We are all on the journey. The hero’s journey is for everyone, and we are the hero in our own story. Being on the journey is the most human thing we can do – humanity will cease to grow or evolve if we follow the status quo. We live in a world of social media, hyper-connectedness, and convenience, but we are becoming less human the further down the path we go. Stepping into our own journey and finding the guidance and lessons to grow as a person is our destiny.

Leadership is not a destination. Leadership is an odyssey. A voyage of discovery, marked by changes of fortune and circumstances, informed by successes and failures. Defined by how you behaved and who you have become. The Upside of Being Myself and Other Leadership Stories is a unique opportunity to catch a breath, step back, and take a long, hard, reflective look at who you are as a leader and where your odyssey will take you. Powered by experience, informed by the reality of operating in today’s harsh realities, and leveraging the insights gained from many leadership victories and defeats, each essay creates an opportunity for reflection, introspection and personal growth.

The Villager is essential reading for brand owners wishing to conquer new markets. When Feyi Olubodun, CEO of Insight Publicis Nigeria, one of West Africa’s leading creative agencies, witnessed one too many cases of brands failing in the African marketplace he began to ask himself questions: Why did brands, both global and local, so often fail to connect with the African consumer? What was it about the African market that brand owners were not seeing? He began to reflect on his own marketing experiences and out of this emerged the framework for The Villager.

The ancient Greeks trained in the nude in the gymnasium and also competed in the buff in the Olympic Games – they literally had skin in the game. The ancient Greek word for gymnasium – gumnasia – means to train naked. However, the ancient Greek gyms were not just for physical training but also had dedicated spaces for intellectual exercise, for philosophy, teaching and conversation. To train naked is to show up just as you are – no pretences, no masks, no BS. We train to compete, we practise in order to nail a presentation. We should also be training to become better human beings, to craft meaningful lives, do work that matters, and to thrive in chaos. Pierre du Plessis’s daily reflections, meditations and practices presented in this book are a call to train naked, to practise for the ultimate marathon, and to have skin in the game.

Turning a TV advert into a real business, the lessons learned. Many South Africans became familiar with the phrase, ‘Ooh Vuyo – he’s such a big big dreamer’ from the TV beer commercial that told a rags-to-riches story about an entrepreneur who starts a business selling boerewors rolls and grows it into a successful multinational business. Wondering whether it was a true tale, Miles Kubheka did some research. When he discovered that Vuyo was a fictitious character, he saw a gap in the market for developing an exciting business model.

Does your job make you feel worthless, miserable, depressed and anxious, sick to your stomach, suicidal, angry? When the authors, Brad Shorkend and Andy Golding, typed in the words ‘my job makes me’ on Google these are prompts they received because so many people had previously searched all of these that Google assumed they were going to as well. Consider how many millions of people need to have typed in these particular statements relating to their jobs for this to occur?