I grew up in South Africa, in a city called Bloemfontein, where I had a wonderful childhood. I always had an interest in the sciences and went to Varsity in Stellenbosch where I majored in Chemistry and Food Science.

My career subsequently started in the industrial chemical field; I worked at an oil and gas refinery in Mossel Bay for a subsidiary of Suez, an industrial chemical giant. I moved to Asia at the turn of the century and this is where I was introduced to the ESL industry.

I got involved in the online teaching industry by chance, really. I was working for an English teaching company where I taught adults when there was a SARS outbreak and students were not allowed to attend classes on the premises. I was very fortunate that the owner of the company was very determined to make a success of online learning, despite the numerous challenges at the time, and he decided to conduct online classes to students confined at home.

Over time, the technical challenges in online learning diminished - the introduction of smartphones for communications was a big one, and the online teaching industry really took off. We haven't looked back since.

I currently live in Taiwan and am married to a Taiwanese lady. I try to spend six months in SA and six months in Taiwan.

After leaving the online teaching company I had worked for, I took a bit of a sabbatical from the industry. James, my fellow co-founder of The Really Great Teacher Company, was running a recruitment business at that time, and we had previously outsourced some work to him.

Personally, I had seen so many talented people come and go from the industry throughout the years, particularly on the teacher side. I felt there was so much still to be done in this industry, especially from a leadership and development perspective.

James and I share so many values on developing people and the importance of leadership at all levels in this industry, so we discussed the idea of combining forces and working together. We founded the company in 2014, the rest is history!

That is correct. A fully remotely managed business was always on the cards, right from the start. But before making the online shift, we had spoken to a couple of potential clients to feel them out, and for them technical stability was an absolute prerequisite, which we took into consideration.

Our initial target market was China, and at the company where I had previously worked often had to onboard more than 1,000 new teachers in a month to keep up with demand. With a physical center and a finite number of teaching desks, it is not easy to assist clients in meeting the student demand growth.

A center is also limited to the talent in the immediate surrounding area where the centre is based, where we wanted to access really great teachers from all over the world. The COVID lockdown in 2020 was the final straw and we moved to fully remote model.

This was a massive blow to the online English teaching industry, and with most of our business in China, we really felt it. Fortunately we already had the systems in place to expand, supported by a very good management team.

We grew our client base to include various additional foreign languages, such as French, Spanish, Portuguese, and even Hebrew! The restrictions in China created an opportunity for us to expand our offering to where we are today - teaching 12 different languages with teachers based in 60 countries. 

My main focus is on service delivery, which is obviously supported by our Operational teams, Recruitment and IT. James and I also share responsibilities in finances and business development.

There are three main things I look for.

How organized a person is, is very important as this demonstrates that they have a thorough knowledge of the role they are in. I have also found that organized individuals are able to adapt quickly and positively to change.

Secondly, I look at how invested they are in their teams. I’m referring to developing their teams, how much they prioritise their training and skills development, and how much they delegate. You often find senior managers who's individual output is excellent, but the teams output is average. In the operations side specifically, we generally promote people from within to senior management positions, so their performance has been observed over a period of time before they are appointed.

Finally, kindness. There is always room to be kind. It does not have to replace anything in your leadership toolbox; it simply adds value to what you already have there. Kindness is often the missing ingredient that prevents a leader from taking their team to the next level!

Well, greater efficiency and productivity are the no brainers here. But when we started the remote management model, our main focus was on our people. We invested heavily in systems as our staff were going to be literally working from home, so we tried to replicate an office environment as much as we could, particularly in the remote support function.

Staff morale is very important, so we are constantly looking at new technologies and adding enhancements to ensure staff don’t become frustrated using slow or dated software.

There are two parts to this.

When we onboard a new client, we work very closely with them to establish their clear expectations and desired outcomes. We then transform these into tangible KPI’s. Everyone from our side who is working on the account, from teachers, recruiters, tech support to the account manager, adopts these KPI’s as their own.

The second part starts from day one when you join the company. We firmly believe that everyone is a leader. Its amazing how many people, for whatever reason, have never considered themselves leaders. Everyone is capable of leadership, we are all born with the leadership characteristics and traits, but they might not always be on display.

So from day one we strive to provide opportunity for staff to develop themselves as leaders. This, coupled with the adoption of our company values, one of them being “always better”, is an excellent roadmap for staff to develop themselves, to improve their work performance but most important, to develop themselves as people.

Definitely the accessibility to online learning, and the low cost thereof. Especially mobile e-learning, where most people (especially in poorer countries) would have access to a mobile phone over a desktop computer. There are now apps available where you can download content and view it offline. The opportunity this creates for more people to learn, truly excites me.

Continuing from my previous answer, mobile e-learning and more downloadable content being available offline. I also think there will be more and more skills-based courses that will be created. Especially with virtual reality and augmented virtual reality on the horizon that can facilitate skills that were previously only industrial, or such as simulated pilot training.

Invest in the development of your people, from your teachers to your managers. It doesn't have to be through partnering with us, but you will see and reap the rewards on a corporate level, but also on a personal one.

Definitely the learnings! Learning from successes and failures, but most of all learning from the people in the company. We have teachers based in over 60 countries and learning about different cultures, heritage, even food recipes is really fantastic.

The old adage, one is never too old to learn, holds very true in the Really Great Teacher Company.