Carel Van Graan: Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Publishing (President & CEO of Innovate)

foreign [Music] to have you here my first question for you is Kelly let's go back to the very beginning we would love to hear about your story and career development let's start from your post-secondary experience so tell us about how that led you to where you are today hi Elena thank you for having me I really appreciate being on the show talking about my post-secondary development I haven't followed the normal trajectory that most other company owners or Founders or Publishers I guess most people follow because what happened was really when I finished school I started

getting into a little bit of a party mode finished two years of varsity and I quit varsity because you know just having too much fun with my life at that stage didn't focus on the studies at all and that lasted for quite a while until eventually I realized hey I needed to start doing some work and I need to start building a life I've been an entrepreneur all my life you know I've always tried to do things differently I struggled working for somebody else because I would always be there and I would disagree with how

they're doing it I'd be like but I can do this better I can do this better so I embarked on a series of little entrepreneurial Adventures from there I had a soap Factory I had a worked at a engineering firm I was part owner in a restaurant I had a little game shops I had a video store I had a variety of things throughout time until I think it was 1996 decided to move from a small town where I lived in South Africa to Johannesburg which is one of the main cities in South Africa and

I met up with some of my mates there that started this publishing company at that stage I was involved in building affordable housing and I still remember the the day we went and bought computers together I was doing really well in the housing and they were doing the publishing thing and we bought these old Pentium 2 computers to publish the books on and do all the layouts and everything on short eventually I decided I didn't enjoy the affordable housing anymore and I joined these friends of mine in the publishing company and we started publishing what

we call Trade directories those days so it was little A5 books I mean I'm talking the time before the internet reached South Africa we publish these little A5 directories where we would go with the Restaurant Association of South Africa and get a list of all of their members and then we would put people that supplied products and services to the restaurants and we would put them all in this little pay for the space and we would mail a book to every restaurant in South Africa and they could use it for their sourcing so we did

these little trade directories and it went really really well and then what happened was we did that for quite a few years and in my business partner who's my current business partner as well interestingly enough at that time Twain went out and he was a bit about a deal with was one of the flight companies flight center a travel agents in South Africa at that stage and they wanted to be on the back cover of all directories and in return they gave swen a free around the world ticket where he could fly around the world

and have as many stops as he wants so swing got on this flight stopped in New Zealand and he decided to start a publishing company in New Zealand and we published Africa but then the the partnership ended because I found another thing that interested me which was marketing advertising mainly event branding signage and stuff like that so I went into that business and I built a big business in South Africa I did that for about 14 years I was involved in the branding and marketing for a lot of the large Blue Chip corporates in South

Africa Africa so when I'm saying branding and marketing it's more just around the the signage and the banners and the you know creating stuff and putting it up and making sure that everything looks pretty 2015 I decided to sell a company and just decided to retire for a while took my wife and kids and we started traveling the month and Mauritius we came and did a 13 000 mile road trip through the US went to Europe we kind of all over the place very nomadic and of course when I got to the US first place

I went in Florida um is to go and visit my old ex-business partner Sven from the days in South Africa now we've obviously kept in touch tiger visits men and he just started this new series The innovate series of books long story short got involved with him again so while we are doing this nomadic thing and traveling I also started became a 50 partner in the business and started publishing the innovate series with Sven and that's how I am where I am today just publishing books kind of very roundabout way to be honest but you

know life works out the way it must Cali this is so inspirational while you're talking I'm thinking I need to have more fun with my life sounds like it's fun and you know a side question for you you talked a lot about many different business ideas how did you move on from one idea to the next was there a way for you to keep one sustainable before you moved on to the next yeah it's actually a very good question and and you know the honest truth about this is that I didn't that was one of

my biggest problems and one of the things that I would tell young people today if they're going to start out with their life and want to embark on an entrepreneurial journey is to to take a step back and to honestly properly think and work out some sort of you know everybody must have some sort of plan on how they would rate ideas before they jump into it my problem throughout my life was that I was I'm very impulsive or I was very impulsive so I would sit and come up with an idea and tomorrow I

would register a URL and I would set up a website and I would start doing things I mean it's until recently one of my New Year's resolution this year is actually I started going through my lists and I went like you've got nine businesses that are all little pieces you know they all started but it never it never went anywhere or you know you're not focusing on it I've got an Amazon store in the US that sells soap dispensers a whole bunch of things and the advice that I can give is to try and avoid

that for me it's worked out because luckily on some of these things I got really stuck in and I got involved but in all honesty if I had gotten rid of all of the other silly ideas and I really focused on a few I guess I would have been a lot further down the line and how would you select those specific ideas is there a formula a way to do this I think it's each to his own but what I've started doing lately is started thinking about these new business ideas along a couple of main

key points number one can I see myself enjoying it you know over a longer period of time I mean is it going to be something that's going to take a lot of my time and is it going to be enjoyable time or is it going to be something that I hate the second thing is obviously I need to look at what is the value proposition what's the ROI going to be how much money is there a possibility that it can grow and that I can make a lot of money out of it or that I

can that it can be sustainable I guess those are really the two main ones the third one I guess oftentimes that starting lately to to that I think more about is what would be the bigger meaning of this in the world I've been thinking about a bunch of ideas around Green Tech and things like that and I'm burning to start it but I want to First finish make sure that the publishing house is 100 organized and that I have people that can take over from me when I move on or you know that can free

up some of my time but yeah I think meaning is also a very important one don't want to spend your time just to make money and do something that causes harm to the world and you also don't wanna it's got to be a balance I really I think each to its own just for example when we moved to Vancouver I moved to Vancouver Canada in January 2021 and I set up a little YouTube channel mostly for the family back home where I was like telling them what's happening in Vancouver and how it all goes and

I really enjoy that I enjoy being in front of the camera on YouTube I enjoy showing people the walks in the Parks and everything and it's great and I've made a lot of videos but there's no real Revenue in it okay I got some YouTube made me a partner recently and I earn about fifty dollars a month out of it but I still decided to carry on with it because I really enjoy doing that I guess I hope that answers your question it's not a very simple answer to be honest it's inspiring and while you're

sharing your wisdom Cali I remember this quote that said oftentimes creativity is not only the process but also the end result it's the process of creating that makes everything that's worthwhile and I recall when I was in high school I started this random e-commerce store shipping cheap things from Alibaba taobao yeah I got my friends parents to bring it back to Canada on their trip back and we sold that in our high school and it worked really well and I think it's these little ideas these creative random things that kind of keep us going and

sometimes I find structure very tiring it drains me a lot I'm with you on that you know you know I think it's also people are different you know and and and the first thing that you need to do for yourself before you embark on any Journeys is you need to be honest with yourself you need to understand who you are you know are you a Creator are you somebody that that functions better under structure because um the one thing that makes us human so amazing is that no two of us are the same we are

all different we we operate differently but it's very important to not just follow what other people tell you but to also you know look Inward and understand who you are trust me it'll make your life a lot easier going forward if you really know who you are structure I'm also like you I I just I I just can't do structure that's I guess that's one of the reasons that I'm looking for people to replace me or to take over my duty so I can go and run after the next thing because that's what keep what

what gets my blood flowing you know I like solving problems I like fixing things I like coming up with ideas and yeah that's it well someone's got to come up with the idea and then someone's got to come up with a system and structure it's God made everyone for a reason everyone different I mean for a reason good Rick yeah and you know while I'm in New York I've had some epiphanies I realized that in New York there's no shortage of wealthy or poor or really beautiful or just averaged individuals you know everyone is unique

and everyone's beautiful everyone is awesome in their own way and so what I've come to realize was all the things that I cared about before such as oh being beautiful being successful being wealthy making that one million dollar all of a sudden didn't really matter to me anymore because everyone's so different and everyone's so valued for being different and so the three things that I came up with yesterday that were important to me the three new things that were important to me were passion purpose and the process of creating value for society and helping people

I think you hit it you hit the nail on the head they were saying the other day I listened to a podcast about psychology and and you know what's the true meaning of life what drives people and they were saying that there's actually the three pillars and I think you kind of hit them exactly almost the first one is the pursuit of happiness you know we want to be happy we want to do things that makes ourselves sad but it makes us happy but happiness is not everything because it just doesn't work like that the

second pillar is meaning purpose it's like what have I done that makes the world a better place or that helps somebody else or that helps a trade dog we need purpose in our life and then the third one is variety that apparently that's also a very important factor in becoming a complete happy human is that you need to have variety so you also need to be able to to do things other things you know and not just be stuck in one rut anyway sorry I interrupted you then no oh good this actually leads me to

my next question so Cali we know you're very experienced in the Distributing and Publishing Industries why did you choose this career and what does an average day of life look like for you I think this career mode shows me just like randomly I like words I like books I've always I read a lot when I was a kid so I really do enjoy books the first time around in the 90s my friends were doing it and I just kind of tagged on because it looked like a lot of fun what makes it awesome is that

you actually and that's the kind of publishing the kind of publishing that we do where we go into cities and industries and regions around the world and we tell stories about Innovative companies and Innovative people in these regions and industries is great because I always I've got a thirst for knowledge I always want to know about the next thing and what's happening and what's you know what's going on the publishing helps with that I mean can you imagine we publish book and over 50 cities around the world that way we tell the stories of innovators

in those cities I mean it's through books like these that I've met people like you which is amazing I mean that's what I love about it what is the average day of work look like for me not at all what I would like it to look like as the president of the company unfortunately it means dealing with accounting making sure that the money is there dealing finding printers there's a lot of not so much fun admin jobs and taking care of dealing with issues and our company is still bootstrapped and the publishing industry while I

love it and it's great and lots of people love it is not one of the most lucrative Industries in the world you don't go viral with the book and and make a fortune so we always thought bootstrapping and we're growing a lot so a lot of our new cities and everything so it's always cash flow like if you're going to become an entrepreneur in your life it's something that you are going to deal with I'm pretty sure you've had that experience as well sometimes it's going absolutely amazing and there's lots of money and other times

not so much and you've got to make all kinds of plans to make payroll at the end of the month but anyway back to a day in the work a day of my life basically in the mornings I start up first deal with everything that happened because we've got a team around the world jump on a bunch of Zoom calls speak with people mostly admin and then in the afternoons hopefully I get some time to actually start spending time and doing what I really enjoy which is reading up on these companies and trying to figure

out what's happening with these companies in you know with Innovation and what's the latest things around the world I am starting a podcast soon in this year where we are going to look at innovators and where I'm going to chat with innovators and the main reason I'm starting that is because I want to force that to become part of my daily work is to talk to interesting people because that's really the fun part of this job sometimes creativity requires you to be in the zone when you come up with a vision the strategy and that's

the complete opposite of what we talked about such as housekeeping admin so how do you make that transition Cali it's hard it is really really hard interesting question Alina if you just consider this a little bit because how do I make that transition I actually don't really I just kind of I tried to get as much of the housekeeping done in the mornings and then try and move on but in all honesty I think oftentimes it's more when I go down a rabbit hole which is actually supposedly is completely the opposite of what you should

be doing if you're focusing and working effectively I subscribe to a lot of newsletters about Innovation and I get notifications when new companies come into our books and sometimes I'd be sitting here doing some work and I'd see some an interesting company that just popped up on my radar and then I would go online to their website go and read up on what they do and then three hours later I've come up with a couple of ideas I just go down the rabbit hole wow and the reason why I'm asking this question is because sometimes

I find it incredibly difficult to switch from admin housekeeping and all of a sudden to strategizing coming up with a vision the creative idea because I find that when I do all the housekeeping admin I'm already so drained because it's so boring at times it's hard to enter the zone so what Fosters creativity for you what enables creativity for you it's just very random to be honest I I don't think that there's anything specific I'm I'm a I'm a very creative guy in general and I think oftentimes when you when you speak about creativity in

the sense like you need to make the switch you're like okay I need to start thinking creatively about my business um I'm like a fire host that's not being held I just spray all over you know I'm just all over the place if that makes sense creativity I oftentimes struggle to be creative in my business specifically because my creativity just runs all over the place if that makes sense Kelly this gave me some solution keeping admin stuff maybe I can turn on some TED Talks or subscribe to some Innovation newsletters like yourself and just let

it go all over the place and I think that keeps the balance it does and what it also does is don't get me wrong I still get creative in the business because oftentimes that creativity where you see something else and you think about oh how would I make a better ocean power generator what it does is it keeps your creative juices flowing so when you start going back into the stuff that you need to be creative about you still have that going it's an easier transition I oftentimes I know that you've got people that go

out there and go hey we've got this problem to solve we need to think about this we need to create this we need to do this we need to plan this podcast this week and we need to do things that way I'm much more of an impulsive person so for me it works a lot differently I would rather go out and be I need to plan this now but I don't feel that I'll just do something else and when I feel a the creative juices flowing then I jump back in and I focus at where

I have to I love that now let's go into a little bit of a different question we talked about creativity now let's talk about Landing a dream job and career development we know that Landing a job is becoming increasingly competitive especially in today's market what are some tips you can give to new graduates especially those who are trying to get their dream job well the most important tip that I can give to new graduates is trying to get their dream job goes back to what I said earlier on about knowing yourself understanding what your dream

job is and really believing making sure that you are picking the job that is your dream job because if you've done that you will be passionate about it I've hired loads of people throughout my life and I oftentimes I look at the way that people approach these things and what they don't do is they don't show that they're really interested and they're really passionate about it it's a cookie cutter CV it's not tailor-made to the job it's almost as if you can see that they put no extra effort into I think that's the biggest thing

we just got an intern in a couple last week actually and what I loved about her was she sits in the U.S in Cincinnati or somewhere what I loved about her is she came onto the zoom call she was friendly she was excited she was asking questions she was you could see that she's really interested in this and this is an unpaid internship that we got through an agency we actually pay an agent that's it's all big thing they're doing what I love is that I could see her passion for not specifically our business but

her passion for making herself better she works a part-time job she studies part-time and then she offers up two hours a day to be an unpaid intern for a company she's running out she's actually going to be running the social media for the LinkedIn page for innovate Vancouver to take a step back I guess my advice would be really go after your dream job and don't just give up but show your passion if it's really really your dream job then you will draw up a proper CV that is targeted to that job tell people what

you think that you can add to that specific job completely avoid templated CVS and templated job applications that those are just you don't stand out it's called the pattern interrupt when somebody reads your your CV or your job application they must go oh wow this one doesn't look like all the others so that's very important now sometimes I find individuals who are creative and entrepreneurial who are passionate are actually the most difficult to manage oh without a doubt so how do you keep them motivated I guess it's the curse of being the boss it's because

of having to deal with people the ones that are going to be the best of are the ones that are creative and driven and they are unfortunately the ones that's going to be the hardest work so yeah I don't have a specific answer for you there it's something I'm still dealing with but I think you know you also need to know those people and you need to understand how they function and we sit with it right now I mean so now we need to scale and in order to scale I'm trying to implement systems and

and and making sure that things work in a specific way but the other problem that I'm dealing with right now is the people that got us here the publishing partners that got us here they're unfortunately not people that can fit in little boxes if you know what I'm saying if I'm like this is the system you have to fill out this form and if the guy fought you know this is the system they just don't play by those rules they don't do those systems but they were the ones that got us to where we are

at the moment so now I have to kind of almost run two systems I've got to run a system for the ogs that each do their own thing the way they want and then I need to put a new system in place for scaling and dealing with training any new partners that come in it's not as simple never a simple solution this got me thinking maybe creative individuals shouldn't be managed I think they should be managing other people sometimes but I mean you there's just so many different people you know have you ever heard there's

a number of psychometric tests that you can have your people do that I think it will cost like 75 bucks or 85 bucks a test and it will tell you who they are other Creator are they a Lord are they a superstar they've got all these names and it's around this little circle where every person fits in it's all about understanding who you're dealing with because if you know what the personality is that you're dealing with you also understand how to deal with them better creative people are great but they're not always great managers because

their creativity is a really really wide phrase I mean creativity can mean a number of things you could be very creative in design but not very creative in managing or developing you know so I don't think it's as simple as that it isn't and I think creativity is in essence chaos beautiful chaos exactly I love that that when you add the element of managing people into creativity and Chaos that's even more complexity so I've been trying to figure this out lately how do we motivate creative individuals and I think next time what I'm going to

try is co-creating a vision bringing the business requirements to the creative individual co-creating the vision and letting them Define the rules themselves in order to get to the mutual goals and then provide the planners the folks who provide structure underneath them to help them tame the chaos that's going on and I think I might give that a try it's it's a very interesting Journey trying to manage individuals who are exactly like yourself and I think that's also one thing I've been trying to figure out my whole life is how do I manage myself exactly I

was just about to say trying to manage the creative individuals with like I'm struggling to manage myself all the time I think you're on to something you know look there's lots of psychology that says that if you make people feel like they have a say or a hand into what's going to happen then they are much more likely to support it and to actually go through with it and do a good job as opposed to walking in and saying hey do this if you walk in and you go hey how do you think we should

do this let's come up with an idea or let's come up with a strategy and then you are tied to that strategy the person is much more likely to push it because then it was their idea it was their strategy or they had a hand in it as opposed to just being told how they should do stuff I love that great tip now the last question for you Kelly the job market is constantly changing and evolving with advancing Technologies some of the jobs that existed 10 years ago don't even exist today thanks to technology can

you share some advice with the Young Generation on how we can adapt to this fast changing business environment that's another interesting thing because this business environment is changing and it it's just speeding up every year faster and faster I mean right now we're looking at all the AI stuff that's coming in and that's going to completely completely a lot of businesses it's on an upend a lot of career opportunities a lot of things are going to change over the next year I think my best advice to keep up with things is to always just keep

an open mind and to constantly be learning don't go into a bubble be be there subscribe to the newsletters of what the latest thing is that's coming out you know just kind of keep an eye on what's happening around you in your specific career path or what you were planning or in your environment just keep an eye on what's going on and constantly think about how it's going to change and try and see what was that saying don't skate where the back to where the pack is Skate to where the puck is going to be

type of thing there's not much else that you can do the best thing you can do is to stay on top of the latest news and the latest developments and learn life is a journey for adventures and lifelong learning correct you cannot stop learning you've got to stay informed you can't stop learning absolutely thank you so much Cali for coming onto the show today it is such an honor to have you here and we can't wait to also be on your podcast as well one of these days as soon as we got it ready thanks

Selena thank you [Music]