#029 A Life-Changing Break | Hermien Uys

Hermien Uys, guest · [01:40]I think it started with two of my friends. We were four close friends at University of Stellenbosch where we studied law. And, two of my friends after we graduated in 1994 took a gap year. And I thought this was so, romantic and, exhilarating to be able to go to London at the age of 22. so they worked for about, eight months, and then they traveled Europe for four months with the money that they earned whilst working, you know, in the first period of the break. my father, however, was much more strict, and he said, look, I paid for you. nowadays, I think that, you know, it, it, it is quite a, a thing if, if parents can pay for their children all the way through. So, so my dad paid for us. We went to hostel, and, it was a fantastic experience altogether. But once the five years was over, my dad said, look, you need to start working now, which was such a good lesson, must, I must say. But in retrospect, when I reached the age of, I think it was about 46, 47, I'm jumping ahead now, I'd really, participated in quite a number of, M&A transactions at, at the first two companies that I worked for in mining. and, and M&A is, is really sort of quite time driven. you work long hours to get these transactions completed. and I thought back about that period in time, and I, I also wanted to have that experience of, you know, time off and, travel, et cetera. So, it, it also started, a while before I actually embarked on the journey. So I think, I mentioned to you that, that I took my break in 2017, 2018 thereabouts, but it, it started earlier by having a conversation with my then employer, Rio Tinto, which I must say they were, they were, you know, willing to, to, to, to hear me out on this idea of taking a six-month break. in the end, what happened is that we moved to Cape Town after having stayed in Johannesburg for about thirteen years. My husband got a new role. I, I worked for a year, then they're still out of Cape Town. But, but the role sort of came to a natural end after we finished a last sort of sale transaction. And I thought, well, you know, I actually want to take more than just six months. So it, it, it all worked out very well. We parted on friendly terms. And, here I was also at the beginning of a very exciting journey, as, as you are now embarking on. yes, the main aim was to do travel, but also, I think, for me, to do things that I did not have time to do whilst working in the corporate world. So I think the corporate world is a beast of its own. It takes up A lot of your energy, but also a lot of your mind space. So once you, you have that freedom to really think what it is you want to do with your time, I filled up my diary quite quickly with other activities, which some of them might not sound that exhilarating, but it's stuff that you don't get around to while you're in the corporate world. So I'll pause there, before getting into the detail of what I did with my time. I'm not sure whether you want to, steer me in another direction.

Hermien Uys, guest · [06:32]I thought it would be an experience that would broaden my perspective, and, I, I was already at that point in time, I, I, I remember doing a short course at Gibbs about emotional intelligence. I think these subjects start becoming relevant in your middle forties, you know, once you've reached a certain, trajectory in your career, you start thinking about these topics, and, as I said, I did this course, and one of the senior leaders in Rio Tinto acted as a mentor to me. It was such a exhilarating Experience for me to do that, and he was a person that I worked with closely at Rossing in Namibia. He came out to work for a certain period of time in Africa and then went back to Australia, which I think is motherland for, or, home base for Rio Tinto. but it was a wonderful experience to interact with him, and he also told me that he started so early in his career, I think he, he mentioned something at the age of 16, and we had this conversation already at that stage about doing something more meaningful with your time. So I think, yes, I wanted to do the travel bit, as I mentioned to you at the beginning, but I also wanted to do something more meaningful with my life. I was experiencing an emptiness sometimes. Once you've completed certain transactions, you've received recognition in your career, it's all good and well, but then you also start realizing life is Not only about that, I think I might have mentioned to you that my mother also passed away during this period. So it was a time of reflection and, you know, my dad didn't cope too well at the beginning being on his own. So all of that just came together. So I think I realized that I would spend quite a bit of time trying to improve myself, trying to broaden my, vision as to what it is I want to leave behind almost as a legacy, not only this corporate person having, you know, excelled in the business world, but is there something else to add me? Did it turn out a hundred percent like that? No. As we're getting to, as we're getting to the detail, unfortunately not. It sounds very romantic, and I did do a lot of planning around it, but it did not pan out one hundred percent as I thought it would.

Hermien Uys, guest · [11:49]It's quite an adjustment, can I say, in the sense that you and I just spoke about corporate life now. If you've worked your entire life, which I did up until that stage, it's difficult to adjust that quickly because you, you, in a routine, you know, you, you get up, you would know every day and, and you, you get to the office at a certain time and, and the day just passes by with meetings and all things to do. And now, I mean, my husband does the same thing, so he would leave for his work and I would be at home. And yes, it is an adjustment at the beginning because I followed Gretchen Rubin on LinkedIn and, and all kinds of social media and she's written a well-known book about the happiness project, but she's also written quite a bit about loneliness. Types of loneliness, and there's one, one type of loneliness that she describes as new situation loneliness. And, and this was what I was experiencing because the other people carried on, all my friends worked, other people carried on with their day jobs, and their normal routine, suddenly you had a lot of free time. Yes, you, you've got planned activities, but it does not necessarily fill up your entire day. So other people can't just take off at ten in the morning and, and go for coffee. So yeah, it was an adjustment, but I soon got into a routine as to how to fill my day.

Hermien Uys, guest · [22:08]And then, as I said, just a bit more detail, the volunteering bit is I joined a group of people in the hometown where I live, Stellenbosch, that do work with children after school that do not necessarily have support at home when they get home after school to help them with their homework. Reading is especially, a challenge. People do not, sit with young children and help them. They do not learn to read properly at an early stage. So, again, a wonderful experience for me. We Had a child dedicated, to us for, for care and, and development. So I did that for a year, went on a weekly basis after school and sat with the little girl that, that I sort of took care of. So a wonderful enriching experience, and now I'm actually on the board of the mother company that, that does all of these outreaches in the Stellenbosch community. So a different role from what I did in 2017, 2018, but also a wonderful experience For me to know that I think you get so caught up in what you do people have got this idea of Stellenbosch it's only rich people that live here and it's a very affluent town but there's a lot of communities in Stellenbosch that that do not reflect that and it just opened my eyes again to realize when I go to bed in the evenings not everybody has the same surroundings or food available to them so a wonderful opportunity to do that and then thirdly as I said I I did a Cape Wine Masters course also because grew up in Stellenbosch and I thought to myself yes I know a lot about wine my father was also in the wine industry But I did know a lot about, you know, grapes and wine making. and here I am in this beautiful town with all of these vineyards surrounding us when we drive around. I know the wine, but the end product, but I don't really know what happens from the, the vineyard to the wine, actually. And that was also so enriching. I learned such a lot of things. I completed the first two certificates, so if you want to do a, a full wine master's course, there's only a handful of them in South Africa, I think twenty or thirty, you have to do four modules, so maybe we don't know. I can do the other two when I've, when I've got time available later on, but also very enriching experience learning to taste wines blindly, which is also quite difficult. I thought I knew a lot, but I struggled, and, yeah, very enriching experience.

Hermien Uys, guest · [36:57]I think my husband, we've got, we, we actually met, and I'll just give you this background, during the MBA, and, we've got very different personalities. I'm, I'm a bit of, you know, OCD, as I said, very, very sort of perfectionist and everything has to be done right away, and my husband is a much more relaxed person, an engineer that turned into a, a asset manager. so he, he was very supportive of me doing this, because I think he, he, he saw me on my little treadmill every day at work, thinking that she needs to get a bit of a break. So very supportive, and because he's got a different kind of personality than I do, I think he was totally okay with the fact that I took time out. He also said to me something that, that, that I'm still, thinking about till today is that I seem to have found my worth in that corporate persona, and I was sometimes afraid that people would not see me as worthy when I did this, and, and that I, I, should have confidence in, in the fact that there's different values, hidden in my personality outside of only being a corporate person, and that to me was so, valuable because we also become that. We become the person that you said you've been in corporate world for twenty-five years. You are that person that people see every day. People don't see other aspects of you, and when you take time out and you do other stuff, people see you in a different light, and you yourself, see yourself in a different light, and Believe and I now firmly believe that there's more to me than that corporate person and I can contribute in the corporate world still different things, not not only my intellect and my project management skills and whatever else people might say about me on LinkedIn I'm good at, but there's much more to me as a person that can add value to other people's lives in a different way.

Hermien Uys, guest · [40:44]I actually tried to, as I mentioned earlier on, we moved to Cape Town because of a position that my husband obtained here in Cape Town, and at that stage I was working for Rio Tinto. They were very supportive of me working out of Cape Town because at that stage I'd worked for them for, I think, five, four, five years, so they knew my work ethic, totally fine with me, got a small office in Cape Town for me. But after a while, with the sabbatical, as I said, I, I wanted to re-enter the world of work and wanted to look for something in Cape Town. could not find something. it's amazing, you know, I've got quite a bit of business development experience, and I thought I could transition into a different industry, but with that sort of corporate commercial experience. Found very hard and, got headhunted then for this role at Vedanta, so ended up doing the same thing basically, but just at a different mining house. And it was quite a different experience in the sense that the work, the kind of legal work and, and, disputes that we were involved in were different from the kind of work that I've done before. So at least from that perspective, you know, it was something different, but, every company is obviously different and it's a different culture and a different environment, so I think I was Of to have taken the sabbatical well equipped to handle that kind of environment.

Petro du Pisani, host · [42:15]Yeah. And, and the lessons that you learned during the sabbatical, I call it a sabbatical mindsets, are you carrying those with you and applying them now?

Hermien Uys, guest · [42:25]Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I, I, as I said, I, I've become more involved with this, Stalembomb organization in Stellenbosch, trying to obviously keep up my exercise and health routine, and also a bit about mindfulness, trying to be that person that speaks to colleagues more and, and making those real connections, which we sometimes neglect to do because we're so busy with work and emails and meetings, trying to be more mindful. I've also started to be more of a, a advocate for certain issues in the industry, if I might call it that. You know, I started with public speaking, which I enjoy very much, and, and usually on these platforms, It's more about, you know, industry issues around sustainability, which is something I would never have done in the past. I, I would have just focused on my M&A transaction or my refinancing transaction, all about banking law and mining law. Now I'm also interested in industry issues and is the industry really making a difference? I also looked at, starting a PhD, but, but that was put on hold because of, work pressure last year. Again, on a sustainability topic where I spoke to a professor at UCT who's at the, I think they call it the, the mining law chair, at, at UCT around the, yeah, as I said, around the sustainability topic. So that focus has changed, you know, only doing sort of the work that you're supposed to be responsible for, as opposed to leaning into more general but important topics. That is going to be a conversation point for people for many years to come now with the energy transition.