Shaun Fuchs — Educator, Powerlifter, Water Polo Player, Entrepreneur, Author

It is what's involved, as we do each and every week, round about this time, we chat to people from all walks of life, different kinds of people, tonight though. My special guest, and I've really been looking forward to having a chat to him, is Sean Fuchs. Hello, Sean. Hi, Dave. How are you? Well, thank you. Now, when I say special guest, Sean Fuchs, and people are going to go, "Huh? Okay. What? Who is Sean?" One of the things is many things, and I've been trying to figure out, because I've been reading... First and foremost, the reason I came across Sean is he's an author. He's got a book that's just been published called Fush, A Story of Pride, Respect, and Leadership. Now, that's where I first came across what Sean is all about, and I've been reading the book, and I've been spellbound. I love the way it's been written. One thing that has troubled me about this interview, though, Sean, is I don't want to give away too much of the book, because I could sit here and we could talk about everything, so we need to leave some surprises. Happy with that. Yes, of course. Absolutely. All right. So, let's start right at the very, very beginning. Tell me, who is Sean? Where did Sean grow up, and what was your formative years like?

Because you're also, not only are you an author, you're a teacher, you're a weightlifting champion as well. Powerlifting. Powerlifting. Powerlifting champion, you're a waterpiler coach of notes, so there's all of these things. Let's start your journey now. Sure. So, Dave, born and bred in Johannesburg, and have lived here literally my entire life, other than the time that I served in the South African Defence Force, and grew up, initially my family was from Bononi, and as I say in the book, in the one chapter that starts, I said, "There, I said it. I'm from Bononi," and so we were born there, grew up there really, probably until about five, six years old, and then my family headed to, at that point in time, an incredibly open area called North Riding, which today is the Kaya Sands area, and we had a plot there, about a 10-acre plot that we grew up in, and my father had a very successful engineering business in sort of the Boxburg industrial area, which he then sold, and in the '70s went into the gym industry buying two gyms, one in Hillbron, one in Jobex City itself, so I ended up growing up in these gyms, hence my love for gyming and obviously powerlifting eventually, and unfortunately, the gyms were not successful.

It wasn't a great business venture, and it was more his passion than anything else, and so that kind of led us to, in the '70s as a family, that we had really been incredibly successful and very blessed with travels overseas and really good income to getting to sort of losing the gyms, and my dad literally having to start again, and us moving from this beautiful house that was sort of custom bespoke designed and built for my parents in North Riding to a really two-bedroom apartment in Jubeir Park / border of Hillbron in the late '70s, sort of early '80s. Sure, okay, that is quite a change. Just so you know, and we can put it out there, and I'm glad you mentioned the thing, because I'm also a boy from Benoni, born, bred, grew up in Benoni, actually went to Wordsworth High School in those days, it had just changed, when I started there, it just changed from a technical school, an Afrikaans technical school, to this sort of dual-medium, and that was going on to an English school, so yes, as they used to say in those days, there's a soti joining a high school like that, and when things like initiation were still, it wasn't frowned on, it was a very interesting time. Some people say the best thing about Benoni is when you see it in your rear-view mirror, I don't agree with that though.

No, I don't agree with it at all, it's a great place, certainly for us at that time to have grown up there, and some top people still live there, and they've come from there, and the roots were there, so it's a good place. Yeah, I think we bred a lot of good people in Benoni. So schooling-wise, I mean, you said you're in Benoni for a little bit, and then you moved to North Riding, where did you go to school? So in North Riding, we went to a dual-medium school called Boskop Primary, which is still there today, it's in the Honeydew area, and we were there, my brother, my older brother, and myself, Goth, we were there really from grade one at that point in time, until about grade three, or at that stage, sort of standard one, standard two, and then we moved to, and in between, sort of after the financial difficulties, we then moved across to Priscilla, which is sort of near the Glen Hazel Highlands North area, and for a year we went to H.A. Jack Primary, and then it was really getting quite tough for my folks, we had four kids, two younger siblings, and then Goth and myself, and they decided with us moving into the apartment or the flat in Jubeir Park, Hillbra that we would, Goth and I would go to boarding school, so we were shipped off to a really small little village hamlet called Heinitzburg, between modern-day, excuse me, between modern-day Poliquone and all days Berdesburg and Zainim, and an absolutely magnificent area, beautiful rolling hills, pine forests, Ebenezer Dam, spectacular, even going up-to-date, it's a magnificent area to go and visit, and so we were there for, Goth was there for his standard five-year, and I was there for my standard four and my standard five-year, and you will have picked up in the book that my initial, when I first started writing, I actually would write as currently kind of grades, because you know, you talk about grade five, grade seven, grade eight, and my editor said no, we need to keep it into context in terms of at that point in time, we spoke about standards, so it was standard four and standard five, which I think a lot of the older generation people understand completely and get slightly confused when we talk about today's grade 11 or grade 9 or grade 12, so the book actually deals with, sort of historically is factually correct, so we were there in standard four and standard five, and it was again a dual-medium school with a very dominant Afrikaans community, and the English guys that were there were really kids from the city, and I suppose we all had our own issues and our own problems and that, and I sort of titled that chapter the Anglo-Boer War, historically, I mean I'm a history teacher, historically we talk about the South African War, because the war included everyone, I mean it wasn't just the Boers and the British, it included a mixture of South Africans at that time, but at that point in time it was referred to as the Anglo-Boer War, and that's exactly what it was, because we spent most of our time, weekends and time off fighting each other, because it was sort of the Afrikaans guys versus the English guys, and so we spent most of the time defending ourselves and having fights and clay lot fights, and it was quite rough actually.

You know what, this is something, when I relate these kind of stories to people these days, they kind of look at me with a little bit of disbelief, but I mean, when I was growing up and living in Bologna, and I was at what they call Wordsworth High School, just changed to Wordsworth High School, the local Afrikaans high school was Brantford, and depending on which group of kids got to the bus stop first in the morning, you know, if the English kids got to the bus stop first in the morning, then the Afrikaans kids would be held to pay, but it was also happened vice versa, so you had to worry about when you would get, and there was this rivalry and it was, there were some hectic fights and rough stuff and everything, and then at the end of the day, you kind of just get along, except for sports days. They had to keep us separated at sports days though, but it's a fascinating time, and people, you know, when I look back to where we are today and how life in general was then, you growing up as an English-speaking person, me being English, there was a certain amount of kind of, do we call it racism, you know, if you weren't Afrikaans speaking, I was told very often, you know, sorry mate, you're not an Afrikaans speaker, so to get a job in any of the traditional Afrikaans stronghold type businesses is not going to happen, and I never really thought much about that at the time, but it strikes me now, that kind of behavior and now people would freak out.

Yeah, I think it's probably more a preference, so there was a stronger preference for Afrikaans speaking people in most areas, I mean if you go later on in the book, when I talk about my time at Johannesburg College of Education at WITS, we were completely dominated in the education sector by Afrikaners, and there was sort of a mini coup that was staged sort of by myself as SOC president at that point in time to take over the Transvaal Student Teachers Union, which had been run since its inception in, I think, the original date of that Transvaal Student Union goes back to the 1912, 1913, so almost at the time when the national party itself was formed, so, you know, there was a consistent dominance, but the interesting thing was that even in primary school, so when I was there in 1979, 1980, I was a big guy, so I was able to defend myself and kind of played rugby and absolutely loved it and got through to the far north primary school trials and did incredibly well as an English person, but my best mate at the time was a chap by the name of Kivit, and his nickname was Kivit, and his name was Kasper Lawrence, and he was my best mate and we were great friends, but we still had the Anglobur War, and then we'd kind of separate and have our little fights and everything, and then we'd be back together and, you know, doing our thing in the evenings or on our time off or whatever it was, so it was an interesting dynamic.

Yeah, it's fascinating. We've got to talk a little bit more about Shawnee's early life, because you're an educator at heart, and when we come back, we'll be talking about what led Shawn to move into that direction in terms of the educational field. It is what's involved more from my special guest, Shawn Fuchs, when we return, and we're back. It is what's involved. It is my special guest, his book, Fuchs, A Story of Pride, Respect, and Leadership. That reminds me, let's get that part out of the way. Where does Fuchs come from? So as the book will tell you, one of the, and the front cover has this water polo ball on it, and the front cover is quite interesting, because we, first of all, it was shot by one of my past students, Devon Lester, who's a fantastic photographer, and we looked at it, obviously we shot a whole lot of photographs, and I chose that one. One because it's got the water polo ball, which was such an important, played such an important role in my life as a teacher, as a sports coach. I went on to coach the provincial teams, and in 2000, the South African schools team, we toured Slovakia and Hungary, and we won three national titles in the inter-provincial tournaments.

So it had the water polo ball, and the water polo ball was a significance for obviously being the water polo coach, and traditionally in the water polo circles, we often had nicknames, and somewhere along the line, the boys had started calling me Foch, and as I mentioned in the book, where there was a combination, my surname being Fochs, and where there was a combination of Fochs or whatever it was, it sort of stuck, and there were different spellings with F-O-O-S-H, but the one we stuck with was very close to my surname, so F-U-S-H, and that's really where it stuck, so for years, the students, the boys, the players, would call me Foch, and I think that's what I was known as, really, more than anything else. Very few people called me Foch. Fantastic, now, this desire for you to get into the world of education and to make a difference to leave, because it strikes me that that's one of your philosophies, is anywhere you go or wherever you interact, you try and leave the places, the institutions better than they were before you arrived there. What drove you? What made you want to get into education and make a difference? So after primary school, I'd spent a year, my folks had sent my older brother, Goth, you're ahead of me to a school called Grenville in Rustenburg, and I followed the following year, so in 1981, with my standard six-year, I spent a year there, and you sort of alluded to it earlier with the initiation and sort of how the times were at that point, and there was an enormous amount of victimization, bullying, seniors would really beat you to a pulp.

This was an English school, again, in Rustenburg, in a very dominant African cons environment, but you were bullied by, you know, kind of the guys in standard nine, standard ten, and I was in the hospital, and it was a really rough year as a standard six, and you had no recourse. I mean, the teachers did absolutely nothing, it was seen as sort of a part of the journey you had to go on, and I absolutely detested that, leaving it, my folks pulled us out because my dad had always wanted us to get into JEPI high school for boys, so we had an opportunity having moved from Hillborough into, rented a house in Kensington, and largely because it could get us into JEPI, because we would then be zoned to go to JEPI. And so, in my standard seven year, in 1982, I started at JEPI, and I loved my time at JEPI. I loved the tradition, I loved the culture, I loved, you know, I talked about walking through the hallways, the smells, it was a really fantastic time for me. The sport spoke to you exactly what I was about, so I enjoyed my rugby there. In the afternoons, I would jump on the bus, and I'd head into town and go and train at one of my dad's gyms, and so JEPI for me was a great time, and I had really strong teachers and teachers that had a massive impact on me, and you know, I always say to you, through the years, when I've been a headmaster or after that, and was managing director, running a group of schools, I'd always say to teachers when I'd do an induction, I'd say to them, think of, and I'd say the same to you Dave, think of someone that really was a massive influence in your life, nine out of ten, if not ten out of ten times, I guarantee you that's a teacher, that was a teacher that was that positive influence in your life, and you remember them, you remember their idiosyncrasies, you remember their talk, what they did, how they reacted to you, the influence on you was massive, and so I had a similar sort of appeal.

Sadly, there's also a flip side of it, where people that have been traumatized, have sadly been traumatized by teachers in the school, or will never forget that a teacher did this or that, and I'm hoping that's the exception, and I think it is, because I think the majority of people always had a teacher, regardless of how you found your schooling, had a teacher that had that positive and that dynamic influence on you, and I did, my rugby coach at the time Dave Pitcan, was that influence on me, and I absolutely loved him, I loved what he, you know, how he interacted with the students, the way he taught, and I initially wanted to go into law school, but, and thank goodness I didn't, and he sort of on our matric, when I was first team rugby, a jeppy in my matric year, and on one sort of camp, a training camp down the south coast, he had asked me what I planned to do the following year, and I said actually, I wasn't sure, and he said going to teaching, and I mean I didn't need more motivation than coming from him, and I also had an amazing history teacher in Gail Mervis, and she also inspired me to sort of pick up the history as a subject, so I went in doing sports for Zedd and doing history, so that really was the background for me to go into teaching, and I always wanted to, you know, I think I've always wanted to, you know, you want to leave some form of legacy, when I eventually stood down as headmaster in 2015 at Crawford College, Lone Hill, the editor of the student magazine had asked me what was the legacy that I felt I left behind, and she kind of wanted to know what, you know, this closure of this chapter of my life, and I said for me it was so important that you inspired people, and that you created an environment that was safe for students, because I never had that, certainly not at Grenville and even at Haynitzburg, I did feel I had it at J.P., although they all, I had an interview on Saturday with a chap that runs his own sort of blog as well on the podcast at least, and he was also a J.P. all boy, and he had a completely opposite experience to me, so again, it was my experience.

Okay, because when we come back, can we chat a little bit about your experiences? Because you know, you've highlighted that a lot of your experiences at school during your school years were very positive, but there were also some experiences that were quite negative and really affected you, and particularly in those days, you know, we're talking in the 80s, which for me on the one hand seems like just yesterday, and on the other it seems like another lifetime, but there was stuff that you went through then as well, some tough times, can we talk about that when we come back? Sure. Yes. There we go, fantastic, it is what's involved my special guest, Sean Fuchs, I don't know, this is a great book, and I might sound like I'm gashing, but Sean's book is brilliant, I mean he's done so much, he's managed to fit a whole lot of living into his life, and it's a really well-written book, there are times it grabs you, and there are times that you're going to get a little bit angry, a little bit upset, there's going to be some tears, I reckon as well. When we come back, we'll find out more about Sean and his schooling career, it is what's involved. And we're back, my special guest, Sean Fuchs, his book, Fuchs, a story of pride, respect and leadership.

So Sean, we've heard about the good times, there were some bad times as well, do you want to talk a little bit about that? Because surely that has impacted what your vision is for how you would like to create a future? Yeah, I think one of the themes that clearly runs through the book is that I started dealing with my sexuality when I, like any teenager, when you start reaching puberty and you start becoming aware of your sexuality. And for me, I knew that in the 1980s that I was different, and obviously, there wasn't the social media or the access to information like we have today. So for me, I was trying to deal with the sexuality, trying to understand why I think about friends that I was attracted to, as opposed to my mates who had girlfriends, and I really wasn't interested in girls at that point in time, I like girls, but I just wasn't interested. And that was a really tough time because there was, I felt that there was no one I could speak to, and it was an incredibly lonely time. I always use the example that when I was probably 16, 17, 1984, 1985, and was really dealing with their sexuality in a very masculine environment. So playing first team, being involved in sort of a gang to German and really getting involved in sort of bodybuilding and powerlifting, and then questioning my sexuality.

And then who did I speak to, I didn't, because the only person I knew at the time that was supposedly gay was Liberace, and nothing wrong with Liberace, he was a phenomenal pianist and incredibly talented artist, but he had then just died of AIDS, and right at that point in time was the height of the AIDS epidemic, and it was seen as a gay disease. So in my mind, I was going to die of AIDS. I had no idea why or how, because of the naivety at that point in time, but that was the example that I had. And the other challenge, of course, was everything associated with gay was negative. So when anyone around you, anyone, whether it was your friends, whether it was teachers, it doesn't matter, if they wanted to sort of insult you or anyone at that point, they would refer to, they would use a slur that would be gay. So are they so gay, or are you such a fag or whatever? No. Today, people realize what and how hurtful that is. But you can imagine as a 15, 16, 17-year-old growing up in the 1980s, that all you're trying to deal with who you are as a human being, because you never chose this. This is the person I just became. This is who I was. But everything about who I was was associated with negativity, and that was massive.

And it was an incredibly dark and an incredibly lonely period for me, because I didn't know that there were other people out there, and I didn't know that I could speak to anyone about it. I can only imagine, and I mean, I'm sort of, if I think back to those 80s when I was in school as well, it used to be almost a threat, like, oh, you've got to be careful, you can't seem to be sleeping around doing this, doing that, doing the next thing, you'll get AIDS. And to somebody who is a gay person, I cannot, simply I've tried, and I've got a whole bunch of people that I've known through my life that are gay or bisexual or whatever the case might be, and I still, you know, that walk a mile in Washi's, I still can't comprehend the kind of bias that people had towards other people who may have had just a different orientation, and when I look how far we've come as people, and I hope we've come for, I can't help but feel a sense of pride, but I think people like you, Sean, have done amazing work as well. Yeah, thanks, Dave, and I think that it's really about awareness, and it's about creating an awareness that we are all human beings, you know, the thing of, for me, putting people constantly into categories.

We grew up in a society like that, that's the society I came from, under the apartheid system, and that is not the society we should have today, and obviously at the moment there's an incredible awareness, there's an incredible movement of looking at the discrimination on minorities. Now, when you're in the majority, it's easy to say, come on, what is all this about? Can't people just get on, can't this, can't that? But when you are that minority, and you've been discriminated, and you've grown up your entire life living where you don't have opportunities, or you are held back because of who you are, it's not a fair process. And when I see today, I was sent a picture by a friend of mine of St. John's College, who were flying the pride flag, and I saw that Rondebosch boys had done it, and I'm sure there's some other schools that have done it, and I applaud that, I applaud that because it's June's pride month around the world, going back to the Stonewall riots of the late 1960s, and I applaud that kind of behavior, but going with that needs to be an education. We need to also explain, and we also need to educate kind of people, no they're just flying the pride flag. It's also about kind of opening up, having conversations, and making it a comfortable environment for everyone.

You know, in 20 years time, hopefully less, 10 years time, Dave, you and I could have a conversation, and no one's going to blink. No one is going to blink at all, about kind of gay people rights or gay rights, because it will be so entrenched in our society, you know, I always go back and you kind of look at through the ages how we society, you go back to the 1920s when women were demanding the franchise, the vote, it was argued, this is impossible, how can a woman have the logic to think politically, she should be at home, I mean, it was unheard of, and of course women got the franchise, got the vote, and 20 years later, no one blinked an eye about it, so this is society adapts to the environment, and I think this is the phase that we gangs do at the moment, it's a very strong movement, and it's a very legitimate movement, and for me as an educator, as a headmaster, as a sports coach, I always wanted to create and try to, and I believe I did, create an environment that was open, was tolerant, was mutual respect, as best we could, you know, there's no perfect environment at all, but I think the environments that certainly I was responsible for, I tried that as best as possible. I think you've hit the nail on the head there, and this is I think what it's all about, and you cover this so, so well in your book, and I keep saying this book has literally grabbed me, not because, I suppose yes, because there's so many similarities in terms of, you know, your experiences, and what you've been through, going to the Army, being in the Army, you know, when I did my Army service, you know, it was one of those traditional things, well, if they're gay, they get sent to catering school, you know, and that's the way people are, and they do this, and you couldn't say at that stage, when you were in the Army at that stage, you couldn't say, listen, ladies and gentlemen, I'm gay, because you would have got beaten to within an inch of your life, they would have tried to beat the gay out of you, as the saying used to go.

So just the fact that you've done this, and I mean, the fact that you're setting an example like that, I think is absolutely phenomenal. So let's just quickly, when we come back, and then we're gonna wrap up, but then, because there's just so much to cover, I don't think we can cover it all in 40 minutes, but we've covered that you were in the Army, you were in office, I need to leave some stuff in the book as a surprise, but we talked about Crawford College, so when we come back, can we start, can we chat about how that came about, and then we'll wrap up and see what's next for Sean Fuchs. And we're back with what's involved, my special guest is Sean Fuchs. So Sean, tell me a bit about it, because you became a very committed educator, and I don't think you can become one, I think you probably are born with that kind of a commitment, and education teachers, to me, you said it earlier, I've got one teacher that she'll stay in my mind forever, and the impact that she had on me, and how she infected, how she affected my life, in a very, very positive way. Talk to me about where you went to then, you went to JCE, you got through JCE, what happened? After leaving JCE, I finished my national service, and I think we'll leave that chapter for the book, and I think the one sort of tidbit, excuse the pun, was sort of amputating my fingers during that, and having to sort of pick up the fingers, because no one else would touch them, and trying to get back to the military sickbay to have them sewn on, but we'll leave that chapter for the listeners to kind of explore that more in the book.

But that becomes quite significant as to who I was as a sports coach, as a teacher, because if you look at the front cover, my hand on the ball will show you that there's a digit missing on my index finger, and I never told the students about that ever, so I finally revealed that in the book, and for years students wanted to know what it was, I mean if I was umpiring or reffing a water polo game, there would be, in those days it would be four meter or five meter penalty, and I'd hold up my hand with the five fingers, and the boys or the girls would sort of snigger, and they'd say, "So is that a four and a half meter penalty, or is that a five meter penalty?" So we always had that wonderful sort of joking relationship, but so yeah, I think that we'll park that for now, but the move through to Four Ways High School is a new school, I started water polo at the school, I didn't enjoy cricket and I felt water polo was far closer to rugby in terms of the way it's played and the aggression and the strategy and the tactics and that, and was teaching history at the time, and then in about 1998 the headmaster at the time of Four Ways High School, Malcolm Park, who was a massive influence on me as a person, and played a strong mentorship role, he was approached to go and open a new school called Crawford College in Lone Hill, on the old Lone Hill Clubhouse grounds that was acquired at that point in time by Advitec, and Malcolm went across as the head and took a number of the top staff from Four Ways, and we'd gone across and then opened in 99 Crawford Lone Hill, and I went across as the head of sport and obviously teaching some history, and through the years had worked my way into the management, so going on to a great tutor, eventually a deputy head, the senior deputy, and finally a headmaster in 2009, I was appointed as the headmaster because Malcolm had decided to retire and had stepped down, and what was so interesting, certainly about the moving to their headship was the company Advitec, which owns the Crawford brand, they rightly so opened up the sort of the interviews for headship at the time to sort of anyone who wanted to apply, and what was so interesting, the students felt differently, for them they felt I was the natural person to become the headmaster or the principal, and they started a petition, and you know this was before sort of the days of the power of social media was realized, it was fascinating because within literally a week there was 700 students, past students, parents that had joined this Facebook group called Sean Fox for principal of Crawford College, Loan Hill, and Advitec at that time didn't actually know what to do, they actually got hold of Malcolm and said you've got to shut this down, and he of course just lost, he said how do I shut it down, I didn't start it, we don't know what to do, and they were posting comments on this, so there was a lot of pressure, and fortunately it was the right thing to go through an interview process, and I got the headship in 2009, and probably I would say the happiest years of my career were while I was head of Crawford College, Loan Hill, it was a phenomenal school, it still is, and I had the most amazing staff, incredibly talented and incredibly gifted teachers with a really sincere, good, motivated community of students and parents.

Which I think is so, so important, what happened from there to bring us almost up to date, Sean, what did you get up to, I mean it was Crawford College and I know you speak of your passion and your love for schools and all things schooling, so what next? So I got to, during my time on management I made a call to do my master's degree in business, which was unusual for a teacher to sort of do an MBA, I was, when I was doing it through the business school in the Netherlands there was a ton of bankers and engineers and more bankers and business people, and I was the only teacher, so it was quite unique that I would do that, and so I think the natural trend besides having been incredibly entrepreneurial through most of my life, the book will talk about it, where I ran the Tuckshop Mafia scam at J.P. high school for boys in the 80s to running all sorts of businesses as a student and later on even as a teacher, so I think Advitec naturally felt that it was a career move for me to go and sort of move into more corporate space of managing schools, and that's what I did, I stood down as head in 2015 and that's where I finished the book and I was quite, I was quite, I was quite clear with my publicist and the editors that worked with me on the book that that's where I needed to end it for now, and a lot of people said there's definitely a second book coming, and the, and that was the happy space and I really felt that it was important to end on that note, because for me a lot of what was happening at Sydney in the last year and even now in the media, there was so much negativity on schools and not a criticism and more observation, the media were very quick to jump on the Park Town Boys incidents, on any incident that was negative within a school environment, and for me Potter writing the book was to bring out the positivity, to talk about the good stories, talk about the positive stories, of course there's negative and of course there are ugly stories that one can write about, that's not what I wanted to do, I wanted to write something that when you put the book down, you actually felt good and you felt positive and it reignited your own positivity in your school career or your own experiences as a teacher or a parent or as a student, it didn't matter, so I finished it there when I stepped down as head and the last two chapters, you know, I don't want to go on to the second last chapter, I think 14 was with my godson who was killed in a scooter accident and we'd given him the scooter for his 16th birthday and he was at my school, so I was headmaster and having to deal with that with the school community as a head, having given him that scooter, not accepting the responsibility he will blame, but just dealing with the trauma of that, for me they were so important, again it spoke to parents who have lost a child, to a school community that's lost a child, to teachers, to friends, so that chapter to me was very very powerful and people who have read the book have just said it is the most powerful chapter and I think it won't do it any justice talking about it, you really just need some quiet time to read through it and you'll understand what I'm saying, but yeah I left in 2015, I ran the Crawford schools group as general manager and then the Centuris group of schools which is Pekinwood and South Downs and Tiger Valley and we did some additions and then I was approached by Inspired Schools which owns the Redham House brand, Inspired Schools is a London based private school group and I ran the Redham House brand of schools up until March this year and then I decided in December to sort of step down, I think I felt I'd lost that passion, that energy more on the corporate side, I mean you said it earlier, an educator, it's kind of in your DNA, you can't get rid of it, it's there and the whole idea was writing the book and publishing the book was to get out and tell the good stories and talk about inclusion and talk about tolerance and talk about sort of diversity in our schools, in our workplaces and that's really what I wanted to do, of course being hit by sort of lockdown and Covid and where we are at the moment in terms of as a country and certainly globally that has put a halt on sort of actually engaging with people because I think webinars and that, it doesn't have the same impact as physically seeing someone and talking to people and engaging with them, so I think that to me is the next journey is talking about diversity, talking about inclusion, mutual respect, tolerance because that's the environment we are and largely we are, but we need to reinforce it and we need to talk about it and that's where I want to go.

So into the speaking sort of arena, I think it's a brilliant idea because even talking to you now for this short time, I can sense that you are an educator and one of my best mates also started out in the sales training but started out as a teacher and his dream is still to go back, if you ask him now, one day what do you want to do, he goes I want to go back one day to teaching and teach because not because of the money but because of the sheer love of teaching, so I can get that with you. What's next for Sean? So I need to obviously, the lockdown didn't come at a good time with the launch of the book but I'm not the only one, it's affected all of us, so right now it's to try and get as much publicity on the book as possible and get the word out and the message out and I think I've got some entrepreneurial businesses that exist and that continue at the moment so that does keep me busy but it's really about getting back into the schools, talking to the students, talking to the teachers, talking to parents and into workplaces as well and businesses and I think once we at that level, whether it's in a year's time, whether it's in 18 months time, that's fine, the book is timeless, the story of inclusivity and diversity is timeless but we can talk about it at any time.

So I'm not in a rush and I'm really just enjoying the space that I'm in at the moment. Wonderful stuff, well Sean all I can say is I wish you all the best, this is amazing book, I'm so glad that I've gotten to read it. We have so much to share and I salute your courage in writing this book because you did write about your life, words and all and I think it's that that definitely shines through the truth of it. The book is now available at exclusive books you say if you need an actual physical book. Is there a digital book available as well online? Intentionally we've decided to hold off on the digital book, call me slightly traditionalist in that sense, I think the odds sort of cover though at least the physical book is quite important for me. So we will have a digital book later on and an audio book but right now it's the physical book at exclusive books or obviously on our website which is seanfuchs.co.za. Now Sean is spelled S-H-A-U-N, fuchs, F-U-C-H-S so it's seanfuchs.co.za, if anybody's got any questions, anybody maybe would go hey Sean could you maybe chat to us or maybe there's a student or a parent that's listening that is experiencing some difficulties or challenges or whatever.

Are you prepared to speak to people like that? Yes anytime of course and that was the intention of writing the book is to get out there and engage with people so I mean they can contact me via the website is probably the easiest to do. Fantastic stuff, Sean thank you so much for taking the time out and having a chat to us. I wish you all the best and I think from many many people we would just like to say thank you for what you've done, thank you for your truth and your story and living your truth and I hope we can get to chat to you again sometime on the show. Thank you David, I appreciate it and thank you to your listeners for listening to me and get the book and enjoy it. Fantastic stuff that is my special guest Sean Fuchs, what a book, what a book I got to tell you I haven't quite finished it yet and I did and you know what made me come to the Crashing Halt on reading this book is that one chapter that Sean was talking about just now because that is my Snorton Tranter time over there. It has been what's involved, thank you so much for joining us and for listening to my special guest as well. Before I go one more thing, thank you for listening.