environment and our essence. By restoring our own sovereignty in these domains, we improve the nature of the conversation we have in all of these areas and live more fully and intentionally.

Much of this is the material I am currently exploring in my upcoming book, to be released later in 2027.

My path has also led to working with men all over the world in the mytho-poetic tradition of initiation and rites of passage. These are spaces centred on presence, responsibility and grounded self-leadership, which I call embodied authorship. I have founded The Gentle Fire to support this exact purpose: working with men and women with the capacity to re-author the story of their lives, become more comfortable with uncertainty and more familiar with the sensations and emotions that we otherwise walk around completely blind to.

I am based between Europe and Costa Rica, where my days are filled with writing, speaking, problem-solving and trying not to think too much - while also making time for chasing waterfalls and rivers with my three kids and wife.

Life is good if we want it to be.