Why Every Great Decision Starts With Someone Else’s Wisdom
- PG Geldenhuys
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
When I think about the best decisions I’ve made in life, almost all of them were borrowed.
My earliest mentors were my father and his business competitor and friend, Jannie Gildenhuys. They didn’t teach through lectures, they modelled through motion. I watched them shake hands on trust, lose money without losing integrity, and keep showing up. That was my first MBA - free, practical, and brutally honest.
I could never fully be my extroverted father, who built his success on relationships and EQ. Jannie felt more like me at the time, a quiet leader who built trust and partnerships through smart systems and a razor-sharp mind. I eventually settled somewhere in the middle, but having both of them to shine a light on the way was massively useful. And today I still maintain friendly relations, like they did, with the people that play in my sandbox and who share my core values. Collaboration over competition has always served me.
Having said that, I faced new challenges when scaling, and I looked beyond those early examples. When I faced a culture crisis across multiple businesses, I asked Terry Munro from Beachcomber Travel for breakfast. Terry’s built one of South Africa’s most loyal companies, and hardly anyone ever leaves his team. Over coffee and scrambled eggs, he openly shared a few things about culture that I copied word for word. Within months, everything changed for me.
Mentorship is a shortcut. Not the cheap kind - the wise kind. You still do the work, but you start closer to the summit.
My investment role model is the Oracle of Omaha. In the world of Bitcoin and Tesla and influencers, Warren Buffett has been my constant north star. He built his career on curiosity and courage, and takes a famous long view on fundamentals he understands. And he has never been afraid to learn. At twenty, he read about GEICO, took a train to Washington, knocked on the company’s door, and ended up spending four hours with the CEO on a Saturday morning. Six decades later, GEICO remains one of Berkshire Hathaway’s crown jewels.
That story isn’t about luck; it’s about proximity. Buffett sought wisdom where it lived, from an early age. I’ve been lucky to have my own Buffetts - living mentors who’ve shaped the way I think and lead.
Warren Rustand, through EO, taught me the power of a morning ritual - the 10-10-10: ten minutes of gratitude, ten minutes of reflection, ten minutes of intention. That discipline has changed my life. It’s made me more present as a husband and father, more deliberate as a leader, and it’s the reason I’ve been able to write six books while keeping my balance (most days).
Stephen Covey gave me structure, even though I never met the man. The 7 Habits as a life guide, for me, turned chaos into principle - it taught me to lead from values, not moods.
Jim Collins showed me that leadership isn’t charisma - it’s humility plus will. Level 5 Leadership is a mirror I still hold up to myself.
Johnny Gerber, my old boss, taught me the economics of empathy: if you truly invest in understanding your clients, you’ll never run out of business.
George, my friend and current mentor, has been guiding me through the next frontier - how to think about wealth creation and investment with clarity rather than noise.
Different eras, different voices, same throughline: seek wisdom early, apply it relentlessly.
Once you look, you’ll find those mentorship examples everywhere.
Sport: Tiger Woods and his father Earl built greatness one bucket of golf balls at a time. The lesson was never the swing, it was the discipline behind it.
Movies: Who doesn’t love The Karate Kid? Mr Miyagi’s wax-on-wax-off wasn’t about shining cars. It was about shaping muscle memory before ambition.
Business: After Steve Jobs passed, Tim Cook assumed leadership, and has given investors a 2000% return on their investment. He was groomed for over 14 years by Jobs as his mentor for the role.
Business counterpoint: Satya Nadella at Microsoft still rules them all. He also earned his stripes learning from Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer over 20 years, before integrating the learnings into his own empathic style to lead the Cloud revolution and take Microsoft once more to the top of the tech giants’ pile.
Mentorship is how we convert ambition into acceleration.
PG’s Pro Tip:
You don’t need a formal mentor programme - you need a practice of learning from the wise.
Build your personal board of advisors. Identify five people whose thinking challenges yours. Schedule one meaningful conversation a quarter.
Adopt a daily mentor - your own reflection. Use the Warren Rustand 10-10-10: gratitude, journalling, intention.
Teach to learn. Mentor someone younger; you’ll hear your own lessons more clearly.
ChatGPT prompt:
“Create a 90-day mentorship plan using the Warren Rustand 10-10-10 method. Include one mentor conversation per month, one reflection question per week, and a journalling prompt for gratitude and growth.”
The truth about mentorship is simple:
You can learn from experience - or you can learn from someone else’s experience and still have time left over to live your own.
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