It all started with a dare to participate in a viral campaign where people all over the world had to make fools of themselves while consuming copious amounts of alcohol. But Brent Lindeque had a different idea.
This idea changed his life, going viral in the social media community, who were encouraged to be the positive Change. These days, Brent not only has his hands full with his events management company, flourishing social media accounts and a radio show on Cliff Central, but he’s also Changing the news landscape with The Good Things Guy, a website that focuses on good news in South Africa and around the world. Ruda caught up with Brent to find out if filming yourself while doing a good deed really can be seen as a “random” act of kindness, and to find out exactly how hungry the world is for stories that have the power to inspire.
Transcript
Ruda: Hello and welcome, once again, to the Change Exchange. My guest today, Brent Lindeque, has a company called Chaos Theory. So what is that about? It is not scientific?
Brent: No not at all. It’s got nothing to do with science. What it is, is a company that tries to bring the order to the chaos of events and brand activations. So we base ourselves in the events and activation space, but it’s been alive and kicking for the past seven years and has evolved to more of a creative space where we can conceptualise the events and brand activations and then bring them to life.
Ruda: How did you end up here? What did you want to be when you were a kid?
Brent: Every child has got dreams, right? And when I was little I wanted to be on stage or behind the cameras or on radio or something in the media space, but I don’t think I ever really pursued it, because of whatever the circumstances were. So rather … Parents, family … “Rather go and get a degree. Rather go and study and work towards something where you are guaranteed a salary.” Although we’re not in this country.
Ruda: “Something to fall back on back on, my child.”
Brent: Correct, correct, exactly.
Ruda: So, what was your first job?
Brent: My first job, during school … I worked at a Nando’s. I was the guy behind the counter that took the orders. And from there I …
Ruda: What made you take that extra step? Because it’s a choice … You have free time, you are 15 or whatever. You can either hang out with your mates or earn some money?
Brent: I needed the money, so I think that’s what it was.
Ruda: For what? For dreams? Or for shoes?
Brent: For shoes. For clothes. For going out to eat. For spending time … On my social time I needed the cash and my pocket money just wasn’t doing it. So I realised quite quickly the value of money and that I needed to start making my own. Nando’s didn’t last very long because they didn’t pay very well, so from that I received, or I went and got a job at a wedding venue in the South of Johannesburg, where I grew up in Alberton and I worked there for many years. Starting as a waiter, into a full wedding planner. I worked right next to the head wedding planner.
Ruda: So did you do that while you were studying, still?
Brent: During school and then while I was studying as well. It was a fall back on to make extra money and in hospitality, the catering industry, weddings, especially, there’s good money. There’s people getting married every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The wedding venue was quite busy.
Ruda: And they’re in the best of spirits so …
Brent: Not always! You get bridezillas, which is not great to have them. Because it’s quite stressful and again … Working in a wedding is you’re working with something which I now call emotional money. It’s somewhere … You’ve taken that money, you saved the money and you’re spending it on yourself. A corporate budget – now I know – is a lot different.
Ruda: And the own company? When did that happen?
Brent: So I moved on after studying. I applied for a position at a racing company, as an event manager at Kyalami racetrack and we looked after … It was around 24 race cars, Formula 3 race cars that we used to take around the Kyalami racetrack. And it was all corporate incentives. So Investec we’re bringing out 20 of their highest clients to come and drive on the racetrack. And from there and I think I realised that I didn’t like taking orders and I much appreciated doing my own thing and I wanted to earn my own money and keep my own profits and work towards owning my own company, so …
Ruda: And the insecurity that comes with it was … You were willing to take that on as a balance? As a quit pro quo?
Brent: I think I was too young to understand insecurities and risk at 23 or 24. Starting your own business you don’t know, you don’t have a family, you don’t have houses. I didn’t have any of those obligations to pay for. So I took the risk and I decided that I wanted to have an event management company, but event management companies in one cubic meter, are a thousand. There’s so many people that become event managers that I needed to do things a little bit different. So I started researching different products and I needed to do things a little bit different. I started researching different products in the events space. Things t that were not in the country. Things were a little bit different. And one of the things we had was called Flogos. It was the craziest machine that we got from America. A big black box and inside that box it took foam and mixed it with helium so it made the foam but with helium, which made the foam rise. It got extruded through a negative stencil of a client’s logo and I literally created flying logos in the sky. Something that we brought in from America and the companies loved it. One of the biggest companies that jumped on board was Standard Bank and we did their cricket series for about three years that they had the Flogo machines inside the cricket stadiums. I’m just shooting up either sixes or wickets or the actual badge of Standard Bank. So cool stuff … Get my foot in the door with products and get clients to trust me. Create this atmosphere where they can trust my creativity and build my brand activation elements until I could do a full event, which I was lucky enough to do.
Ruda: How does one get a client to trust you?
Brent: I think delivering quality work. So I think business is pretty easy. Do what you say you’re going to do, and if you can do that, sometimes maybe the unexpected that you add in, where the quality is just really great … Your clients begin to trust you, and then start giving ideas. “Why don’t you try this? Why don’t you add this in? And this might work for your brand?” And then they begin to trust you. My clients have been with me for a really long time and I think that’s a great attribute for the company, is that they stick around and they continue to use me.
Ruda: Because events can be a bit of a ‘oh, let’s try someone new’?
Brent: It does, and I think there’s almost a seven-year cycle? I think you stay with someone for about seven years and you work with them and then you might want fresh ideas and new blood and certainly new ideas come to the forefront, but continuously, you still pick up new clients. So for me yes it’s also that seven-year trend where I get new clients coming in.
Ruda: Talk to me about networks. About one person connecting you to the next one, connecting into the next one. Because I think in business that is … It plays such a huge role.
Brent: That’s massive and it’s the human connection. It’s the ‘I believe you because you used him’ and by word of mouth is massive in our industry. I don’t believe that my website does me any justice for someone searching for an event company. You would have to hear by word-of-mouth of what I’ve done and then perhaps decide to use me in that regard.
Ruda: But, what is now? About two years ago-ish? In 2014 your life changed dramatically. How did that happen?
Brent: Completely. So there was something going around the world globally started in Australia called Neck Nominations. And the whole concept was quite stupid, actually. It was down as much alcohol as you possibly could, film it on camera and then dare other people to do the same. If you look back at social media, it was most probably one of the first viral trends where people were using social media to try and create a viral trend. It was going on globally. It started in Australia … It was sweeping the world. There were hundreds of thousands of videos being uploaded of people doing the craziest things. Drinking goldfish. Downing gin. And then nominating people to do the same.
I’ve been watching it trend on social media and there were a couple of things going through my mind. I think the first was if you ever do anything that has got alcohol in it, and you dare people, it’s bound to end badly. It’s bound to end badly! The second is that I don’t believe people understand that social media has consequences. I call social media at the moment a teenager. Because it’s only like 15 years old and teenagers are pretty rough, if you look at it like that. What we put on the internet now matters. And one day if you’re 18, drinking goldfish and downing gin … Many years from now looking for a job, if they google your name that’s what they’re gonna find. The third thing is that I live in South Africa. And in South Africa we’ve got a huge portion of our population that live in poverty. Really bad poverty. As South Africans we tend to become a bit numb to it, because we see so much of it. So I had this thought that maybe if I did something a little bit different … Even with just in my circle of friends, we’d be able to make a difference. And if 10 people followed my suit, we will be able to help 10 people. That was what I was thinking. So I got neck-nominated and I still remember like it was yesterday. It was a Friday morning and I decided to go to the store and get lunch for myself and a homeless person. I climbed into my car, I had my colleague next to me, that was holding my camera phone and I said to her: “Record this.” Drove up to the intersection, winded down the window, handed over a meal to a homeless person, and even when I was posting the video – it was the first YouTube video I’d ever put up. Even when I was posting the video, I felt quite stupid. I thought to myself, am I doing something completely ridiculous going against the grain what everybody else was doing – the entire world?
Ruda: But you did end it with “and I dare so and so” to also do it”?
Brent: Yes, so I dared two people as well. I uploaded the video and within about an hour I had 301 views. I was blown away. I didn’t even have 301 Facebook friends. So for me that was quite big. What I didn’t know at the time is that when YouTube videos start going viral, they’ve got a panel of experts that are just making sure that nothing untoward. And by that evening I went to a friend’s dinner and she took me aside and she just said to me: “I’m so proud of you and what you’ve done is really the true essence of what South Africa is and I can’t believe your video has had 10 000 views!” And I was blown away. I couldn’t believe it. I had no idea that my life would change the way that it did and the next morning I had a hundred thousand views on the video. There were international people phoning me. CNN, BBC and I was featured in all sorts of newspapers around the world.
Ruda: So how did that make you feel? I mean, it must be like a bit like being caught in a tsunami? You just went for a swim?
Brent: That’s the best way to explain it. It was the most overwhelming experience and for me I’ve never been behind a camera, or behind radio or even in that space. Even though I dreamed of it, it was never a part of my reality. Those … The next three or four weeks I’ve actually got a diary where I wrote down every interview I went to. I took everything in so I could possibly remember it. I’m hardly slept, because my Facebook and my Twitter and my social media was going through the roof. I was receiving thousands of messages every day from people around the world that had just gone: “This is so inspiring.” Like: “I need to take what you’ve done and do it!” And I felt that I’m just a human being. My responsibility is to answer people and to respond to messages. So I’ll continuously was responding to messages.
Ruda: Saying what?
Brent: Do it! Go out there. Take a video. Help someone. Don’t do it on video. Just help someone. If I’d caused the catalyst of change, go with it. The only way that you can create action, is by actioning something. So go do it. Bigger than that, there were hundreds of thousands of videos of people that had seen me that were doing that. So they were going around to their different parts of the world, be it Canada or France or the UK, or even in South Africa, and they were just sharing kindness. It was amazing.
Ruda: So how did your life change? You acquired a radio show?
Brent: So I fell in love with radio. The first radio show I was on where I was in studio was two days after that video. I was on 702 with John Robbie and I remember I was so scared. I was … I was petrified. My hands were all clammy and it felt like the interview went on for an hour. It was …
Ruda: Afraid of what? That you would make a fool of yourself?
Brent: I guess so. There’s always those setbacks and you fear the unknown. The nervousness.
Ruda: That’s always the thing we’re most worried about. That you will fall flat on your face.
Brent: Especially on radio. Like 702 is quite a big breakfast show. A lot of people listen to it. And it must have been 30 seconds that I was on air. I don’t even think it was that long but I realised very quickly that I really like I really like being on radio. But I realised very quickly that I really liked , liked the platform that it would give me to … I liked the platform that it would give me. Maybe make a bigger difference. .This other platform of my social media rising and people arriving and people interested in me right now at a 15-minute track so we need to try to do something good with us interested in me right now is my 15 minutes, right? So I need to do something good with it. I contacted a friend who was a producer at Mix FM. And I got onto Mix FM. I pitched to them to just do good news once a week, to come in and share good news stories. It was every Monday for about 20 minutes that I just I would prepare and come up with a couple of good news stories about South Africa and the world. And I …
Ruda: Why did you choose good news? Why was that your focus?
Brent: I think a couple of reasons. The neck nomination that turned into random acts of kindness … So that fits into the good news space. And South Africa needs it. South Africa desperately needs our mainstream media … blood cells … Isn’t that what they say?
Ruda: If it bleeds, it leads.
Brent: And the reality is the good news falls away. People forget that there’s good things happening in South Africa. They forget about the ubuntu and the good news and the really good news stories. So I thought if I could focus on that, it gives me a bit of a difference. So it’s a niche. I might stand out. People would notice. And also it will be delivering good news to South Africa, which is really what mattered to me. During my time at Mix FM, Gareth had just left 5FM. And he just started CliffCentral. For me that is a maverick in his time and he’s really got foresight into what the future is, so I decided with my little experience on Mix FM I would contact him and I would pitch him a good news show. A full hour of just bringing people good news. I sat down with him on a Thursday and he offered me the job on a Friday. And I started working the following Tuesday. So it was quite quick. CliffCentral, The Good Stuff, has been going for about two-and-a-half years now and we’re always in the top 10 of the good … Of the shows out of the 38 shows that are there. And I can still say that it’s not because of me. It’s got nothing to do with me. It’s because the country really needs good news and they enjoy it.
Ruda: It’s because of the content. And the experience and the experience of sitting in front of … of a microphone and communicating with people out there?
Brent: So I still sometimes go and listen to my first shows that I ever did, and I’m embarrassed. Because I didn’t have an idea what I was doing and I was simply just there with a passion.
Ruda: So what did you do wrong?
Brent: The questions I was asking during the interviews were ridiculous. I’ve subsequently learnt that as a radio host, or as talk show, it’s my job to make the person that I’m interviewing really comfortable. And for them to be in studio. To open up to me. And really for it to be conversational. And I think for the first year I had a list of 10 questions. I asked every single person exactly the same. Just tick the box. Did I do it? Is it right? How are you? Where do they find you? And I guess it’s all learning, right? After every show I will listen to my show and I will try be better. And two-and-a-half years down the line I still do it. I still try to be better. I still want to be the best in the field that I possibly can be.
Ruda: That is really brave to listen to yourself all the time!
Brent: I think you have to. I think you have to. I want to be better, and the only way to be better is to know where my weaknesses lie, and that’s the only way to do it. It’s to listen to your own voice, which is not great either. I don’t enjoy it!
Ruda: Brent, just one, a bit left-field question. It just feels … I didn’t know the whole history. But it just feels completely weird. If I had to ask you to hold a camera to film me while I’m doing something good. It just feels a bit “grillig”.
Brent: So it is and that might come off as a bit contrived and you’re like filming yourself doing a good deed and “look at that privileged oke handing out something …
Ruda: It’s not a random act of kindness if someone is set up to film it?
Brent: Correct but the way that I saw it in the way that I that I tried to portray to everybody is I wasn’t doing it for gratification. I was doing it to inspire others. And I was trying to use …
Ruda: And that happened.
Brent: I was trying to use the social media platform to really just inspire others to go out and do good. A lot of the world … Not just South Africa … People are inherently good and they want to do good. But they don’t have the platform to do it. And sometimes they just need that little push to remind them that it is this easy. It is that easy to do good. So last year on Mandela Day – totally left-field – last year on Mandela Day I got given cupcakes. A million cupcakes to give away. “Go and give them away to whoever you can.” And I stopped at an intersection where there was a homeless lady begging. And I tried to hand her the cupcake through the window, and the light turned green. And the woman behind me started hooting and she was going crazy, and I got out the car and I sort of like … “I’m just giving over food!” And she went: “I’m so sorry. I didn’t realise that you were doing something human.” And I gave her the cupcake and I got into my car and I drove away and it bothered me a little bit. Because I thought I was trying to do something good, and she didn’t realise that. But afterwards it was almost like she did. So I wrote a Facebook post about it. And I said this angry woman Audi. And the Facebook post travelled a little bit and people shared and liked and did whatever they did, and she responded to the Facebook post. So somehow … We’re all from Johannesburg and it was connected. And she apologised and she said: “I never knew that you were doing what you were doing. But you have inspired me now to continue helping this woman.” That she sees every day. SO I think that is it. People need a push to just be a little bit kinder and a reminder, maybe, that they can be.
Ruda: That it is actually easy.
Brent: It is easy.
Ruda: For some of us. I mean, as you say, there are such huge divisions in South Africa.
Brent: Totally. Totally. A lot of the myth around the homeless in South Africa and the beggars on the side of the road is that they want to be there, and that it’s easy to be there and that if they got given a job and they would leave the job to rather beg …
Ruda: And if you give them money they would rather drink it up anyway.
Brent: So here’s what I say to that. If you can go stand on the side of the road for seven days a week from 6am to 6pm and it’s easy, go for it. And if a homeless person is using my money to buy alcohol to get through the night to face the next day, go for it as well. Everybody is facing their own demons and they’re in this life on their journey. It’s up to us to help each other.
Ruda: Plans and dream, career wise?
Brent: Career wise I want to build the Good News platform. It’s become a passion project of mine and I’m lucky enough to have a business to be able to fund me. I don’t get paid for being on radio – I do it completely out of the passion of sharing good news and knowing that … If I can just inspire one person today. All I need is one person to respond or one person to go: “Hey, that’s a cool story!” And it makes me feel a bit better. A year ago, I realised that these stories needed to be shared a little bit more, so I was doing all the research for my shows, and I was finding so many good news stories in South Africa that nobody was publishing. So I started a Facebook page – ’cause social media … That’s where we live, and one of the first stories that got shared got 2.5 million reaches and it went out into the social media universe, absolutely phenomenal. So I decided to open up a website called GoodThingsGuy.com, I swear I only had one reader when I started because it was so new. And now I’m researching and sharing up to six or seven good news stories a day, mostly from South Africa, because I feel that South Africa really needs it, and I have a readership – last month we celebrated over 950 000 readers that had come to the website. So my idea and my hope and my dream is to build that. I’d love to be the good News24. I’d love to be that side, and that big and that great that people tune into it when they want to be informed, but informed of the good news happening in South Africa.
Ruda: And your personal life? You say in your description of yourself somewhere, “I am involved with another person”.
Brent: Involved with another person – I’m engaged. I have an incredible fiance, he is just absolutely phenomenal; we’ve been together for eight years. He supports me and in all my craziness, whenever I come up with these ideas like “I want to start a website” or “I want to go do this”. He just … He’s there. He’s always supporting me and being my biggest sort-of cheerleader.
Ruda: And what was the first think this is more than just a little fling?
Brent: It was our first date, actually. It was the first time that I ever met him and we went out on a date and I knew … Something inside you ticks. And I knew that he would be the one.
Ruda: And now it’s eight years later …
Brent: Eight years later and it still feels like day one. So that’s good news.
Ruda: And tell me about your home? Where do you live?
Brent: We live in Dainfern in the Northern Suburbs of Johannesburg. Very lucky with the house we found – it took us a long time, almost a year, of searching for houses …
Ruda: Why? What made the difference? What did you want? What were you looking for?
Brent: I think my buyer’s decision process has got 27 steps. So … Especially when it’s a big spend, it takes a lot to sort of go: “This is it! This is a commitment for the next 20 years!” Or whatever it is. And the house that we found … I think it just spoke to me. It was my sort of style, my space … It’s very open-planned, very earthy, and it really did speak to me. And again – he’s quite the clever one. Because I fell in love immediately, and the estate agent was there and I was like: “I love it! We’re going to buy it! It’s amazing!” And he was going: “Uhm, no. I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s great.”
Ruda: “The price is not quite right.”
Brent: “Ja, it’s not exactly what we want.” And I still pulled out the driveway – we were in separate cars and I phoned him and I said to him: “No, this cannot be! We are so good on all decisions, this cannot be!” And he went: “Brent, you have to play hardball to get the price down!” So we’re a good team and we found the perfect place.
Ruda: And is there one thing … What do you do first? Is there a picture you hang up? Is there a bookshelf you install?
Brent: So there’s …
Ruda: A guitar you take?
Brent: There’s something that’s travelled with me since varsity. In university I got a diary given to me … I can’t even remember. It must have been like 2004, and the diary is a Picasso-themed diary. So every couple of pages it had something of Picasso. Some sort of artwork. And I know nothing about art – I’m quite scary. I couldn’t tell you anything about art, but I kept some of those pictures … I then went and had … I took it to an art person, a printer. And they printed 16 different blocks for me, and that goes with me from wherever I live. It sort of travels with me – it’s a beautiful. It’s almost like a storytelling wall, now, because it’s these 16 canvasses of Picasso that all will travel with me.
Ruda: May you live there for a long time and be very happy.
Brent: Thank you.
Ruda: Thank you for the visit.
Brent: Thank you, it’s been incredible.
Ruda: Until next time.
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