We are here today on the beautiful game farm Tankatara, just outside the magnificent coastal city of Port Elizabeth in the picturesque province of the Eastern Cape in sunny South Africa.

We have a view of the Indian Ocean beyond the organic vegetable tunnels in front of us, with the world famous Addo Elephant Park to the right and just across the Sundays River flowing into the Indian Ocean. We are sitting on the deck of the lapa with a trophy and medallion display that signals success and a fair warning.

We are joined here by Gerhard Meiring chairman of the very successful Geroma Group of Companies and he is about to share with us the background story of how we ended up here on Tankatara…

Well, it all started with the dream of a seven year old redhead boy with dreams in his eyes and fire in his heart. The first time I set foot on Tankatara was with my father when we came to buy sheep from the owner of Tankatara at the time, late Mr. Kenny Lake. I fell in love with Tankatara without even knowing it.

My parents just bought a small piece of land on the other side of Port Elizabeth, on the way to Cape Town. My dad bought all sorts of animals: sheep, cattle, pigs, poultry of all sorts, and even a donkey. I have always had a fascination with animals, plants and nature. Coupled with that, I always had a much larger fascination with the business world.

As much as I loved farm life as a little boy, I loved doing business even more. Hence my first business, at the tender age of eight, being a chicken business of buying day old chicks and raising them to about six weeks old and selling them at a profit.

Even though I am not much of a betting man, I once won a wager with my dad and my takings was a lamb of my choice from dad’s flock of sheep. I had to catch it with my bare hands at about ten o’clock at night. Luckily I have always loved a good challenge and I came out with the biggest strongest lamb in the flock.

Many years later in my mid twenties I visited Tankatara frequently to hunt Kudu’s with my father-in-law and that is when I realized that I fell in love with the farm as a seven year old boy. And here we are today another 30 years later.

That sounds very fascinating, but surely it must have been some journey to get from the days of a seven year old boy to sitting here today many years later. Some ups and downs maybe? However, before we get to that, first I have to ask about the very beautiful and also very intimidating trophy and medallion display here on the deck?

This is another dream that started in the heart of a young boy, also around the age of seven when I was doing Judo at school. I started in grade one and unfortunately it ended at the end of grade two when I changed schools. Since then it has always been a dream to participate in some form of martial arts. For many years I dreamed about it, but never enrolled again.

Then suddenly one day when my son was about ten years old my wife phoned me and told me that she drove past a mixed martial arts dojo and my ten year old son wants to enroll. She gave me the number and I phoned for more information. I asked if my ten year old son was too young to enroll and he told me that children can start with mixed martial arts as soon as they can walk.

Then I asked if my son’s 36 year old dad can join him, to which the Sensei replied that he himself is 62 and still actively participating in the sport. I phoned back my wife to tell her that my son and I are starting with mixed martial arts the very next day, and we did start the very next day.

About a month into the sport the first competition came up and I was very reluctant to participate. One of the Sempais at the dojo told me that the best place to learn is at a competition and that I would only fight in my own weight and experience class.

Both my son and I entered the competition and won some medals on the day. He won a gold and a silver medal and I won four gold medals and one silver. I knew that day that I was made for the sport of mixed martial arts.

It has been a very challenging road since then with a few injuries and a few operations and lots of local and national competitions along the way. However, with a lot of rehabilitation, training and hard work, I eventually reached my goal of representing South Africa at the ISKA MMA World Championships in Miami USA where I walked away with three trophies.

That is very impressive! Did any of that martial arts training assist in your business success?

Well, even though the martial arts story ended really well, I almost gave up on my dream. I almost gave up on all my dreams!

Not long after my son and I started with mixed martial arts, his mother informed me that she wanted a divorce. It was a long dragged out divorce and somewhere during the divorce proceedings my youngest daughter joined my son and myself in the dojo.

She was a few months into the sport and participated in her first provincial competition where she won gold and silver medals. My son won three gold and two silver medals at the same competition.

Only for their mother to move away about a month later to another province. My world started tumbling down, as not only did I lose my wife, but I lost my children too. It affected my whole life and not in a positive way.

I wasn’t performing well in any area of my life and my business suffered the most. The financial life line of everything was crumbling right in front of my eyes. There was the one set back after the other. My health at times was taking strain too.

The divorce took almost five years to finalize, during which time I only kept my insanity intact by miracles from a much greater power than myself. I was in a dark place and did not know how to get out.

Luckily I have done the Master Key Master Mind Alliance back in 2015 and during September 2024 enrolled again. I realized that even though my life has gone through some changes, my life was not over. Not by a long shot!

When the divorce eventually finalized, I felt like I had no purpose and I did not know where to go from there. My identity used to be centered in my marriage focused on my role as a husband and a father. I had to go back to the drawing board. I had to go inside myself. I had to face myself.

All of me. The good, the bad, the ugly, the beautiful, all of it. And that is when I started planning my future again. According to what was in my heart. My own heart. The Master Key Experience has helped me to go inside in order to build the world on the outside that I really wanted.

So I started planning the future of my business and where I want to go with it. I took my martial arts experience into my business, as one of my Sensei’s always taught us that when your fighting an opponent, you will either win or learn.

There is no such thing as losing if you are willing to learn. And another one of my favorite quotes from martial arts is: “A Black belt is a White belt that refused to quit.” So I realized that life happened and threw me back to White belt and all I need to do is keep on keeping on and go through all the training, grading, challenges and hard work to get to Black belt again.

So within my business I had to go back to the drawing board. Back to the dream board. Back to basics. I had to admit a few hard truths to myself. I had to evaluate where I was in order to start moving forward. In the Master Key Experience we learn about our subconscious mind, our blueprint from where we actually live. It is like the program that runs our lives.

I had to re-write my program, re-design my blueprint, change my subconscious mind. One of the many lessons in the MKE is that knowledge does not apply itself. It is said that the hardest work in the world is working on yourself.

As I started looking inside and started getting honest with myself I noticed that I did not like everything that was written in my program. My subconscious mind was running my life in a way that I did not like at all. I was very selective in what I would and wouldn’t do.

Anything new was very challenging for me as it was not part of my normal program and my subconscious mind was fighting any and all changes that I wanted to make. I would say out loud that I forgive someone, only for subby, my subconscious mind, to remind me the very next day about the resentment I feel towards that person.

I would start doing something to make it a new habit, as we are creatures of habit, only for subby to keep telling me it wont last and that I don’t need to change. One of my biggest core beliefs that I had to face and overcome was: I am who I am.

For some reason I believed that I don’t need to change, yet I expected my surroundings and my circumstances to change. Talk about a paradox! Nothing can grow without changing. For anything to grow, it needs to change all the time.

All living creatures, plants and animals grow all the time. For us as human beings growth is optional. We get to choose to stay the same or we can choose to grow. For way too long I was more or less the same and in order for me to grow and change I had to change the way I think about myself.

I started telling myself as many times a day as I could that I am whole, perfect, strong, powerful, loving, harmonious, happy, healthy, punctual, productive, honest, and wealthy. I realized that I needed to change from being my own worst enemy to my own best friend.

I needed to believe in myself and my abilities. I had to remind myself that I have skills and abilities. Some of them I may have neglected, but they just needed some dusting and polishing and they were good to go.

I started loving myself and everybody and everything. I adopted a positive mental attitude towards life, accepting what is, while striving towards what could be. Taking steps of faith in the the direction of my goals.

I used the pain and disappointment of things that happened in my life as stepping stones to get to where I wanted to be. It took me a long time to embrace that all the things that happened in my life was for my own good. I had to take responsibility for me, all of me! And eventually I did.

I accepted that I cannot control what happens to me, but I can choose how I respond to everything that happens. I had to cut myself loose from my past in order to step into my future. I wrote out my new blueprint to be programmed into my subconscious mind. My own blueprint!

Not the blueprint of my parents, not my ex-wife, not my friends or family, not my school teachers! Mine! My very own program for my own life! It was the hardest thing to do, but it was so worth it. Unfortunately change for the better gets a lot of resistance, but that is actually confirmation that you are moving in the right direction.

And sometimes that resistance comes from your very own old blueprint program, in your own voice, telling you that you can’t change. Telling you that you are the way you are. Telling you that nothing is going to change, you were made the way you are and that is that. I had to admit a few things to myself.

I had to be real honest with me about me. Some of the things I had to admit to myself was not easy to accept, but that is where my fighting spirit came in. I had to pick myself up by my bootstraps.

One can only go up from rock bottom. I wasn’t completely down and out. Everything wasn’t lost. I just had to keep on keeping on. I started going back to the basics. Doing all the simple small things that makes a big difference.

I started changing my habits. Getting rid of non-serving habits, replacing them with good positive habits. Building my goals one step at a time, one day at a time. Part of personal growth is taking responsibility for yourself. Accepting that you are 100% responsible for you. No more blame shifting. No more could’ve, should’ve, would’ve. No more bullshit!

I see-in your bio that you describe yourself as a determined business builder. Tell me more about the businesses you built?

It all goes back to childhood days again. As a child my favorite board game was Monopoly. Well I guess as an adult it is still my favorite game, now I just play it in real life. Since I can remember I have had an intense interest in property.

The acquiring of a vacant plot and then the development of that plot into something bigger. Starting small and then just keep building. One green house, second green house, third green house, fourth green house, and then finally a red hotel!

Another childhood interest has always been the business world. The bigger the business the better! It has always been very fascinating how they operate and provide products and services needed by society.

At a young age I realized that most large corporations are not built overnight. It takes years, sometimes decades! Even though I found that most large corporations that has stood the test of time started out small and more often than not as a family business.

My dad tried his hand at business a few times, but unfortunately never succeeded over long periods of time. One of the best lessons I learnt from dad is to never give up. After every failure he would just start something new again.

They say the best way to learn is from mistakes, however we don’t have enough time in a lifetime to make all the mistakes by ourselves. Therefore we should learn from the mistakes of others. Luckily we can also learn from the success of others and build on the success created by others.

So, I used my love for the game of Monopoly to build Geroma Propvest into the property giant that it is today. I used my love for large successful corporations to build Geroma Propvest into the equity giant that it is today. The money vehicle for the process was Geroma Consulting which is financial services provider company.

This is where my business journey started literally as a teenage boy when I joined a financial services provider small start up company as an employee at the tender age of 18. A few short years later I became a partner at the tender age of 24.

When I joined the start up company, my mother was an employee too. We registered our own business when I was 24 and the rest as they say was history. Somewhere in my thirties I questioned if the financial services industry was what I wanted to do with my life.

It all changed when I embraced that I love people and I love providing service to people, and that I was in the very fortunate position of already having a foundation to build on. In the process of building all these companies I had the privilege of employing hundreds of people who in turn had the opportunity to grow with the success of the businesses while providing for their families.

Over the years employees and clients first became friends and with time became family. Since relationships is the most special part of life, it has been an absolute honor and a blessing to have all the amazing people in my life who made the journey possible and worthwhile.

That is where the real value in all of it is. Some of my employees has been with me for more than 20 years. Over the years we have struggled together and we have grown together. We have laughed together and we have cried together. We have seen each other’s children grow up.

We have supported each other professionally as well as personally. We have taken on challenge after challenge. It has been a privilege to provide my employees with the opportunity of personal and professional growth by studying various company sponsored courses. Some even obtained degrees which is something they never thought was possible.

As Emerson’s Law states: give more, get more. The more I gave to my employees, the more they gave back to the growth and success of the businesses. For sure I couldn’t have done it without them. It turned out to be a mutually beneficial relationship. A real win-win for everyone involved. The best part is that we are still building together towards a bigger, brighter future