"Focus on your purpose, your passion, and people."
Daleen Vorster started out as an attorney specialising in credit risk management and debt recovery for schools and small businesses. In 2002, she co-founded Jonker Vorster Attorneys where she specialized in education and credit law.
In 2014, Daleen and her husband founded Jumping Fox Software – a solution that automates debtor management and collection teams’ internal processes.
Through her work with young programmers as well as young candidate attorneys, she saw the dire need for the development of technical and core skills. This realization led me and senior developer, Riaan Dreyer, to launch our online skills development company, DevSavvy.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Daleen Vorster: I started out as an attorney specialising in credit risk management and debt recovery for schools and small businesses. In 2002, I co-founded Jonker Vorster Attorneys where I specialised in education and credit law.
In 2014, my husband and I founded Jumping Fox Software – a solution that automates debtor management and collection teams’ internal processes.
Through my work with young programmers as well as young candidate attorneys, I saw the dire need for the development of technical and core skills. This realisation led me and senior developer, Riaan Dreyer, to launch our online skills development company, DevSavvy.
2020 and 2021 threw a lot of curve balls into business on a global scale. Based on the experience gleaned in the past couple years, how can businesses thrive in 2022? What lessons have you learned?
Daleen Vorster: Focus on your purpose, your passion, and people. Then you, your company, your team, and your clients will thrive. Be authentic and do not try to duplicate someone else’s recipe for success. Get a mentor and keep learning.
The 2020/2021 curveballs forced me and my team to push forward and grow in our thinking. It was two exceptional years, for different reasons.
The pandemic seems to keep on disrupting the economy, what should businesses focus on in 2022? What advice would you share?
Daleen Vorster: Move your business online and employ a junior programmer to help you achieve this. Thinking that you can do business using the same methodology is a mistake. Employee-employer relationships changed, company-client relationships changed, sales and marketing changed, so should the way you run your business.
The new workforce can add tons of value with the technical skills they have. They are not afraid to operate outside their comfort zone – they just need guidance. Young programmers can help companies be more competitive.
Most importantly, mentor your team.
How has the pandemic changed your industry and how have you adapted?
Daleen Vorster: For attorneys, the change was huge, as all formal legal proceedings and processes moved online. For our company, it was easy to adapt as we also work and have experience in the tech space.
For Jumping Fox Software which focuses on schools, it was quite a challenge with the schools being closed often during the first part of the pandemic. Our product, a debtor management solution, is an online solution – so the challenge was not in the product itself, but moving the rest of the operation online. Sales and product onboarding were where the challenge lay, as clients preferred on-premises demos, onboarding, and training. We have, with great success, managed to make our clients comfortable with online services.
With DevSavvy, the e-learning platform, the pandemic created enormous opportunities. It is now very easy to communicate, train and educate young programmers from all over the world.
What advice do you wish you received when the pandemic started and what do you intend on improving in 2022?
Daleen Vorster: When the pandemic started we wanted all our clients and other people we worked with to immediately move online using technology. But for the clients, moving online was a bigger challenge than expected. We moved a bit too fast for some of our clients and that created doubt in the relationship.
In 2022, I will definitely be more patient and always remember that everything in life is a process.
Online business surged higher than ever, B2B, B2C, online shopping, virtual meetings, remote work, Zoom medical consultations, what are your expectations for 2022?
Daleen Vorster: I think the best of online is yet to come. Businesses are adapting, but also taking their time to first do research, finding new service providers and new products. Not all, but most business owners I work with, are still a bit nervous about technology (for example automation) but I realize that the shift will take time.
DevSavvy focuses on educating businesses on the value of technology and employing people with the right skills – tech skills. If we can get business owners and young programmers closer to one another, 2022 will be a fantastic year.
How many hours a day do you spend in front of a screen?
Daleen Vorster: Everything I do happens in front of a screen – meetings, research, drafting documents, training, design, networking, marketing … the list can go on.
To answer your question – an average of 10/11 hours per day.
The majority of executives use stories to persuade and communicate in the workplace. Can you share with our readers examples of how you implement that in your business to communicate effectively with your team?
Daleen Vorster: I mostly work with programmers and people who are very focused, so I have to keep my stories short. Our clients create the stories we focus on. Their stories become our stories. They are the heroes and we are the guide to helping them thrive.
Business is all about overcoming obstacles and creating opportunities for growth. What do you see as the real challenge right now?
Daleen Vorster: Seeing the bigger picture, I think – people are very uncertain about the future and the impact of technology on everything they do. The challenge is to help, especially business owners and the users of the technology, to accept what technology brings and to make it part of their daily life.
In 2022, what are you most interested in learning about? Crypto, NFTs, online marketing, or any other skill sets? Please share your motivations.
Daleen Vorster: NFTs is something I want to know more about, but my focus will definitely be on continuous improvement of our products and services, staying up to date with where technology is taking us, and marketing young programmers to all businesses as a very important and beneficial part of their team. I enjoy doing some design work, so I will definitely allocate some time to improve my design skills.
A record 4.4 million Americans left their jobs in September in 2021, accelerating a trend that has become known as the Great Resignation. 47% of people plan to leave their job during 2022. Most are leaving because of their boss or their company culture. 82% of people feel unheard, undervalued and misunderstood in the workplace. Do you think leaders see the data and think “that’s not me – I’m not that boss they don’t want to work for? What changes do you think need to happen?
Daleen Vorster: I love this question, and I think the new workforce is the catalyst for what’s currently happening. The old way needs to go and make way for a new way of managing a business and your team. The idea of “working for me” is changing to “working with me”. Being a mentor and not a boss is now a requirement and helping your staff grow is something an employer must do in order to keep their top performers. Running passion projects and being about more than the bottom line is turning out to be non-negotiable. Rewarding performance and offering remote work as part of the package will attract the new workforce and help prevent employees from just moving on to the next company.
Working with young people and in the tech space helped me understand this concert very well and I enjoy learning more and improving on what we have implemented to date.
So I am sorry to say – chances are that it is you who needs to change.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Daleen Vorster: Influence – to influence and bring about change takes time. If I had the superpower of influence it would be possible to create and bring about change much faster.
I would start with young programmers and the value they can add to every business and the development of their tech and core skills. The sooner their value is understood the sooner all businesses can move online and stay relevant. This means a healthier economy, job creation, skilled workers, and staying relevant.
What does “success” in 2022 mean to you? It could be on a personal or business level, please share your vision.
Daleen Vorster: Changing lives and making an impact – helping businesses and our product users understand the value of technology and how they can have a better life, for themselves and their families if they can just manage to change and adjust, even just a little bit.
One last thing – helping people aged 50+ years realise that the best years are yet to come. It is possible to start a new career at 50 and it is amazing to learn, unlearn and relearn.
Jerome Knyszewski, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Daleen Vorster for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Daleen Vorster or her company, you can do it through her – Linkedin Page
Disclaimer: The ValiantCEO Community welcomes voices from many spheres on our open platform. We publish pieces as written by outside contributors with a wide range of opinions, which don’t necessarily reflect our own. Community stories are not commissioned by our editorial team and must meet our guidelines prior to being published.
