Pete Henderson. Survivor: Lion Attack, African war zones and Selling a Business
Episode - 5
Pete Henderson. Survivor: Lion Attack, African war zones and Selling a Business
Join me for a riveting interview with the legendary Pete Henderson, an exited founder whose life could be a blockbuster biopic. In this episode, the former war journalist turned serial entrepreneur shares his mind-blowing adventures, including building businesses in African war zones, surviving a lion's attack, spending a decade living in Kenya after his exit, writing a bestselling book, and his current mission to combat global hunger.
What We Discussed:
00:00:02: Dramatic introduction
00:00:31: Introduction to Exit Paradox Podcast
00:00:49: Guest Introduction: Pete Henderson
00:01:13: Pete's Mission to End World Hunger
00:01:28: Pete’s Experience as a War Cameraman
00:05:31: Impact of Technology and Media
00:05:56: Development of Nutritious Food Bar
00:09:03: Pete’s Early Life
00:10:49: Lion Attack Incident
00:14:23: Selling First Business and Attending Harvard
00:15:53: Pete’s First Business as a DJ
00:16:36: Transition Into Television Business
00:18:13: Building a media company
00:19:09: Growing and selling the business
00:19:47: Life after selling the company
00:23:27: Starting a new business
00:28:15: Venture in Telecommunication
00:32:06: Introducing Site: Sustainable Impact Trading Ecosystem
00:33:56: Future plans for 'food' venture
00:39:06: Building a microalgae farm in Zimbabwe
00:43:13: Reflecting on life and personal values
00:43:46: Discussing parenting based on personal experiences
00:45:54: Experience living in Africa and the children's outlook on life
00:46:55: The children's transition to British boarding schools
00:46:26: The role of money and wealth management
00:52:29: Sharing an intensifying experience in South Africa during apartheid
00:55:56: Meeting Sister Barnard and learning a valuable life lesson
00:56:40: The decision to write a book for his children
00:58:25: Defining success
00:58:44: Introduction to Pete, "the food chap"
00:59:37: Discussing role models
01:01:16: Emphasizing the power of thinking
01:02:06: What keeps Pete awake at night
01:04:55: Feelings of guilt about financial success
01:06:35: Regrets on selling a business
01:07:20: Discussing joys in life
01:07:51: How Pete wants to be remembered
01:08:23: Finding fulfillment through witnessing history
01:09:39: Final advice for listeners
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Pete Henderson: [00:00:00 - 00:00:30]
And they were shouting, Jesus, Jesus. Burn the white guy. Burn the white guy. And I was the only white guy in there. I got my camera out and I was filming these baby cubs, and next thing whacked like so hard and so violently that I thought that somebody had driven the Land Rover and now has been eaten alive by this lionesse.
You feel that you're one of the few people in the world that's touched my groin.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:00:25 - 00:00:27]
Who do you want to become?
Pete Henderson: [00:00:28 - 00:00:30]
I'm very happy being me.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:00:31 - 00:00:49]
Welcome to the Exit Paradox podcast. Here we meet remarkable exited founders to uncover what comes next. After selling a business, did they sustain success and find fulfillment? Let's learn together. Please subscribe to join our community today.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:00:49 - 00:01:09]
My guest is Pete Henderson, a legendary adventurer who has lived multiple lives from war journalism to building successful businesses in the most dangerous parts of Africa. He's also a best selling author on a mission to fight global Hunger. Talking to Pete is like watching an action movie. Pete, thank you so much. It's extremely exciting to have you here.
Pete Henderson: [00:01:09 - 00:01:13]
I'm delighted to be here as well. Thank you very much for inviting me.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:01:13 - 00:01:28]
Pete, when we first met, you actually shocked me with a statement. And the statement was that you were on a mission to end the world hunger. How did that happen? How did you get there?
Pete Henderson: [00:01:28 - 00:02:11]
I'll start a little bit earlier on in my life where I grew up in South Africa. I was born in South Africa during apartheid, a terrible time for the history of the country, which meant I also, by law, had to go to the south african army and put on a uniform and travel to southern Angola and fight against the Russians and the Cubans. As a 19 year old young man coming out of the army, I got a job with CBS News as a cameraman. And one of my first assignments was to go back into Angola, but this time into the officer's mess of the enemy that we've been fighting 18 months previously to interview them. So suddenly, this was an incredible experience.
I was witnessing history unfolding in front of me on a daily basis, one as a white, privileged South African, as a member of the sort of diabolical regime now suddenly talking to the enemy who were now liberating their country rather than us, thinking we were being invaded. And it gave me the sense of curiosity, thinking what's right? What's wrong? Is it your, where you come from or where you're going to? What sort of defines you as a human being?
And it was a fantastic time to do that because at 21, you basically are fearless. You're inquisitive, you've got adventure, you've got so many. The world's your oyster, really. So I started working as a freelance news cameraman, traveling around the world.
And because I was from Africa, clearly the stories on my doorstep were places like Somalia, famines in Ethiopia, in Eritrea and Ethiopia, wars and the unrest in my own country, of course, as well. So I came across some terrible tragedies, really, from famines to wars to disasters. And there were three things that basically filled me every time I saw that. I saw people who were displaced. They were always scared.
They were cold and definitely hungry. And it always bothered me that I never had enough way of helping them. I could make a film and I could tell the world about it, and I could actually mobilize huge events. We were the first people into Rwanda. For example, I was in Johannesburg, and we were filming the inauguration of President Mandela, who was becoming the first black president of South Africa.
And this really polite gentleman walked into our edit suite with, in those days, a VHS tape. And he gave it to me and said, put this in your machine and have a look at it. And I did. And I was astounded because there were these bodies floating down a river and going over a weir. And I counted, like 30, 40 bodies a minute just floating down this river.
And I could see the tape hadn't been edited. There were no jump cuts or anything. And I said to him, where is this? And what's going on? He said, this is Rwanda.
There's a massacre going on in Rwanda, and this is a little border town called Gomez. You guys need to get there. Nobody had heard about this at all. And so the next day, I got two guys to fly to Conchasa. We picked up a french alouette helicopter with the french Foreign legion, and we flew into this dusty town of Goma.
And it was stranger than witchcraft to most of the locals. As we set our camera up and turned the film, the camera towards the border crossing, where literally tens of thousands of people were just falling down at our feet and dying because they had been massacred by the and Tutsi war. I felt really guilty. I felt I couldn't really do anything. And then two days later, I saw the Runway being extended.
Hercules planes landing, the UN getting involved. Blankets, water, food. We mobilized the world's attention, really, because of the fact that we were now witnessing this and broadcasting this event to the world. So in a small way, I started to give back through technology, through exposure, through our contacts. I picked up the phone to Steve Cassidy in Atlanta on the CNN News desk.
Pete Henderson: [00:05:31 - 00:05:56]
And I'd say, hey, Steve, it's Pete in Gomer. This is what's happening. And I'd put the pictures up on the satellite, and then CNN would broadcast it globally around the world, and then everybody else would sort of follow suit. So, in answer to your short question, with a very long answer, that was the first time that I recognized our ability through technology and access and understanding of the environment that we're in, we could make a difference.
Pete Henderson: [00:05:56 - 00:09:03]
So we were saving people's lives through sharing what was happening later on in life, when I had sold the business and done other things, I looked back on that time and I thought, well, actually, if I could find a way to help feed people a better product, that would make a massive difference to many, many people's lives. And during those early days, if we were in South Sudan, in a place called Juba or newsight, you'd look up in the sky and a Hercules would be flying over you, the back door would open, and 25 kilogram bags of maize would be thrown out the back of the plane. Now, if one of those bags didn't hit you on the head and kill you, and you're lucky enough to pick it up, it was too heavy to pick up. Two or three kids would have to carry it. They'd have to find water.
They'd have to cut down a tree, make a fire, make a pot of food. They would then eat it. They'd get really full, they would have a carbohydrate spike, and they would go to bed exhausted and wake up hungry. There was no nutrients at all in that. And when I invested a few years later in a protein production farm in Poland, I saw that we were making spirulina, a microalgae.
And I thought, wow, that's a high form of protein. If we could create a food bar that would be really nutritious and doesn't need water, doesn't need heating, cooking, refrigeration, and we could put seven and a half thousand of these on a pallet. We could pop that out the back of a plane, and these people would have instant food. So, having created now what I regard as most probably the healthiest thing on the planet, that somebody who's displaced when an emergency needs the food bar, we now need to work with partners to have it distributed around the world. And obviously, the best people to do that are United Nations organizations, World Food Program, UNICEF, UNDP, IOM, all those different people.
Getting into those programs is pretty tough. You have to go through an interview process. You have to send them your ingredients. It has to be verified, it has to be checked. And we've now got to a point where we've just been sent a request to register as a supplier for sending food into Gaza.
So one of our challenges now is saying to the UN guys, we've invented something that's really unique and different and new. It's nutritious, it's good for you, it's great. Let's find a way to work with you where you can take advantage of this opportunity rather than lose out while you wait for us for another two years to sell to other people. So I'm looking for ways to work with the government Bodies, UN agencies, organizations.
I mean, a perfect one would be Andrew Mitchell from the UK government. They've just sent a plain load of aid to the Middle East. We're a UK company producing UK food. There's no reason why we shouldn't be on that aid plane. And that, to me, would be a great way of the UK sitting forward, getting involved and making an impact together.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:09:03 - 00:09:19]
It's perfect because, actually, it shows why you're doing what you're doing now. But now I want to go back and explore this a little bit in a greater detail, if you don't mind. I really want to know what your parents expected from you when you were a child.
Pete Henderson: [00:09:21 - 00:10:26]
My father died when I was ten years old. He was a prisoner of war during the second world War, and the Red Cross very kindly gave him hundreds of cigarettes every day to sit and smoke. So he got lung cancer and died when I was ten. And I was furious. I really felt that life had been unkind to me.
I didn't have a father to play in the football match or build go carts or play cricket with. And I went to my grandmother and I said to her, I'm really annoyed by this. And she said to me, I wouldn't be annoyed. This is a blessing. I said, how can losing your father be a blessing?
She said, you have a guardian angel. And I said, what's that? And she said, look over your left shoulder, you may see him. I looked over and there was nothing there. And she said, he's an Irishman and he's going to allow you to do whatever you want to do in life and look after you.
If your dad had been alive, he most probably would have wanted you to go to Oxford University and become an engineer. You now have the opportunity to invent whoever you want to be and go wherever you want in life and always feel secure that there's somebody looking after your best interests.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:10:26 - 00:10:28]
And then did you go to Oxford?
Pete Henderson: [00:10:28 - 00:10:49]
No. In fact, I went straight from the army to becoming a cameraman. Seriously excited because I'd been accepted to go to the Los Angeles film school as a cameraman. And on the last weekend that I was in South Africa, I was visiting a primate game reserve. And I went with the person I'd met the night before at a party.
Pete Henderson: [00:10:49 - 00:13:57]
And we went up to this game farm. And the big highlight of the day was to go and film some baby lion cubs. So we got out the Land Rover, walked over to where these cubs were, and there was an enclosure between us and the lions. But I got my camera out and I was filming these baby cubs. And next thing got whacked like so hard and so violently that I thought that somebody had driven the Land Rover into me.
But as I turned around, the lionesse mother had basically come back. And I was between her and her cubs. And she felt threatened and she pounced me. I put my hand to protect myself, and my hand went right in her jaw and her teeth went through my arm here, bit this finger right off, smashed this whole hand. And now has been eaten alive by this lioness.
Jill grabbed me by the arm. Village bear had me around the waist, the lioness had me by the arm. And there was this tug of war going on between us. And I couldn't imagine this amazing noise. I didn't know where it was coming from until I realized it was me screaming.
It was like so loud. And there was a white flower with a yellow center on the floor that I was just looking at. And this whole thing of, oh, my God, I'm being eaten alive by a lion. And let go of my hand because I want to hit it on the nose. Anyway, the lionesse luckily let go and we all fell over in a heap.
And I picked my finger up off the floor, stuck it back in the hole. All my tendons had come out. So I wound these tendons round and I looked at my hand. Oh, that's pretty unlucky. But it took 6 hours to drive me to the closest hospital.
And on this undulating dirt road all the way down towards Victoria, I was going in and out of consciousness. I was really, really painful, as you can imagine, because all my tendons were exposed. And anyway, I got to the hospital eventually onto the operating table. Anethitus put the drip up, and the surgeon came along and he looked at this and he said, I'm going to amputate your hand. I said, what, the whole hand?
He said, yep. Six inches above the wrist. I'm going to chop your hand off. I said, isn't that a bit severe? Do you think I could have a second opinion?
I went to the reception and I said, can you give me an ambulance to take me to another hospital? I said, nope, you're at hospital. You can't use. I think you'll have to call a private one down the hall. Use the call box.
I called my parents and luckily my brother answered the phone. I said, Stuart, I've been eaten by a lion. He said, what? Anyway, he sent a private ambulance. He got me to a different hospital in another city, in Johannesburg.
Took another hour to get there. And then when I woke up in the morning, I thought I'd made a terrible mistake. So you feel that you're one of the few people in the world that's touched my groin because they stuck my hand into my leg and my leg kept my hand alive. And my whole leg was basically keeping my arm alive because it was so badly mauled and eaten. It's called a full groin grab.
And then they basically, eventually, after a few weeks, they released it and I was in hospital for about nearly nine months, basically recovering. But the interesting part of this whole story is, during those nine months, I had no right hand that I could use. So I played table tennis left handed, I shaved left handed, all that kind of stuff. And then when I eventually got out, I started kicking a football left footed, and I'd gone from being dominant right to dominant left. And then I became creative from being technical.
Pete Henderson: [00:13:57 - 00:14:01]
Before I was a cameraman, and then suddenly I was now creative.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:14:01 - 00:14:01]
You're kidding.
Pete Henderson: [00:14:01 - 00:14:15]
And I started producing and doing production and doing other stuff and writing that I'd never had before. And I'm now not good at giving directions. If I say go that way, it's a bit confusing. But I survived being eaten by a lion and now I'm left handed.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:14:15 - 00:14:22]
That's incredible.
I love this story.
This is so cool.
Pete Henderson: [00:14:23 - 00:15:48]
And then I built up my business and after ten years, I sold it. And I always had a bit of a sort of inferiority complex. I'd never been to university, so somebody said to me, why don't you go to Harvard? I said, Harvard? Are you mad?
They'll never accept you at Harvard. They said, well, just try apply. So I applied and I think I got in because I applied from Kenya and they probably hadn't had very many Kenyans apply, but I was accepted and I did a three year executive OPM course at Harvard Business School. And frankly, that sort of changed my life. I did it at a time when I'd sold my company.
I was 40 years old. I had had many years of adventure and fun and accumulation of wealth and purpose. And I'd got to a point where suddenly, at 40, I thought, well, what now? I've lived sort of ten lives, I guess, compared to most people, but yet I was married, still married happily, with three kids who were six, eight and ten. But I had accumulated enough money in the bank to pretty much do anything I wanted to do.
And it was a big question. It was quite a tough question. What next? How do you actually go from having done so many things that other people couldn't imagine that you could do, to a point where now you're in a position where you could do whatever you want?
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:15:48 - 00:15:52]
Let's go back to the very first business you built. Why did you?
Pete Henderson: [00:15:53 - 00:15:56]
First business was I was basically a DJ.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:15:57 - 00:15:58]
Excellent. Why?
Pete Henderson: [00:15:58 - 00:16:36]
At school. I don't know. I thought it'd be quite cool to stand behind the turntables at the school dances and play records. And I realized that was quite a cool business because I got paid to have fun. And then I rented a little town hall in a seaside resort of Canton on sea.
I think it cost 30 rand for the whole thing. And then we had, like, 200 people arrive, each paying a rand to get in. And I realized, wow, this is extraordinary, getting, like, having fun and doing well. So I had my mum working for me in those days. So that was my disc attack that paid for my university and basically taught me that if you can imagine, you can do it.
Pete Henderson: [00:16:36 - 00:18:13]
And then once I got into my television business after working as a freelance cameraman, I realized that a camera earned more money than the cameraman. Now, camera in those days cost $50,000. That was a big amount of money. It was more than a big house cost. So I went to the bank and I said, hey, guys, I want to borrow $50,000.
And they said, sure, what house you're buying? I said, I'm buying a camera. What are you going to do with it? I'm going to take it into Soweto, into the township. On your bike, mate.
So after I went to three or four banks, I was really disappointed and I went back to the NBC bureau chief, a woman called Heather Allen. I said, hey, heather, I can't supply my own camera and be a cameraman for NBC. She said, have you got a passport? I said, yep. And I said, jump on a plane, go to London, go to Tottenham Court Road, meet Rachel.
She's got my checkbook. Go to Barclays. I'll pay you $50,000. Go to bathing Stoke and speak to Peter Christmas. Get a camera and be back in South Africa on the weekend.
Be filming in a township. So I couldn't believe my luck. I hardly even knew this bureau chief. Anyway, nine months later, I'd paid her back every cent for lending me the money. And I said, how much interest I have to pay you?
And she said, no, there's no interest. You just have to pay for it. Help somebody else one day. And I was overwhelmed. I mean, she had really taken a chance on me.
But suddenly I had a camera that was earning $500 a day. I was earning $250 a day, and I saved up for another camera. And now I was getting $1,000 a day and then another camera. And then suddenly I started having, like, eight or nine or ten cameramen working for me. And then by this stage, I'd left South Africa and moved to London.
Pete Henderson: [00:18:13 - 00:19:07]
Didn't really like it, so moved to Cyprus in the Middle east. And I had a media company based in Cyprus, providing camera crews and equipment to CNN and BBC and german TV and all these different people. And the one thing we did is we then bought a satellite, and we were doing live television. So when you saw Peter Arnett on the roof of the Rashid hotel in Baghdad, we were broadcasting live television back to CNN. And suddenly we were selling our television by the minute.
And so from $500 a day for a camera, we were now maybe $500,000 a day for all our services after that. So very quickly, the company, by the time I sold it, was generating over 380,000,000 a year. So it was a very big business, and that was how it grew. From nothing and no debt, just from a camera being lent to me by Heather Allen.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:19:07 - 00:19:09]
Incredible. How long did it take?
Pete Henderson: [00:19:09 - 00:19:40]
Ten years. It took ten years. And it was an incredible adventure. And it didn't really even feel like work. It was just like there was a group of people who went from covering the Olympics in Seoul to covering a riot in Rio to a war in Afghanistan.
And we were all mates, basically, having fun, traveling around the world, doing extraordinary things, from Chechnya to Russia to everywhere. Book arrest. I mean, it was an incredible journey. Amazing fun.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:19:40 - 00:19:47]
So when it was over, can we go back to that moment you sold the company, you got your big fat check. How did you feel?
Pete Henderson: [00:19:47 - 00:21:56]
So I walked out of my office with a cardboard box with a couple of photographs, and got into my then convertible Mercedes sport, drove home to my big house in Surrey that had horses and indoor swimming pools and tennis courts. And I felt on top of the world, but I also felt, oh my goodness, what happens now? And I think any advice is just take a rest, don't rush, don't think you have to reinvent yourself, don't think you have to go and do it all again too quickly. I think just looking up, looking out, looking around, taking a deep breath of oxygen and actually looking at the other quadrants of your life, which is your health, your well being, your mental health, your family, your kids, the environment, other people, all of those things you tend to ignore in your first business, because it's all about accumulation of me, me and us more. But when you get to that other point, think, well, actually, you know what?
I've missed out on quite a few things. And I remember walking down the beach once and I met an old friend of mine who was a farmer and I said, hey, Trevor, how are you doing? He said, oh, I'm really cross. And I said, why? And he said, well, my rugby team just lost the rugby.
And I was like, I wanted to tell him everything I'd done for the last ten years and where I'd been and who had seen and all the presidents I'd met. But yet his life was just a farmer on a beach. And his simplicity of being annoyed because his rugby team had lost made me actually realize that life is not all about being 100 miles an hour, accumulating all the stuff. It's about actually being in the moment. And I'd been so busy coming from and going to, I'd forgotten to just be.
And so when I sat and thought for a second, I'm just going to be. It was an incredible feeling of enjoyment, really. You think, okay, I deserve to be here and I've got a lot of people around me that are important to me that I'm going to take care of and I'm going to think for a while, because if you don't think, you make mistakes, you don't remember where you've come from, you can't imagine where you're going, but most of all you don't really appreciate where you are, how.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:21:56 - 00:22:02]
Long that healing that just been last before you started feeling that you.
Pete Henderson: [00:22:03 - 00:23:27]
I don't think I felt anxious to do anything else since then it's basically just been, I do what I enjoy doing now and I enjoy spending time with people that I like being with people who are positive, people who don't drag you down, people who aren't negative. So I surround myself with positive people who have a reason for being. And it doesn't have to be selfish being, it's just giving more than anything else. People who slightly enlightened, who lateral thinking. I mean, one of the happiest.
Somebody said to me, Pete, what makes you happy? And I thought, wow, that's a really tough question. And after a while, I actually figured it out. And it's recognizing happy moments that makes me happy. So if I see a kid running across a park and hugging their mother, and I acknowledge it as a happy moment, or the sun's shining or something beautiful is happening around you, or somebody says something that's nice, basically acknowledging happy moments enough times during the day makes you feel happy when you go to sleep at night.
Because life's not like a bank account. You can't just take, take and expect it to be there forever. You need to give back a little bit. You need to give in a way that can be as simple as writing a letter to somebody who you haven't written to for a long time or donating some money to somebody or driving an old person to the store. But just actually being considerate to others and giving back is a really important part.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:23:27 - 00:23:33]
How long did it take you from the sale of the first business to start a new business?
Pete Henderson: [00:23:33 - 00:24:04]
I think it took six months. And the reason was we sold the business. We moved to Kenya. We had a beautiful house on the Nairobi National Park. I was going to watch kids play sport.
And I came home one day in the middle of the afternoon. My wife said, Pete, I married you for better, for worse, but not for lunch. I said, what do you mean? She said, well, aren't you going to do something? Aren't you going to do something with your day?
Like, are you going to get a job? And I said, I was quite enjoying this, not having to work.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:24:04 - 00:24:06]
She had too much of you by then.
Pete Henderson: [00:24:07 - 00:27:53]
So she said you know, surely you must be doing something. So a friend of mine called me and said he was going to South Sudan to interview John Garang, the rebel leader of South Sudan. Would I like to go? And I thought that would be fun. I used to be a cameraman for the BBC once, a long time ago.
So I took my camera and I flew into South Sudan and met with John Garang, the rebel leader. And I was interviewing him, thinking I'd sell a video to the BBC and that would be my job. While we were talking, I was intrigued, because here was a man running an entire war in South Sudan with virtually no communications. And I said, how do you communicate? He said on the radio.
And I said, you don't have an email? He said, no. Said, do you have a phone? He said, no. I said, that's nuts.
You should have a 20 foot container here. You should have german high speed broadband, us dial own, and you should have a command center. And he said, well, how do I do that? I said, well, I can do that. And he said, okay, how much would that cost?
I said, I'll give you one. I'll give it to you for free. And he said, how long will that take? I said, I have a couple of weeks. Well, I misled him because it took me four weeks.
I went back to Nairobi. I got a 20 foot container, filled it up with all equipment, and we drove it back into South Sudan across the bush. And when we got there, we didn't quite know how to unload it because it was a big container on the back of a lorry. So we took everything out and he tied a big steel cable to the back of it and tied it to a tree, and we drove the truck out and collapsed in the dust. And we put all the equipment in and John Garang and I sat in this happy box and I got JohnGarang@yahoo.com.
Got him his first email and they loved it. This thing just changed their lives. He was calling his sister in Australia, they were calling America. They were having the most amazing time. And he said, I'd now want one of these happy boxes in all the villages.
And I don't want to walk to the box. I want to walk and talk. I said, well, that means you need a GSM mobile phone network. He said, ok, well, let's do that. I said, ok, we'll be partners.
Done. I said, how much are you putting in? He said, what do you mean? I'm the rebel leader. I don't put money into these businesses.
I said, well, if you want to be a partner, you have to put money in. I think I'm the first person ever to get a million US dollars out of the south Sudanese Liberation army, the SPLA, because they put a million dollars in. I put some money in and we formed this network called Network of the world now. So I flew back to Nairobi and said, hey, JJ, I'm now in the mobile phone business.
Said, good. So I set up the first mobile phone network in South Sudan, and it was during the comprehensive peace agreement talk. So I was under a huge amount of pressure to actually get a signal out of the south before the peace treaty was signed because they needed to have their own mobile phone network operational before that. So we opened in this little town called gay and we had the first phone ever ring in this village. And this old man was given the task of opening the event.
And he was the elder of the village and he came in with his big sort of feathers and he blessed the occasion and was screaming all the demons in the bushes and picked up the phone and we gave it to him, said, you want to call your son, who is in Canada? And he hadn't spoken to his son for twelve years because of the war. And his other son, who lived there, dialed his brother's number and this guy looked and the son answered and he was inside this plastic box. It was like, wow. And he said, this is your father, over.
He kept saying over and the tears were just pouring down his face. And I said, just keep the phone, you can have it. But that was the impact we had suddenly from having no phones within two or three days. We had kids running around selling scratch cards, we had shops opening, we had bicycles going around selling stuff. We had things coming in from Sudan.
In six months, that little dusty village was now a town just because we had put mobile phone network into it. So we created this incredible impact from nothing. In six months, we had a GSM network in place.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:27:53 - 00:27:55]
What happened next?
Pete Henderson: [00:27:55 - 00:28:08]
So the Chinese came in and they looked at South Sudan, they looked at oil, they looked at telecoms, and they came to the government and said, we'll give you all this money and you can build a chinese network and you don't need Peat anymore.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:28:08 - 00:28:15]
So it's been quite a roller coaster up to that point. So you're back with your family. What happened next?
Pete Henderson: [00:28:15 - 00:28:52]
So, I mean, I still had some other good businesses. I had a mobile phone business, which was satellite phones. And that was a good business because our clients were the UN. And with all those businesses, the phone doesn't work unless you pay up front for your airtime. So we would sell the phone to UNDP or UHR or whatever, and they'd buy the phone and then they'd pay us for the airtime and then we'd make like 20% profit on every call that they made.
So that kind of business was good because every morning when you woke up, you're slightly wealthier than when you went to sleep because there was an accumulating revenue constantly going on. So there was a bit of stability on that.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:28:53 - 00:28:54]
Is it something you started?
Pete Henderson: [00:28:57 - 00:32:06]
So, mostly because I had no Internet in my house in Nairobi, so I went and got a satellite dish and I stuck it up in the garden. All my friends said, how did you do that? So I set up a company called Indigo Telecom and I gave all my mates the Internet. And then the UN said, we're going off, know, southern Somalia. And I said, well, I went to Dubai and I got satellite phones and I basically set up a satellite telecoms company.
I think the best part about that time was I lived in Kenya with my kids and I watched them grow up, so they were from six to 18. So I went to all their football matches and their swimming lessons, went on safari, we climbed mountains, we worked in orphanages. And that ten years was most probably, from a family point of view, the most valuable and enjoyable. But when we came back to live in England, because now all the kids were boarding school in England and my wife and I were feeling sort of isolated in Africa with the rest of the family here. Coming back to England was tough because it wasn't an entrepreneurial environment with the ability to take helicopters into South Sudan and build mobile phone networks.
It was far more sort of sophisticated and less entrepreneurial. And that's when I think I started to look globally rather than locally, at what I could do next. I met a polish man, Leshak Siebek, who was staying at one of our hotels in Africa. And he said to me, what do you know about solar energy, renewable energy? And I said, nothing, but it's a great idea.
And he said, Poland is one of the filthiest countries in the world. It's got black coal energy, there's virtually no solar energy. And he would like to start investing in that and would I be interested? And I'd sort of learnt, going along the lines that I didn't really want to invest in other people's companies any longer because I didn't have control over it and I wasn't guaranteed it would be successful. So I went out of interest more than anything, just to have a look.
And when I got to Poland, I recognized there was a really young market that was about to take off. If I looked at all the other markets around Poland, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, everybody was full of solar panels, but there was nothing in Poland. And that was mostly because of the strong mining unions, et cetera. But things were changing. So we started to build together a solar farm business and we built up around 128 solar, which is like two or three football fields for solar, which we built up and sold to the Portuguese, and we carried on developing more projects.
And along that journey, we came across a polish german professor who was growing microalgae and I looked at this and what the hell is that stuff? And I realized that he was now growing spirulina. That was the highest form of non animal based protein. So he needed some investment. My partner and I invested in his factory to create this green powder.
Pete Henderson: [00:32:06 - 00:33:50]
And then when I looked at it, I thought, well, there must be something better to do than put it into yogurt or sell it into pharmaceutical animal or fish feed. And I went back to my roots as a cameraman, thinking, this is the ingredients that I need for my food bar because it's, like, really super healthy and really good high protein. So I basically set up another company called Site, which stands for sustainable impact trading ecosystem. So it's Site and Site's ambition, really, is to feed people around the world. Very nutritious food in the best possible way, as large as we can possibly get around the world, making an impact.
This company is very young. It's only been going nine months. So nine months ago, somebody said to me, what are you going to call this protein bar? And I said, I've got no idea. And they said, well, why don't you ask your Harvard mates?
I thought, wow, that's great. They're far more intelligent than I am. So I put out a short message, sort of slightly apprehensively saying, guys, I'm making a protein bar. What should I call it? And then one very bright woman in Australia, Anna Shepherd, she sent back a short message, said, mate, just call it food.
So I said, you can't call it food. I'll be like, how do you trademark the word food? She said, there's no bullshit. It's just food, mate. And I thought, well, actually, every time I've been in a truck going into a refugee camp or somewhere, the kids are all putting out their hands.
And the five words that they all basically say, they say, good, okay, food, water and blankets, those are the five things that are important to them. And as a result, it's been phenomenal. We're getting huge branding awareness. I'm getting messages from the World food Program saying, we want to send food to Gaza and say, yeah, our food. So it's like, got a bigger personality than the idea of what it was originally established for.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:33:50 - 00:33:51]
I love that story.
Pete Henderson: [00:33:51 - 00:33:52]
Yeah, it's cool.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:33:52 - 00:33:55]
Okay, so what's the plan now for food?
Pete Henderson: [00:33:56 - 00:39:05]
So I've seen too many philanthropic projects around the world fail because there's no business model attached to them. I mean, there are lots of really, really good causes, don't let me get me wrong. And there's a lot of people who do real impact and do well, but if you want to do well for a long time and be successful, then have a business model around it at the same time. So we have a philosophy that we are a for profit company, but we're going to have a very, very strong track, your impact element to the philosophy of our business. So when you donate money to buy a food bomb, it'll be like Amazon, pretty much.
You get confirmation your money's arrived. You'll get confirmation the bar is in manufacturer. It'll be on a ship going around the swiss canal around the Horn of Africa. It'll be in, say, Mogadishu, and it'll be delivered to somebody in Africa, and there'll be a confirmation to you as an impact donor that your bar has made an impact and it's arrived. The second thing is for us not to be restricted by politics, religion, territory.
We really want to be a global brand that's good for everybody. So we've appointed, so far 20 food ambassadors. Like Taylor Swift has her swifties. We have our foodies. And again, I went back to my Harvard HBS group and said, who would like to be an ambassador?
And we've got this incredible network of people who are passionate about giving back. And we've so far got 20 folks from South America, Central America, to Asia, to Africa, to all around the world. And right now we need some like minded founders who've been in different industries, who've got industry experience, knowledge, and entrepreneurial flair to become ambassadors, to become food ambassadors. So one of the great opportunities, if you would like to get involved, you can donate a container of food to South Sudan, for example. That's 150,000 food bars.
So if you think of South Sudan, there's like 7 million people who displaced. They had a terrible war in the north, and women and children ran south. And they're now sitting in an environment across the river with no shelter, no food, no income. And they're pretty much a forgotten group of people, but they all desperately need food. So what we're trying to do is set up a donation platform which allows you, as a food ambassador, to make a donation through an american charity called United Way.
You get the normal tax relief and all the benefits and due diligence of using US charity. That money then is sent to our factory where we manufacture the food and we send it to Kenya. We would then like to invite you to join us for the impact part. We call it track your impact, where you fly to Nairobi. We meet you at the airport we take you out to lunch in Nairobi and introduce you to a security specialist.
He's an ex seal, actually, and married to a wonderful woman who them, as a family, have adopted a couple of south sudanese kids. So they know everything about the area, the territory, the safety, the security. And after an interesting dinner in Nairobi and spending the night there, we'll fly you the next day to South Sudan. That's approximately an hour and a half on a twelve seater turbo prop, a king air. And on arrival in Juba, we'll introduce you to some really interesting people, possibly get you a meeting with a minister or with a couple of UN charities and groups so that you can get a feeling for what people are doing in an environment like South Sudan which desperately needs help.
We'll then film the bars being dispersed to the community that are benefiting from it. You'll have the chance to talk to them, speak to school teachers, speak to the mums who are perhaps breastfeeding and having the benefit of their food to help their kids. And you can really see the life changing impact that the food bars give the people who are receiving it. We'll spend the night in Juba, which is always fun and interesting. And then the next day we'll fly you from Sudan to a very nice safari game reserve in Kenya, where you'll have a chance to perhaps do slightly more touristy type activities.
Go on a game drive, see some elephants, some giraffe, maybe some lion, if you're really lucky, have a sunset around a fire, drinking a gin and tonic, reflecting on your couple of days that you've just had in South Sudan. And then the next day, we'll transport you back to Nairobi for you to fly back to the States. So you'd most probably leave America on Friday night and you would be back in the States the following weekend. So it's a week of your life going out and having an adventure that certainly will make a massive impact on the beneficiaries of your donation, but will also give you the chance to see firsthand and track your impact and be able to share your story with others and hopefully encourage others to do the same and join you. And we can do it in groups of two, four or six, depending on how many people in your party.
Pete Henderson: [00:39:06 - 00:40:18]
And it's very selective and we'd love to talk to you and work with you on what your needs are and how to support your giving back, but we'd love to have you as a food ambassador. But the second part of our business is to have a development and upliftment program that allow people in their country to become their own growers of spirulina. So, for example, a HBS friend of ours from Zimbabwe, he's got a very successful business. He's implementing a billion bricks into Zimbabwe. He's donated some money through a charity, through United Way, it's an american charity, to send money to Zimbabwe to build a microalgae farm on the outskirts of Harari.
And this microalgae farm will be in a school, so we'll get the kids involved and the teachers and people start to learn how to become farmers. We'll have 240 foot containers. We'll put some solar panels on the roof, some raceway ponds, fill it up with water, and we'll teach and train these people how to grow spirulina. And we can feed 550 people a day from one pond, giving them each 5 grams of super protein.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:40:18 - 00:40:21]
You would need to bring your production facility there.
Pete Henderson: [00:40:22 - 00:41:42]
We'll build a factory in that country, and we'll teach the locals how to become farmers. And they will harvest on a daily basis enough protein for 550 people to have a spoonful of protein powder in their existing food. So they'll put it into their satsa or their millimeal, or their sukumawiki, whatever they're eating. So it gives them that protein that's really important for humans to have. What they don't consume themselves, we'll buy back.
So we'll actually pay them money and we'll buy the products and then we'll put them in our protein bars and sell them around the world. So what we're really doing is we're creating a very sustainable development, upliftment, education and income generating project at a local basis to help people who otherwise may have been deprived and have no income and no possibility. It's a fantastic model and that's scalable because once you've done one. We've just applied to USAID in Kenya for a $48 million grant to basically put these all across northern Kenya so we could impact 2-3 thousand people's lives if we get that contract. So it's new farming, it's new technology, new way of doing it.
But ultimately, a human being needs four things to survive. They need sleep, they need water, they need oxygen, and they need protein. And if you can get food, and if you give them that, their life's going to be better anyway.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:41:43 - 00:41:47]
So what are the biggest hurdles for food right now?
Pete Henderson: [00:41:48 - 00:43:12]
The hurdles, it's the world did pretty well without you before you arrived. And what's the world before and after you. So it's education. You need to promote, present and convince people this is a good idea and a good product.
You need to get family, friends and investors to invest in the early stage of the business. So it's a very interesting time now because my kids are now in their 20s, they're all living independently. They've got girlfriends and boyfriends and they don't need me as much anymore. And you almost lose a little bit of purpose for being because you've done your job, you've given them their wings and their freedom, and they're independent. But it's almost a more enjoyable time because you have the ability to focus on a bigger picture.
It's no longer just people who totally dependent on you. You can then open your eyes and look out and look around and think, well, what's important to me in the world? And for me personally, I have three things that are important. One of them is renewable energy because I think the world's just killing itself with its carbon footprint. Food security is a very big thing for me because there are too many displaced people who've not been fed properly and carbon reduction.
Pete Henderson: [00:43:13 - 00:43:46]
So with this current business, we meeting those three elements that are important to me and making an impact at the same time. So I wake up in the morning, I look forward to continuing doing what I believe in, having fun with people that I surround myself with. And the other thing is having youthfulness on your side as well, you as young as you feel. And the people who I'm working with are in their early 30s mostly. And I love their energy and their imagination.
They can take on the world. And I encourage that and support it and think it's great fun.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:43:46 - 00:44:02]
Well, I think you have more energy than most 20 year olds. Like a fountain of youth and energy. So can we talk about your kids for a bit? So what was important for you based on your experience in terms of parenting?
Pete Henderson: [00:44:02 - 00:45:06]
So I think for me it was to give them what I was given by my grandmother, the ability to unconditionally do whatever they loved doing. And there was one word in my vocabulary, and that was passion. Follow your passion. I don't mind if you're successful or not, but when you wake up in the morning, if you look forward to what you've got ahead of you and you do it with passion and enjoyment, then that's going to mean that you're ahead of most of the people in the world already. So follow your passion.
Obviously, integrity and honesty and consideration to others is really important as well, but I think the permission to make mistakes without us being too sort of dictatorial on where they should go, what they should do or how they should behave. So you need to give them their freedom. So I felt to my kids, if I could give them a good education, they all went to really nice schools, they did really well, and they're all decent people. Most of all, they can walk into a room and present themselves confidently, and that means my wife and I have done a good job.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:45:06 - 00:45:11]
How did you ensure they didn't grow up as spoiled, wealthy kids?
Pete Henderson: [00:45:11 - 00:45:54]
I was driving down the road in Farnham in my Volvo with my Wellington boots in the back and my barber jacket, with three kids who were six, eight and ten, arguing whether Verbia or Sandanton were better ski resorts. I thought, oh, I've screwed up completely. And I came home after dropping them at school and I said to JJ and my wife, I said, darling, we're moving to Africa. And she said, what have you been smoking? I said, no.
Our kids need to float down rivers, climb up mountains, work in orphanages. They need to get the freedom of Africa rather than being restricted by an environment that they're in now. And it happened to be, I was 39 years old. It was the same time I was selling the company. So it all just clicked.
Pete Henderson: [00:45:54 - 00:46:54]
At the same time, it was sell the business, go on adventure, focus on the family, and get the kids to have a slightly different outlook on life. So I think with them arriving in Africa, they had never come across people who didn't wear shoes or didn't have running water. And working in orphanages was fascinating for them. And they went to multiracial school, they got to learn different cultures, and as people, they became broader thinking and more considerate of others. So I think that was a very big help for them.
When my one son, who went to Eaton Сollege, was interviewed by the intake person, saying, so, what do you like about living in Africa? He said, driving the Land Rover, sir? And I said, but you're ten and a half years old. He said, yep. And he said, your parents let you drive the Land Rover?
And he said, yeah, they're normally on the roof having a beer, and I'm driving. So our kids would are suddenly getting exposure to things that, like, other kids weren't getting.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:46:55 - 00:46:59]
Ethan really liked the idea of having a kid like that.
Pete Henderson: [00:46:59 - 00:47:21]
Yeah, they did. It was quite funny because they said to him, I mean, they asked him some tough questions. They said, don't you feel guilty living in Africa with all those poor people and your dad's got so much money and he said, well, you obviously don't know my dad, because a lot of african people have got much more money than he has. So it was quite an interesting question for a ten year old to have to answer these hard questions.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:47:22 - 00:47:27]
Why did you decide that they should go to British boarding schools after that?
Pete Henderson: [00:47:27 - 00:48:20]
I think in Kenya, at the age of twelve, the schools weren't really good, so the junior school where they were was fine. But nearly all the kids either went to South Africa or to England to school. And because we were already been in Africa, I thought being educated in England would be better for them, because then they'd have the sophistication of an English education with the passion of growing up in Africa. So they would sort of have 1ft in Africa, 1ft in the UK, and there'd be more interesting people. And I went to boarding school, so it was not a difficult thing for me to send my kids to boarding school.
And they all loved it, actually. But it was my wife and I who felt that we were deprived of their company because we were now stuck in Africa and they were all here. So at that point, we basically came back to live in England.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:48:20 - 00:48:22]
How old are they now?
Pete Henderson: [00:48:22 - 00:48:26]
27, 29 and 32.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:48:26 - 00:48:32]
So, looking back, do you think that was a good plan, parenting wise?
Pete Henderson: [00:48:32 - 00:49:24]
I think every family has their own goals, ambitions, for us what I wanted my kids to have was a global outlook on life and a broader understanding of balance, because life is not fair and there are a lot of privileged people who can't understand and recognize that there are other people in the world less fortunate than themselves, and that doesn't work in society. You need to understand all aspects of society for you to be a balanced human being, because that gives you the opportunity to understand, share, give and support and help or lead, in many senses. So I think we gave them that. We gave them adventure, we gave them the broadness of knowledge and unconditional love.
And most of all, we gave them the ability to follow their passion.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:49:26 - 00:49:28]
What is money for you?
Pete Henderson: [00:49:29 - 00:50:30]
It's a tool. It's something that you need. You don't take it with you at the end of the day, it's very helpful to open up opportunities that need money, especially if you got your own money. You don't have to go and ask somebody else for money and you can take your own risks and know that if it works, it's great.
If it doesn't, you only got yourself to blame. But I wouldn't say money is accumulation of wealth. It's just a tool to have accumulation of purpose, but it's an important part of it. As an entrepreneur I've been through many occasions where I've done well, had a lot of money on other occasions I've had no money and then got it again and lost it again.
And I think the common benefit or denominator of all those occasions was the best part was my supportive wife, who didn't feel that money was going to be the reason for us being happy. It was just part of the journey.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:50:30 - 00:50:32]
Did money make you happy?
Pete Henderson: [00:50:33 - 00:51:19]
Not really. It's never been an important part of why I do things. It's just sort of happened. So definitely my first few businesses, the accumulation of cash was just a byproduct of the adventure and fun. Certainly when I had three kids at private school in England and we were living in Kenya and I had nine international airfares and I was paying a fortune of school fees, then suddenly that put into focus a little bit, thinking that I had to spend all that money on the education.
But I think once you have enough just to pay your electricity bills and pay the food and you're comfortable with where you're at, life's not about money. It's more about how you behave and what you do and where you go and how you treat others.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:51:19 - 00:51:23]
Yet it is an important tool. So I have to ask you how you manage your wealth.
Pete Henderson: [00:51:25 - 00:52:24]
Most probably badly, because I take more risks than others. No, I think my main thing is I invest in my own businesses. And that to me, is where I feel that I've got the most control over it. So I take personal risks that I'm comfortable with. And those risks are normally calculated because I feel that they're going to be successful rather than failures.
And as a lot of people, you need to structure your wealth as well. In, you know, there's some people who are non-residents, you've got other people who have family trusts. You've got to consider many other aspects of transition to family wealth that you hand down to others. So it depends really how much wealth there is and how you need to manage it. But for me, there's not enormous wealth.
So I'm still having a lot of fun using it for an impact on others lives as much as I can.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:52:24 - 00:52:29]
Brilliant. Brilliant. So I want to hear more stories from your incredible life.
Pete Henderson: [00:52:29 - 00:55:56]
So one of the stories that made an impact on my life was going into a township, a black township, which was a very evil form of apartheid in South Africa, which meant that there was segregation. All the black people had to live in a certain area, all the whites lived in a different area. There were laws that didn't allow you to have the ability to marry across the color bar. It was called the group Areas act and the Mixed Marriages act. And there were these very, very volatile areas where deprived black communities were living.
So in this environment of unrest, working as a cameraman for the BBC my job was to go and film riots, basically, which meant, literally, with a black soundman and a white cameraman or the other way around. You always worked in a team. We would drive headlong into a war zone. And on this one particular day, we drove into a town called Davidon. And we got there slightly late because we recognized that there was tear gas in the air.
There were rubber bullets on the ground. There were stones all over the streets. Obviously, the crowd had been dispersed. And somebody said to us, just down the road, everybody's regathered in a village town hall. So we went down to the town hall and looked like an american sort of Midwest church hall.
It had two big doors at one end and a side door down the side. And so Zet Manono and I walked through the side door onto the stage. And as we walked onto the stage with me rolling on my camera the place went ballistic. They erupted and they were shouting, chisa, chisa, chisum, lumu, which means burn the white guy. Burn the white guy.
And I was the only white guy in there. And I'd realized I'd walked into a very hostile group meeting of a group that was called the Azarpo, the zanyan people's Organization. And Azarpo was one bullet for every satellite. It was like the opposite of the Ku Klux klan. It was, the white people on this continent are a problem.
And here's a white guy walking onto the stage and Zed said, Pete, we have to get out of here. And I knew there was nobody to run. There were like 3000 people in me. And I was on the stage and the hair went up on the back of my neck and I thought, whoops, we're in trouble here. And I saw this wide eyed woman at the sort of pendulum talking, addressing this crowd.
And she looked and thought, what are you doing here? And she had a microphone. And I walked straight up to the microphone and I grabbed the microphone and I shouted in their language, amandla. And the whole community went, amawetu, amandla, amawetu, which means power. Power to the people.
And then in my best kosa, which is Nelson Mandela's language I said, schlalapanzi, which means sit down. And I said, guys, I know I might not be welcome here. I'm from the BBC and I've done more for this struggle than any of you will ever do in your life. So sit down and behave yourself. And everyone looked at shocked horror and silence, including this woman, this nun who was standing on the stage and under enormous personal risk to herself.
She very publicly walked up to me and embraced me and gave me a hug. And she said, we need to get you out of here. And all the counselors on the stage, of which there were twelve of them, surrounded me in a human sort of protection of a shield and duck marched me off the stage and into the car and I got out of there and she saved my life. And that night I was lying in bed and I thought, this woman. Who was she?
Pete Henderson: [00:55:56 - 00:56:40]
Who was this woman who saved my life? And the next day I drove back into the township and I found out her name was Sister Barnard, and I asked for directions to her house, which I eventually found. And she was really surprised to see me the second time. You again? I said, I just want to thank know you saved my life yesterday.
Can I give you some money? Can I buy you some stuff? Can I donate to the church? And she said, no, just be kind to somebody else. I thought Heather said that to me once about the camera.
Now you saying it to me for a second time, this must be something that's an important reason to do so. Throughout my life, whenever I've had the chance to give something back to somebody else and help them, I've done that.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:56:40 - 00:56:42]
Why did you write your book?
Pete Henderson: [00:56:43 - 00:57:53]
My great grandfather came from Ireland and came from Ulster in Ireland, and he wrote a book called Ulsterman in Africa. And his great friend was a guy called Cecil Rhodes, and Cecil Rhodes and him traveled through Africa and they became miners together. And he was the mayor of Kimberley during the siege of Kimberley, and he wrote a book called an Ulsterman in Africa. And I read it as a kid and loved the idea that I could hear all about my grandfather. So I thought that I would write something for my kids.
And so I basically, during COVID got a really good editor, got somebody to help me with a book and put down all the stories, and then basically thought I'd self publish it. And I thought, if I make any money, I'll donate it back to journalists. So I donated all the money to the Rory Peck Trust and I was stunned because suddenly Rory started reading it and it became a number one bestseller on Amazon for journalists, basically. So it's been quite a nice thing to have a record of the adventures. It's called bigger than me because the story is always bigger than me.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:57:54 - 00:57:56]
Was building the business worth it?
Pete Henderson: [00:57:56 - 00:57:57]
100%.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:57:58 - 00:57:59]
Why?
Pete Henderson: [00:58:00 - 00:58:25]
The adventure of creating something that you have a direct involvement in, and you include others, and you can look back and reflect on what you've achieved. The good and the bad and the ugly is something that is invaluable. The journey is fantastic. It's an amazing opportunity. If you're lucky enough to build your own business.
It's just one of the best things in life you can ever do.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:58:25 - 00:58:26]
How do you define success?
Pete Henderson: [00:58:28 - 00:58:44]
To me, it's recognizing happy moments. It's not about what you've achieved or what you've got. It's by having the ability to look out, look around, look up and recognize successful things around you. That means you. Successful.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:58:44 - 00:58:45]
Who are you?
Pete Henderson: [00:58:45 - 00:58:47]
I'm Pete, the food chap.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:58:51 - 00:58:52]
Who do you want to become?
Pete Henderson: [00:58:54 - 00:59:36]
I'm very happy being me. A few years ago, we were in a private helicopter leaving the rooftop in Guatemala, flying off to some amazing hacienda somewhere. And I didn't realize everybody was listening to the radio comms. And I shouted to my wife, I said, I really love being Pete. And suddenly, when we laid it, all the other wives were saying to their husbands, why can't you be like, know, why can't you just be happy with who you are and what you?
So it was not really meant to be broadcast to everybody, but it was a reflection of how I felt at the time, that I felt really blessed to be me. And I was lucky enough to have a great family and be doing great things and having lots of adventures and living life to the fullest.
Anastasia Koroleva: [00:59:37 - 00:59:38]
Do you have any role models?
Pete Henderson: [00:59:40 - 01:01:16]
Wow, that's an interesting question. I think Madiba Mandela is somebody who I've watched with fascination over the years because I grew up thinking he was a terrorist. I ended up interviewing him and sitting with him in the presidential palace in Cape Town. And then I asked him what his biggest regret was thinking he would say, of course, been incarcerated unjustly for 27 years by the white Pretoria racist, diabolical regime.
But he didn't. He said, Pete, my biggest regret I have nowadays is I no longer have enough time to think. And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, when I was on Robben island cracking rocks, I had a lot of time to think. He said, the person who organizes my diary now that I'm president of the country, I told him this morning to give me 1 hour a day of thinking time, because if you don't think you don't remember where you've come from, understand where you're going, or appreciate where you are.
So I left that meeting with President Mandela thinking, you're one of the coolest people I've ever met. And you know what I've learned is I've learned to have time to think. I've learned to reflect, realize, enjoy, appreciate, consider. And it's all about thinking. So whenever I can, if I get on a plane and I fly somewhere, I try not to watch the movie straight away.
I try to find that quiet time just to think. Or most days, I go for a nice walk, spend at least an hour or so walking with my dog around the common we love out in english countryside. I do a lot of thinking there. And thinking is not about selfish things. It's just about anything.
Pete Henderson: [01:01:16 - 01:01:37]
Just learning, understanding, appreciating, giving. There's so much you can do by thinking. The power of thinking is so powerful. And we haven't unlocked that power, most of us, until you get to an age in your life where you've got things to remember, but you also then have time to reflect and also consider where you're going.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:01:37 - 01:01:44]
You mentioned that before, when you talked about that period after you exit, how important it was to stop and think.
Pete Henderson: [01:01:44 - 01:01:47]
I think so. Don't rush.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:01:49 - 01:01:50]
True. Do you meditate?
Pete Henderson: [01:01:50 - 01:02:06]
I do. Not a lot. But I have phases of meditation, mostly because my wife does it every day and I get encouraged to join in. It's good. It's a very good form of relaxation and unwinding.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:02:06 - 01:02:08]
What keeps you up at night?
Pete Henderson: [01:02:09 - 01:02:38]
Excitement about what's ahead and an anticipation of what's coming. I sort of can't sleep because I want to keep going, do the next thing. I don't think there's much that worries me. I think sometimes in the middle of the night, when it's dark and it's quiet and things seem bigger than they really are and you just start to unnaturally have concerns. But by the time morning comes and you reflect a little bit, it's not that bad, to be honest.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:02:38 - 01:02:43]
Yeah, sounds very familiar. Do you have a sense of purpose?
Pete Henderson: [01:02:44 - 01:04:55]
I think, again, it's from a role model. And this person was the president of the board of Cricket Control in India. His name was Mr. Dalmya. And I went to dinner in Delhi and sat down next to him.
I mean, rushed in and sat down. I introduced myself and he told me his name and I asked him what he does and my heart sunk because I realized he was one of the best known celebrities in the whole of India. And he was like a household name. And he looked at me and he said, I'm just being. I said, being what?
And he said, that's the problem with you foreigners. You're always coming from or going to. Can't you just be? And I suddenly thought, yay, you're absolutely right. I love that.
That's going to be my purpose. I'm just going to be. So that next day, when I flew back to London and I was on the red eye BA flight that left at one in the morning, the gentleman next to me in his pinstripe suit said, so what do you do, old boy? I said, I'm just being. And he looked at me strangely and talked to me the whole way back to London.
Yeah, I think that's my sense of purpose is being. I love being. And a big part of my being is giving back. And a big part of giving back is in a way that it's sustainable, that it's not only sustainable from an environmental point of view, but as a business point of view. And I'd like whatever we create to be around for a long time and for many, many people to benefit.
So I think my being is also being bold enough not to have boundaries. So if you can imagine being in 20 countries, why not imagine being in all 150? So let's not restrict our opportunities by lack of confidence, but at the same time, not to be arrogant at your imagination that you can take over the world. But I think that if you have a purpose of being, that you know that you're doing well, you're giving back, you're helping others, you're doing it for the right reasons and you enjoy it, and you've got your passion, then there's every reason why you're going to encourage other people to join the journey and be bigger than you and make it more successful without you even.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:04:55 - 01:04:58]
Have you ever felt guilty about your financial success?
Pete Henderson: [01:04:58 - 01:06:33]
Yeah, big time. It was very tough when we were in Rwanda and tens of thousands of people were dying in front of us, and we were invoicing 610 million dollars a week to the european broadcasting union. And I was 35 years old. I owned the company myself. I had no debt, and I had millions of dollars coming into the company, which I owned 100%.
And I didn't know how to justify that. I felt it was at somebody else's disadvantage that I was gaining accumulating wealth. And it was hard. It was only later on when I thought, well, we actually helped more people by being there and bringing in security and water intense and alerting to the world the problem that actually I shouldn't feel guilty because our success helped more people than my personal guilt. But it was a tough time because I wasn't the only person doing it.
There were other people who were working for me who were staff who weren't achieving the same kind of financial success. And so when I sold the company, I made very sure that everybody who joined me on the journey did well. They all had their houses paid off or they got decent bonuses or even though they were entitled to a share of the profits, I dispersed most, probably 20% of what I got back into the staff and to people who had joined the journey, but taken no risk and helped me get where we went. So that was my way of reducing the feeling of guilt.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:06:35 - 01:06:37]
Have you ever regretted selling your business?
Pete Henderson: [01:06:37 - 01:07:20]
Once or twice. I mean, it's now doing even better than when I had it, which is a good sign, I guess. You should always sell a business when there's still some gas in the tank. And yeah, I think moving to Africa, I went backwards a little bit in terms of business, financial success, because we were now in a third world part of the world and there wasn't the same opportunities. But it's not about financial accumulation, it's about experience and an adventure, which I think I gained more from.
So sometimes I think, well, if I just not sold and carried on, it would be much bigger and there would be a different me. But I don't regret it. I have no regrets.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:07:20 - 01:07:22]
What gives you the most joy?
Pete Henderson: [01:07:22 - 01:07:51]
Friends. Love spending time with friends. I love travel, I love adventure.
I like sunshine, good weather. Yeah. Spending time with family and friends. My family is very important. And having fun.
Jumping out from behind a cupboard and going, boo. Seeing somebody get a fright, that makes me laugh. So, yeah, I think not taking life too seriously and just having fun, really.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:07:51 - 01:07:53]
How do you want to be remembered?
Pete Henderson: [01:07:53 - 01:08:23]
I think as somebody who always had a smile, who had fun, who is an adventurer. I think my wife's put it quite well. She said, on your tombstone, I'm going to write down, he's rested at last. I don't rest. I have so much energy and so much fun and so many things to do that I'm not quite ready to just chill out and do nothing yet.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:08:23 - 01:08:28]
If you look back at your life, what do you think gave you the most sense of fulfillment?
Pete Henderson: [01:08:29 - 01:09:34]
I think witnessing history unfolding in front of me on a daily basis and broadcasting it, being able to have a front seat of some of the most extraordinary events, whether it's the Berlin Wall coming down or the handing back of Hong Kong to China or being on the Queen Mary with her Majesty the queen. Those kind of pinch me moments on Air Force One or traveling around with Clinton, meeting the rebel leaders of Somalia. Those incredible events where you just think, well, wow, how come I've been lucky enough to be doing this with these extraordinary people? So I think that was one of the moments where I realized that actually, if you're unrestricted in your expectation of who you can be and where you can go, you reduce those boundaries or those feelings of doubt, and you just open up opportunities. So if you can dream it, you can do it.
I know it's an american thing, but it really does work. If you can imagine anything you want to do and be, you can do it. If you're just passionate enough about it.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:09:34 - 01:09:39]
Pete, thank you so much. This was so beautiful, so inspiring. Thank you. I really enjoyed it.
Pete Henderson: [01:09:39 - 01:10:30]
It's a pleasure. And thank you for being here. And I think if I have one thing left for our audience to mention, and that would really be take life by the horns and live it to the fullest, because it's not a dress rehearsal. Just go for it. Consider your family, your friends, and the reason you're doing it, but most of all, just enjoy it.
It's a huge adventure. It's great fun, and there's so many things that you can do that other people haven't even invented yet. So use your creative, entrepreneurial flair and just imagine it and just go and do it. Because the world's a great place, and you, as a leader, have the opportunity to have an impact, make a difference, and help a lot of other people through the way you lead your life and your example that you give your kids and your family.
Anastasia Koroleva: [01:10:30 - 01:10:31]
Thank you
