I started working at 12 in my father's cinema and supermarkets in Cape Town. By the time I was 19, I was effectively running parts of the business: cashing up, procurement, cash flow, and calculating the quantities we needed across the bakery, cinema, takeout, and supermarket. I paid invoices, drove to buy goods, and made the everyday decisions that shaped our customer service. It was an unusual place to start a career, but it was where mine actually began.
As family circumstances changed, I started selling carpets at the market to make money and worked at the V&A Waterfront while paying my own way through a degree in Information Systems. It was not the most direct route through university, but it was mine.
After graduating, I worked in the UK for a while and spent time in Spain, including a stint at Harrods as a communications officer. When I returned to South Africa, I moved back into IT, starting again as a junior developer and spending years building a career as a software developer in Cape Town.
It was during this time that I realized my core strength was not just writing code, but system architecture. My mind naturally functions holographically. Whether I am managing a supply chain, mapping a database, or structuring a narrative, I don't just see the individual tasks; I see the entire ecosystem and how all the moving parts connect.
That architectural mindset naturally pushed me to open my own business and launch a series of proprietary products. I built ParkingSA and ParkPal (Cape Town's first prepaid parking card), Housebid, and Premis Real Estate. Later, I launched Coolbrew, one of the first online coffee sellers in Cape Town. Coolbrew grew out of a fascination with good coffee: sourcing quality beans and building a digital directory of the best coffee shops I found while travelling through Germany, the Netherlands, and South Africa, while allowing others to add their own discoveries. Selling ParkingSA even took me abroad as I navigated getting the products in front of international stakeholders.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, I became a novelist almost by accident. I once told my dad that I did not like how a particular movie ended. He said, "So write your own." I started at 28 and have since completed 19 books, including novels and short stories. To me, writing a book is just another form of architecture: building a world and a structure from the ground up.
When I am not working, I am usually in the ocean, surfing, swimming, and more recently surf skiing. It may not sound like part of the business story, but it is where the actual mental processing and system-building happens.
I later spent years architecting systems in the payments industry while consulting on the side. The last few years were spent in a corporate role, but I have realized that a mind built for sovereign innovation cannot be confined to a traditional cage. Today, I am transitioning entirely out of the corporate structure to return to my roots as a master builder. I am currently finalizing my latest manuscript and launching a new, interconnected digital ecosystem, including Dishlify, Chuusey, and Bartazaar, built on my own terms.