Rugby player turned e-commerce specialist. He has sold property, led sales teams and built his own companies, and now helps online brands grow from Los Angeles.
Everything that follows started here. South Africa is where he learned to compete, to play for the people next to him, and to start again when the ground shifted.
Rugby taught him what a team can do when it trusts the people leading it. When that chapter closed, he started again from zero.
He went to work inside an online brand and learned the business from the ground up: how a store wins traffic, turns it into customers and keeps them coming back. He earned certifications in SEO, digital marketing and web design, then went independent.
In 2021 he moved into property in Cape Town, learning to win listings, negotiate and close. Every sale showed him how trust is built with a buyer, and how quickly it is lost.
He rose to manage a sales team, then went on to lead teams across his own companies. He learned that teams fail when the people at the top lose touch with the people doing the work, and he builds every team to close that gap.
He co-founded a telehealth company and built Inicio into a consulting firm for e-commerce brands, covering conversion, customer journeys, retention and now card processing. Every system Inicio offers, he tested on his own businesses first.
Today he lives in Los Angeles, California, as a full-time student and entrepreneur. He studies management at UCLA Extension, putting structure behind what the field taught him, while running his companies.
“I know what works and why it works, because I've tested it myself. The hardest problems were never the strategy. They were teams unwilling to change, and leaders too stubborn to see they were the problem.”
Send a few lines about your business and where it's stuck. Gerhard reads every message and replies within two business days.