Jan04

#5 Nick Goliath – Individualism, Foundation of Respect, and Goliath and Goliath’s Growth in Lockdown

PODCAST: Episode 5

Nick Goliath – Individualism, Foundation of Respect, and Growth of Goliath and Goliath in Lockdown

We spoke with an iconic South African comedian, Nick Goliath. We cover Goliath and Goliath’s growth in lockdown and the importance of individualism.

This podcast is brought to you by Smartick.

Listen to Nick’s Episode on Your Preferred Podcast Channel

About Our Guest: Nick Goliath

Nick is a well-known South African comedian, the former host of the hit eTV game show, Beat That Price, and has performed at Comedy Central Africa’s International Comedy Festival, Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal, Canada, and Montreux Comedy Festival in Switzerland.

Nick Goliath

Nick is the proud father of two and remains dedicated to bringing world-class comedy to center stage through the highly successful Goliath and Goliath brand.

Topics Discussed

How Nick educates his kids at home.
Adopting safe technology practices at home.
The challenges the Goliath and Goliath brand faced in lockdown.

Full Episode Transcription

Guest Introduction

Philip von Ziegler: In today’s episode, I’ll be speaking with Nick Goliath. Nick is a well-known South African comedian, the former host of the hit eTV game show, Beat That Price, and has performed at Comedy Central Africa’s International Comedy Festival, Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal, Canada, and Montreux Comedy Festival in Switzerland.

Nick is the proud father of two children and remains dedicated to bringing world-class comedy to center stage through the highly successful Goliath & Goliath brand. In this episode, we cover topics such as Nick’s education journey, how Nick educates his kids, the challenges faced by COVID, why he sends his kids to an International German School, and a range of other topics. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation with Nick, and I’m sure you will, too. Without further ado, I bring you Nick Goliath.

Nick, thank you so much for being with us, I appreciate you taking the time. I think, to start off for those that don’t know who you are, which I don’t think there will be too many of, but for those that don’t. Tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, where you come from, and what it is you do.

Nick Goliath: Cool, I will, Phil, and thank you so much for having me on; very excited to be on the podcast. And for those of you that don’t know, I don’t know where you are in the world before lockdown. But I’m a comedian, I’m an MC, I’m an entertainer and a voice-over artist. Originally from Eldorado Park, you can’t tell from the accent because Eldo’s accents don’t get voice-overs. So then unless, yeah …

But anyway, that’s who I am, and I’m here now in Florida as a comedian with a wife and two kids. I’ve got two boys, 11 and 7, almost 7.

Nick’s Children’s Education

PvZ: So you’re speaking about your kids, maybe tell us a little bit more about them. You said they’re 4 and 7 years old. Are they currently at school?

NC: So my eldest is 11, my youngest one is, he’ll be 7 on the 24th of September. And they’re on holiday at the moment, but they’ve kind of been back at school one week on, one week off type of vibe, while still doing the online and distance or homelearning. Which has been interesting, to say the least, because they go to the German school as well. Which makes it even more interesting, because I don’t speak any German and they do German on a home language level, which means all of their subjects are taught in German, except for English, that’s their only English subject.

PvZ: Wow, that’s super interesting. What led you to make the decision to put them in a German school?

NC: So growing up, I’d always been kind of against private school and I thought it was that sort of privilege. And I believed, because I went through the public school system and it worked out okay for me.

But what led me to the German school is actually my wife. She was a German school student and matriculated from there. And when I went and saw the school and we were ready to get the kids into school and we went and had a look at the school. And I realised that at that time, I think, they’d had something like 120 years with 100% matric pass rate. And I walked into the school and I saw kids with all types of hair, blue hair, green hair, long hair, short hair. Some had nose rings, some had piercings.

And I realised that the school system that I went through kind of forced you to be uniform, we all had to be the same. Which was something I was always against because I couldn’t understand why my hair had to be cut a specific way in order for me to learn. I couldn’t see how my hair relates to my ability to learn. And seeing the German school and the fact that they allowed kids to be who they want to be, sort of develop their own personalities, and still achieve a 100% matric pass rate year on year. It was a no-brainer for me, because I want my kids to be able to step out of the box and just be who they want to be.

PvZ: Of course, and it also opens up the international door.

NC: Exactly, yeah, so if they do the 13th year, which is called Abitur, it gives them access to something like 180 European universities. So it’s kind of like A-levels as far as I understand, which is a great opportunity.

PvZ: So do your kids do any at-home or online learning programs?

NC: So the school actually has an app called ANTON, which is an international app used by all German schools around the world. All the subjects are on there, depending on the level that they’re at. And they’re ranked globally on the app, which is really cool. So they can see where they measure up to the rest of the German schools, or kids in German schools around the world.

PvZ: I think moving on, something that I want to talk about, you’re a comedian. You’re part of the famous Goliath & Goliath team, and what you guys have built is pretty incredible.

That said, the comedian career path is an unconventional career path. What led you down that career path? And did your educational journey sort of hinder, or did it aid you in building this, “nonconventional career path”?

NC: Wow, I’ve been asked that question so many times, but never in that context, it’s so great. So firstly, comedy is something that I’ve always sort of had and just enjoyed. I was that kid at school who was always doing something or saying something to try and make people laugh. And it’s just something that I’ve always enjoyed doing, is the ability to make people laugh in any situation.

In terms of education, I think that how my education helped me and led me to this path, is that I was exposed to all different types of people, cultures. And it wasn’t a specific group like most South Africans have experience with. They’ve either been to school with mostly White people, mostly Coloured people, mostly Indian people. Whereas I had the opportunity to go to school with everybody. There wasn’t any South African that I wasn’t at school with at some point during my schooling career.

Which, I think, helps me in comedy, because I feel like I have a better understanding of just South Africans. As opposed to just having one perspective, I’ve got many different perspectives, which kind of makes me a bit more relatable when it comes to audiences. Which, as a comedian, is something that you’ve got to understand. Your relatability to your audience is the only thing that sells it. So I think in that way my education helped.

Other than that, I had a teacher, an English teacher in Grade 12, Miss Barber, who at the end of Grade 12, you’ve got to go and do an English oral. While she wasn’t my English teacher, but she was an English teacher. And you had to do your final oral with not your class teacher, and I ended up doing it with her.

And I remember doing the oral with her and at the end, I had a little joke that I’d written that I told to her. And I said to her, if I could make a living being a comedian, that’d be great. And she said to me, I’d pay to come and see you, and that’s just something that stuck with me for years. I only got into comedy probably 9 years after I matriculated. But the first time I got on stage, that was the memory that I had in my mind; was her saying, I’d pay to come and see you. And I was like here these people are. Fine, they didn’t pay to come and see me, but I’m doing the thing, and I think that just helped motivate me. And because I just enjoy making people laugh, I get on stage not for the fame and the fortune, it’s for the thrill of making people laugh.

So, yeah, I think that’s the way my education sort of played a role. Very unconventional. Because of the school and my parents, there’s that standard belief that you’ve got to work hard at school so that you get good grades. So that you can go to university, get a degree, get a good job, so that you can get a good pension fund. So that when you retire one day you have enough money to live till you die.

Which is something I could never understand, and I understand the importance of money. But I want to be happy in my life. And I looked at so many people around me that are doing jobs, or in careers that they’ve studied so hard for. And yet every day they wake up hating their lives, hating the fact that they have to go to an office to do a thing that they’ve done every day for the past 20 years. And I just couldn’t see myself doing that. And I think that’s where my parents, my parents took a while to come to terms with the fact that I was a comedian. Because in my mother’s mind, I was going to be an accountant, which was never going to happen.

How Nick Built His Confidence

PvZ: No, no, and I think it’s incredible to go against the grain and still make a success. I think it takes incredible confidence, and I think as, well, I’m not a comedian, but I would imagine one of the key ingredients to a successful comedic career is to have this unwavering confidence.

Now, that’s something that most people aren’t born with. Is your confidence in yourself and your ability to not take things too seriously, is that something that you consciously worked on? Or is that something that you’ve always just had?

NC: I always explain it as for me, I’m an only child, so I don’t know if that’s kind of affected my confidence. But growing up, I wasn’t a very confident person. I think my confidence has only really developed since I’ve started doing comedy, because it’s a place I feel most comfortable.

And only once I realised that I am actually funny, because you’ve got that feeling that this could all be fake. What do they call it? Imposter syndrome.

PvZ: Yeah, imposter syndrome.

NC: Exactly, so I think that that’s something that I’ve always just had, and that the confidence has come from being on stage and being good at the thing that I do.

And I think just also, I think a lot of us have been raised to not pat yourself on the back. You don’t show that you’re proud of what you’ve done. You’ve just got to kind of do the thing and carry on and let other people praise you. And I think once I realised that it’s okay to pat yourself on the back when you’ve realised that you’ve done something, it’s good to because it also just motivates me to keep going.

So I think that’s where the confidence comes from. It’s something that I work on every day now because I also just try and see the positivity in everything. And like I said, growing up, I wasn’t very confident. I didn’t really have an outlet for emotion, and I found that comedy was a way for me to deal. My dad comes from a family of hilarious men generally, who tease each other all the time. And I found that’s how I deal with life, with stress. When things are looking bad, I find the funny side because it makes it easier to deal with, I suppose.

PvZ: I think people are always talking about their highlights, but naturally, you’ve got lowlights in your life; you’ve got difficult periods. And these are normally the sort of adverse situations that form a person. Are there any points in your life that were sort of turning points, big lessons? Perhaps the first time you bombed, if ever that happened? How did you deal with these sorts of adverse periods in your life, if any? And then, how did that shape the person that you are today?

NC: Yeah, so I think there’s two moments that kind of come to mind when you ask that, and the first one was moving. When I was 10 years old, my parents moved out of Eldorado Park, which is where we were from, to Florida. And put me into a Model C school, which was a mixed-race school, which at the time, it was 1995, we were fresh out of apartheid. And it was the first time I was actually exposed to being around White people and culture.

And because of growing up in Eldos, you have stereotypes and you hear things. And I’d never really actually spent time or seen a White person. And I think that, like I said earlier, that was a huge turning point because there realised that we’re all just people, and we’re all just doing the same things. And these are my friends, you know, like we played soccer together. We went to class together, which I think changed, I didn’t realise at the time, but when I think about it now.

And I see how people who didn’t get the opportunity to change, and get that opportunity to mix, still have a very narrow mindset. I feel like I’m just a little bit more open-minded because I’ve been exposed to that which, like I said, obviously helps my comedy.

And then I think the second turning point was shortly after I started comedy because I’d been out of school for a couple of years. I had a tight-knit group of friends. We’d be together partying every weekend, and we had our obvious way of thinking. You surround yourself with like-minded people and we were all more or less the same people. And what comedy did to me was expose me to, once again, a different type of person, different groups of people.

And often those were people that my friends and I would judge if we saw them out in public because they looked different because they acted different because they spoke differently. And meeting those people made me realise that once again, these people don’t actually care about what we’re saying in our little groups. They’re living their lives. They’re living their best lives, most of them better lives than any of me or my friends were living at the time.

And I had a conversation with my friends about this and explained this idea. And they said to me, oh, so you think you’re better than us now? And that was the last time I saw that group of friends. And it just made me realise that sometimes just a different mindset, people that are close to you will push you away because you disagree, or your perspective differs to theirs.

Screen Time Management at Home

PvZ: One of the things I want to touch on is the fact that you’re sitting in Johannesburg, I’m sitting here in Cape Town. And this conversation is really enabled through incredible technology, stuff that 10, 15 years ago, we had no idea was lying ahead. In saying that technology has enabled so many people to do the things that they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to do. Now, that is also being experienced in schools and amongst the youth. You’re naturally all-over social media; you have to be for your career at this present time. How do you manage screen time for your kids?

NC: Obviously, COVID has come and sort of thrown the screen time limitations out of the window, because that’s all they do now is screen time. But obviously, there’s different types of screen time. So what I do with my kids, my kids love Fortnite and PlayStation and gaming, so they’ve got during the week, Monday to Thursday, no games, no sort of console games, PlayStation. And I do allow them two hours a day on their tablets or cell phones. And that’s basically just YouTube, they watch TikTok and all of these things.

And that’s where it becomes a fun night because I don’t want my kids because they’re still so young, I don’t want them on social media. Personally, you said that I’ve been on social media, and to be honest, I think that there are people who are wondering if I’m still alive because I haven’t been on social media that much.

Because I just feel like it’s, you know, I have such deep emotions about social media. For me, it’s just such a negative space, and as much as there’s so much positivity, I find that the negativity is what trends and what, you know, the #CancelCulture and all of these things.

But for my kids, so obviously I don’t have them on any social media platforms. They’ve got TikTok. They are limited in terms of what they can watch and how much time. Like I said, during the week, two hours a day, and weekends, they can play on the PlayStation and games or whatever, Fortnite or Minecraft, these things.

And I feel like I can’t because I grew up where my parents didn’t want me to play TV games because it was the TV games when I grew up and it was this sort of brain-zapping technology that’s going to give you square eyes.

And I look at my kids now and we’re in a space where I can’t withhold technology from them because I’m holding them back. Because this, two years ago wasn’t a thing in my world. I wasn’t doing Zoom meetings. There was FaceTime, which was an app on my machine that I never used, and now this is a daily thing for me.

So the world is moving so fast, and the technological advancements. I mean, if you think about in the last six months alone that we’ve been in lockdown. Just the things I’ve personally seen, have grown so much that I can’t keep them away from technology. So my wife and I make sure we control it and see what it is they are looking at. We have access to all of their devices because you’ve got to have control, you’ve got to be able to see what they’re doing.

The world is a crazy place and there are so many scams all the time. If you’re not keeping an eye on it, you might as well just leave them out in the streets and let them roam the world by themselves. So, yeah, screen time, I try and limit it as much as possible. But like I said, obviously, with lockdown, it’s been a little bit more difficult still trying to get work done and keep them entertained or busy without the screen time. So those numbers have shifted a bit, and they have been allowed to play games during the week, just to try and keep them busy.

But my eldest son is now into Popular Mechanics, the magazine. And he actually wants to do robotics, because the school offers a Live Kaizen, it’s a robotics program. Where they also do sort of coding and robotics, which he’s really excited about. And it’s like I said, if I keep him away from technology, I’m doing him a disservice.

PvZ: One of the things that I’ve always been concerned about with regards to our traditional education system is not necessarily the things that they teach or the ways that they teach them, but it’s the things that they don’t teach. And I don’t know if you have any opinions on that? But as it relates to things like financial literacy and your day-to-day human interactions, your soft skills, which you’ve obviously developed in your own way. These aren’t things that schools teach. So are you taking any steps to keep your kids ahead of the game in that regard?

NC: You know, for me, it’s like I say, I can give them the guidance, I can direct them in my perspective and what I’ve learned. And I guess I feel like I’m generally open-minded to allowing them to learn for themselves. And one of the things I say to my kids often is that they’re in control of their happiness. I can assist, and I can buy you the things that you need, but your happiness … Doesn’t matter what you’ve got; if you’re not happy inside this, there’s nothing that you can get that’s going to make you happy. So you’ve kind of got to find your way, and I think that’s the big thing.

Like, yes, I agree with you that schools don’t teach enough of what we need in the world. Like for me, a simple thing like filling in a tax certificate. Why is that not? Because when you leave school, technically, you’ve got to go and start. Either you’ve got to go and study further, or you’ve got to go and get a job. If you get a job, you’ve got to pay tax. You have no idea how to pay tax. And the job you’re going to get is not a high-end job where you’re going to have somebody to pay your tax for you. You’ve got to do that yourself.

So basic things like that should definitely be taught. I think that there should be open discussion classes where kids are just allowed to voice their opinions and have debates about what they feel, what their views are. Because once again, it comes to me from my parents are telling me that this is the way the world is. And somebody else comes in and says, no, but it’s not actually how it works, it works a different way.

I feel like our natural reaction now is to defend our way, and try and convince that person that our way is the right way, where we don’t have a space where we can have … If you look at social media, you look at Twitter, everybody’s just trying to force their opinion and their way of thinking onto everybody else because we’re not open to saying-

PvZ: So tribal.

NC: Yeah, we’re not open to saying, okay, I see what you’re trying to say. This is my opinion, and yes, we disagree, but I can respect your opinion and your point of view, and that’s a big thing for me. The most important thing for me when it comes to my kids is respect. And that’s the one thing I teach them, because if I respect you, anybody, all of our problems disappear. Racism, gender-based violence, everything, it all disappears. Because if I have respect for you, I will treat you with respect. Whether you are male or female, Black, White, doesn’t matter. And if we all just had that sort of mentality, I feel all of our problems are gone.

Governments are not going to steal money because they respect the people that they are supposed to be working for. So they will do what needs to be done to ensure that you have a working education system, a public transport system, the police are safe. People can walk the streets at night.

And so, I think, yes, the school, the general … I know what a cumulonimbus cloud is. I have no use for that in my life.

PvZ: [laugh]

NC: So I feel like there’s a lot that’s taught that is important and cool to know. But in terms of the world, once you finish school, what does Higher Grade Geography do for you unless you’re going to become a geologist?

Work-Life Balance

PvZ: How do you balance your time between family and work? I think that’s something that most people struggle with. And I think the more successful you become, the more challenging it becomes.

NC: Obviously, I mean, speaking from a privileged position where I’m not forced to be at an office every day, Monday to Friday, from 8 – 5, type of a situation. But also, I’m privileged in the fact that my family understands that because I run a business and I do things for myself, there’s no weekends and public holidays, and Fridays. And there are days that I work and there are days that I don’t work.

And sometimes the days that I work, happen to be on maybe it’s a birthday, or it’s a weekend, or it’s a public holiday, or a family function. And unfortunately, I end up missing some of those events, which makes me feel horrible because those are the big moments that you really want to be there for. And I try and schedule my life as much as possible around those moments.

But the big thing for me is that because I don’t work a traditional job, I’m able to take my kids to school every day. I’m able to pick them up from school most days. And on a random Tuesday, we can go and do something, or be together, or go to a park, or take a hike somewhere.

So the way I try and balance it is that if I am home, I try and be home, and be the dad, and be the husband that’s here. Which also, because of my work, is sometimes difficult because I could come off of a week of really strenuous work, and for three days I just want to lie and not do anything.

But, like I say, I am privileged in the fact that my family, they understand. My wife is super supportive and especially when it comes to the kids, and I think my kids are just amazing. Like I say, 7 and 11, and they’re pretty much self-sufficient. They make their own 2-minute noodles. The older one will make a sandwich for the younger one if he’s not on the PlayStation. And I like that they’re independent, and I like that when we do have time together, it’s a great time together. We have fun, we laugh, we cook together. You know, it’s small things that we can kind of do. We kick a ball outside. I don’t know, it’s more about quality time over quantity time, and I think that’s the thing.

PvZ: I think that independence is key. But how do you strike that balance between privilege and still remaining respectful, still remaining ambitious, still remaining independent and hungry? Yeah, I think that’s a difficult balance for a lot of parents who are in a privileged position.

NC: Oh, definitely, definitely, and that was my reason for not wanting to send my kids to a private school. Because, there’s that impression that our private school kids are all these snooty, don’t-have-time-for-anything, better-than-everybody, type of kids. So everything my kids have, they have to work for, and my eldest wants to do robotics, but it’s an additional subject. So he’s got to score high in his math, his German, and his English.

So what I try and do is put the ball in their court. Because one of my big problems growing up was, I could never understand why I had to do some of the things I had to do. I could never understand why I have to study so hard. All I need to do is pass, and I’m onto the next grade. And that was my thinking; all I need to do is pass to get onto the next thing. If I’d known, I just feel like I wasn’t equipped with the understanding of why?

So that’s what I try and do with my kids now. It’s cool, so you want to do robotics? Do you understand the process of getting to robotics? What are your current marks? How much harder do you have to work? What extra?

I think I’m trying to teach them project management, just in life. Like yes, because we all look at the big picture at the end, but it’s the steps in between that allow you to get to the big picture. And sometimes, if you don’t look at the steps, it’s easy to see the big picture and step over the steps in between. And then wonder why you missed the big picture, or you missed your end goal.

And that’s what I’m trying to get them to. Not everybody in my family is privileged, so we still go to the hood, and so they see the other parts of the world. And my wife and I are also very open and honest with them in terms of what’s happening in the world. And why they have a tablet and phone, when other kids their age or older don’t even have access to a phone in the home. And trying to just explain to them that they are very privileged, and they are living this sort of fantasy life almost in South Africa, because the rest of the country is not living this.

And I think for me, the big understanding and the appreciation of what they have, that’s what I’m trying to teach them. And the fact that because you live, say, a better life, or you live a more privileged life than somebody else, doesn’t make you any better than that person. Because chances are that person who’s less privileged is, like you said, they’re the ones who are harder working. They are the ones who are more resilient, who deal better with the tough times. They are the ones who are more creative when it comes to solving our problems. Because if you only have limited resources to solve a problem, you make those resources work for you. Whereas my kids, and I’m not rich by any stretch of the imagination, or wealthy, but I do understand that my kids live a much better life, and it makes it easier for them to have to deal with problems.

Most times there’s help at home, they never have to make the beds. But weekends, they’ve got to make their beds, they’ve got to clean up after themselves. It’s a tough balance to try and get them to do everything and understand. So I think a big part of it for me is just the mindset and just giving them the ability to do the basic things.

I don’t expect them to be out here changing roof tiles. But you’ve got to be able to clean your room and wash the dishes because at some point they’ve got to leave my house. I don’t want them here forever. And I don’t want to go and visit them and find all the dishes, and the house is filthy, and rats. I just want them to live a better life.

The Impact of Corona on Goliath and Goliath

PvZ: I want to shift gears just a little bit. You’re the former host of a hit show on eTV. You’ve been on Comedy Central. You’ve performed at international comedy festivals, and, and, and. So you’ve been on a roll for many years now, and then all of a sudden, coronavirus hits.

How has this impacted you on a personal level, and Goliath & Goliath as a business overall? And what are the things that you’ve done in order to keep things going during this difficult time?

NC: So, yea, man – luckily, I was that less privileged kid who was more creative with solutions! Because literally corona came and ended comedy, in my mind. All of my gigs, everything that I had planned for the year, within three days, everything was cancelled and all my sources of income had just dried up instantly.

Luckily, I feel like, because we’d been working as a brand and we’re both the brand, we were still sort of the go-to guys when companies or people were looking for what to do in these times. Which kept us afloat and allowed us to make it through lockdown and this period sort of okay. It’s ruined all my plans for the year, but I’ve made it through.

And the impact on me personally, those first, I’d say that first month, month-and-a-half, it was soul-destroying. Because I couldn’t see past the fact that all my work had been cancelled, and I had no idea how I was going to pay school fees, or how I was going to put food in the fridge.

And then, like you say, the creativity kicks in then, and we started having different conversations. And luckily, we were doing the Goliath’s Go-Live, which was our daily live show. And because, like I said, the Goliath team’s so supportive, we just sort of kept going, and ideas got thrown around. And because we were kind of keeping our heads above water and working, it made it a little bit easier.

But what it did make me realise is that all of my income was reliant on comedy. Or a large part, 80 – 85% of my income, was reliant on comedy. And it’s just made me realise that I can’t rely on all of my eggs in one basket, because if anything like this happens again, it stops. And next time I might not be as lucky as I have been during this time to still have work and still be getting things done.

And so our business has shifted gears and we’ve started discussing new opportunities and new possibilities using technology. Because we now have these abilities, we do voice-overs. And if we can get a studio together instead of having to go into studio, we can now have a studio space that somebody can rent. Because we’ve got the office, which now hasn’t been used during this time, and we were thinking about getting rid of the office, or what we do?

But instead of getting rid of it, we’ve got the space, so we’d rather change the dynamic because it’s part of what we do. And the nice thing with comedy is that it’s given us access into so many different other avenues, and insights into so many different other ways of earning an income. From voice-overs, from all the crew you’ve got around you, the cameras, you know.

So the nice thing, and I think it’s because of the type of industry that I’m in, is that creatively we’ve come up with a couple of solutions which will change the direction of our business, but I think that it’s also at the right time. It’s the perfect time for us to change and try and incorporate more technology.

And just, I never want to get on stage to earn money. I want to get on stage and do comedy because I love doing comedy. And if I can get that right, if we as a business can get our business structure right, we never have to worry about earning money from comedy, which then allows us time to go and do comedy for the passion.

Rapid Fire Questions

PvZ: To wrap up, I’ve got a couple of rapid-fire questions that I’ve just come up with and love to hear your take. So firstly, who’s the greatest comedian of all time?

NC: Aah, I want to say Dave Chappelle, but I also love Eddie Murphy. Aah, I’m going to go with Chappelle because he’s more [inaudible], and I saw him on a motorbike, and that’s cool.

PvZ: All right, who’s the funniest Goliath?

NC: The funniest Goliath is Kate.

PvZ: Really?

NC: Yes, yes, she just doesn’t want to be on stage, but if you could sit in on our meetings, you’d understand. Kate’s the funniest.

PvZ: Okay, great. And I think the last thing, and it may be a little bit more of a thought-provoking question, but what do you believe about education that most people disagree with?

NC: I think that our education system works. I think that’s our-

PvZ: I think a lot of people would disagree with that. So, yeah, so that’s a very good point.

NC: Yes, so look, for me, I’m a testament to the fact that the system works. And I’m not the only one, there are millions of South Africans who have gone through the public school system and have made it and are killing it out in the world. Trevor Noah is the host of The Daily Show.

PvZ: Sure.

NC: But it’s the other aspects, the home, the community, the parents, their support, their attitude. Those are the things that determine the direction that you’re going. The education system is fine. It needs work because we can’t have 50 kids in one class, it’s ridiculous, with one teacher. So the education system works. We need to work on our mindset and social development. I think that’s the one thing.

PvZ: Awesome, Nic, thank you so much for your time. That’s it from us, but I’ve really enjoyed this conversation.

NC: Thank you so much.

PvZ: And I must say, I’d love to do it again sometime.

NC: Oh, please, anytime!

PvZ: See how you’re doing in a couple of months. So, yeah. thank you so much again, really good points, I really enjoyed it. And yeah, looking forward to the next time.

NC: Phil, thanks for having me on, man, I appreciate this, this was great. And please, have me on again, I have many thoughts on many things.

The Future Minds podcast is brought to you by Smartick. Smartick is an award-winning, intelligent, online mathematics and coding program for kids ages 4 – 14. Powered by sophisticated, adaptive AI, Smartick teaches kids math and coding from the comfort of home in as little as 15 minutes per day. For more information, visit smartick.com or download the app on tablet or iPad today.

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Sabrina Jansen van Vuuren

Sabrina graduated from the AAA School of Advertising with a B.A. in Integrated Marketing Communications and prior to joining the Smartick Team she started her own digital marketing agency in 2014.
She is the founder and producer of Smartick's podcast called Future Minds with Phil.
In her spare time, Sabrina enjoys horseback riding, reading, and going to the gym. She also loves to travel!

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