Winning The Away Game – Episode 1 – Orrin and Bryan – Transcript

[00:00:00] Justinus Adriaanse: Hello everybody. Welcome to Winning the Away Game. If you love business and Springbok rugby, then this is the show for you. I’m Justinus Adriaanse. I’m the co-founder of Private Property and WeThinkCode_ in South Africa, and Ntabeni Systems and Umgundi Holdings in Canada. I love travelling to watch the Springboks and I eat Nando’s in every single country they exist.

[00:00:35] My co-host, Flip van der Merwe, is a Blue Bulls legend, Springbok number 818, and he earned 38 caps in the lock position. Then he took the leap and moved to France to play rugby at Clermont. And as he says, in sport the retirement chooses you, so the final whistle blew at 34 years of age. He restarted a career in data consulting and strategy, earning his executive MBA at Cambridge.

[00:01:01] Today he’s managing partner of Level Six Consulting, where he helps leaders of fast-growth service companies get their heads out of the scrum, find the gap and charge onwards. Flip, how are you doing today?

[00:01:14] Flip van der Merwe: I’m great, thank you, Justinus. We’ve got some legends on the pod today and I’m looking forward to our discussion.

[00:01:20] Justinus Adriaanse: Speaking of our amazing guests, let’s not keep them waiting any longer. Today we are grateful to welcome two incredible guests. Flip, who did you bring to the show today?

[00:01:28] Flip van der Merwe: Yeah, my guest today is one of South Africa’s most decorated athletes, a World Cup winner, a record-breaker, and recently considered to be South Africa’s most successful post-rugby Springbok.

[00:01:41] And I’m happy to call him a good friend as well. His journey started in 1995, watching the Rugby World Cup with his dad, and that moment didn’t just ignite a love for sport. It planted the belief that rugby could unite a country divided by history. After playing for the Lions, Bulls, Stormers, and earning 124 caps as a Springbok, Bryan made the leap to Europe, signing with Toulon.

[00:02:05] And we all know the history that he made with Toulon, but like every bold move, the shift came with cost, injury, uncertainty and the quiet question every athlete faces: who am I when the game ends? He retired from rugby in 2018 and now his journey has come full circle, from global success to South African soil.

[00:02:28] He’s building businesses, mentoring leaders and redefining what it means to win long after the final whistle. Welcome husband, father, entrepreneur, president… all the accolades… Bryan Habana, once the fastest man on the field and now learning to start again. How are you?

[00:02:48] Bryan Habana: Hello Flip. Once the fastest man… sure, have I gone downhill that quickly? Did you say once the fastest man? But yeah, thanks for that lovely introduction. Great to be on the pod. Thank you for even stirring up some emotions.

As I think when you retire, you sometimes hear a lot about your history and the path you had, the chapter you had. But, you know, hearing it from someone that you walked the park with stirs up a certain amount of emotions.

[00:03:16] So I’m looking forward to chatting all things rugby, transition, the current chapter that I’m in and hopefully sharing some, I want to say, good banter, Flip, because we had a few good times which we’ll hopefully be addressing at some point over the next couple of hours.

[00:03:35] Justinus Adriaanse: One hundred percent.

Justinus Adriaanse: So, who do you have for us? I have an absolute legend. He’s been called the dream manager in disguise. He’s built a tech company that doesn’t always feel like just a tech company. It feels more like a movement, one that stretches from Johannesburg all the way to New York City in the USA.

[00:04:04] He attended eight different schools and got expelled from quite a few of them, but it didn’t stop him from bootstrapping his business into a global MSP. His business has survived multiple crises and used each one to reinvent the business model. Along the way, he’s made sure every employee has had a chance to chase their own dreams.

But what happened between expulsion and expansion? What challenges did he face and what did he learn? And which rugby team does he support in the Rugby Championship?

[00:04:26] Welcome, Orrin Klopper, CEO of NetSurIT.

Orrin: Thanks so much, Justinus.

Justinus Adriaanse: So, first question, gentlemen. Tell us your favourite Springbok story. Orrin, do you want to lead us in?

[00:04:42] Orrin: Sure. Yeah, there are so many. Probably the thing that stands out right now for me is just some of the stories behind the way Rassie is leading and managing the Springbok team.

[00:05:02] Specifically, you know, there’s a great book by Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown called Multipliers. In the book they talk about this idea that you have leaders and managers that multiply your talent and then you have others that really diminish your talent.

Just watching Chasing the Sun and seeing some of the ways in which he’s got these really, like, unbelievable players, and where, for example, a player has made some huge mistakes in a game, and Rassie and the team’s approach was: “We’re behind you 100%.”

[00:05:38] And that’s a typical example of multiplying the talent within someone. Whereas you can come down on them like a ton of bricks and diminish them, they lose their self-belief and the rest self-perpetuates. So maybe not a specific single memory, but a parallel with a leadership quality that you see there, which I think is part of the success of the Springboks today.

[00:06:06] Flip van der Merwe: Fine.

[00:06:07] Bryan Habana: I don’t know whether I’m nervous here, right, as the backline player. You almost have to wait for the forwards to finish before you start talking, otherwise they bite your head off. Also, like, do I start? Do I jump in?

Yeah, so there are two real stand-out moments. Obviously Flip mentioned in the intro, 24 June 1995, being at Ellis Park, getting to witness history being made and having a passion ignited within you.

[00:06:34] It really became a watershed moment in my life because it gave me this sense of belief, of wanting to do something bigger. It gave me an opportunity to understand the power of sport and gave me a sense of belonging in the infancy of our democracy in South Africa, where an incredible icon like Nelson Mandela stood firm in his belief in a specific symbol called the Springbok emblem, which became such an ingrained part of our fabric in South Africa. He understood the power that it has.

[00:07:03] Where maybe at that point in ’95 the Springbok didn’t appeal to 80% of our country, it was seen as a sign of oppression, yet Nelson saw, in his incredible entrepreneurial vision, the power behind sport play out. It ignited the dream in a 13-year-old boy.

The dream didn’t start out quite as you’d imagine. My first ever game of rugby, the following year, at King Edward VII School, was for the under-14C side. We’ve got a lot of clever brains on this current podcast, but just for those listening, there’s A, B, C, D, E, F, G… yeah, seventh best.

[00:07:29] Seventh best. We had a little prop who, when he washed all the padding, you couldn’t see his neck, it was absolutely hilarious. But just getting to play this game, given what had transpired a year before, was beautiful.

Fast-forward eight years: 20 November 2004, getting to make my debut for the Springboks. I know Flip said it quite a bit as well, but after all the sacrifice, the effort from your parents, getting to the point of the realisation of a dream was incredible. But I tell people that that was by far not the best moment of my career, because it was at that point, through the journey to get there, that you appreciated all of it, but it then made you realise how much more you wanted to stay in that position.

[00:08:32] Whatever had transpired before that meant absolutely nothing, because the hard work only started then. So those two key milestone dates were incredibly important in the person I became through rugby. I tell people rugby has given me a phenomenal life. There’s a lot of negative that sometimes comes with it, but in comparison to the positive, the life it’s given me…

[00:08:54] Yeah, 20 November 2004 was an incredibly special day.

[00:08:57] Flip van der Merwe: It’s amazing. You know, if you think when you start off, ’99, whenever you were in standard six or grade 8… ’99? ’96?

[00:09:06] Bryan Habana: ’95, ’96. You see, the forwards, you just have to help them a little bit, right? You tell them “go forward”, they go forward, but you need to give them some form of direction.

’95, ’96. And again, for someone that did an MBA at Cambridge, Mr van der Merwe, we might need to work on those accounting skills just a little.

[00:09:24] Flip van der Merwe: Yeah, yeah, it’s okay. I’ve got Excel doing the sums, sweet, that’s all right.

And, you know, when you start playing rugby at grade 8, you never think you’re going to become a Springbok. Everyone wants to become a Springbok, but you never think it’s actually possible.

[00:09:38] When I grew up there were legends. We used to watch guys like Uli Schmidt, Kobus Wiese and Mark Andrews, and I even used to watch our good friend Victor Matfield play and be amazed. You never think that you can represent with these guys one day.

You guys, you and Orrin, have a common denominator in King Edward VII School. How did your journey at King Edward shape you towards becoming the person you are today?

We’ll give Orrin first go on this one because he’s the denominator, the big person.

[00:10:10] Orrin: Thanks, thanks Bryan. Yeah, so it’s hard to explain the impact the school had on my life.

[00:10:26] I’d been to a lot of schools and I’d been expelled or asked to leave three, and then I ended up at King Edward VII in standard seven, which I suppose is grade nine now. I joined in the second term.

To be really open, my mum was in her third marriage and he was not… I didn’t want to be around this guy. So the idea of being at boarding school at KES was very favourable for me.

[00:10:55] Just having that constant environment, with the discipline… We had a thing where you would have to work after dinner. I was at Buxton House and there was still corporal punishment at that time. I was an unbelievably naughty kid and some of the…

If you misbehaved you had a choice. You could go and do what was called gardening on Saturday morning with Mr Moffat, or you could get whipped by the prefects with the shaft of a hockey stick. That was my choice because I’d received a lot of hidings in my life.

[00:11:41] There was a dynamic at that school where it almost didn’t matter where you came from, whether you were a poor Portuguese kid from Bez Valley or whether you were a more affluent kid from Houghton. I was nothing at that school, but I felt like part of a brotherhood and part of a community.

I didn’t really succeed in sport. I did pretty well in academics but I worked my arse off. Nothing came easily.

[00:12:21] So I feel in those early years, where my life was so tumultuous, I was such a problem child and I could have gone in so many directions, that school gave me this grounding and foundation upon which I’ve been able to build. I’m proud of the journey I’ve travelled and I really think King Edward’s has played a big part in that.

[00:12:48] I don’t say that meaning King Edward’s is perfect. There are all sorts of things you could list that it didn’t get right, but I feel deeply connected and I’m still involved in the school. I find it a huge privilege and honour to give back.

[00:13:05] Bryan Habana: Unlike Orrin, I was a day boy, not a boarder, with the benefit of sleeping in my own bed and not getting strapped or having gardening on a Saturday morning.

[00:13:15] Although a lot of the boarders always ate all my lunchboxes – so much so that in grade 11 and 12 my mother had to pack me two lunchboxes. That’s only because I love the boarders so much. And to Orrin’s point, there was a real brotherhood.

Looking back, because Flip, maybe just to your point, right: when you’re playing the game, and rugby post-’95 obviously catapulted where South Africa was on the global map…

[00:13:42] The stat is that if you play schoolboy rugby in your final year of school, the chance of becoming a Springbok rugby player in the next decade is 0.00058%. If you think, ever since 1896, across the history of Test rugby, there have maybe only ever been 955 players who have represented South Africa, of which maybe 15 or so toured with the Springboks but never actually played a Test match.

So when I started playing in 1996 in that under-14G side, yes, there was a dream, but it was the most far-fetched dream ever.

[00:14:24] Maybe to Orrin’s point around having that educational foundation of being involved in something greater than yourself, we were very fortunate at KES. The discipline, the structure… Mr Moffat, our geography teacher, was an absolute brute – may his soul rest in peace – but as hard and disciplinarian as they were, there was a softer element to it.

I’m not quite sure how much Miss Nelson laid into you, Orrin, but Latin was not my favourite. It was the first subject I dropped when I had the choice, because between Miss Nelson and Mr Wilson I was like, “No, I’m not going to do that.”

[00:15:05] What KES gave us, in terms of the fundamentals to have pride in yourself and understand the pride with which you represent something bigger than yourself…

I also don’t want to say I was a nobody. I played first-team rugby, went to Craven Week, but I wasn’t a prefect. I look back now and see there were times where the things that built my character at KES, to Orrin’s point, were also not the best things.

[00:15:26] I got dropped from the under-16A side for one game because I went to play for the Lions. The coach and two old boys who were assistant coaches felt that I was putting the Lions ahead of the school. I told my dad, and I thought of swearing when that decision came through: “Well, you chose to play for the Lions, that means next week, in the last game of the season, you’re not going to play for the under-16A.”

[00:15:46] I was so bitter. Then I learned a valuable lesson that the school didn’t teach me. My dad said, “Listen, you’re going to go play for the under-16C team against Red Hill, who are in the B-league, not even… and then once you finish that game, you’re going to go back to the school and support your A-team rugby teammates.”

[00:16:05] I’ll never forget how seething I was with my dad. I would rather have let my mum protect me, because I did not want to go support that team.

Therein lies the point: you also can’t let people steal your joy, because there’s this expectation of what you should do. As a 16-year-old who couldn’t really fathom why he was dropped, unfortunately the school couldn’t give me the logical understanding of what to do better. It wasn’t that they were prioritising the school over me, it was just their way of thinking.

[00:16:48] The school was a really phenomenal upbringing for me. I was never a prefect; I couldn’t understand how I wasn’t a prefect or a top student. But I do know one thing I’m extremely proud of: I am on the academic board at King Edward’s.

You get onto the academic board if you have a distinction in matric. I’m very proud to say that my only distinction in matric, putting me on the academic board – which, much like a golf scorecard, doesn’t have a comment section – is “Bryan Habana for his distinction in second-language Afrikaans,” of which I’m extremely proud.

[00:17:18] There’s no comment column on the academic board, but I’m on the academic board.

It was a great environment of camaraderie. From a sporting perspective, playing in that red jersey was incredibly special. School rivalry at its best is a phenomenal environment.

[00:17:40] Having “Dokkie” – John Smit – two years ahead of me, probably one of the best schoolboy rugby players South Africa’s ever seen; having Graeme Smith a year ahead of me… seeing that aura around the Reds, how you sleep with the jersey under your pillow the very first time before you play…

There’s that element of schoolboy rivalry that installs a lot of foundational elements on which people can then springboard and become incredible businessmen or have an impact in sport, industry, art and culture. I’m very grateful for my five years and the sense of belonging the school gave me.

[00:18:19] Justinus Adriaanse: Wow. I’m sure that distinction in Afrikaans served you well interacting with all the rugby players at the school.

[00:18:28] Bryan Habana: More importantly, it served me very well going through Rand Afrikaans University the following year. There were about twelve English oaks who got into “BA Mans” and we looked and thought, “Wow, this is going to be interesting, gents. This is going to be very interesting.”

That did help me facilitate the chasm between the different Afrikaans and English mindsets. And it allowed me to marry my dream girl, who was across the way at the University of the Free State. So yeah, very grateful for that, Justinus.

[00:19:09] Justinus Adriaanse: Amazing.

Okay, so we want to talk a little bit about the old ground and origin stories. King Edward’s obviously folds that in quite nicely, but Orrin, maybe from your side, just tell us a little bit about the origin of your business.

You became successful in South Africa and then at some point you decided that you wanted to shift and run the business abroad. Talk us through the business – some of the ups and downs – up to the point where you were ready and wanted to expand in the US.

[00:19:40] Orrin: Yeah, sure. So, you know, I didn’t get any distinctions, but I worked very hard, so I should have got some distinctions. I think I got a lot of Bs and some Cs.

[00:19:52] In matric I was so excited about the prospect of university because I thought it was going to be where they really wanted to know how you thought, and it wasn’t just about memorising and then regurgitating. Then an opportunity came where my brother said I could come to the UK for a year.

[00:20:16] So I matriculated in ’92 and I went to the UK in 1993. In 1991 my brother Anton had paid for me to go to South America with him and his girlfriend. That was my first overseas trip and it was a huge eye-opener.

In ’93 I went and lived in the UK with my brother, working for him selling… He had a business called Hunger Busters that sold hot dogs and hamburgers at rock concerts, biker festivals, biker shows.

[00:20:51] At that time the Hells Angels were one of the outfits – they had a security offering where they would do the security for the show. Needless to say, there were not a lot of security issues at the shows where the Hells Angels were the security.

I saw in my brother the way he ran his business and his work ethic, and it had a real impact on me.

[00:21:21] When I got back… Well, I wasn’t actually planning to come back to South Africa. I went to Israel for two months and worked on a moshav there, because both my brothers had done that. It’s some of the hardest work I’ve ever done in my life.

I wanted to go back to the UK but, at that time, it wasn’t the most popular time to be a South African. They refused me leave to enter, so I went back to South Africa.

[00:21:44] I signed up at RAU – Rand Afrikaans University – and I only found out my mum had actually signed me up when we were in the bookshop and I realised there was no English track at RAU. In ’94 it was Afrikaans.

I didn’t do badly. I worked very hard; I think I got a D for Afrikaans. You wouldn’t think so with a surname like Klopper. I did Commercial Law, Bedryfs-something, all of these things in Afrikaans.

[00:22:30] In that year, I met a guy, his name’s Hennie Alt, who was doing engineering, and another guy called Brian Cooper who was also doing BCom. Brian and I were the most handsome English-speaking guys in BCom – self-proclaimed. We would sit in BL-something with 400 students doing accounts.

[00:22:53] Then I started doing various things. This was in ’94. Pornography was legalised at that time in South Africa; there was a lot of change. So we took the top, most-awarded porn movie at the time and I convinced my girlfriend then to buy a second VHS. She said, “Why are we going to do that?”

I said, “We can copy the movies we really like.” She was quite well off, so we were just duplicating Janine Lindemulder’s Hidden Obsessions and we were duplicating them.

[00:23:11] I was working in restaurants and I would sell them at the restaurant. You always get an eager pornography market in a restaurant with some of the kitchen staff, some of the guys. Then we threw open parties.

I also sold second-hand shoes. There was a Sony Nike outlet where you had slightly defective shoes. They were still good, so we sold those. I also worked at the Rosebank Rooftop Market selling books and magazines for my brother.

[00:23:49] Then Hennie invited me… so in my second year, ’95, Hennie invited me to come and sell for them. I’d taken Information Systems as an extra major. If you passed all your subjects at RAU and got above 60 or 65, you could do an extra subject free of charge, so I did Information Systems.

My impression of that first year of varsity was that it was rubbish. They literally just wanted you to memorise stuff and regurgitate it. Information Systems, I thought, “Wow, they really want to know what you think.”

[00:24:26] I was not the best programmer. In those seven-hour exams, I took seven hours; the really bright guys took 15 minutes. That’s how the journey started. I started selling computers, engineering calculators, and Hennie opened that door for me. Brian joined us shortly after that and the business started growing in South Africa.

[00:24:56] We came up with the name NetSurIT in late ’99, which was really this idea of technology IT support insurance, born out of the idea that small and medium enterprises were being exploited and taken advantage of with their technology and there wasn’t a trusted, reliable service provider looking after them.

We grew organically from there.

[00:25:16] In 2004 we were invited to participate in Microsoft’s Partner Advisory Council because of our strong partnership with Microsoft. I would fly to Seattle two, three times a year. I’d fly through New York, and I ended up building up some friends in New York while the business continued to grow.

[00:25:41] In 2015 – another story over tequila – I managed to convince a friend in New York that we should be their IT services company. We closed that deal at eight rand to the dollar. Within six months it had gone to twelve rand to the dollar.

We said, “Okay, what are we going to do with this? We want to grow it.” I started planning to move to New York and in that process we found an acquisition. We bought our first business and made every mistake you could imagine except going out of business.

[00:26:06] We still have most of the clients; we don’t have a single one of the staff members left. And then we just continued to grow organically and acquisitively. That’s how our journey to the US started.

Now about 65% of our revenue is in the US and about 35% is in South Africa.

[00:26:25] Flip van der Merwe: Wow. Very good.

Orrin: I don’t sell any more porn though. That was just during an earlier stage in life.

[00:26:30] Flip van der Merwe: Yeah, we have to wheel and deal whatever we have to do.

No, that was it.

[00:26:32] Orrin: Yeah.

[00:26:32] Flip van der Merwe: Bryan, so our paths obviously crossed at the Bulls and the Boks – very turbulent times, 2010, 2011, when I had the fortune to join.

For me, I was all star-struck. I couldn’t believe I had the opportunity to play. Then when you reflect back you just think about what chaos it was, and then you move on further.

[00:26:54] When you moved to Toulon in 2013, if I’ve got it right, what triggered that move? How did you go through making that decision?

[00:27:05] Bryan Habana: So, exactly. It wasn’t, “Oh, I’m going to not do this.” I think post the 2007 World Cup – we’re prerecording this podcast but today is actually our 18-year anniversary of 20 October 2007, getting to celebrate what was a pretty epic journey post-’95 –

[00:27:18] After 2007 I’d been approached by a few clubs in France. I was thinking, do I want to? I had this plan of being in South Africa at least until 2011. I really wanted to be playing my part in South African rugby at that stage.

So there were discussions. I’ll never forget, in 2007, my dad was acting as my agent. He said, “Listen, Bayonne are interested in acquiring your services, it’s some really good money back then. Let’s go have a look.”

[00:27:42] Having never experienced the French environment before, we said, “Listen, we’ve got to keep this under wraps. I’ve just renewed my Bulls contract up until 2009. We’ve got to keep everything under wraps.” I’m like, “Yeah, they promise it’ll all be under wraps.”

We got to France and there was this media throng waiting for me in Bayonne. I’m like, “Oh, this is not going to go down well at all.” That was off the back of a pre-season camp in George that I’d decided not to go to in 2007, so there was maybe a little bit of animosity already.

[00:28:19] That was my first experience and I decided, “Okay, cool, I’m going to commit to the Bulls.” They had lied that they wouldn’t have media attention and all the media attention was on me.

Then in 2009, at the end of that contract, the Bulls wanted to keep me, there was an opportunity to go to France and the Stormers had come to the table as well.

[00:28:56] Having experienced France during the Rugby World Cup, there was an immediate emotional connection. “Ah, you know, France is good.”

I’ll never forget going to meet Mourad Boudjellal for the first time in 2009. There’s one specific restaurant he always uses for players he wants to sign – right on the beachfront in June, amazing summer time, immaculate. You get wined and dined and I’m like, “Wow, I could do this. I really could do this.”

[00:29:17] Then we spoke about the initial number. When I got back to South Africa two weeks later, the number on the contract wasn’t the number we’d spoken about. I’m like, “They’ve wined and dined me but they’re not actually coming through.”

So I said no. The Stormers were also looking to rebuild a franchise that had incredible legacy in South Africa and they looked particularly at myself and Jaque Fourie to up the ante in the 2010 season.

[00:29:44] I think, detrimentally for me, because of some stuff happening off the field it made it a lot easier to choose Cape Town rather than stay at the Bulls, which, looking back now, had a lot of emotional complexity that came to the fore off the field rather than on the field.

[00:30:11] I had an incredible three years in Cape Town. The opportunity to get back to France with Toulon came around the end of 2012. You guys had gone on an end-of-year tour, I was injured, and my agent said, “Listen, Toulon are really keen. You’ve had a great year… such and such… They’re willing to put down a lot more money than they were talking about in 2009.”

I’m like, “Okay, sign me up, Scotty.”

[00:30:39] I met with Bernard Laporte in London in December 2012, then flew back to South Africa and had to explain to my wife, who’d now dug her roots very deep in Cape Town – because I’d told her when we moved there in 2009 that Cape Town is our forever home.

I got back and said, “Klein, listen, Toulon are willing to pay really good money.” She said, “No, but you said Cape Town is our forever home.” I’m like, “It will still be our forever home. We’ll experience Toulon for, like, three, maybe four years.”

[00:31:06] That was a struggle to get over. But it was at a point in my career, Flip, where I was really fortunate to have achieved everything in South Africa. I had won Super Rugby, I’d won SA Rugby Player of the Year, I’d played against the Lions, won the Tri-Nations in 2009.

I knew that for longevity in my career I needed to be testing myself at a higher level.

[00:31:31] At the time of signing with Toulon you had the likes of Jonny Wilkinson, Bakkies Botha, Ali Williams, Carl Hayman, Juan Martín Fernández Lobbe, Drew Mitchell had just signed, Matt Giteau… It was this plethora of world-class players that I knew I needed to be around if I really wanted to push to be involved in the 2015 Rugby World Cup.

As much as the financial element played a big part in the decision to go there, it was really about trying to maintain a level, to constantly push yourself further with the best in the business to bring out the best within you.

[00:32:27] In South Africa I’d become comfortable in the rugby environment because of what I’d achieved. I wanted to become uncomfortable, to push myself forward for that 2015 World Cup.

[00:32:41] Justinus Adriaanse: That’s fascinating. It’s amazing how the willingness to push through or seek that uncomfortableness, to seek that space outside of your comfort zone, drives growth and opportunity.

So, Orrin, when you decided it’s time to go and start in New York, how uncomfortable was that?

[00:33:01] Orrin: Yeah, it was exciting. I definitely was not leaving South Africa because of a lack of love for the country; I was following opportunity.

When I left… It was crazy. I’d just got married in September 2014. My mum passed away in May 2016 and then I went to live in New York from July 2016.

[00:33:26] There was a lot going on. We’d done a strategic acquisition in 2015 of a Microsoft professional services partner. It was a small acquisition but very strategic.

I hugely underestimated the impact it would have. For various reasons, some totally unrelated to the move but a whole lot related to the move, my wife at the time, by September 2016, had had five miscarriages in the space of 22 months.

[00:34:26] She broke. She went into full-on psychosis. There were a lot of things that happened in a very short space of time. My relationship imploded.

One of my partners, Hennie, had said, “Orrin, you’re going to end up doing this. You’re going to end up selling, you’re going to end up account-managing, you’re going to end up…” and he was a hundred percent right. We made every mistake.

[00:35:06] Those two shareholders we acquired from are still shareholders in the business today, they’re amazing people, but we made a lot of mistakes.

I’m an optimist. One of my superpowers is optimism and gratitude, so I can reframe things like that. But just to share openly: when you have BPD and you have a cognitive collapse like this, where what you believe to be real and what is the truth are two different things…

[00:37:25] She alleged some things. The NYPD were looking for me. I was at my dad’s because I’d flown back – I never want to miss my dad’s birthday on 1 January – so I was back. I get a text message from my landlord. I was living in the East Village. He says, “Orrin, someone from the NYPD was here looking for you.”

I’m like, “Whoa, what’s this?”

You see a smile on my face now, but it was the craziest time. This woman I loved so much had literally disappeared in front of my eyes.

[00:38:11] The following year, 2017, I did some of the deepest self-work I’ve ever done. I went to Northern California, did a programme hosted by the Hoffman Institute, and did some deep healing, deep growth, deep learning.

[00:38:21] Flip van der Merwe: Thanks for sharing, man. Incredible, incredible, Orrin.

Bryan, so, you know, it all looks very idyllic from the outside. The sun is always shining, you’re part of pretty much a galactic rugby team at Toulon. You choose a position and there’s a superstar in it.

We know – I’ve lived a little bit through French bureaucracy as well – it’s not always plain sailing. You’ve packed up your family. Did you have your two boys already, or were they born over there? I can’t remember.

[00:38:57] Take us through the tough times outside of what the TV didn’t see.

[00:39:05] Bryan Habana: Well, sometimes the TV did see it because Mourad was very outspoken, like many French rugby club owners.

I’ll never forget my first real… Well, actually, the first thing was when I got there. I ended with the Stormers in July 2013, that was my last game. My contract with Toulon had started on 1 July but we still had Super Rugby until mid-July.

[00:39:20] I knew I was part of the Springbok Rugby Championship set-up, so I gave myself a two-week window before getting to France. My wife and I went up to London. I did a shoot with British Airways where I raced the Airbus A380 as one of their campaigns – which I thought was really cool.

Then I got to Toulon in the last week of July. That initial thing of Bakkies and the guys waiting for me at the airport, with the hosted cameras – it really was like a Hollywood production. I’m like, “I’m here to play rugby, but okay, I’ll go with the flow.”

[00:39:59] Then they took me to that same restaurant to wine and dine me, photographer all around, then to the stadium, throwing the scarf and all that. The whole plan was that because of the Rugby Championship I’d come back to South Africa and play.

In that week they were like, “Okay, listen, you’ve got to open your bank account, you’ve got to do X, Y and Z. Bryan, I know you said you’re only going to come here to be introduced, but would you mind playing our first warm-up game of the season?”

I’m like, “But that’s not what we said.” The agents, they sit between a rock and a hard place. They need to appease both parties.

[00:40:33] I thought, “It’s not worth upsetting the fans.” I was there with Conrad Smith and the other guys, everyone looking at me. So I played this game. I was very average, but I opened my bank account. I got my salary at the end of July and I’d only been paid for four days.

I go to my agent and say, “Okay guys, what’s happening here? My contract says 1 July. I stopped my Stormers contract mid-July. So there’s two weeks I’m out of pocket here because you said I’d be paid from Toulon.”

They said, “No, but the president says you only arrived on the 26th.”

[00:41:12] I’m like, “You didn’t tell me he was only going to pay me from the 26th. My contract contractually obliged you from 1 July.”

That was the first thing where I thought, “Oh my word, this is going to be interesting.”

A couple of weeks later I was in Argentina and my agent phoned me: “You know your club president is not going to pay you if you don’t come back to play your first game for the club?”

[00:41:43] I’m like, “But I thought contractually we said I’m going to be playing for the Boks in the Rugby Championship.”

He goes, “Well, you’re going to have to pay for your own flight back.” South African Rugby weren’t willing to fly me back to France because that wasn’t in the commitment.

So I had to pay for my own flight back to Toulon, get there on the Tuesday. I’m the marquee signing for the year so there’s massive expectation. We train on the Tuesday and I’m ready to go. We’d had a really good Rugby Championship up to that point.

[00:41:58] I’m ready to start and Bernard Laporte picks me on the bench. I’m like, “This guy is playing it hard.”

We played against Grenoble away from home. When it doesn’t go well in France, as you know, Flip, you drive everywhere on a bus. I hadn’t got used to that. It was a seven-hour bus journey to Grenoble.

I came off the bench with seven minutes to go. Jonny Wilkinson missed a touchline conversion to draw the game. So my first game, I’d only played eight minutes and we ended up losing.

[00:42:39] Grenoble had just come up to the Top 14 in that 2013/2014 season and they’d beaten the Galacticos, and Bryan Habana, the marquee player, had made his debut. It was a press furore. I was like, “Get me out of here.”

The Toulon team had to go back on the Sunday to train. I was like, “I’m out of here, I’m going to Brisbane to play for the Boks. You’re not going to see me.”

There were all these things of just learning about the culture. Firstly, you can’t understand the language. Secondly, the culture is extremely passionate in their verbalisation of life.

[00:43:18] They’re extremely, I want to say, eccentric or passionate about how they act. They live very much in the moment.

I think as South Africans we have a lot of resilience but we don’t really live in the moment because of how we’re brought up. You get taught critical thinking, a bit of rationality. There, they’re living in the moment the whole time.

That initial year didn’t go well. I only played ten games in my first season. I got injured playing for the Boks and there was just this rolling, downward snowball I couldn’t fix, which was not ideal.

[00:44:09] But I think it taught me a lot about myself, how I needed to, to Orrin’s point, leverage support. You don’t know how strong and capable you are until the world really pushes you to your limit. Then you have to reach out for support, get yourself a toolkit to improve yourself and have people in your corner who can criticise you to build you up, not criticise you to break you down.

It requires a sense of self-critical development. When times are tough and you do that work, you’re constantly building resilience.

[00:44:32] Learning to live with a passionate people, in the moment, with massive expectations, was very different to the extremely rigid, professional, systematic process I’d been in in South Africa.

[00:44:49] Justinus Adriaanse: Okay, so let’s talk about the playbook for change.

Orrin, you’re in the US, things are as low as it sounds like they’ve ever been, but you make a decision about what’s next. What’s going through your mind? What are you deciding? How do you fight back and make this work?

[00:45:07] Orrin: You know, the one thing I’ve been blessed with – and I think we’ve built it into how I think about my life and into how we approach strategic planning in our business – is this idea of confronting the reality of where we are right now.

[00:45:34] When I do “my dream book” each year, which is my top 10 personal goals and dreams, there’s a bit of a process before you do your new dream book or your new goals. You ask: What’s working? What’s not working? You rate yourself. There’s an internal and external analysis and that’s what precipitates what goes into your goals for the year ahead.

In the business, it’s similar. We do a SWOT and we look at a lot of internal metrics.

[00:46:21] If I think about a transformational time in the business where it was probably one of the scariest and lowest times, which precipitated this unbelievable growth we’ve experienced over the last five years…

In 2019, going into strategic planning, our two biggest customers, we knew we were going to lose. We had a support contract with FNB and a support contract with Liquid Telecom.

[00:46:44] FNB had made a strategic decision that all outsourced partners were going to be moved in-house. We were going to lose that work. Liquid Telecom were doing a global outsource and we were going to lose that work too because we didn’t have representation in those regions.

When I analysed our organic growth, it was clear that our organic growth was not coming from new logos. There were some, but the majority came from the growth of existing customers.

[00:47:01] On the horizon, late 2019, early 2020, we started hearing about this thing, COVID.

What did we do in 2020? We did the most aggressive cost-cutting we’ve ever done. We bought nothing. We still had almost four years on our lease in Manhattan. Hardcore Israeli landlord, not hearing any negotiation. One day we just moved out.

[00:47:29] We told him, “We’re done.” We got very aggressive.

We did three rounds of retrenchments, which for anybody that’s run a business… You get to know your people so deeply, they’re like family, so it’s rough. The retrenchment process in South Africa is rough because you have to give notice and people don’t know if it’s going to be them or not.

[00:48:11] Long story short, we cut an unbelievable amount of cost. We did the most aggressive cost-cutting we’ve ever done, we bought nothing. We took 50% of those savings and put it back into cash flow and profits to protect the business. Then we took 50% and put it into what we call the Growth and Innovation Provision.

We almost expensed it but we provided for it, so as it built up we were able to do some radically different things.

[00:48:30] We retained a buy-side advisory firm to lean into acquisitive growth. We did a deep rethink of what our core offering was and what we believed was becoming commoditised. There were so many companies in the space.

We came up with what is today called “Innovate”, our AI, automation and digital-transformation managed service.

[00:48:57] We literally reinvented the business. It didn’t happen overnight. To be honest, our Innovate offering has only really succeeded over the last 18 to 24 months, although we started working on it in 2020.

But confronting the reality and having this burning platform – “Guys, we’re losing our two biggest customers, there is a pandemic coming, what the hell is a pandemic?” – suddenly everybody was ready to make decisions. We didn’t have to hold big debates. We were decisive, doing it now.

[00:49:55] Over the years – 2001/2002 crash, 2008/2009 – we’d built a muscle that if the shit’s hitting the fan, we move very quickly and decisively. Fortunately that’s what we did, and I think it started this trajectory that we’re still on today.

[00:50:02] Flip van der Merwe: It sounds so structured, hey, but I believe when you’re in that tornado it’s a mess.

[00:50:10] Orrin: It was a subtle mess and I was hoping nobody would figure out that I wasn’t a hundred percent sure what I was doing, but I liked…

[00:50:17] Flip van der Merwe: I like the dream-book aspect that you built in. While you’re in it, it’s a tornado, it’s a mess, but you can structure it afterwards and learn from it.

Bryan, so, you eventually start properly playing for Toulon. You win everything and against everyone. It’s an unbeatable team, they have all the trophies you can collect. Then in 2018 you decide to pull the plug. You still had some kilometres left in your legs, I believe.

How did that come, and then on top of that, moving back to South Africa? Take us through that decision.

[00:50:49] Bryan Habana: I think one of the biggest fallacies that professional athletes hate to believe is that the end is always near. Sometimes you unfortunately don’t get to decide when that end is.

That 2017/2018 period was as low a point in my rugby career as I’d ever experienced. Through all the highs, all the lows, you always think it’s impossible that the end is inevitable, because you’ve been so consumed in this thing for so long.

[00:51:10] I’ll never forget, we had a game on, I think, 27 April 2017. I’d gone walking with the dog the day before in France. It was on the Thursday before the Saturday game. We had the captain’s run on the Friday.

As I was walking down a hill, I felt something go in my knee and thought, “This is interesting.” At captain’s the next day my knee was inflamed. I’m like, “This is not ideal.”

[00:51:36] I said, “Doc, I think you’re going to need to inject me with something to take away the pain, because I literally can’t walk.” He said, “Don’t worry, we’ll inject you.” Got injected, played the game.

In reflection, I realised I’d given Toulon a lot, but there I was thinking, “Toulon have done nothing wrong.” I scored a try, typical Bryan Habana fashion – 95-metre intercept try – no one from Castres could catch me.

I came off at half-time and they said, “No, go a bit longer.” Then I looked at Drew Mitchell just after half-time and said, “No, Drew, I’m substituting myself.”

[00:52:20] Drew’s like, “You can’t do that.” I said, “No, no, you come on, I’ll go off.”

Not knowing that was going to be the last time I’d ever be on a rugby field.

Could I have gone a bit longer? Possibly. At that moment it was probably the drugs keeping me together, given how sore my knee was.

[00:52:39] I went for a scan the next week and they said, “There’s a little bit more here than we thought. You’ve got no meniscal clip.”

I’m like, “Sorry, what?”

They said, “You’ve got bone-on-bone and bruising.”

That’s not what I’d envisioned when I substituted myself. So not realising that me substituting myself, coming off with the glory of scoring a try at Stade Mayol, in reflection it was probably one of the worst decisions I’d made because it was literally the last time I’d be on a rugby field.

[00:53:17] Over the next year I tried my damnedest to get back and unfortunately the inevitable had already come and gone.

One of the lowest points was 24 March 2018, when I had to make my announcement. Given social media, you now have to do this lovely post and thank everyone. You try to be unique. I’ll never forget doing that post in the morning, then going to the club. You get thousands of messages, people remembering the good times, the praise.

[00:54:09] I got home. My wife was pregnant with our second and our three-year-old was in the house. I’ll never forget opening the door in Toulon and just breaking. The tears flowed out of me. It was almost a metaphor: as I opened the door, the door closed on rugby.

I just bawled at the top of the staircase at home, thinking, “I’m never going to get it back. I’m never going to have that opportunity to do something I love, to do something that’s given me so much; 80,000 people singing the national anthem… it’s all gone.”

[00:55:18] As low as that point was, as I opened the door and stood bawling my eyes out, I heard my three-year-old having this incredible belly laugh with my wife, who was now pregnant with our second.

I realised as low as that point was for me as an individual, there was more I needed to live for, because there were people I was responsible for. My three-year-old had no idea who I was in terms of rugby; he just knew me as Dad.

[00:55:42] My wife had sacrificed so much for me to live out my dream. She was more than just support; she was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to me.

I reflected that this is probably where a lot of athletes struggle. For most of us, when you’re going through your career and you’re so consumed in the unrealistic reality you live in – earning a CEO salary at 21, travelling the world, playing for the Boks, doing all the cool things –

[00:56:23] The one thing you unfortunately get lulled into is thinking your identity is that sport.

I was fortunate, in the surroundings we had – whether it be P3 giving Bible studies every week or John Smit allowing us to interact with the world – as much as I realised rugby was a big part of my identity, rugby was never my identity.

You don’t always get it right. There are times where you struggle and you say, “In my day…” or “In my era…” but I’m grateful there were elements of my rugby journey that allowed me to appreciate how much rugby was part of my reality, but that it wasn’t my entire identity.

[00:57:14] That allowed me to transition. Orrin spoke about sometimes needing to reinvent yourself, sometimes needing to look outside what you know.

It’s cool that Orrin and one of his partners come from RAU. My current co-founder at Paymenow was my university roommate at residence. We’ve known each other for a quarter of a century; he was MC at my wedding.

Players always say, “The harder you work, the luckier you get.” Maybe there’s a piece missing: none of us are spared our own luck.

[00:57:53] I look at successful people and there are five key elements: you need to be disciplined; you need to be willing to sacrifice; you need to be willing to work hard; you need to be resilient and perseverant, because nothing comes easy.

If you don’t have those five elements, whether you’re a professional athlete, an entrepreneur, a musician, an actor, even a politician, your likelihood of being successful is not great.

Flip, I get asked a lot: “Who’s the best coach you played under?” Best is subjective. I tell everyone the best coach is the one that selected me. I gave myself every opportunity to be selected, but I never selected myself.

[00:58:43] Very much like with Paymenow, I never selected myself. Dion selected our co-founding group. It was because of our relationship, opportunity he saw, but also because I had those five transferable skill sets that he believed could play a part in his business.

I had to learn very quickly that MVP in business does not mean “Most Valuable Player”; it means something very different in the tech space.

[00:59:24] I’ll never forget, I was in Japan in 2019 watching the Rugby World Cup final. Dion got hold of the four of us – myself, Dion, Paddy and Werner, our CTO and CPO respectively. I was celebrating and Dion said, “You’re not going to believe this. Pat’s just got our MVP.”

I’m sitting thousands of kilometres away thinking, “You absolutely what? I thought I was the MVP.” There was violence on the other end of the line.

He’s like, “What do you mean?”

I said, “I thought, of the four of us, I’m the most valuable player. That’s what you told me when we started Paymenow.”

[00:59:46] He said, “You’re MVP in your world, I understand that, but here MVP is ‘minimum viable product’. We’ve just processed a transaction in less than seven minutes. You’re good, but you’re not that good.”

The ability to have those five skill sets, and one of my biggest learnings in this transition period – and it’s actually not a transition anymore, I’m in the next chapter –

[01:00:20] The transition happens for a year or two. At a point you need to have transitioned. I believe I’m now in that next chapter.

One of the biggest skills I’ve learnt, taking rugby to the corporate space, is that you need to unlearn to be able to learn, because the way the world works now is very different. The way rugby used to work when we played is very different.

If you’re so pragmatically against unlearning, you don’t give yourself the opportunity to become better. It’s in unlearning that the most powerful elements of learning happen.

[01:00:59] I’ve had to openly admit at times that I’m not good enough, that I don’t know, to my fellow co-founders. I’ve had to learn how things work in a world they’ve been in for 20 years. If I wasn’t willing to unlearn, the ability to transition into this new chapter would have been very difficult.

[01:01:17] Flip van der Merwe: Amazing, Bryan, and thanks for sharing. It’s stuff I didn’t even know. We all go through that. I’ve got a red eye because I’ve got a seven-month-old who didn’t sleep last night. As you said, we need the reasons to wake up and work, so I relate to that.

[01:01:36] Justinus Adriaanse: So, Orrin, what was the transformation for you when your first child was born? Was that quite a pivotal moment for you as well?

[01:01:44] Orrin: Yeah, for sure. I always wanted to be a dad.

When I fell in love with Liesl, you never know: is your person going to be a great mum? The big transformational moment that happened for me was that I’d always been this martyr entrepreneur – NetSurIT had always come first.

[01:02:19] If we had an extra fifty thousand rand to spend a month in the next year’s budget, it would never be, “Can I pay myself more?” It was, “Let’s put it into marketing,” or “Let’s put it into this.”

Something shifted that night our little Lulu was born. I felt a change in me where it wasn’t just about me anymore. I had this greater responsibility and I needed to be more balanced in how I thought about what I needed and wanted in my life and what the business needed.

You’d think that would result in slow growth. Lulu was born on 12 January 2020, and I spoke earlier about what that year was like. It brought a decisiveness and balance in my thinking that had a huge impact.

[01:03:16] The other thing for me was that it connected me to my own parents. I’d lost my mum in 2016 but my dad was still alive, and I appreciated more what my parents had gone through for me. I had a deeper understanding and gratitude for that.

I really believe it made me a better leader. It made me more decisive and focused on balancing my own needs more effectively with what the business needed, and that actually resulted in the business growing faster.

[01:03:58] Justinus Adriaanse: So we’ve come full circle. What I’d like to ask both of you is: where are you now? What’s the legacy? What do you see as the future for the next 10 or 20 years? What is it you are working towards now?

Maybe Bryan, you can go first.

[01:04:13] Bryan Habana: Twenty years? I’m working one day at a time. That’s a very philosophical 20 years.

I think for me, at the minute, there’s a lot of unlearning I still need to go through. As we grow a business, when you’re involved in a start-up…

[01:04:27] We have the core guys that started the business in 2019 and we’re now over 60-odd staff, processing about a million rand in profit a month. We’ve got shareholders to keep happy. We’re live in four territories globally, so it’s really intense.

We’re in an environment where six years ago no one really knew what our ecosystem was. Now, what was cutting-edge six years ago is no longer good enough. It’s about reinventing what you want to do, pivoting, understanding trends, market considerations.

[01:05:10] AI is playing a configurable role in how people are interacting. In the space we all play in, privacy and personal information are top of everyone’s mind, and you really need to safeguard your business for longevity.

If you offered me a big valuation now for Paymenow and my shareholding in it – which is a very minimal shareholding – would I take it? I don’t think so, purely because what we are doing is making a massive impact.

[01:05:40] I’ve been very fortunate within the Paymenow environment to be involved in something where the purpose is far greater than what we did as rugby players. The highs and lows of professional rugby are great, but when you go into a bathroom and you see a Paymenow user, and you say to them, “Oh, you know about Paymenow?” and the first words that come out of their mouth are, “Thank you,”

you’re like, “Thank you for what? For cleaning the urinal?”

They say, “Not even my family wanted to help me.”

[01:06:15] That purpose-driven environment in which we now function as a company…

In our first month – I know your daughter was born in January, Orrin – we went live with our first client in March 2020, two days before our first family meeting, seven days before hard lockdown. It was brutal. Four guys had funded a business with not a lot of money. We were getting traction with an angel investor but hadn’t unlocked the first tranche of capital.

[01:06:55] We went to friends and family, anyone, everywhere. Our first month, March 2020, we did 61 transactions on our platform, with a staff complement of less than 10. We thought, “Okay, 60-odd transactions – not everyone’s on the platform, only doing two transactions… Guys, we’re going to need to scale this very quickly.”

[conversation continues into discussion of Paymenow’s growth, exploring SME models, and Bryan’s focus on purpose-driven work, family and ongoing unlearning and growth.] [01:23:21] Bryan Habana: My wife is by far the best thing that’s ever happened to me. It’s not just about giving birth to my boys, she literally is. Rugby was great, but my wife is by far the best thing that ever happened to me and I need to understand her sacrifice to be able to appreciate it even more.

I stumbled quite a bit, so I’m hoping the long-winded answer also gave you a bit of insight into… it wasn’t easy, because I literally broke a promise. And I think we all know in life you need to stick to your word. But understanding the sacrifice made me realise the appreciation.

[01:23:55] Orrin: That was very powerful. Thank you so much, Bryan, I really appreciate that.

[01:23:59] Bryan Habana: I mean, we’ve had a lot of intense things going on on our side. So my question is going to be very simple: did you ever sign in the clock tower at King Edward’s? Did you sign your autograph in the clock tower?

[01:24:09] Orrin: No. No, I didn’t.

[01:24:16] Bryan Habana: As a boarder that is just ridiculous. I cannot believe you let me down. I built such incredible respect for you, Mr Klopper – it’s dissipated.

[01:24:31] Orrin: That’s such a good question. Sorry.

[01:24:34] Bryan Habana: Maybe, sorry, Justinus, script-wise, but maybe just that: we had a clock tower and there was a tradition in matric that if you didn’t sign in the clock tower, you left KES a bit of a… I know we can’t use that word in today’s terms.

It was this massive thing, you had to go up. I know there are a lot of traditions there around saddle blocks and whatever.

[01:24:59] If you didn’t find your name in the clock tower, if it wasn’t there in your matric year, you were an absolute muppet.

I’m very happy that the two of us are on the call as non-signers, because I also didn’t, as we had to plan and wheel and deal, but the boarders had it a lot easier because they were literally at the school the whole time. Us day boys, we didn’t have that opportunity.

[01:25:18] Justinus Adriaanse: That’s awesome. Thanks, guys, that’s amazing.

So that’s it for this episode of Winning the Away Game. We’ve got 11 other episodes in this first season, so make sure you find us on YouTube or wherever you go for your high-quality podcasts.

[01:25:37] Please connect with us on LinkedIn or Instagram and let us know what you think of the show. If there’s a specific guest you’d like to see on the show, we’d like to hear it and we’ll try our best to get them on.

The show is recorded and produced by Jonathan from Ping Productions, brought to you in collaboration with the Lekker Network, which is helping South Africans around the world share knowledge, network and peer-support each other.

[01:25:56] Justinus Adriaanse: I’m Justinus Adriaanse.

[01:25:58] Flip van der Merwe: And I’m Flip. Thanks again for joining us and we’ll see you on the next one – Winning the Away Game.