Episode Transcript
The Finance Ghost: Welcome to Episode 1 of the Maximus podcast. I'm your host, The Finance Ghost, and I'm looking so forward to learning a lot more about Maximus Corporation and just bringing this story to the market actually, because I think it really is a fantastic example of how businesses can be built, and organisations can be grown in the South African market.
So, Maximus Corporation is a South African investment holding company, and I think they have quite an unusual approach. It's very people-centric, the way they do business and they make their investments. And the goal of this podcast really is to just put a spotlight on this approach.
To do that, we will be recording podcasts with a number of leaders within the broader Maximus ecosystem.
So, if you are listening to this, you are probably either a prospective employee or perhaps you are looking at accepting an equity investment, or co-investing, or getting involved in some way, shape or form. And this will hopefully help you get a better understanding of how Maximus goes about doing what they do.
Now, to get us started, Episode 1 features Jan van Niekerk, who has been building the foundations of Maximus for many years now, alongside his partners.
So, Jan, congratulations on everything you've built, and well done on choosing to do these podcasts. I think it's going to be a lovely way to tell the story. Welcome to episode one.
Jan Van Niekerk: Thanks Ghost. I really appreciate that, and I appreciate the opportunity.
The Finance Ghost: Yeah, I think we're going to have some fun with this.
So, let's talk about Maximus as essentially your legacy, because I think that's exactly what it is. I can see it in the passion that you have for the portfolio, your desire to really make a difference in South Africa.
It's a country where a lot of people have left, they decided there was no future here, etc. You're here, you're building. I know you have every intention of staying here and continuing to build, and taking advantage of everything this country has to offer.
So, I think to understand Maximus, we probably need a better understanding just of your backstory, your relationship with Piet Viljoen (your partner in Maximus) and some of the history with RECM.
I think let's bank all of that and just give people an idea of where Maximus has actually come from, and where you've come from.
Jan Van Niekerk: So, I'm a farmer's son. I grew up as a son of a sheep farmer, in the Northern Cape, in a place called Pofadder. And fairly early in my life I realised that I did not want to be a farmer. The benefits from all the hard work just weren’t enough, in my opinion.
At about age 10, I knew I wanted to be in business one day, and I wanted to be in charge of my own destiny. I wanted to have my own business. I started reading newspapers, thinking I could learn from that. And then the bank manager in the town was quite helpful and introduced me to the stock market.
So roughly at the age of 11, I started buying and selling shares on the JSE with the help of the local bank manager in Pofadder. And I used that as an opportunity to learn about business.
I was fortunate enough to get a bursary from Sanlam, the life insurance company, to study to become an actuary. But as soon as I got to university, I realised I liked the idea of investing more than the life of calculating the probabilities of when someone would die (which is what actuaries mostly do).
I spent a lot of my time in the stockbroker's offices in Stellenbosch, thinking they would know a lot more about investing than I would. Ultimately, I found out that at that time there was a lot of insider trading, and they wouldn't share the information with me.
So, I ended up reading and discovering a guy called Warren Buffett. Like so many other people, I wanted to emulate him. And it took me quite some time to realise that there's only one Mr. Warren Buffett. And every investor has to find their own way of doing things.
In essence, you have your own investment DNA, in the same way that you have DNA for the colour of your hair, or your height, as a person. And the sooner you figure out what your investment DNA is, the better it is for the rest of your life.
From an early age, I had a natural inclination to like people, to want to spend time with people. I think I'm an extrovert. I get energised by people. So fundamentally, I have a positive view about humans. Humans are wonderful things. We have ingenuity, we have creativity, we have drive, we have energy, we have dreams.
And yes, of course, there are dark parts to our psyche as well. But I choose to focus on the positive side, because I think there's so much that comes into the world if you focus on that, rather than on the dark side.
That means that in the process, I developed a way that I wanted to invest, which meant that investing in the stock market was probably not the right way for me. You don't get to interact with people in the way that I really liked.
And that's why I focused on (or moved over to) doing private investments, on top of what I was doing professionally. At the time I was working for Citadel, which was a wealth manager.
And then later on I worked in the Peregrine Group, where a lot of what we did originally was investing in the stock market, but eventually we were managing the balance sheet of the listed company. We got to invest in private assets.
I really wanted to do more of the private stuff and less of the listed stuff, because my investment DNA was better suited to private investments.
And that's why in 2013 I got the opportunity to join Piet Viljoen and Theunis de Bruyn at a company called RECM, which was a traditional ‘long only’ value investor; already successful at the time. Pieter and Theunis had also started a company called Calibre, which is a private balance sheet investment company.
And then there was a listed investment company called RECM and Calibre Limited (RAC) (now Goldrush), which was a listed vehicle through which we could do private investments. And I became a partner (one of the three partners) in all three of those entities in 2013.
I had respected what the guys had done for many years. What Piet was doing with the team at RECM was very public. They wrote eloquently, they presented well. Piet is very coherent in the way that he explains how he sees the world. He's very consistent in his application. I was absolutely drawn to that culture and the people.
I joined the business as Piet’s partner, with the idea of running the business and letting him focus on the investment side of things, predominantly. And that is how we've progressed over time.
We’ve taken our retained earnings - or the profits from all of our investment company’s activities - and reinvested those into other mostly private companies in South Africa. In that process, we've learned a lot in terms of what kind of businesses suit us. And we've also learned what kind of people suits our relationship.
And that's how we ended up with Maximus Corporation: a culmination of that, which in essence is now a family investment holding company. It's owned by Piet’s and my families. We focus on - for the rest of our lives at least - buying and partnering with good businesses, and with great people with whom we can have great relationships.
The Finance Ghost: Fantastic, Jan, it's such a cool backstory. I think you might be to Pofadder, what Charlize Theron is to Benoni! Well done. You’ve done a huge amount of super interesting things after your humble beginnings on the farm, as you say.
I think a lot of those humble beginnings come through in the way you have built these businesses today. So, I guess our early life does shape us.
And as you say, someone taking an interest in you at age 10, 11, when you started buying shares, the bank manager there, also feeds through into the way you manage young talent these days and look for people to grow and develop. But we'll certainly get to that later.
Before we get there, one of the points we need to focus on is, as you say, your interest in private companies, and avoiding these faceless investments on the market, where you're basically just trading on a screen.
Obviously doing more private equity type stuff does involve a lot more of the time with people, as you say. And I think that is, as I've understood it from you, what differentiates Maximus from some of the traditional family offices, where you have these balance sheets that are managed in such a way that they're deploying capital into markets, etc.
I think what you're doing is actually building a network of people, as opposed to just collecting assets on a market. I mean, would that be an accurate summary of how you would see Maximus distinguished from the more traditional family office structures?
Jan Van Niekerk: I would say many people have many definitions of family offices, and I think the typical view is that a family office is an investment team that looks after the realised assets of a successful entrepreneur. Because the capital needed to be generated at some time in a business.
My perception is that typically, family offices then try to diversify as widely as possible, and in most instances, they invest in funds and or other ventures which are not related to ‘on- the-ground’ businesses. And they have a fairly distant relationship with the people that make those investment decisions.
What we've done at Maximus is to retain all of our capital in the form of stock and debtors, so to speak. So, we have investments in operating companies only - where we have significant minority interest, or a majority interest in the business.
We have a very good and strong relationship with the entrepreneurs that run those businesses. They are the types of people who accept, and want, and appreciate a partner - or more than just a cheque.
They want someone (or a team) who has experience - like us - to help to either make acquisitions for their business or make rational decisions about how they reinvest the profits in their own business.
And sometimes we’re just helping them in those lonely times where, as an entrepreneur and as a leader, there's not really anybody else they can talk to. And frankly, tell them, “I'm scared about the decision I am making. I don't know if it's going to work out. I'm anxious about the macroeconomic environment”.
And those are the places where our history, and the strength of the bigger team and balance sheet, can give them comfort in making those good decisions.
Personally, I have had many people who were kind to me and gave me opportunities at an early stage of my life, all the way from the bank manager to a very kind uncle that took interest in me.
And when I started working early in my life, all the financial institutions gave me lots of opportunities, at a young age. And therefore, I believe that young people have so much more to give. I really don't believe in the fact that you have to be 60 or 70 or 80 before you can be running a business.
So that spills into our attitude: to work with younger leaders that have ambition, that have energy and a clear plan; those leaders who have the ability to be a partner.
Remember, lots of talented people rather want to be “the boss”, or they understand that they’ll be working for someone. So, there are basically two styles of interaction. It's either command and control, a bit like in the military, or it's a partnership model, which is the one we have actively chosen, where we do not dictate to any team what they do.
They are good at running the business already. We are supportive partners - we help to make decisions. And we understand that the parts where we can help are a little bit of the senior HR. We help to build and bring in senior management teams. And the other bit where we help is making decisions on how to invest the capital of that business.
The Finance Ghost: There are really interesting nuances coming in there. We're obviously going to dig into that a little bit later, in terms of what some of the opportunities are for young people to get involved here. Whether it's at underlying portfolio company level, or at group level.
But I think before we get to that, we should understand more about some of the deals that you've done along the way, and some of the activities that have led to this thing, as you have it today.
Because the theme that keeps coming through is working with people. It's private assets, it's significant minority stakes, it’s sometimes controlling stakes. And obviously, if you are investing with people and alongside people in a relatively concentrated portfolio, you're getting the best and worst of what that means.
So, it's an emotional journey at times. It's not always easy, that's for sure. When it's on a screen and it's a number, and it's half a percent of your portfolio, that's one thing. But when it's actual people's lives, and you've gotten to know these people over time, that's something quite different.
I would imagine that over that career, there must be some memorable deals that would have shaped the way you invest today. This doesn't necessarily need to be businesses that you actually still own, or have any kind of involvement in, whatsoever.
But if you cast your mind back, what would you say are some of the memorable transactions that have really shaped the way you do things today, and how you go about building Maximus?
Jan Van Niekerk: Just to perhaps preface this: when I mention the names of certain companies in my explanations, I don't mean to cast any aspersions. I will use them as an explanation of my experience, and how that has formed my investment decisions. Because I think examples work better if we make it real.
So perhaps the first bit that I learned was in the public markets, when I was 11, and buying and selling shares through the bank manager.
What I didn't realise at the time was, by the time I read the newspaper in Pofadder, the news inside of the stock exchange had been disseminated. The clever guys had bought and sold. By the time I would buy something, there was no money to be made. So first of all, I learned that reading newspapers to find investment ideas was not going to work.
Then, spending time in the stockbroker's office in Stellenbosch, I learned that the guys closest to the game have the information, and they have no incentive to share that with you in a way that will help you make more investments.
Their business model was getting me to buy more and more and do regular transactions so they could make brokerage from that. So that taught me that incentives are incredibly strong, in how people operate.
In my early years of working as a young actuary, I came across a private company in Malmesbury, called the Swartland Handelshuis Eindomsbelegings. Their origin there was, under the Apardtheid regime, many of the agricultural companies ran as co-ops, and so there was a co-op in Malmesbury where all the farmers would, together, have buying power, selling power, etc.
In around 1995, there was this fear that the then Minister of Finance, Derek Hanekom, was going to nationalise all the reserves of these co-ops. Very quickly all the co-ops converted into companies, and all the members’ interests, that the members of the co-ops had, were converted into shares.
Most of these farmers had no idea what a share was called, what it was worth, or how to value the shares. All they saw was, instead of getting an agterskot every year, they would get a dividend.
The assets of this company were quite interesting. The Handelshuis used to have trading - they owned basically all the property in the centre of Malmesbury, which is a prime location. And there was a shop inside of this property. And over the years, the shop became unprofitable.
They had the sense to stop running the shop themselves, and rent out the property to companies like Clicks, Standard Bank, and all the big corporates. And all of a sudden, it became an investment holding company, where the underlying asset was a great portfolio of properties.
But the shareholders of this company had no idea how to value this. And I picked up the financial statements; got them from a friend. I did my own calculation, and I figured out that the shares were worth, at the time, probably R10,000 a share.
I asked him, would I be able to buy any shares? And he instructed me to speak to the local lawyer in the town. I found out that people have been buying and selling these shares for R200 a share recently.
Because what the board of the company had done is, they had been retaining all the income, reinvesting it into more properties - so doing the right thing to make the company more valuable. And therefore, they paid out a very small dividend.
And most investors, as you would, would look at the dividend and say “well, if I only get R20 of dividends, then this thing can't be worth a lot more”. So, there was a misunderstanding in the shareholder base.
Many of the shareholders at the time were elderly widows. So many of them just wanted money, or needed money, et cetera. So, I was able to send an agent around to Malmesbury, who bought up shares on my behalf, from many of the widows.
The lesson I learned there was, on the date that I wanted to transfer the shares to my own company's name, the board of directors declined to transfer the shares - because the Memorandum of Incorporation (MOI) gave them the right to deny transfer without any explanation.
And in the process, they decided that the company would buy back the shares itself, which, again, was a rational decision for the company. It was incredibly frustrating for me, because I'd done all the work, I could see all the value sitting there, and I was denied the opportunity to get some of that value for my family.
Fortunately for me, a few years later, the company found a way to buy another big, sensible property. And they did a rights issue. And many of the same widows (from the last time) phoned me and said I could have their rights, to follow their rights. They didn't have the money, and I became a shareholder in the company.
That's a memorable process and a memorable transaction, which taught me a lot. If you are young and aggressive, then the attitude with which you do a transaction can alienate the people on the other side of the transaction, to the point that just emotionally, they want to deny you a share in the economics of the transaction.
So, relationships and approach and attitude towards people is very important, which is different from if it was a deeply discounted share, trading on the JSE, as you see from time to time in the property sector.
Perhaps one of the ones that did not work out - a while after we joined RECM, and inside of RECM and Calibre, we had done a couple of profitable transactions. And at the time I was very comfortable to still look at companies that are in trouble or in distress, thinking that because I have done this in the past, I can go in and help to fix a company that's in distress, that has problems.
So, at the time, we made an investment in a listed JSE company called Dawn, which was a manufacturer; a distributor of industrial products, mostly plastic piping and other instruments in the building industry. Dawn was mismanaged to the point that it urgently needed some capital to just pay its regular bills.
We provided about R100 million at the time for a substantial share of the company. Being a listed company, we were unable to do proper due diligence before the time.
So by the time we arrived, and could get onto the board and get involved in budgeting and cutting costs, it was clear to us that inside of the business there was a much bigger mess than we could see from the outside, which is one of the other lessons that I have learned from listed companies.
In the listed environment, there's a certain amount of information that the executives can share with you (as a prospective investor, as an analyst, as a portfolio manager, or just an interested party). If they go beyond that, it becomes inside information and they have to share it with everybody.
If you have a management team that is inclined that way, they have an excuse to keep information from all investors. Whereas in a private investment, if I want to make an investment, I can ask people for the lease agreements, for their divorce agreements, for any police clearance certificates, etc. I can get all the information I need and it helps me to make those decisions.
On top of that, in the listed market, companies usually trade at much higher valuations than they trade in the private market. So, the obvious thing is, in private markets you have more information, and you pay less for an income stream or an asset. Whereas in the listed market you have less information, and you normally pay more.
And the way you make money is, you have to either predict the underlying growth of the business, or you have to hope that someone else at some stage in future likes this company more than you do, and they will pay you a premium for what you do.
So, those have been some of the lessons that have shaped our insights into the kinds of companies that we can and want to be involved in, which markets we want to be involved in; and that's why we choose private over public. And also, the kinds of people that you can do these transactions with.
The Finance Ghost: Yeah, that's fantastic. I mean, there's so much experience coming through there. Part of what I'm hearing there is obviously the opportunity to spot dislocations in the market, and then understanding the incentives that sit behind them. That's a key learning there. And how to actually unlock that, as you say, through relationships. So, there are some really cool learnings there, from early transactions.
The other thing that came through there, that I think is really interesting, is information asymmetry in listed companies. So we often think, “Oh, in a listed company environment, you have access to more information when you're making an investment”.
But in reality, when you're doing private company deals, because of the due diligence process you actually get to dig in a lot deeper and find what's really going on. Whereas in listed company land, you're relying on exactly the same information that everybody has.
And that goes back to the stuff that always comes through when people talk about their investment edge, and how they find outsized returns, etc. Everyone's working off the same stuff. So, those are some really cool insights coming through there from many years of dealmaking, Jan. I love it.
I guess that's all led to the Maximus portfolio as it stands today. And I'm sure in podcasts to come we'll dig into some more of the stories to get here.
But I think in this intro podcast, let's actually go through what's in your portfolio as it stands today. So, walk us through the portfolio and also just explain what the common thread is across the company. Is it a particular type of person? Is it an industry? What has actually led you to build the portfolio, as it looks today?
Jan Van Niekerk: I think it is important to understand that there is a common theme through all the investments. Obviously, one theme is the ability to work with the management teams, to be able to build a wonderful relationship of respect and trust, and also to have people that have an attitude of wanting to be a partner.
The other thing is, we have chosen to mostly consider companies that are B2C, so selling directly to the consumer, rather than selling to other businesses. Apart from the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) in South Africa, which obviously excludes me, what it means is that on your purchase side from clients, you don't have concentration in terms of your customer base.
In a B2B business, if you are concentrated between four or five customers, you are beholden to their order cycle, to their minimum order quantities, to the payment terms, etc. So normally that means you have customers who are very big in your life, and they can dictate the terms.
Whereas if you sell directly to the public, you have better pricing power, and there's no big concentration in your customer base. And we feel that's a very good trait in the kinds of businesses that we can understand. If we can make those businesses better by inherent traits, of course it will help.
So, one of the things we look for is companies with licences. A licence means that not everybody can come and compete with you. In order to get a licence in South Africa, or in any establishment, you need to be able to apply and prove that you are responsible and diligent in how you handle the licence.
You normally have licence conditions, which mean that you need to run your business professionally in order to maintain your licences. That also means that you can have a professional team around you - and you need a professional team around you, which is the way we run our businesses.
As we go through the businesses, you'll see many of these have licences, and that probably came from me having had formative years in financial services. To run a wealth management company, to run a hedge fund, to run an asset management company – for all of those – you do need licences with conditions. That just means that the people in the business are more professional.
The second angle is that if you can get a business with scale, that’s a good thing, because scale does bring benefits. We have started up many businesses, and in startups, you need to inspire the people around you with dreams, until you get to the point where you can reward them appropriately, financially.
But there's a limit to how much you can reward people, or inspire them, with dreams. If you don't build your business big enough, fast enough, you start losing some of your best talent - because you just cannot reward them appropriately.
So, scale means (for us) beyond having the ability to negotiate with your suppliers (meaning if it's in marketing or the goods that you're selling), it means we can afford to appoint great people to work with us.
Because we understand that really good leaders, really good operators, are worth, normally, much more than what you pay them. So, most of the great leaders in the world will tell you, you can almost never overpay the great people. Scale gives us the opportunity to do that.
And the third one is, find a business with a brand. Because brand is one of those attributes that can help you with two things. It either helps you to sell more of your product (because people know your brand and they want to buy it), or it helps you to charge more for your products.
You can have a better margin, because people trust your brand for the quality, consistency or availability - whatever your brand stands for.
The best outcome is a licensed business with scale and a brand.
And if I take two of the biggest investments, the one is a company called Goldrush, which is the largest alternative gambling or gaming company in South Africa.
You mostly have casino companies, where Sun International has the resort casinos. Tsogo in South Africa has the urban casinos. And then Goldrush is a company that owns licenses and runs establishments where you have bingo halls, limited payout machines, online gambling. And they also have the licence to run the National Lottery for eight years.
If you think about that with Goldrush, everything we do is under license, and we have the team to maintain those licenses. It has a brand: Goldrush's brand has been built over the last 13 years. And it's got scale. It runs all the verticals inside of gambling. We operate in all nine provinces of the country.
We have substantial staff, we have substantial infrastructure to be able to run that business, and it will continue to be profitable for a long time. And Goldrush's customers are individuals. We don't sell to the institutions. So, for me, that's an example of how it all comes together.
Another company where we have a substantial stake, influence and investment in, is Outdoor Investment Holdings. It’s the holding company of the most visible brand that people will know as a hunting and outfitting shop: Safari and Outdoor.
Again, here we sell products that are sold under licence. That includes guns and ammunition that people use to go hunting with in South Africa. We don't sell to any other parts of society. You need very strict licences.
Secondly, we only sell to the public. So that's again, business to consumer. And it's got scale. It's a company with eight big shops throughout the country. We own the importers and the distributors already.
And then it's got a brand - which is a very strong brand, appropriate for their customer base. The people who like to hunt, the people who like that industry and that lifestyle, love the brand. And that's why the brand, the scale and the licences, again, give us the opportunity to sell to the public.
So those are probably two of the most visible assets in the portfolio.
If we go further, we have a substantial investment in a company called Leatt Corporation. They manufacture and distribute protective clothing for people who do dangerous sports. The company was started by Chris Leatt, who was a keen motocross biker - then his friend had a terrible accident; he broke his neck.
Chris thought, “There must be a better way.” So, he designed a neck brace which in essence saved many lives over the years. And from the neck braces, they have designed other very functional protective clothing which eventually became very cool.
Again, this company sells direct to consumers. It has a brand, it doesn't really operate under a license, but they have patented many of the inventions and the products in there, so they have patents that protect them.
And Leatt at this stage sell 90% of their products overseas. It's small in a global market, so it doesn't have international scale yet, but it does have South African scale.
The next company is the Flexi Mobility Group, which is a company that provides finance for the second-hand and used car-motor trade. This is a company which again sells directly to individuals. We provide finance to individuals, not to corporations. That means that our credit book is not overly concentrated.
It’s beginning to get scale. This is one of the original companies we started, and it now has a fleet of about 3,000 cars on the market, which are starting to give some scale in the South African context. We’re still building the brand, but we believe it is a brand that will be built over time.
A common thread: we also have an interest in WellsFaber, which is a South African-based wealth manager, basically a private bank without the banking licence. Again, the customers are individuals or families. We need to run it under a licence from the Financial Services Agency.
It’s 40 years old. The brand is very strong in financial services in South Africa. It fits all the metrics of what we want to do.
This is in essence, a services business. So, we employ competent financial advisors, who are our partners. They give advice to families who need advice on how to invest their financial assets, and don't have the skills or the inclination to do that themselves. And therefore, that's a business that has longevity.
We also have an interest in a company called Questco Corporate Advisory, which is, I believe, one of South Africa's pre-eminent corporate finance houses.
Many of the corporate finance companies in South Africa are either tied to a bank (think Investec, RMB, Standard Bank) - they have very strong corporate finance teams. Questco is the one team that is not affiliated with any of those institutions.
They are a pure corporate finance team, which has a long history - about 23 years of providing independent corporate finance advice and transactions structuring for corporates in South Africa.
This is the one business where we do not do business with individuals many times. We do business with individual companies, but the nature of the transaction is, you don't have a continuous client that becomes a big client of the business. You do transactions with different companies all the time, which mitigates a bit of that client risk.
Perhaps I can talk about these last three.
We have an investment in Sloom, which is an online mattress and bedding sales business, selling directly to consumers. Sloom has quite a strong brand.
It doesn't have that much scale in licencing. This is the one company where there is no licence to protect how you design your own mattresses. There we rely on long relationships with our suppliers.
The company is still fairly small in the South African context, but it's a very strong brand. And the internet infrastructure allows this business to compete in a great way with the regular ‘bricks and mortar’ mattress and bedding companies.
Perhaps the last two.
Sunridge is an importer and distributor of products in the building areas, specifically in sanitary. Think pipes, fittings, taps, showerheads, etc. It's a company that has found a niche in procuring appropriately from overseas sectors in China and India, importing and distributing into mostly what we would call the ‘bakkie’ builders, or the informal building industry.
We don't supply big corporates, or the listed ones, for instance. So, it's a fragmented market. We have pricing power, and we provide a product that is very appropriate for the market that buys from us. The business has got scale. It's quite substantial in its size already.
And then perhaps the last one to talk about is Hero Motorcycles, the delivery bikes that more and more people are using in South Africa. As online shopping is growing rapidly, most people would have seen those around in the streets.
Hero is basically, if I'm allowed to say, the ‘Toyota’ of the motorbikes. It's been built and manufactured in India. It survived and has been tested in the rough-weather circumstances in India and many other countries in Africa. We believe it is unbreakable mostly. And the industry in South Africa is growing, so the brand is very strong globally.
We think it's a matter of time before the brand will take off in South Africa. We have the exclusive licence to import and distribute in South Africa, so we are protected by the licence again.
And most of these bikes we sell directly to the riders or companies that finance the bikes for them. So, our customers, again, are mostly individuals and not big institutions.
So, the scale is not there yet, but I can see that we can get there.
That’s quite a broad, diversified range. But the common thread of what we do is that combination of licenses, scale, brand, and good people in there.
The Finance Ghost: Thanks, Jan. That really helps us to just understand what's actually in there. You work with lots of businesses at different stages in their life cycle, at different sizes, but like you say, a real spread of risk. And there’s a nice golden thread across everything, which comes through in the way you've described it there.
So, I think 11-year-old you, buying his first shares, would be quite proud to look at that portfolio today - and be able to get involved in something like that.
Let's look ahead. Because 11-year-old you was a long time ago. We're focusing on Jan as he is today, and what you're building at Maximus. Your goals and aspirations for it over the next five years, the next 10 years - I'm not sure what sort of lens you like to use, but as you look ahead with building this thing, what is the plan with Maximus? And then, how would you say that young talent fits into that - and the sort of people you want to be having conversations with?
Jan Van Niekerk: If you are the person with the attitude or the nature that wants to be in charge and wants to make a big difference, then there's basically four ways to get there.
The one is, you can go into politics. If you work your way up into politics high enough, you’ll be in charge of budgets, and you can direct that and make a difference.
You can go to the military and work your way up high enough so that you have a budget and people that you can move around.
You can go into the church if you want to. You’d work your way high up enough so that you have an influence of how the organisation works.
And the fourth one is business. And I have chosen business as the instrument through which I would like to make a difference in the world. I believe that building professionally-run businesses with professionally-run people is the way to make a difference in the place where we stay. And we've chosen to be in South Africa.
So, for me, the dream is not five or 10 years. It's basically for the rest of my life. I want to be able to find a couple more of these great businesses that fit into the description we've given.
And also at the same time, I want to look and find more relationships with hungry, energetic, ethical young leaders; with leadership ability, with passion and with the ambition to do big things.
Because if you have young people that want to do big things, I believe we're in a position to back them unconditionally, to be those big things. We have the opportunity to teach people that you don't solve problems as an entrepreneur with a cheque, but you solve it with ingenuity.
Cheques and capital are there to help you grow your business, not to solve problems. That's the dream: to be able to find more of these hungry young leaders and to give them a place, an opportunity where they can be the best of who they are.
And if we can get it right, that we create the environment in Maximus that people like that are comfortable to be part of our team, that will be a fantastic outcome.
I think it's important to mention that if we do that, then Maximus will build a group of leaders that will eventually be able to take over from Piet and I. Who will look after this and take the business forward. We’re fairly committed.
Our children have no right to claim, to come and run the company after we're done, just because they were born in a certain house. We are very happy that our kids have proper educations, and they’re pursuing their own careers.
So, this is a professionally-run business, which we want to be running as long as we can.
The Finance Ghost: Yeah, I think it speaks directly to that legacy point that I raised right at the beginning.
Jan, I think we'll call it there for Episode 1 of this podcast series. And hopefully by now the listener has understood what we're looking to do here. And obviously there's so much to dig into.
I mean, there's executives in each of these companies to talk to, there's deals that will come through, businesses will be sold and bought and everything else. It's going to be really, really cool. I'm looking forward to doing this whole series with you.
So, thank you for your time on this and yeah, just thank you for sharing the story. I think it's such a special one, and I have no doubt there'll be lots of interest in the podcast to come.
Jan Van Niekerk: Thank you very much. I really appreciate this.
