Denis Vaden — State 5 Coffee and their recent acquisition

David Watts on Mechs 93.8 It is Mechs 93.8, some legendary radio for you. On a Monday night, it is what's involved, proudly brought to you by the Cradle Boutique Hotel. What a wonderful place. We chatted to Kerbus, the CEO there. Just love it. And they very much make big into this conscious capitalism thing, which works even better for me. Speaking of a raving conscious capitalist, my guest in studio, once again, tonight from State Five Coffee, it's Dennis Vardan. How are you? All good and you, David. Thanks for having me back. Yeah, it's actually quite funny though, 'cause we're on our phones and I said, listen, I want you back. You're like, why? You've already asked me about coffee, but we're not really gonna, we'll talk a bit about coffee. But this show, what's involved is all about, you know, entrepreneurship, it's about, it's inspirational, it's motivational. And you, I mean, a couple of weeks ago, we had Francois in here from Action Coach, and you messaged him going, he did stuff for you as well. So I thought, listen, let's call in Dennis, see what he's up to, see what he's doing, and then, you know, see where it goes. Maybe we can share some motivational thoughts, because often, as I said, some of the most interesting discussions happen off air.

We're gonna keep those interesting ones on air tonight. How does that sound? Good, sounds good to me. Alrighty, so, a lot has happened since we last spoke, specifically in your life. You just, you never, ever seem to slow down. What is a typical day in the life of Dennis? Let's start there, what time do you start off?

- Okay, so, about 5 a.m., 4.35. I normally train early in the morning. I've moved from CrossFit, and I now have started running. I've set myself a new goal. The goal is to do a half Ironman by the middle of the year. I don't necessarily have that runner's build or that body, like, of a runner. I don't weigh the right amount. But I work well with goals. So, I set myself a goal, and, you know, CrossFit, I had certain goals that I achieved, and in this situation, I have a goal that I want to achieve. So, come hell or high water, I'm either gonna do it or they're gonna drag me out of the coffin. It's gonna be either or. So, I train early in the morning. Normally, I'd work by about half past six, latest seven o'clock, depending how busy I am. If I'm busy, I might skip a training session. It's not often, and I'll be in at about six, quarter to six. And then it's just start, I guess. I'm very, very grateful that I've got an amazing team at the moment. It used to be all me. I mean, I've done the whole everything myself, from wake up in the morning, call, deliver, do all the invoicing, work from morning till 12 at night, literally every day. This sounds weird, but I'm probably working less now than I've ever worked in my entire life.

And I want to justify that by saying I work all the time and actually, in fact, my work used to define me. If you asked me who I was, the first thing I'd tell you is this is what I do. And I've made a concerted effort to pull back from it and go, my work isn't the only thing that defines me. There are other things that make Dennis interesting or actually make him a human being. But I've got such a good team now. So, I think pretty much like anyone else, the emails don't stop. People are always asking for things. We always have stuff to do, but my brain never stops. It's my curse. I truly, you know, at 2.22 AM and I can tell you, 'cause I took a picture, a screenshot of my watch the other day off the phone, I'm up and I get my best ideas. I can't help it. It's just, that's, my brain does not shut off. - Do you wake up earlier? 'Cause I'm one of these people, and a lot of people think I'm weird, because generally, I'm at my desk by about 3.30. - Sure, sure. - In the morning. But I go to sleep early. I'm asleep at 8 o'clock per state at night. - Yes. - And that is when I'm at my most productive. But I've had to learn not to fire off emails at that time of the morning. - Well, that's the thing.

Sleeping's a superpower. It's my superpower. I'll be honest, I can always sleep. If I couldn't sleep, I don't know if I would have been able to build my business. So, I also sleep early and I try to get into routines. I wouldn't be up that early if I couldn't get into a half past eight, nine, half past nine sleep. But I do find that I'm definitely my most productive in the morning and I taper off during the course of the day. It's sort of how it goes. I've now started swimming during the middle of the day. So, I go to a gym and I do a kilometer or two in the pool, which completely revitalizes me for the rest of the day. What I have done is I've stopped doing emails till late at night. So, I used to, that again was a conscious effort. We have a wall at our office, which is a goal wall. And it's only personal goals. Not interested in business goals. Our team in the office, not at the shops, is about eight. And each, well, sorry, it's more 10. Each one of them has a personal goal. And the personal goal could be, I wanna lose four kilograms, I wanna run an Ironman, normally a month to month goal. And I've managed to set a few goals for myself. And one of them was stop working till late at night.

Become a human being. Start doing other things besides working. Unfortunately, being an entrepreneur, you're always on call. You're like a doctor. There's always someone that needs you. You're always required. And unfortunately, yet again, the brain doesn't switch off. So, as much as you're trying to chill, I could be sitting in the mountains in the Drakensberg looking at the sunset going, oh my goodness, I've just thought of. And if I don't scribble it down, it's a problem. So, even when I'm on holiday, I need half an hour or an hour or 15 minutes. Anyone that knows me well enough knows this just to get the work side out of my brain so that I can calm down a bit. - But I got to say this. Since last year when I interviewed you, up until now, I mean, it's been clear that you've been a very, very, very busy man, but you do look a lot calmer, a lot more focused and centered at the moment. So, this is a conscious thing that you've been doing. - Conscious, absolutely conscious.

David, as we grow, we learn. I think wisdom comes with time. It's one of those things that I find particularly about myself, lack of focus in my past probably was the biggest determining factor of lack of success. And everyone could see it. Objectivity is also a superpower. So, it's easy to go and point fingers and say, you should do it like this and this and this, but it's not so easy when you're in the situation and you have a million ideas. The other problem is when you don't have money. So, it's easy when you don't have money and you have a salary because you know your salary is gonna come at the end of the month. It's a little harder when you don't have money and you can't pay wages. So, you're sitting there going, I don't know how I'm gonna pay my staff. Never mind myself and the telephone calls. So, what that does is it invariably makes you look for more opportunity. And quite often that opportunity isn't within your business. So, you're always looking for new ideas or a new thing or a different thing. And essentially what you're doing is you're playing multiple sports. You're trying to be the best rugby player, a fantastic gymnast and a great ballerina at the same time. - And not sort of focusing on what your core business is.

- Yeah, core business, you can start doing more things when your Maslow's hierarchy of needs is set. - Is met, yes. - One, two, when your business is starting to give you a certain amount of money, then you can move on to the next business. People like myself, unfortunately I have the curse. I can never be in one business. Till I die, I will never be in one business. Eventually when I am at a level of success that I plan to be at, I will be invested in multiple businesses. But the people I'm gonna be invested with are gonna be the ones that are doing the work. And I'm gonna be adding the real value that I have, which is the creativity, which is the slightly out of the box thinking, obviously the connections, that sort of stuff. That's what I'm playing to, but I still have quite a while to get there. - But you've done exceptionally well. And I mean, we were chatting, and you see this is what we were saying just now as well, is we sit, and I sit with each of my guests before the show, and when we plan what we're gonna talk about. And invariably with you and I, we might as well not even bother. So I'm gonna try and stick to some of the things we agreed to talk about. One of those things is you've now made some great strides with state five itself.

So you're now not just brick and mortar. So tell me a little bit about that, because it's actually weird. 'Cause I think back, that was something you were talking about last year. And it was just a dream. It was something you wanted to do. So what happened? Talk to me. - So obviously the short of it is that we have acquired a business called Coffee Cafe. Coffee Cafe is the biggest mobile coffee company in the country. So we have 38 franchisees and two of our own. So we have 40 mobile franchises and units that basically sell coffee at events, at schools, at 702 Walk the Talk at 94.7, at a whole bunch of different events. What we've done, it's hell of exciting. I mean, we bought it on the 15th of November. We bought it from a mom and pop that did a phenomenal job in growing it to where it is. I think we're gonna be able to add some real value to the business now. We're gonna be rebranding all these carts to state five. So obviously there's an exceptional branding opportunity there for us to see our trailers at all these top events, even small events. We don't mind. It's pretty cool because we're bringing our coffee to the people. Obviously they're all gonna have state five coffee on them and cold brew.

So a lot of these guys make fortunes in winter and struggle a bit in summer. Whereas we're bringing quite a cold beverage offering and saying, cool, you can sell coffee in the morning when you go to the school, but now give them a little taster of cold brew when they have their cup of coffee and then they can come back later. - That is actually one of those things that I've got to just talk about it 'cause you've got it on your shirt as well, cold brewed coffee. When you initially told me about cold brewed coffee, I was like, thank you. I mean, I am a radio presenter. I only know how to drink my coffee cold, but cold brewed, like as in ice cold, like coffee, cold coffee, I thought, yuck. And I actually had some at state five the one day and it was, it's a definite eye opener. There is something special about coffee that's been cold brewed. What is it? - So the process is quite intricate. You literally have to take beans, you grind them, you leave them in water for about 24 hours, you then have to filter them. And I think the trick that we did, we were tasting again, even with my team this morning, guys that hadn't tasted before. And their faces when they tasted it the first time is like, wow, this is amazing.

Who drinks coffee cold? If you look at the states, about 30% of the artisan coffee shops, about 30% of their turnover is cold brewed coffee. So obviously it's got double to triple the caffeine of normal coffee, which is insane. So it can make you bounce off walls. And it gives you a very distinctive dark chocolate flavor that you don't get in other coffees. - And that was the thing I noticed is the flavor profile was very different. - Yes. - It was a very rich kind of... - Rich, deep, dark, chocolatey. That's what you're looking at. And then obviously you add it to milk or you add it to a touch of cream or cold brew and tonic is ridiculous. I wanna do a campaign called tonic face, which essentially is taking pictures of people when they drink a cold brew and tonic, because what they taste is sweet, fruit and bitter simultaneously. Their brains can't compute. They get this sideways eye thing, they get a twitch. Literally, they don't know what to do. And then they're like, "Ooh, I like it." Or, "I don't like it." - So it's literally like a shot of cold brewed coffee. Fill it up with tonic. - And a little bit of vanilla syrup. If you wanna get dirty, yeah. And you get sweet, fruit and bitter simultaneously in your mouth.

I can guarantee you it'll be like nothing you've ever tasted before in your life. - I gotta do that. I'm a G and T fan. So if I can find something else to mix tonic with, brilliant. Anyway, listen, we're gonna come back and talk a little bit more about State Five and about exactly what you're doing with State Five Mobile. It is what's involved. Proudly brought to you by the Cradle Boutique Hotel. - David Watts on the mix, 93.8. - Legendary radio, it is what's involved. Proudly brought to you by the Cradle Boutique Hotel. My guest in studio, Dennis Varden of State Five Coffee. And now State Five Mobile. So you've got, just refresh my memory again. How many of these units did you get? - 40. - 40 of the units? - Yes. - And you're now busy rebranding them, et cetera, et cetera. Are these units sort of, are they part of a franchise already? - Yes, so the franchise was called Coffee Cafe. And we have acquired Coffee Cafe as a franchise also. We own the franchise. And we are now rebranding these units into State Five Coffee Cafe. So we're in the process of looking for sort of permanent sites, schools, office parks, that sort of stuff. Where we can get our franchisees in from Monday to Friday.

And then they can do their events on weekends. And we've got quite a cool campaign. This is the 222 idea I was telling you about. So I haven't worked out the wording completely and it's gonna come out in the next two weeks. But I literally sent out the email at three, which I shouldn't have, I know. It's gonna be along the lines of like refer us to a site. So if you find us a school or an office park that you're already in or you can refer us to where we can put a permanent location of a State Five or a State Five Mobile Cafe, we'll give you free coffee in perpetuity. Literally as long as the car's there. You get your free cup of coffee. You can come down every single day and get your free cup of coffee on us. - That's brilliant. Listen, we got a message in here. It says the only criticism I have is that you make me feel hungry, not thirsty. And that's from Nick. - Yeah, Dennis has a habit of doing that 'cause I must tell you that the goodies to eat at State Five are also quite epic. But I'm fascinated about this State Five Mobile. So guys, you currently are franchisees. - Yes. - You're going to them and going, listen, this is who we are. This is what we've done. And this is what we're gonna be doing for you because I know your whole idea, when I mentioned conscious capitalism earlier on, your eyes lit up because you're a big fan of that.

- Of course. - And I think it's the foundation. Certainly the way things are going with some of the bigger corporations. And when you do some research into it, it's brilliant. - It's the way of the future. And to be completely honest with you, I won't get involved in any business that doesn't give back in some way. So my mission is to leave the world a better place than I came in, even in my own little way in whatever I can do. And seeing as I'm pretty good at business, it seems to be something that I can do, let me do it in that way. - If you read John McKay's "Conscious Capitalism" from Whole Foods, brilliant, absolutely brilliant. He literally talks about the five pillars, which are your suppliers, your team, your community, your investors, and da-da-da-da. There was one more that I can't remember now. Look after all of them and you become a conscious business. - It's absolutely brilliant. I don't know if you've ever read any of the urban monk stuff, Pedram Shajai. He's now released a couple of movies as well. And one of these things is when he's dived into this "Conscious Capitalism". He goes back a long line of Taoist Buddhism and Taoist theory and everything. And he's now, he was actually an abbot of his order and he's now sort of become an urban monk.

- So it's so cool. - So Pedram Shajai, if you haven't read it. - I should be reading it. - I should send people to a website where I can make, you know, profit on affiliate sales. That's what I should do. - We'll call you Tim Ferriss. (laughing) - I've pivoted as well. You've pivoted. It's a big new buzzword. - Yes. - I think pivot is a nice way of saying I ran into a brick wall so I had to start doing things differently. - Yeah. - That's the truth of it. - Yeah. - You know? But you've done that now with state five mobile. So just again, quickly. So I am currently a franchisee. You're gonna come to me and say, we're gonna rebrand this. We're gonna supply with our really cool coffee. - Yep. - When it comes to the locations to put these, are you gonna say to the franchisees, "Hey, listen, you are in mid-rand "and I found a place in a corporate park for you." - Absolutely. And they still keep the event business on the weekends. Because remember, we pretty much have most of them. We're at park runs. We're at 702 Walk the Talk. We're at the Rand Easter Show. So we already had quite a few of these events. - Yeah. - So we keep the events on weekends, but I find them some during the week income.

So I get them to become a business, essentially. - Again, giving back. - Of course. - So, question, are franchises available? - Yeah, they're absolutely available. I think more importantly, I'm more interested in finding sites and locations at the moment. We have quite a few interested franchisees. We're gonna be very picky about who we choose. - Okay. - I'd like to find sites because I can couple franchisee with site. It's better for us. - Yeah. - What's happened is, obviously, now that I've got my sort of franchise cap on, opportunities are presenting themselves also for bricks and mortar state five stores. So in the last three weeks, I've had people approach me for sites for state five bricks and mortar stores that are unbelievable. Like really, really, really good sites. So we're gonna expand the mobile into more bricks and mortar. So we'll be franchising across both avenues, obviously supplying our coffees, supplying infrastructure, supplying training. I've been a franchise all before and a franchisee. So I know both sides quite intricately. And I think that'll only stand us to good stead when we're dealing with our franchisees that we have on board now. - Now, with the franchisees, are they gonna then be able to take advantage of all of those wonderful fresh goodies that you make as well?

- Of course, of course. - I'm thinking winter around the corner. I'm already wishing for winter. - Brioche donuts. - Yes. - Vanilla custard cream. Let's make Nick hungry. - And the soup. - You hungry, Nick? - Oh, the soup. (laughing) Nick's gonna hate us by the time he's finished here. So those are all gonna be available then, those kind of things. Maybe not them necessarily, but that kind of thing. - And depending where we are. So at certain events you're allowed to do that, at certain events you're not allowed to do that. - But I mean at a corporate office park. - That's insane. - State five coffee with, and are you gonna serve cold brew as well? Yes, you are. - Absolutely. - You gotta experience that. If you haven't, you have to. I mean, never mind the caffeine kick. The taste was what blew me away. - A lot of corporates are looking for that way to look after their staff. So we have quite a few, what we call sort of it's a private function. They get hold of us and they go, cool. We'd like you to serve coffee for our team, or can you do something different? So we just come up with a menu for them. So for like Edgar's, we did donut lattes. So we ended up serving 600 donut lattes, which is cold brewed coffee and a vanilla custard cream donut on top of it.

And that went down really well. So yeah, it's absolutely a big part of our business. - I've known Dennis now for quite a while. I've had him on the show twice. Still hasn't figured out that he needs to bring me goodies if he's talking about food. - I'm keeping you slim. - Damn it, damn it. It's not working. (laughing) - We keep things step away from the donut. - Oh yeah, it's one of my weaknesses, I gotta say. So that's, I think that's brilliant. But then you've now branched out even more. And this is what I wanna talk to you a little bit about because you've now gone into this, there's another two, potentially three businesses that you're talking about. The one is Miss T, which is an alcoholic tea. - It's an alcoholic, robo-sized tea. So we serve it on tap. - And it's also done fine. I've had that too. - Thank you, yeah, it's unbelievable. It's been a little bit more challenging. The company that we were gonna roll out with essentially sold their taps to a competitor. So we were gonna move into 600 taps. We're now no longer moving into 600 taps. So yet again, we have to figure out a way to do it differently. We're in at about 12 outlets now where we're serving and it's doing very well off tap.

So we're gonna be canning it soon. So we'll get it into a can. And then the nice thing is, not only will we sell it to the restaurants, but we'll also be selling it to the bottle stores. - Wonderful, and then obviously at your various state five outlets, you'll be able to get hold of it as well. - Absolutely. I like the idea of this and the branding and everything is very clever. Now there's two more things which I wanna talk about, but before we do that, question. Because when I see you and when we chat and when we sort of cross digital footprints on the interwebs, you always seem to be bouncing and full of life and up and positive and these things are happening.

Tell me that, I mean, how do you, you must have had things that have let you down. Failure is maybe not the right way, but let's call it failures. How do you determine why, what keeps you going? I've been asked this question and I've often responded probably it's because I'm too stupid to lie down and die. - Yes. - You know, I just keep holding on long after everybody else has let go. - Yes. - Which is maybe a little self-deprecating, but there is a certain stubbornness in myself. And I've learned to use that. When I get let down or when somebody disappoints me, I use that feeling of upsetness and betrayal or whatever and anger and I channel it into, oh really? I'll show you. Do you have those same kind of things? - So I think I said to you before, so I'm busy writing a book and it's in the background and it's titled "Stubbornness, Stupidity and Perseverance". So I genuinely think that with those three traits and I'm being tongue in cheek, you obviously need to elaborate a little bit more on it. There is nothing to stop you being successful. Now I don't care whether it's business, I don't care whether you're a ballerina, I don't care if you're a triathlete. If you carry on, as you said, when other people give up, it is physically impossible to not achieve what you want to achieve.

Now obviously within the realms of reason, I'm not gonna jump over the moon, it's not gonna happen tomorrow. But if I have a smart goal, which is specific, measurable, realistic, time related, all achievable, all those things, and I do not falter from that goal, regardless of the brick walls that are in my way, regardless of the times I've been let down, regardless of my failures, my personal failures. There have been so many I couldn't even tell you. If I had to write a book, I'd write three books, maybe an encyclopedia on my personal failures. But what I do do is I carry on going. You talk about, I'm upbeat and I'm positive all the time. I sit at home at night often having panic attacks on my own that I don't know how to deal with. I literally sit in my bed going, I don't know if I need to drive myself to the hospital or if I don't drive myself to the hospital because I'm literally having an attack. So we are all human. Literally we all have to go through this stuff. There's the bad and the good. But what I do have is a high measure of stubbornness, stupidity and perseverance. So when I wake up the next morning, regardless of how I felt the night before or how I feel during the course of the day or when I can't wake up and I go, how am I going to drag myself out of bed today?

I just do it. I literally just do it. I can't explain it any other way. And it's never easy. Anyone who tells you that success in any capacity is easy is lying. It's that simple. And yet again, I'm not talking about money here. I'm talking about success. I'm talking about achieving something. Quite often our problems are that we've set a goal and then we move that goal. It becomes a moving target. Whereas I think you should keep exactly the same goal to the realms of reason yet again. - See, I was chatting last week to Lawrence Oberholzer from Retire Rich and Happy. And we sort of came to the agreement that goal setting in the traditional sense of the way is not something I believe in. I believe in well-formed outcomes, having your vision. But something that was said to me very, very importantly by one of my mentors was, if what you, and it's an NLP presupposition as well. But I mean, I used to get to the stage where I suffered from paralysis through analysis and I would sit there and work myself and I would do nothing. And he said, I don't care what you do. Do something, do anything else, but do something. Take some action. Whether that action be as simple as deciding to go for a walk, do something rather than just lying in bed in the fetal position waiting for the sky to fall in your head.

- No question. - And I don't think, you know what? We hear a lot about success, but we don't hear a lot about failure and about how difficult it is. And I think that is what determines the kind of success you will be. Because for me, for a long time, it was all about money. - Yes. - Mine was always focused on the money. If I have a lot of money, people will like me. - Yes. - And I got to the stage where, yeah, the money's nice, but to me now, success is something entirely different. It's the lifestyle I live. It's the way I can give back. It's the way that I can get up every day and do something I enjoy. - Can I say something about that? I'd like to interrupt briefly. Mine was completely the opposite. I hated money. I have hated money from a very, very young age. If there was anything that my parents ever fought about, it was money. I had two people that loved each other more than anything else on the planet that died. My father passed away and they were more in love 40 years later than you could see two human beings. But what did they fight about? Money, all the time. That's all they ever heard from a young age. So I grew up with money being the devil. It literally, to me, when I saw someone with money, I was like, "Ooh, you know, what did he do?" - Money is the root of all evil.

- Yeah, what did he do? And my father was bankrupt quite early. I had to work early, you know my story. And he was quite tainted. So he was also like, "Oh, what did he do to make money?" So to cut a very long story short, I was probably one of the few entrepreneurs, and I actually have realized far more than we think, that hated money. So here you are sitting trying to build this empire and you're trying to grow things and build things. And profit is a dirty word. And you're sitting there going-- - Sabotage yourself. - Complete self-sabotage. So in the last three years, and particularly in the last year, I have been unpacking my issues with money myself. And I've actually came to the conclusion a little while ago, which sounds weird, that I deserve it. And I said it the other day to someone very close to me. And she said, "Yes, Dennis, you do deserve it." And I was like, "Sherbet." I actually deserve it. And I'm now saying it out loud on radio to make you understand that this was, this was, it was an epiphany for me. It was like, okay for me to deserve it with the amount of hours and the amount of time and the amount of effort that I've put into it. And by no means am I gonna let it define me.

I don't give a shit about it. Oh, excuse the language. - You said it on radio. - I did. - Oh no. - I did, I did. - It's true. I mean, but I think this is the defining thing 'cause I grew up with that program playing in my head the whole time as well. We'll never be rich enough. You don't deserve it. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The Wattsers are destined to struggle. That was one of the big ones in my family. - Sure. - And I had, and I went the opposite way. I was like, "No, no, no, no, no, but all those people that have lots of money, look how happy they must be. Money, I will be happy when." - Yes. - And you know what? I was never happy 'cause my when never came. - Yes. - Until I got to the stage, well, you know what, I'm gonna do what I love. Sort it. And you know what a nice, happy byproduct is? Money does come. - Of course. - You know, and once you redefine it, at least in terms of what I think it is now, you know, the conscious capitalism aspect of it makes me excited now 'cause the more I make, the more I know I can give back. - Yes. - And that's cool. - I like the glass analogy. So quite often, if you look at a glass and you're trying to fill it, and let's assume we're trying to fill it with money, very often in my life when the glass got half full, I'd give it all away.

Be like give, give, give. And then it would just like drop again. So they'd be like not enough. And eventually I came to the idea and to the thinking that what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna allow my glass to fill completely and I'm gonna donate the overflow. - Yes. - So I'm literally gonna give away whatever falls over the top, have fun, enjoy it. Let's make the world a better place. But let me sort out my Maslow's hierarchy of needs and a little more because I deserve it. - Absolutely. - At least enough to be able to give me choices. And the choice is to choose whatever I wanna do. If I wanna invest in another business, if I wanna become a world-class sneaker player, if I wanna start a circus or whatever I feel like doing, I must be able to do. - Fantastic stuff. Listen, we're gonna come back and chat two more. We've got another two businesses at least to discuss. Gigi says, can you supply a place in Hrötbrok? I didn't even know if there was a place in Hrötbrok, but I'm sure Dennis will make a note. Then she goes, this speaker reminds me so much of myself. I'm also unable to stick to one thing. Well, I don't know. Dennis is not sticking to one thing. But listen to this. This is Gigi again.

She's busy with an events planning job whilst making jam and selling houses. And I hate money. Don't hate money. Oh, don't hate it. - Yeah, I think that's the point. Don't. - It's about the best I can say. Listen, we'll be back. It is what's involved. Proudly brought to you by the Cradle Boutique Hotel. - David Watts on Mix 93.8. - It is Mix 93.8. What's involved? Proudly brought to you by the Cradle Boutique Hotel. Got a message in here. It says, strongly suspect your surname is not spelled W-A-T-T-S. David, nonetheless, you're out of my league in dynamics, high voltage without blowing cigars, Mike. That's from Seamus. Seamus, the surname is spelled W-A-T-T-S, like Watts as in Watts, Mega Watts. That's why Tony always jokes when I met Flashback Friday about DJ Mega Watts. That was his little thing that he landed me with. And eventually I just had to accept it 'cause I hated that nickname initially. Anyway, so that's what that's all about. We are chatting to Dennis Vardan in studio and we're making our meandering way. But it's a lot of fun. People are enjoying it and I think it's important to get the information across 'cause we can give the good news all the time. And I can, okay? But it isn't always good news.

And I'm there to see, and you're not the only one. There's many people that are of the entrepreneurial bent. They do, they sit at night when the doors are closed and it's just them and those four wheels and they fall apart. But it's to pick yourself up the next morning and go out and do something. - Yes, I completely agree. - So now, you've talked about Miss T a little bit, the alcoholic iced tea. We've talked state five mobile. You've got, and you're still using yours and I've been hogging mine 'cause I need to order another one and I've been hogging it. You'll see I'm using another type of book here now. You had this idea and you went out and you sourced this product and it's called Scribed. I call it Scribed. What do you call it? - Yes, Scribe, Scribe.me, S-C-R-Y-B. - Scribe.me. - Yeah. - Okay, so that's, I call it Scribe because it's just much easier. Scribe, S-C-R-Y-B.me. - Yes. - And basically what it is, is it's like a little journal meeting book. - Yeah. - When you talk about it, it's your product. - Okay, well, it's, I didn't source the product. I came up with the idea. So I liked, I have far too many meetings and I had no structure in the meetings. So I thought, how am I gonna actually get them more structured?

And I created a new template that works for me that essentially tracks who I had the meeting with. There's a little index. I can go back and see, you know, I had a meeting with this person. I can refer to the notes. It obviously gives me what the objectives are, what the actions are, what the person I met with actions. So all these things started last year, April. It's been unbelievable. I won't lie. I mean, I've had large corporate orders from big groups like MUA Insurance Underwriters. They were amazing. A lady by the name of Michelle, she's also a beast. Famous Brands has given us orders recently. Nevermind the little guys. I keep on getting like the stationary junkies. I get an email to say, I just saw one of yours at the office, or I was given one at the office. Please can I have four or five or 10, or can we get for our office a hundred or 200? It's the most amazing thing. I've done nothing. If I give this business five hours a week, it's surprising, but it is absolutely fun. - But was that one of those right idea, right place, right time? - Yeah, I'm a big fan of timing. Again, the older I get. So look at Cold Brew. We've taken a lot of errors in the back with Cold Brew. A lot of errors.

It's been almost four years. - Yeah, I remember us talking about this and you had a stage going, "Well, maybe South Africa is not ready for Cold Brew." - It isn't ready for Cold Brew, but you're gonna make it ready. And eventually the timing will be right. So a lot of it is about timing. Businesses are about timing. So if you've, there's a couple of Ted talks around. One of them was this guy looked at a thousand different businesses. And essentially from an Apple computers to like a corner cafe. And he figured out the biggest determining factor for success, number one, timing. Number two, jockey. Obviously the person running the business. Number three, idea. So you go timing, jockey, idea. The idea is number three on this list. Understand that. And then operations, all the things that fall, cashflow, da da da, investment. But those are the three determining factors. This has absolutely flown. And it's starting to open up a lot more corporate doors for us. I've got plenty more ideas on what we're gonna do here. I'm a little woo in my nature. So we're gonna be doing things like manifestation journals, daily journals. I'm doing coffee workbooks that we're gonna be selling at coffee shops.

We're even gonna do nanny diaries. So that nannies can write down notes every day of what they fit children. - Back, back, back. Manifestation, I like that. - Yeah, that's set of features to my stuff. - That's my frou-frou side as well though, is this whole law of attraction, manifesting. And that's why I recommended the book that you read that I've just finished reading. The Dawson Church, Mind to Matter. He's also written something called The Genie in Your Genes, Dawson Church. And that is a brilliant book. If you're gonna get to a diary like that, I'm there. - Absolutely. - I'm right there. - Absolutely. I'm doing it, it's the next move. - Awesome, when can we expect it? - Probably about three months, realistically. And I'm also building an app on this one so that you can track time, track people you met with, and I'm gonna make it a negligible number, like 10 rand a month, you can subscribe. And what will happen is you'll be able to upload your meetings and email them out. But then more importantly, you'll be, I met with David and put a time. I met with Sarah and put a time, and was it successful or not successful? It's gonna be a nice little dashboard at the end of the month to say you had 60 hours worth of meetings this month.

50 were successful, 10 were not successful. The 10 not successful with Mary, Roger, David, and Sue. And the successful were like this, and this is how long, so you can actually start tracking your meeting time. - I loved it, I mean, I got one of these right off the bat. I think that the first shipment had not even cooled after you'd got it delivered, and I was like, I gotta get me one of these. - You're one of the first people. - And brilliant, absolutely brilliant. There is, however, one caveat. You do actually have to use it and carry it with you. Because I've done that before. I get into the habit and it's beautiful, and I'm who I've met with, and then I leave it behind some way, you know, so maybe my needs to have some sort of a leash on it and I'll do it. Okay, so where do we get these books? 'Cause they're brilliant, and do you-- - Scribe, yep. - Do you sell just one offs? - Yeah, yeah, we've just got e-commerce going now, scribe.me, so S-C-R-Y-B.me, that's the website. - That's brilliant, brilliant. We don't even have time to talk about the last, oh, that really doesn't work for me. Anyway, we'll have to bring you back, 'cause we're out of time again. I hate it when this happens.

Anyway, listen, that has been our lot. Dennis, brilliant stuff. If somebody wants to get hold of you, and just, you know, maybe drop your mail, find out more about State 5 Mobile, anything like that, where's the best place to get hold of you? - The easiest email will be Dennis with one in, so D-E-N-I-S at state5.co.za. And that's S-T-A-T-E, the number 5.co.za. - So there we go, D-E-N-I-S at state5.co.za. Mr. Varden, thank you so much for coming in. It's like a bréché, bréché, bréché. - A bréché. - Bréché, and have another, have another Miss T, David. You are like a breath of bréché, and then maybe it's all that coffee that you work around, but it is, it's like having a caffeine jolt. Absolutely fantastic. Oh, I mean to tell you, I've got a book as well, which is an introduction. It's NLP that I've just done, NLP for beginning practitioners. So I decided the other night, and I keep meaning to tell you this, because there's a book and I've done nothing about it. If you'd like a complimentary copy, okay? Absolutely free gratis in PDF format. All you have to do is just mail me David@what'sinvolved.co.za. So it's what's, W-A-T-T-S-I-N-V-O-L-V-E-D.co.za. And just in the subject line, just give me the book, okay?

And I'll send it off to you, give me the book. There is a drawback, full disclosure. I'm probably gonna put you on a mailing list. But then you're just gonna get like funky ideas from me all the time. So you're not gonna complain about that. David@what'sinvolved.co.za if you'd like the book. Dennis, thank you so much. All the best. - David Watts on Mix 93.8.