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Can AI Open New Jobs in Africa? | Gerard Holland of Talent Match Africa | The Brainiac Blueprint

Writer: Kyle Lambert
Kyle Lambert
Oct 15
33 min read

Today on The Brainiac Blueprint Podcast by Left Brain AI, we sit down with Gerard Holland, Founder of Talent Match Africa, an outsourcing business with teams in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, Nairobi and Addis Ababa serving clients in the USA, Australia, Canada, the UK and beyond.


Gerard shares how a chance meeting with Nelson Mandela's grandson led him to take his business into Africa, why the talent he met there blew him away, and why he jokingly says he competes against the Philippines every day.


He also explains how Talent Match Africa builds an AI-first culture, why automating your own job makes you more valuable, not less, and why curiosity matters more than any training program. Plus, the new "Claude expert" roles clients are hiring for, a marketing manager who delivered a year-long idea in nine days, and how a lifelong dog person became a cat person.


Full transcript below.


🎧 Watch or listen to The Brainiac Blueprint Podcast:




⏱ In this episode, we discuss:


00:00 - Intro


00:38 - Welcome Gerard Holland


01:00 - Who is Gerard Holland and Talent Match Africa


02:35 - The chance meeting with Nelson Mandela's grandson


03:26 - 21 days and 56 meetings on the first trip


04:46 - Africa is a continent, not a country


05:52 - Growing carefully and redrawing the map of Africa


06:36 - "I think AI is..." Gerard finishes the prompt


07:57 - What Talent Match Africa does and where AI fits in


09:26 - AI, abundance and job displacement


10:25 - Why automating your own job makes you more valuable


11:52 - Culture and attitude over training programs


13:12 - Learning on the go by asking the AI itself


15:22 - Working across cultures, from New York speed to sport


18:17 - What clients are asking for now


19:37 - Skip the $200,000 consultant, embed an AI-savvy hire


22:33 - Start with one or two projects


23:53 - Get 1% more efficient every week


24:13 - How do you measure AI fluency?


25:37 - A year-long idea delivered in nine days


27:02 - Gerard's view of Africa before and after


29:08 - The talent that changed his mind


30:09 - Expansion plans and Nigeria


31:11 - The roles they fill


31:47 - The challenges of building in Africa


33:31 - The natural advantage of African talent


34:36 - Rapid fire: automation, Rwanda, Glastonbury and cats


38:53 - Open forum: think of Africa for your next hire


39:33 - Where to find Gerard and Talent Match Africa


🔗 Gerard Holland



🔗 Talent Match Africa



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Episode Full Transcript:


Gerard: [AI] is the most exceptional, exciting, greatest technology that has ever been produced.


Kyle: Welcome back to another episode of the Brainiac Blueprint, where we discuss the intersection of AI and how it impacts business and the world around us with our esteemed guests. I am your host, Kyle Lambert, founder of Left Brain AI and Action Hero Marketing.


In today's episode, we discuss if AI can open new employment and staffing opportunities in Africa. With that being said, today's Brainiac is Gerard Holland. Welcome to the show, Gerard.


Gerard: Thanks for having me, Kyle. Pleasure to be here and looking forward to the conversation.


Kyle: Yeah, absolutely. I know we were just syncing and there's some interesting perspectives and things happening in Africa. So I'm looking forward to diving in. But before we do, you're with Talent Match Africa. That's talentmatchafrica.com. Please tell a little everybody about you, your role, and who Talent Match Africa is.


Gerard: Yeah, so I'm the founder of Talent Match Africa and I was introduced to the African continent in 2020 through Nelson Mandela's grandson, where I had a chance meeting and he had asked me why my business wasn't in Africa.


At that stage my business was only in Australia, the UK and Canada. And Africa wasn't not on my list for expansion. But that one question that did trigger something inside me, it led to running some pilots and that led to me flying into Ethiopia.


Then to Rwanda, followed by Kenya, and then down to South Africa. And yeah, once I spent some time in Africa, I was just I was all in. I was blown away by the quality of the talent, the infrastructure that was happening.


And we were talking just before the call, just about the energy and prosperity and the future that Africa has in front of us. You know, it's a continent that is absolutely on the rise. And if you could imagine getting into India thirty years ago and you know, what's happened in the last thirty years, Africa's is going on this same journey.


So it's very exciting and the energy you get from being there. And so on the back of that I launched Talent Match Africa. And now we have people working out of our offices in Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, Nairobi and Addis Ababa servicing clients as an outsourced model for businesses in the USA, Australia, Canada, the UK, France, China, Dubai, so all over the world.


And I jokingly say that I compete against the Philippines every day and I convince businesses to look to Africa instead of the traditional markets when they're looking at their global resourcing.


Kyle: Very cool. Very cool. I don't think I knew the whole Nelson Mandela's grandson part. That's seemingly I obviously I don't know him, I know his grandfather, but there has to be some kind of you know, inspiration from meeting a person like that, you know, of that nature, if you will, or expertise, whatever you want to call it. And what was that conversation like?


Gerard: Yeah, there's a bit of an aura around it, I suppose. Yeah, but I mean, he inspired me to take my business to Africa. So probably don't you probably don't get much better than that. You know, a few simple targeted questions and you know, we and we stayed in touch after that.


So it wasn't just a one off meeting, but it definitely it's definitely what led me to take my business into Africa, which, you know, lots of people thought I was crazy and that I'd lost the plot. But I sort of had that entrepreneurial instinct that it was the best thing for the business.


Kyle: Fair enough. Did he or other organizations kind of support you in that discovery? You know, when you were going to like to make that decision or what city or what country or anything like that? Or did you go in just completely blind to your own research and was like, Okay, let's check out these couple of places?


Gerard: No, that's a really good question. And it was a big part of it. Our first trip there was twenty one days and we had fifty six meetings now. All those meetings were prearranged. So yeah, and without having that amount of intensity and we met with ministers, vice chancellors, heads of NGOs, you know, went out to the universities.


We we'd sort of had this jam packed schedule. And if you're going to go I think if you're going to go into any market and Africa's no different, you wanna have some partners to do it with. And so yeah, we were able to leverage off those relationships to help us do that.


Kyle: It's interesting. You talking about this just made me kind of realize we're talking and this might be a dumb statement, but we're talking about penetrating a continent. You know, usually it's like a country or a city or like a market or something like that, but we're talking about a huge collection of countries.


So I I'm sure it was interesting hearing you know, what these different places have to offer and these different positions, how they think about things. You talk about a minister versus probably a CEO or whatever it may be, I'm sure you got all kinds of angles and selling points and things like that. It was probably overwhelming, but probably pretty enlightening as well. Yeah.


Gerard: Look, I th you do raise something that is important that Africa is a continent, so it's like talking about Europe. Yeah, there's fifty six countries in Africa. And so you've got it they are all very, very different. No dissimilar that France is different to Estonia.


And so we're in East Africa and South Africa. That's where we're operating now. And I've just come from Nairobi where I was speaking at a conference there and there was a lot of people from Ghana, Algeria, other places in West Africa and I always get the question, particularly from the Nigerians, when are you coming to Nigeria?


When are you setting up there? And the question is I'd love to, but we did get to a point early in Talent Match Africa where being in three countries was way too much. Like it's just the as you're biting off more than you can choose.


So yeah, I do talk about Africa as a continent, but it is really important to think about them as very separate countries. You know, some countries speak French, some speak English, some you know, have native languages.


So like it's not even all on the same language and each are at different stages of their development. So i it is, yeah, very important to separate it.


Kyle: And I can understand what you're saying about, you know, more or less not growing too fast. I know that they're even talking about like reshaping the map of Africa to show how large it is. So there's so much you know, area and isn't Nigeria top five or top ten in population or something like that?


Gerard: Yeah, it's over two hundred million people. And they're not reshaping the map, they're actually going to build the map the way it's actually accurate, which Right. Yes. And when you look at it, it's there's like five Australians or something fit inside the continent of Africa if you actually did it proper land size.


It's I mean you can tell who probably drew the maps a couple of thousand years ago, right? That there's no ulterior motives there, was there?


Kyle: Yeah. Yeah, right. That's so interesting. Well, I wanna dive in a little bit more, but before we do, as you know, I want everybody to kind of set the stage with how they think about AI. So if you could please finish the prompt, I think AI is.


Gerard: Is the most exceptional, exciting, greatest technology that has ever been produced. I mean at all day every day. I'm a big user of Claude, but I've just got introduced to Grokbot today. So this weekend I'll spend in Grokbot.


It becomes addictive, obsessive. Yep. The dopamine hits are like never ending, the self gratification. It's just like it I don't know. I'm not the only one that bugs out on it because once you really see that what's actually I don't know what's possible.


That's probably the problem, is it? None of us know what's actually possible. Yeah. But you realise that it's almost endless what's possible.


Kyle: I can see the passion on your face. You know, just kind of jumping in there. And I think I told you when we first connected, you know, I am not a coder, but I've been using Claude Code and kind of building some apps and some automations, and it makes me feel invincible.


It's like, you know, like I've never done this stuff, and now I'm just like typing and having a conversation, and boom, I have this whole app. So I I'm right there with you. Like it's exciting and the possibil possibilities feel endless of


Gerard: If you're happy to invest the time, you can become an expert in anything. Yeah. You just need the determination, the commitment, the curiosity. You can master anything.


Kyle: So let's expand on that. I know that you've been working on mastering AI and you're also, you know, trying to find people in Africa that can either master or support other industries or other organizations. So tell us a little bit more about you know what it is that you guys are working on, what exactly Talent Match Africa does and how AI is fitting into that mix.


Gerard: Yeah, so we've been placing people with clients that come from a finance and accounting background, software developers, digital marketers, a lot of marketing roles, sales support, customer service, media buyers, legal support, a whole range of roles.


And we've been doing that for the last four or five years. And then once I realized the let's call it the power of AI and could sort of start to visualize what it was going to do to the world and what it was going to do in employment, I mean There's been revolution in revolutions before, but this industrial revolution changes knowledge and intelligence.


It you know, it challenges the white collar worker, it changes the people that are driving businesses in all sorts of ways, you know, behind a computer. And so it's gonna fundamentally change the way we work and the jobs that people do.


So given my business is in staffing effectively, providing resources to businesses, like I'm sitting right in the middle of it. And so about a year ago could sort of see a couple of different pathways and one pathway being really, really bad and I don't know if you remember when Elon was going on about abundance and we're all gonna live in abundance, no one has to go to work, we're all just gonna have so much abundance.


Yeah. And he's thinking, well, what how is that gonna work? Like Yeah. And if we get to that point it's gonna be Armageddon, like it there's gotta be civil wars everywhere and like that just doesn't make any sense. But if you're peel back a bit what he was saying is that you know have robots doing all the work.


And so how people earn an income, he was I don't know whether he thinks people don't need an income, but in and in a way if you think about if even if we got to 10% of what he was talking about, then, you know, you'd potentially have a lot of job displacement.


But on the flip side, you have people that are doing different things. And that's what's playing out now is that the roles that people do inside businesses is shifting quickly. And so we identified that, I'd say, relatively pretty early and started really investing in the training of our Team members in Africa that they're AI native, that they're AI first, that they, you know, think AI in everything that they do.


And I mean, my methodology around this is that if you're like if you've got someone in Johannesburg that's working for you, Kyle, and you know, maybe they're a marketer, you know, working alongside you or in your business.


And if that person is, you know, calls you up one day, said, Kyle, we jump on a call, I've got something to show you. Oh, yeah, cool. Jump on a call and they say, Look, I've done this and I've just saved twenty hours per week in what I do.


And I'd say to guys, Kyle is not going to turn around and say, Oh, cool, we don't need you anymore. Awesome. See ya. Kyle's gonna be like, Oh my god, I love you. How do we get you doing more of this? Like you are securing a job forever if you do that.


But the opposite is also true. If Kyle spent the weekend playing around with Claude or Grokbot or whatever it is, and then starts playing in, you know, the role of that person and then over the weekend you work out you could actually save twenty hours of their job per week.


That's a really dangerous place to be because then you would sit there and saying, hang on, do I need this person anymore? You know, they're not doing all this sort of work. So like both are very powerful, one hugely negative and one hugely positive.


And so I'm forever reinforcing and emphasizing that into all our staff that you've got to be the ones that's pushing it up to your clients and to your managers. Because if you're not, the risk is that they're doing it the other way around and you're at a hundred percent not in danger of losing your job if you automate your own job.


If you automate your own job, people are gonna love you and they're gonna put you onto other things.


Kyle: That's so interesting. It's important to think about the decision maker, right? You know, and making sure that you're not replacing yourself in some ways. What does like the training specifically look like? Are you guys jumping into AI concepts and you know, proper prompting?


Are you breaking down different tools? Are you even teaching them to have that conversation that you just mentioned? Like to say, like, hey, like, Look what I did, now I could do more type of stuff. What does that all look like?


Gerard: So the biggest part of this now is culture and attitude. So when you're not when I refer to culture, it's having an environment where people feel empowered and have confidence to try things. I talk about sharpening the axe all the time.


Like you need to spend an hour a day to sharpen the axe. And, you know, whatever functions you're doing, stop, work out how you can automate that part, but you've got to find the time to do that. And then you've got to be an environment where you feel empowered to do that and you have the confidence to do that and you can Talk to other colleagues and bounce things around.


And then on the training part of it is it actually it becomes a smaller part. We build our own training programs. We've used HeyGen to do AI avatars. There's one of me that my COO may be pretty dorky and on the like anyway, it's pretty funny.


But just made it funny, you know, and use the AI tools to do that. So but the beautiful thing about this technology is that if you don't know someone something, you ask it. So if you're doing something in Claude and you know, you said you've played around with Claude Code, you just sit there and you say, I don't know how to connect versal.


Like I don't even know what it is. How do I do that? And Claude tells you how to do it. You can send screenshots to it and it walks you through. It said, I I'm stopped here. How do I do it? And I think that fundamentally changes the way you learn because you don't have to go and enroll in a course that you go and do for twelve weeks, then you come back and apply it.


You learn on the go by asking the exact technology that you're using. We've never ever had that before, like ever. So that's why I think that having a culture and having people that are curious is far more important than the actual training you give them.


The training's important 'cause it sets people on the right pathway. But then if you have an environment where people are just learning all the time and they're around other people that are doing the same thing, that's what really sets people apart.


So I'm very, very big on creating a culture of being AI first and not so much about running training programs.


Kyle: So first off, I'm now picturing your avatar just like saying all kinds of like corny Australia like typical Australian things, you know what I'm saying? Like a strip on the bobby or something like that. But I love the way that you're approaching that and thinking about that.


I mean, my own personal journey aligns with that perfectly. I like I remember the light bulb going off and being like, I don't know how to use this. Let me ask it. And it told me. And then like for every task that I give Claude, I say, what do you need to be successful in this task?


And it asks me questions about and the output. It sure it takes a little bit longer, right? But if you're training a human employee, you have to go through that process, right? So, you know, it's worth it in the long run to ask it and to have that conversation.


And, you know, whether it's a ten minute conversation or a forty five minute conversation because it's a super detailed, you're just gonna get better results.


Gerard: Yeah, I mean you've got a second brain that's sitting right next to you that is a thousand times smarter than you. So wouldn't look isn't that stupid to not utilise your second brain that's way smarter than you?


Kyle: Exactly. Exactly. That's what it's there for. It's very interesting. I like the point that you made about culture as well. I'm curious, are you speaking to them about maybe even like American culture or French culture or whoever it is that they might be working with?


Because, you know, Americans work differently than other parts of the world. So I'm curious if there's like again, like kind of like some training on how to deal with the person that you're working with in a sense.


Gerard: Yeah, so there's probably two elements to culture there. One is around a culture of just embracing AI technologies and you know, using it every day and challenge everyone challenging themselves to be able to be more efficient, be more productive and that's like a just part of the DNA of everyone that works inside Talent Match Africa.


And then the second one is more on that personal side, you know, of culture where Australians are different to Americans who are different to clients in China. I'll use New Yorkers as an example. So if you ever meet a New Yorker, they'll tell you how fast they go, right?


So you know you gotta go at New York speed. Like, okay, what is New York speed? Anyway, that but you know, New Yorkers operate at a certain level. So if you've got someone that's you know living in Nairobi that's joining a business that's based out of New York, they're gonna be expected to move pretty fast, right?


So yeah, you know, if they someone wants something now, they really actually want it yesterday. So we do a lot of work around what that expectation management is like. And then look, sport I find is such a great tool around building relationships and fitting in from a cultural aspect.


You know, Americans love their NFL and, you know, basketball and NHL and whatever it might be. And you know, Australians love their cricket and Aussie rules football and the World Cup's on and there's always, you know, ways to be able to connect with people.


And I mention that because people want to work with people who they like and who they get along with, no matter where they live in the world. So You know, you're in if you're in New Jersey and you know you you've got colleagues in Philadelphia, you know, you you're only meeting them online.


You when you jump on a call with them, you want to enjoy the call, you want to have a smile, you wanna have a laugh, and you know, you wanna enjoy work. And the same goes when our people in Kenya, South Africa and Ethiopia that having the outgoing personalities and, you know, putting the effort in to get to know people and having a smile and a muck around and I had we got one client in Australia, an ed tech company and I spoke to the CEO a few months ago and he Oh Gerard, look Raleigh and Michael, they give me shit all the time.


And I'm like, Man, I'm so sorry. Like I get one of our managers to talk to them and you know, like I'm really it's he said, No, no, no. He goes, I love it. It's the best. And I think like just, you know, encouraging our guys to let their personalities come out because first and foremost, you wanna work with people who you like above all else.


Kyle: I love that. I love that. I am a big sports guy myself and I've always said that it as long as someone can at least like talk about one sport, doesn't matter what it is, I'll be able to connect with you in some way. So that yeah that's so true.


So okay, I'm curious. So I want to I wanna dive in a little bit more into what the actual kind of like day to day and the partnerships look like. So what are you know clients asking for when they approach you guys? Like what's it like an actual common kind of task or role? Yeah.


Gerard: Yeah, it's sh it's shifting a lot because you know client so say your client wants an accountant, then they now want an accountant that's an expert using Claude and because Claude you well Claude inside Excel is just awesome, right?


And it's and it is slowly shifting a bit. I mean it's still the case with someone, you know, a client will say, I want someone to do AI like, okay, what do you want to do? Like, you want to do AI? And like, Yeah, but what?


Look, look Gerard, I've got to sort of tell you a secret. I don't know what, I just know I've got to do AI. Okay. So nothing's changed in business where you've still gotta have a problem to solve first and then work out how you're gonna solve it.


Now whether AI is part of that solution or not, work that out along the journey. But you know, what processes or problems or revenue are you trying to drive and then work out the best way to do it? But having AI capable people and I think curiosity is probably not the best word around it now.


Like you don't need to be an expert in claw, but if you're curious And you know, you want to spend your weekends playing with it, it doesn't take long to know what, you know, the capabilities are. And so that becomes a really important element of servicing clients.


I had a call this morning with a large client in Australia in the aviation industry and it sit there, their CEO and they're not using a lot of AI and so they all got a quote from a consultant for two hundred thousand dollars to, you know, come in and, you know, show them how they could use AI.


And then that another one of our of my clients said, stop and before you do that, go and have a chat to Gerard at Talent Match Africa. He might be able to know, look at their guys. And I see it a lot where the whole consultancy, I think, service offering is getting challenged a bit because instead of paying $200,000 to get a PowerPoint presentation and a you know a PDF deck sent you about, you know, what you might do, you could have someone, this is what we do be injected into your business that is really AI savvy, that is smart, that it has good business acumen for, you know, I don't know, three, four thousand dollars a month that can actually work with you and work on certain projects.


And this CEO I spoke to this morning, he's got about five or six projects already that and these are some of them very simple things. But he's like, I'm not an expert in AI. I just know we can use AI and we could automate that process.


And it's going to save us X amount of hours per week. Are we going to We're better we will pick up more client work from it. And so we're placing someone in their business that'll end up sitting across different divisions of the business that are going to be sort of like the Claude they're going to use they're using Claude, the Claude expert to help drive some of these efficiencies and productivity.


Now that's a role that didn't exist nine, ten months ago. But I think it's a much more effective way to spend your money because if it's not working or you run out of products after three, four months, you just turn it off.


As opposed to spending two hundred thousand dollars with consultants straight up for them to tow you the time on your watch and then you've got to go and implement it. Well, the thing with AI is that as you get into it, you iterate very quickly anyway.


You're learning more things, you discover something is possible you didn't even think of before. So it's not a waterfall engagement. It's a let's get in there and let's see what we can do and let's iterate as we go. It makes more sense to have someone completely embedded in your business, much more affordable because, you know, located in Africa, still smart people, but you can then go on to project or look at per division.


And then you start to build a culture with other people inside the organization that everyone else can start using these tools to do the same thing.


Kyle: Couldn't agree more. I have that same exact conversation a lot from a marketing standpoint. You know, some of my clients will, you know, come to me asking about marketing and strategy. And it's like, you know, we can either spend all this time and energy and put together this, you know, amazing plan, or it's like, let's just develop an ICP, get some messaging out there and see how they react.


Like let's just start doing, right? You and figuring things out. So it makes perfect sense to think about that from an AI standpoint. It's like, yeah. I can tell you implement Claude, connect all these tools, have this prompt library, like whatever it may be, or it's like, Hey, what's the first time consuming task that you want off your plate? Yeah. Jump into that, you know? So


Gerard: Exactly what I said to this CEO this morning. He said, what are the two or three projects that are like in your head already? And he talked them through. I said, Just start with he Oh, we'll start with the finance division.


Well, you don't need to start with the finance division. Just pick one or two things, go and do them first. And then once you've got the case studies, you'll start to build out more and more of them and it's all changing fast too, right?


Like I mentioned Grokbot before. Like I hadn't played the Grokbot yet, but now like people are screaming about how good it is for building agents. It's much better than some of the other tools that people have been using up until now.


But in three months' time there'll be something else that's become even better. Because it's moving so quickly, you go and write a big PowerPoint presentation, then by the time you present it to the executive team, it it's out of date.


Kyle: What yeah, it's so hard. I think that's part of the problem to it, you know, is people are, you know, I need to be the best or I need to have everything or like, you know, kind of the all at once instant gratification type of thing.


But it's also like you need to reset your thinking that if you get twenty percent of your time back, that's a win. It doesn't need to be one hundred percent. You know what I'm saying? Like Getting ten percent like that's still twenty percent more output that you're able to get to grow your business and things that so it's I think there's a education needed about the mindset and the approach as well.


Gerard: Yeah. I tell my team to try and find one percent a week. Just become one percent more efficient every week. Now if you do that for fifty two weeks of the year, that's half your job. Like exactly. So it it's actually really good progress.


Kyle: So I I'm curious. I I'm sure you're not specifically, you know, tracking one percent growth, but I know there is a concept of you know AI fluency and success. I is there some measurement that you have there that says, you know, this person is ready to take on this task or take on this department or this organization? I'm curious as to what that looks like.


Gerard: No, like short answer is no. Like it is hard to measure. I think I mentioned curiosity before, like attitude is like just such an important part of it. Like there's still some people that don't want to use AI, believe it or not.


They're like they just refuse to. I think at Jensen from Nvidia was I think at the AI at the all in conference was mentioned that people that don't just ignore this technology will be the ones that don't have jobs in even as short as two years' time.


Like you're just gonna get weed and I know CEOs that I speak to that They even know that they're gonna lose twenty percent of their workforce by people just being against it and not ready to adapt. And so I think that's a key indicator is you know, that's why I ask people, what AI are you using, which tools, and how are you using it?


You've got give me examples of it. And I think that's when I know that sort of someone has maybe sort of crossed the line a bit, is they can give you a really good case study of how, you know, it's done X amount of gains, whatever it might could be time saving, it could be that.


Generating revenue. It could be any number of things. They haven't just chatted with ChatGPT. They've actually gone and used some of these technologies and they've had a material impact from it. There's one of our clients that is based in Brisbane.


We placed a marketing manager with them and within three weeks of her being there, I spoke to the CEO and he said, what she gave me was the best piece of work I've ever been given in my life. Now this is a 56 year old you know executive and I thought, mate, you don't need to exaggerate to me.


It's fine. Like you can just Tell me the truth. He goes, No, I'm serious. Like he said, I had a meeting with her and I said, one day I would like to have this. Just off the cuff comment, you know, anything in a year's time.


He said, Nine days later, she put time in his diary and presented, you know, this web page that she'd use Claude Code to go and build it all. But and I won't go into the details of it. But he said, it just blew my mind what she I thought was a year away for us being able to do that.


And so like it's those stories that you're like, that is an AI competent first. Person that can take an idea that their CEO's got and within two weeks come back with a ready made product that they're able to deliver to them that just blows their socks off.


Kyle: I can't imagine the raise or promotion that person got taking a three hundred and sixty five day task on to nine. That's a big win.


Gerard: And they and this is a client that it always hired in Australia. I mean, wages in Australia are expensive. They've got someone in Johannesburg which, to be honest, would be seventy percent cheaper than hiring in Australia.


And it's like not only are we saving out on in an in our PL and our businesses are under pressure, like there's lot of businesses struggling to be profitable, but I'm getting like this output that is like nothing I've seen before.


Kyle: So interesting. That's very cool. I want to jump into just to Africa specifically for a second here. You seem like a pretty worldly guy. I know you've traveled around a bunch. Did you have experience in Africa prior to you know, kind of going there and having that initial conversation, or was that just luck and happenstance? Or I I'm curious as to, you know, what your knowledge was beforehand. Very


Gerard: Very little. I my vision of Africa before eventually jumping on a plane and say, right, this if we're gonna be serious about this, we've got to jump on a plane and start it in Ethiopia. But my vision of Africa was World Vision ads.


Like literally. I grew up as a kid seeing World Vision ads on every single week. And now World Vision's business model is based around getting donations. So you don't get donations by showing the beautiful harbour of Cape Town. Donations by showing


Kyle: Yeah.


Gerard: The worst parts of the continent. And so that's the vision that's not I mean it's not my fault. That's just what I've been putting my mind. So yeah, that's consciously or consciously, that's what I was thinking when I jumped on a plane.


And then I remember being in a car in Addis, which is the capital of Ethiopia, and just looking out the window at all the sky risers, buildings that were being bit and I just couldn't believe the infrastructure that was happening.


And yeah, my perspective completely changed and It's funny, when I speak to a potential new client, anyone that's been to Africa before, it's like a really easy sell. Cause I don't have to convince them of Africa. They're like, Yeah, but I've met the people, I've seen what's happening, ph you don't have to convince me of that.


But people have never been there before. It's like they're sitting there minding, do they have the internet? Like they got they speak English. They got like no one wants to say it, but they're all thinking in the back of their head.


It's not their fault, but that's just the perception that's been built over the decades. But it's very, very different once you spend time there.


Kyle: Perfect sense. I mean I I'm probably more aligned with the pre trip version of you than the post because I've never been there. You know, I see the, you know, quarter a day feeds a kid for a week type of you know, ads, you know, like that type of stuff. So yeah, I totally get that. I would love it. I would love it.


Gerard: Let's get you on a plane next year.


Kyle: You mentioned, you know, just the infrastructure and kind of the landscape. W was there anything else that just like really shocked you? You know, upon like really getting in there and talking to people and seeing the culture?


Gerard: Yeah, like the twenty one to thirty year olds that I met are just blown away by the quality of the talent. Beautiful English, tech savvy, educated, absolutely motivated to work and you know, the enthusiasm to work. I that was what it was that actually triggered me to really start the business in Africa because I'm like, the talent is here.


It's like the world's best kept secret. Everyone else goes to the Philippines and India for global resourcing, and yet you've got this huge talent pool here that no one knows about. So That was actually the trigger to saying, Let's we're getting in early. That we're getting into India thirty years ago, right now.


Kyle: That's so cool. Remind me, was it five countries that you're in right now?


Gerard: Three. At Ethiopia, Kenya and South Africa.


Kyle: Interesting. Okay. Are there I know you said you were going a little too fast. Are there plans for expansion? Are you guys just kinda sitting tight and letting the dust settle for a little bit? What's the kind of ongoing plan here?


Gerard: Yeah, I think maybe 2028 we would look at look Nigeria's a really interesting market that I'd love to go and explore, whether we go in or not. I've got lots of I know lots of people that would love to partner with us to go into Nigeria.


I think going into any other country, having a partner model is the way to do it. There's huge talent pool in India, great English, a lot of tech people. Sorry, in not in India, in Nigeria. And you know, Nigeria has a bad rep too, right?


Because everyone thinks of the prince that's gonna Still two million dollars or whatever the sc everyone thinks all the scamming comes from Nigeria. But an amazing talent pool. I met a lot of just really incredible Nigerians.


And they've you know great infrastructure. Lagos is a huge city. So I think at some point we'll go and explore that market.


Kyle: Cool. And how about expansion from a job role or function? I know we've talked about finance and a little bit of tech and I think marketing. Are you guys expanding to all different types of roles or are you kind of just like trying to stay focused on a certain few?


Gerard: No, like we do media buyers, like of all things. So there's really not a role that I say no to. So if I'm speaking to a client, they say, Hey, can we I mean we've got drafts people and people that are building three D modeling for the mining industry.


So it's very rare that a client will say, Hey, I want this type of person that we can't actually find the talent. So we it is a really broad skill set already that we've got working in the business.


Kyle: So cool. Anything else that is interesting? Yeah, kinda kind of a broad question that maybe I didn't ask about a around Africa. Like, you know, I know there's always like government and regulation and all that kind of stuff. Is there anything like any other challenges you had to figure out and overcome, you know, while going through this expansion?


Gerard: I think just the pain the normal pain points of you know starting a business in a new location. So you know you gotta get the right people on the ground. You know, Steph a COO was lives in well from Melbourne, now lives in Johannesburg, so we got to a point we needed her to be to locate herself there.


So I think just those normal pain points of building a business. We went and found some of the nicest office spaces we could get. You know, we wanted our people to go to work every day and feel really proud to you know, as they walk through the office to be there and have all the good infrastructure and facilities that you need.


And then yeah, then it's I think it's just convincing people that have never been to Africa that the talent is there. I mean that that's the probably challenging part is to convince the rest of the world that, you know, give someone an opportunity in South Africa or Kenya and it's very rare that people then don't take on more people from that same location. They just need to take a bit of a leap of faith and do the first one.


Kyle: Well, I think you guys are doing you know, a great job leading the charge. I you know, this is just pure guess from my standpoint, but I would be willing to bet there was similar challenges to get people to adopt India and to adopt, you know, Philippines and all these different countries.


You have to kind of get through that subconscious like you were talking about. So I'm sure the talent will rise as it does for every other you know, organization or role. So it's very interesting to kind of see yet another market kind of popping up and Carving its space out in staffing or in business or whatever it may be. Yeah.


Gerard: And I think and a natural advantage is the quality of the English. So, you know, great English speakers and the other actually that's another thing that probably surprised me. Maybe it surprised a bit was the we find the personalities are like this just absolute natural advantage because Africans are really outgoing.


So, you know, they're not some of the other markets a bit more subservient and bit quiet and order takers. Whereas, you know, Africans are like all these, you know, outgoing people that, you know, sing and dance and, you know, the They've just got these personalities that are quite in infectious and so that is like a natural advantage.


Kyle: It's so fun. I assume they learn English from an early age. Is it or maybe French if it's you know, if they're a France French country, is that a fair sense?


Gerard: And even countries like Rwanda about maybe fifteen, twenty years ago, they changed the first language from French to English. So yeah, the present decided that English is probably a better language for the kids to start learning and switched over to English. So yeah, very much so learning ill learning English at school.


Kyle: Cool, very cool. All right. This has been great. We're getting down to the last 15 minutes here. So I want to jump into our five rapid fire questions just to have a little bit of fun here. First one, I ask everybody the same question.


If you could snap your fingers and any kind of process, either personal, professional, whatever it may be, is just fully automated. What would you want that process to be?


Gerard: I think it'd be the one that all these people around the world are trying to solve and no one can. But the whole business development to sales part of any business in doing reach out and actually getting leads, getting me getting client meetings.


I think if anyone could actually solve that problem, that yeah, that'd be a jet because there's a lot of businesses trying to do it and saying they can do it, but no one actually can.


Kyle: Yeah, no, that's true. Everybody, you know, even I have been playing around with some stuff trying to get to a spot where it's a little more automated for us. So yeah, it's a challenging one.


Gerard: Everyone's sick of getting AI sales emails now 'cause it's like every man and their dog is that's their business model to do it, but it doesn't work anymore. Yeah.


Kyle: Very, very true. At this point do you have a favorite African country or city?


Gerard: Yeah, Rwanda, Kigali in Rwanda. So I've spent a fair bit of time there and amazing people. They went through one of the most terrific you know things in the genocide thirty years ago that you'd ever encounter. And it's a very humbling place to go to the museum there.


But where they've come to in the last thirty years and the people that you meet in Rwanda to sixth safest place to travel alone as a female now. An amazing place. I love spending time in Rwanda. In the world.


Kyle: Is that in the world or in Africa? Wow. That's interesting. Very cool. Okay, if you could become world class at one useless skill, what would it be?


Gerard: A world class at one useless skill. Gee. What would be good at being useless at? You know what? It's probably not useless, but I've been playing around with Higgsfield lately. And it's I don't know if you'd it's so complicated and so I just wish I was word class at Higgsfield already.


Kyle: There you go. Fair enough. What would you make?


Gerard: I'll be making all sorts of videos. Yeah.


Kyle: Fair enough. Question number four. What would you say is the best concert you've ever been to?


Gerard: I pr when I think about that, I probably I mean I'd actually probably say Glastonbury. I went to Glastonbury in 2008 and yeah, it's not you don't forget an experience like that. So it wasn't just one concert, it was a four days or whatever, but yeah, that was an amazing weekend.


Kyle: Very cool. And question number five. Are you a cat or a dog person? Go


Gerard: Did you have to do a briefing call with my wife, did you? So I grew up a dog person. We've always had dogs as kids. Yeah, I hated cats, like hated them. And then during COVID, my wife says to me, when we're Melbourne was the most locked down city in the world for quite a long time.


And she's like, I'm hanging out with you every day. We need a pet. So we should get a cat. I'm like, I I'm not gonna argue right now, am I? Like, okay. Yeah. She says, but you don't just get one cat, you have to get them in twos.


And I didn't know the rules of having a cat. So I was like, all right, suppose we're getting two cats. So I said there was two conditions. One, they're not sleeping on our bed. And two, I'm not cleaning, I'm not doing all the cleanup and stuff after.


So get your sh yeah, okay. And within a within three days of having them, I remember waking up one night and I'm like sleeping zigzagged. And because one of the cats, the cats are situated in a way that means that I'm like bending at all angles.


And as I'm sorta half asleep, I didn't want to wake them up. So I stayed like getting a bad back because I didn't want to wake up these kittens. And so I'd now I rank fourth in our household and the cats rank first. But I've been So the short answer to that is I've become a cat person.


Kyle: That's how it works. That's hilarious. What are the cats names? Marlo and Otis. Nice, nice. Great. They I have a cat and a dog actually, and I I've had to introduce cats to some members of my family. And if you just get the right one that's fun and cuddly, like I have, and she's like, All right, cats aren't so bad.


Gerard: Milo and Otis. Two Burmese cards. Yeah, the two I do love the two that we've got. They'd I wouldn't trade them for the world, but yeah. Yeah, previous to having cats no, but now yeah, they yeah, they come first. Amazing.


Kyle: Yeah, they're fun. Well cool. We're at open forum here. Is there anything that I didn't ask you about that you're super passionate about, you wanna share and just kinda get out there? This kind of floor is yours. Anything that's interesting that you wanna share.


Gerard: Gotta stink from a selfish point of view that to your listeners that as you are looking at resourcing around the world to think of Africa and you know if you can get AI enabled people, you know, at really affordable rates from you know Kenya, South Africa, Ethiopia, it's a great way to support your business and build your business and you know, you're providing a an income to people that really, really cherish it and it has a big you know, has an ongoing lasting effect into many other people and that's just broaden the horizons a bit.


Kyle: Well, I can tell you that staffing is gonna be a consideration of mine come 2027 and you've opened some new ideas for me. So I hope other people will at least give it a shot, you know, and kind of check it out. So they can find you on LinkedIn if they want to reach out.


Gerard Holland and it's talentmatchafrica.com if they want to learn more about the business. Any other things you wanna plug or get out there?


Gerard: I'm pretty active on LinkedIn so yeah, you can always drop me a note on at LinkedIn or gerard@talentmatchafrica.com is my email address. Yep.


Kyle: I feel like I'm Americanizing your name so much. We said I guess I hit so differently. I'm sorry. Yeah. Check out Talent Match Africa. Thank you so much. Thank you for being a brainiac today. Joining the Brainiac Blueprint. If you don't mind, please look at the camera and say, stay brilliant, Brainiacs.


Gerard: Stay brilliant, Brainiacs.


Kyle: Awesome. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.


Gerard: Thanks.

 
 
 

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