Julie Codrington, Cape Town (2026)

23/09/2026

Pink milkshake day 🩷

When we were growing up, my dad used to take us for milkshakes at the end of term.

I probably didn’t think much about it then. It was just something we did.

But when my own kids started school, I found myself doing the same thing.

When they were very small, they didn’t really understand dates or months or what “three weeks until the holidays” meant. But they understood pink milkshakes.

So pink milkshake day became our marker.

End of term.
Mum picks you up.
Pink milkshakes.
Holiday starts.

And now they know exactly what it means.

Regardless of what is happening at work (there are always more meetings to be had, more emails to be read, more things on the list), I really try to protect this afternoon. To be the one at the school gate, sit down with them and celebrate the end of another term before we rush into whatever comes next.

It’s funny how the things you remember from childhood aren’t necessarily the big things.

Sometimes they’re just the little rituals your parents repeated often enough that they became part of the rhythm of your life.

And now I’m repeating this one with mine.

Hopefully, years from now, pink milkshakes will still mean one thing:

We made it. 🤪😅 Holidays are here. 🩷

15/09/2026

Ask a founder how long it takes to get paid and you’ll usually get one number: “30 days, more or less.”

It’s almost never one number. And it’s almost never 30 days.

There are four separate stretches of time between spending money and getting it back, and each one is a place your cash can sit and do nothing:
A: Sales. How long from first conversation to signed order.
B: Make. How long stock, or people you’re already paying, sit waiting for work.
C: Deliver. How long from starting the job to finishing it.
D: Collect. How long from invoice to money in the bank.

Add them up and you get your cash conversion cycle: the real number of days you are funding your own customers.

For most South African businesses I look at, it’s somewhere between 60 and 120 days. Which means if you’re growing, you’re financing three to four months of your own trading out of your pocket, your overdraft, or your patience.

Here’s the part I like: you don’t have to fix all four. Take an hour this month, with the people who actually run each stage, and ask one question per section: where does the time go, and what would have to be true to take five days out of it?
Five days off each of four cycles is twenty days of cash. That’s usually bigger than anything a price increase would have done, and it costs you nothing.

Deposits. Progress billing. Invoicing the day the work is done, not month-end. Quoting faster. Holding less stock. None of it is clever. All of it is cash.

Founders….what’s your honest number, first conversation to cleared payment?

(Framework from Scaling Up by Verne Harnish, which I go back to more than most books on my shelf.)

12/09/2026

Basically the Springboks winning the World Cup… but in the flower world. 🇿🇦🌸

That’s probably the best way I can describe what Leon Kluge and the South African team achieved at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show this year.

Gold. And Best Exhibit in the Great Pavilion. 👏👏👏

And now a version of that incredible exhibit, Life After Fire, has come home to Stanford. Stanford in Bloom Leon Kluge

What makes it even more special is that it tells a story we know so well here in the Cape. The trauma so many of us have carried this year 😔🥹😭

Fire comes through. Everything is destroyed. Well at least it looks destroyed.

And then the fynbos starts again. And I saw it on a run this morning above the Stanford mountains…. The regrowth has begun.

New growth. Flowers that only appear after fire. Species we may not have seen flowering for years.

A little bit of hope after all that devastation.

And to take our indigenous landscape, tell that story on one of the biggest horticultural stages in the world, and win - is an extraordinary South African achievement.

Now we get to experience it here, surrounded by the landscape that inspired it.

Huge congratulations to Leon, Grootbos and the entire team behind it. 🇿🇦 Grootbos Foundation Grootbos Private Nature Reserve

If you’re anywhere near Stanford, go and see it.

It really is our floral World Cup trophy coming home. 🌿🏆

11/09/2026

Talent is rarely the problem. The ecosystem around it is.

I read an interesting piece in the Financial Times this week about Cape Town’s creative economy.

The argument was essentially this: we have extraordinary creative talent in South Africa. What we need more of are the systems, investment, education and platforms around that talent that allow it to grow.

It really resonated with me. Over the last few months, I’ve had the privilege of stepping into the art world through launching The Gallery at Avondale. The Gallery at Avondale

And the talent is extraordinary.

But talent alone doesn’t necessarily build a sustainable career. (This I can see first hand in both professional sport and the art industry).
Artists also need people who discover their work.
Galleries willing to back them.
Collectors who buy.
People who tell their stories.
Businesses that collaborate with them.
Mentors, communities and opportunities.

And actually, I think the same is true in business (and sport!).

We spend a lot of time celebrating exceptional founders and entrepreneurs as individuals.
But very few people build something meaningful completely on their own.
Behind most successful people is an ecosystem that helped them get there.

Perhaps one of the best things we can do for South African talent isn’t simply to keep saying how much of it we have. It’s to build better ecosystems around it.

And to ask ourselves: who are we backing, buying from, mentoring, introducing or creating an opportunity for?

https://www.ft.com/content/c8b0fa8c-714d-4563-8f3b-545ad56a5da5?utm_source=chatgpt.com

09/09/2026

“Winning matters. It just doesn’t guarantee anything.”

One of my favourite lines from our latest Achieve session.

We had Doug Bird join us to talk to the athletes about personal brand, sponsorship and what actually makes an athlete valuable to a brand.

And Doug has a pretty unique perspective on it.

He has sat on both sides of the table: first as an athlete himself, and later working at Red Bull, where he was involved in athlete sponsorship. Today he works in this space helping people think about brand and opportunity.

What I found interesting was how little of the conversation was actually about social media.

It wasn’t about how often you should post or how to beat an algorithm.

It was about value.

You can be incredibly talented.
You can train harder than everyone else.
You can win.

But a sponsor is still going to ask:

Why you?

➡️What do you stand for?
➡️What do people associate with your name?
➡️Can people trust you?
➡️What value can you create beyond your performance?

And sitting there, I couldn’t help thinking how applicable this is outside of sport too.

We talk about exactly the same thing in business.

Being technically brilliant isn’t always enough.

➡️The best accountant doesn’t automatically build the best accounting business.
➡️The best chef doesn’t automatically build the best restaurant.
➡️The best product doesn’t automatically become the market leader.

At some point you have to understand the value you create and make sure other people understand it too.

Doug showed the athletes a progression I really liked:

Attention → Familiarity → Trust → Influence → Opportunity

Performance might get you the attention.

But everything you build around it determines where that attention eventually takes you.

And perhaps that’s the bigger purpose of Achieve for me.

We’re not trying to teach young athletes how to become influencers.

We’re trying to give them the tools to build something around their talent that can outlast their sporting career.

Thanks Doug - such a valuable session. D O U G B I R D 🦅

07/09/2026

A strategy nobody believes in is just a document.

You can spend weeks building the perfect strategy.

Beautiful presentation.
Clear priorities.
Ambitious targets.
Everything neatly mapped out.

And then… nothing changes.

One of the biggest reasons we see strategies fail isn’t because the strategy itself is bad.

It’s because the people who actually have to make it happen don’t implement it, weren’t part of creating it or don’t buy into it.

This wall is from an strategy we hosted’s Appreciative Inquiry process: getting people across a business involved in understanding what’s already working, what they want the organisation to become, and what needs to change to get there.

It can look slightly chaotic 😅

But that’s partly the point.

Strategy shouldn’t only happen between a few executives around a boardroom table and then be announced to everyone else.

People support what they help create.

And when your team understands why you’re going somewhere, and can see some of their own thinking reflected in how you’re getting there, implementation becomes a very different conversation.

The best strategy isn’t the cleverest one in the room.

It’s the one you can actually get an organisation to execute.

06/09/2026

Quiet Sunday. Crazy week.

The house was still this afternoon, the kids were asleep, I had coffee in bed and the spring sun was coming through the window.

I finally opened our wealth spreadsheet.

I didn’t do it at all last month, and I’m already late this month, but here we are.

The first six questions took me about 15 minutes.

👉Update the assets.
👉Update the investments.
👉Check what we owe.
👉Look at the flows.
👉See what moved.
👉See what’s coming.

Done.

Then I got to question 7:

Is our money supporting the life we’re actually trying to build?

And that one took much longer… it always does.

Because for me, wealth isn’t just the number at the bottom of the spreadsheet. It’s “whole wealth” - health, wealth and happiness!!

It’s being physically healthy.

Having time to read in the sun.

A peaceful home.

Watching my children grow up and being there for the ordinary things they’ll hopefully remember. Like this soccer game.

A good marriage. Good friendships.

Art.

Experiences.

Helping people.

Flowers. Always flowers for me 🌸🩷

So I ended up writing far more about that than I did about the numbers.

And maybe that’s the point.

The spreadsheet matters.

But it’s there to support the life. To make sure I am living the life I want to with the resources we have. Making sure we planning and investing how we want to and make sure we are being intentional about our wealthy life. ✨

04/09/2026

YOUR CONDITION IS NOT YOUR VALUE.

On Saturday I started our ACHIEVE The Achieve Club personal branding workshop with a R10 note.

What is a R10 note worth?

R10. Duh!

Crumple it up. Still R10.

Step on it. Still R10.

Throw it in the rubbish amongst old nappies and b**r bottles. Still R10.

Even tear it in half. It is still a R10 note.

Its condition has changed.

Its value hasn’t.

And that was the point I wanted our young athletes to understand before we spoke a single word about personal branding.

Because life is going to change our condition too.

You might get dropped from the team.

You might not win the race you’ve trained all year for.

Someone might leave you.

You might not get the job or the promotion.

You might be rejected, embarrassed, hurt, knocked down or made to feel like you’re simply not good enough.

Those things can affect us enormously.

But they are conditions.

They are not our value.

And I think we’ve blurred those two things, particularly in a world where value can start to feel like something other people give us.

Selection.
Recognition.
Followers.
Likes.
Comments.
Job titles.
Money.

None of those determine your value.

Just like somebody decided that this little piece of paper represents R10, there is value in each of us that exists before anyone else acknowledges it.

The interesting question is what we choose to do with it.

How do I understand what is valuable about me?

How do I develop it?

How do I contribute it?

How do I unleash more of it into the world?

Then we can talk about personal branding.

Because your personal brand shouldn’t determine your value.

Your value should determine the personal brand you build.

01/09/2026

Spring might be my favourite day of the year. 🌸

Not because everything suddenly changes on the 1st of September.

The trees are still mostly bare.
The mornings are still cold.
Work is still busy.
Life is still life.

But then you notice one tiny pink flower on a tree that looked completely dead a few weeks ago.

And suddenly there it is.

Possibility.

More light. More outside. More flowers picked by little hands. More evenings that stretch a little longer. More energy to make things, build things, move our bodies, have a glass of w**e outside and actually notice where we are.

I think that’s why I love Spring Day so much.

It feels like permission to begin again. New month, new season, new energy!

Not with a massive reinvention or another impossible list of goals.

Just to wake up a little.

To notice what’s growing.

And to make a little more room for the things that make life feel full.

Happy Spring 🥳

22/07/2026

Wednesday Evening Musing 💭

This morning, before the school run chaos, the meetings, the noise, I found myself reading Oh, The Places You’ll Go! with my babies.

I’ve read this book before, but today, for some reason a lot of this resonated with me. The one particular page said:

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.”

It’s such a simple line.

But it’s also a powerful reminder.

We’re halfway through the year.

Some of us are ahead of where we hoped to be.

Some of us are behind.

Some are celebrating big wins.

Others are quietly carrying disappointments that no one else sees.

Wherever you find yourself today, remember this:

The rest of the year hasn’t been written yet.

👉You can choose a different direction.
👉You can start the project.
👉You can repair the relationship.
👉You can look after your health.
👉You can ask for help.
👉You can change your mind.
👉You can begin again.

We spend so much time thinking our circumstances determine our future.

More often than not, it’s our 👏decisions👏 that do.

So, if the first half of the year hasn’t gone quite as planned…

Don’t dwell on the chapters already written.

Focus on the pages that are still blank.

👏Your 👏mountain👏 is 👏still 👏waiting.👏

Happy Wednesday. ✨

Julie Codrington

23/09/2026

15/09/2026

12/09/2026

11/09/2026

09/09/2026

07/09/2026

06/09/2026

04/09/2026

01/09/2026

22/07/2026

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