You may remember me mentioning Arno Laubscher, Pete Immelman's protégé who'd been running quality control and developing new patterns at Fishy Pete's. He was an extremely capable fly fisherman and tier, but after Clinton bought into the company, the friction became obvious. Arno couldn't stand Clinton, and the feeling was mutual.
Around the time Treacle invested, I discovered Arno was quietly setting up his own operation and planning to poach half my staff. I wasn't exactly impressed and fired him on the spot.
His replacement was Steve Barrow, an Englishman and former RAF man living near Lydenburg. Steve was everything Arno wasn't—technically brilliant, web-savvy, and completely focused on the job. He took over managing the fly-tiers and did an incredible job upgrading our quality control.
For the American launch, we settled on three distinct clubs: Western, Saltwater, and Eastern—each tailored to different regional fishing styles. The plan was ambitious: a massive print media campaign in magazines like Southern Living, driving people to our website to buy Fly of the Month Club subscriptions as gifts. This had worked brilliantly in South Africa, where wives and children bought subscriptions for the fly fishermen in their lives. It was the perfect gift—personal, thoughtful, and recurring.
Bill Rogers flew out from America to tour our operation. We organized a professional photo shoot at Zoo Lake in Johannesburg, featuring five-year-old Angie handing a subscription package to this typical middle-aged American businessman. It was going to be our full-page Southern Living ad—wholesome, aspirational, irresistible.
John Cartwright tackled the technical challenge of credit card processing. Because of exchange rate fluctuations, he couldn't get transactions to process at exactly $75. Instead, they came through slightly under—$74.12 or thereabouts. I worried this discrepancy would irritate customers, but as long as we charged less than advertised, we figured people wouldn't complain.
The logistics were staggering. Orders would be processed in Lydenburg, packed into custom-molded plastic fly boxes sized perfectly for U.S. mail, sealed with Fishy Pete's stickers, and bulk-shipped to America already franked. We had an American franking machine that could load credits over the internet—cutting-edge stuff for 2000.
Treacle wanted their return fast. They pushed for an April 2001 launch date. I argued it was too early—I needed more time to scale up production and train new tiers—but I no longer had majority voting rights. April it would be. Mistake number one.
Early 2001 brought another trip to America: Clinton, Rudolph, and me heading to what Bill Rogers had booked as a consumer show in Las Vegas. We arrived to discover it was actually a trade show—completely wrong for our direct-to-consumer model. I was furious. Rudolph and I shared a hotel room, and I spent the evenings telling him Bill was incompetent, that we'd wasted thousands flying out for the wrong audience.
The final straw came when Bill got the directions to a show completely wrong, leading us down the Strip in the opposite direction from where we needed to be. Rudolph lost his temper, stormed back to the hotel, and the next day we called a meeting in Bill's room and Rudolf fired him. Bill Rodgers was livid, but it had to happen.
I'd already lined up a replacement: my niece Natasha, who was living in Atlanta with her American fiancé, Stephen Boyd. She was sharp, reliable, and would work for a fraction of Bill's $8,000 monthly salary. At least I'd won that battle.
But the launch date stood firm: April 2001, ready or not.
On paper, I'd achieved everything I'd dreamed of—international business, venture capital funding, a revolutionary product about to launch in the world's biggest market. Yet that familiar hollow feeling gnawed at me constantly.
I remember the day I left for that final pre-launch trip. We had lunch together—my mum, Terry, and the three kids—and I knew I'd be gone for two weeks. Terry was spending more time partying with Kim and Dave while I buried myself in the business. Given her track record, that didn't exactly fill me with confidence about what might happen while I was away.
On the plane to America, I found myself asking Rudolph, "Do you ever think about life philosophically? Any spiritual practices or beliefs?" He looked at me like I'd suggested we join a commune. Pure capitalist, zero interest in anything beyond the next deal.
But there it was—that need for something deeper than material success. I'd started reading books like Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav, searching for meaning beyond the material. The anxiety and depression that was always there just under the surface seemed to be immune to material success.