The Hard Re-Entry

Back into it.

Does this feel like you? Some time away with the family, a solid recharge and good rest… then the hard re-entry into productivity, focus and the needs of your core customer, your team, your cash flow.

It’s not easy. It’s like me getting up at 4.30 am to do my first road cycle of the season after a six-month layoff. There was a big part of me that just wanted to stay in bed and chill, maybe sneak in an episode of Friends and Neighbours before the kids wake up.

Instead, I hauled my unfit butt out of bed and got out there. And boy was I glad… glorious morning, dead quiet, and I’m not as out of shape as I thought. Win.

So maybe work-life normalcy re-entry can feel the same. Especially if I keep on filling my schedule with side quests, fun stuff that keeps me energized and can be fit in while the kids are at school or soccer practice. Cycling. Golf. And sauna and cold plunge… especially sauna and cold plunge.

My week in Plett was filled with a daily dose of sauna and ocean swim. One time, I even had a pod of dolphins put on a surfing show for me while I was sweating it up to Hans Zimmer in there. The ritual is my safe haven, my reset, my health hack. And it goes the same way every time. First, break through the first uncomfortable heat wall. Then, welcome the cold and the ocean engulfing you. Back to heat, and feel the return... the presence… the joy. Do it again, and know that it’s worth it. Feel like a million bucks afterwards.

I like it so much, I wrote a book about it.

Last week I signed off the final print files for Freeing Founders. Its hero is Willem Joubert, a former flanker with a dodgy left knee. His physio puts him in an ice bath after every rehab session. Ten degrees, three minutes, no negotiating. Then her little cedar sauna. The cold empties him out. The heat fills him back up.

So he does what any sane man in a red corporate golf shirt would do. He quits and opens a sauna-and-cold-plunge business in Cape Town. During Day Zero. Yes, a cold-water business in a city running out of water. He calls it Kontras: heat and cold. Padel comes later.

Ja, it's indulgent. What could be more fun than spreading the plunge gospel and calling it a business book? What’s more fun than basing the locations at Hammies, Conradieveld, Woodstock? Places I know well, trade-offs I am familiar with. And set against the epic Greatest Rivalry, with a slice of Claude-enhancement – truly a few of my favourite things.

The book braids three stories. Willem's. Mine, from a minivan in December 2008 to closing PG Tops in 2025, and restarting with G2G Investments. Things evolve, don’t they, and so did my beloved Springboks. Keep what works, build on it, discard which doesn’t. I loved framing Willem’s arc against a backdrop of epic rugby, particularly the Springboks' nine-year road from 57–0 in Albany to this September's 3–1 series win over the All Blacks, their first since 1976.

The trap at the heart of it is one I know too well. Heroics win you the first milestones. That first epic few years is where the magic truly happens. Sweating, shivering, becoming. Building a product, a customer profile, a team, an office, a brand. Then you hit the wall, and you become the bottleneck. In the opening chapter Willem's wife, Anri, tells him: if you leave, build something that can breathe without you. He only hears the first four words. It takes him nine years to hear the rest.

And the clearest lesson in the book comes from the sauna. Taped inside the door at Kontras is a laminated card: NEVER ALONE. TIMER ON. WATER IN. BUDDY OUTSIDE. The whole team drills it, every week. On the Saturday of the Ellis Park Test, a member goes down in a sauna. Kea and Liesl run the protocol: out of the heat in 35 seconds, talking in four minutes. Nobody phones Willem. He's on a rooftop in Joburg, watching his big launch fall over, with 60 pages of beautiful AI-written procedures that nobody had practised.

A card everyone has drilled beats 60 immaculate pages nobody has. The Boks know it: that 7–1 bench in the 2023 final was built long before anyone needed it.

I’m a lone wolf, and I like to sauna and cycle that way too. But I’ve learned to love company, especially if we are aligned. So I’m always evolving to let others into the game, but it is hard. Who knows how to do things better than me, anyway?

The line I'd keep from the book: the founder's freedom is not measured by how little they do. It is measured by how much the organisation can do without waiting for them.

PG's Pro Tip (straight from the book)

Do this: For two weeks, log every decision that reaches you and mark who should own it. Count how many were really yours. That's the Next Test from Chapter 6. Willem's count: 312 decisions escalated in 90 days, and he made 268 of them.

Build this: Then open Claude, attach your organogram and that log, and paste the leadership-contract prompt from Lens 2 of the Playbook:

"Attached are our organogram and a list of the decisions that reached me in the past two weeks. Draft a leadership contract with one row per seat and these columns: outcomes owned, decisions owned, decisions shared (and with whom), spend limit and escalation rule. Place every decision from my list in a seat. Flag any decision I made that the contract says someone else should own. Ask me questions one at a time where you need information, especially about spend limits. Challenge me when I keep something because I enjoy doing it. The team signs the final contract, not you."

Freeing Founders is at the printers now. Hit reply if you'd like to be first in line for a copy, or grab the sample preview on Amazon Kindle.

See you in the plunge.

PG