Since 2015, we have been working on Leaderless. Now a Social Enterprise, Leaderless is both an online education platform and offline Innovation Hubs for Social Entrepreneurs to learn how to use technology to disrupt greed and government corruption.
Nothing we are doing is new, we’re just bringing everything we read, experience and see under a microscope and creating courses out of them to be able to teach and prepare young people for the digital age of disruption whilst taking ownership of their own lives.
In what seems complete chaos in the world today, our long term goal is to steer humanity back to our core values and principles. The first of which is trust.
This we will do by setting up Decentralised Innovation Hubs (DIHs) along the fibre route of South Africa following the LongRideToFreedom.com in years to come. The Long Ride To Freedom will be an annual event to educate people about digital disruption and what they need to think about to upskill and change jobs whilst at the same time encouraging tourism to South Africa.
These Innovation Hubs will house 150 Social Entrepreneurs, the number of people one can have meaningful relationships with. Social Entrepreneurs who understand that purpose over profit and collaboration over competition is how we will weather the storms of digital disruption and job losses to create new jobs in the face of technologies that cut out the middleman like Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence, Software Bots, Robots and more.
The speed at which this is happening is astronomical and unlike Australia who have a plan to help pivot people into new jobs, South Africa has no plan. And even in Australia, it is happening too slowly.
Therefore, we need to ensure that getting food to people is the highest priority. This is where Ecommerce and Blockchain come in. In October 2018, we reverse plan the Long Ride To Freedom and speak to farmers and consumers to educate them about these technologies in order to bypass the supermarkets and deliver food directly to the consumer (and to our DIHs)

Social Entrepreneurs within these DIHs will be their own boss, that is why it is called Leaderless, but we all work on disruptive projects together to help humanity return to a sense of meaning and purpose by contributing to the education of others. This is done using the idea of Tai Lopez’s 33% where you surround yourself with people 33% people below you who you can lift up, 33% of people on the same level as you who you can bounce off of and 33% of people above you to reach out to so that you can reach your highest potential.
Edith Kennedy, an MBA graduate, lecturing on the University of Stellenbosch Business School’s Small Business Academy, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, one of the directors of Leaderless and someone who does extensive Social Entrepreneurial work in Khayelitsha will be central to the support these Social Entrepreneurs will need in order to grow in the pilot project in the Western Cape. As we expand, each of the DIHs will have business mentors at the heart of these Hubs to help Social Entrepreneurs battle the daily grind of seeing their businesses succeed.
Building the next DIHs, Social Entrepreneurs will be free to stay as long as they want in one place or move to the next Hub along the coast. As we become more conscious beings and clean up our planet of the mess we made in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd industrial revolutions, we will not own anything in these circular economies so that what we used to own does not own us and therefore tie us down to one place but allows us to freely travel and learn from other cultures around the world.

Homes at these Innovation Hubs are called Ogels. Lego backwards and made of shipping containers, we will use technologies like Internet of Things, 3D printing and the mindset of recycling to build beautiful innovative homes that are modular as and when you need more space.
Everything we do, always comes back to one word – education. This is why we will work with the Fibre Council of South Africa to make sure that these homes are connected to the internet in order for us to come up with new ideas that will always allow the person to take ownership and find solutions to the problems we face.
As we head up the coast in October, we will reverse plan the LongRideToFreedom.com with the following goals.
- Meet with tourist offices and chambers of commerce in each of the towns to encourage tourism.
- Educate people about Ecommerce.
- Build trust by teaching people how to transact online.
- Half the day will be spent educating people about the Ecommerce Forum of Africa and the other half will be spent educating people about Ecommerce platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify and Magento
- Educate people about Blockchain technology
- Build trust by teaching people how Blockchain technology works
- Bring farmers and consumers together to speak about Blockchain and Ecommerce and how we can bypass supermarkets to deliver direct from the farmer to the consumer. Eventually, directly to our our DIHs.
- Identify land for the DIHs we want to build.
Lebohang Likhojane of SmartSentials.co.za who already delivers food directly to the consumer, will be joining us to deliver these talks in Zulu and Xhosa while Philip Redelinghuys will be the videographer along the journey. I will deliver the talks in English and Afrikaans. We have two farmers on board already and another farmer studying farming at Buhle Farmers’ Academy who is willing to come on board and deliver the food we need at these innovation hubs.
Whenever I have done talks, we always seen a wave of new work coming in and it is here where I would like to call on the WooCommerce community to identify the Social Entrepreneurs who want to join us at these DIHs.
We’re looking for WooCommerce developers with serious grit! Imagine this as a little town and you’re building it from the ground up, that is the kind of person we need at these DIHs. A combination of Auroville in India, The Venus Project and Wakanda for Africa.
It is going to take a monumental mindshift to move into something that is not new, just forgotten. We will bring in as much technology as possible into these hubs to automate absolutely everything so that we can see what living in the Fourth Industrial Revolution might be like.
The Ecommerce Social Entrepreneur we’re looking for wants to live a simpler life. Wants to disrupt greed and government corruption. Wants to clean up the planet in the process by creating a circular economy. Chooses to consume mindfully. Understands the many parallels of technology that are happening at the same time and sees why we might need a Universal Basic Income if technology removes so many jobs and sees work rather as an exploration of multiple talents. Is fearless about teaching other people what they know because they have a roof over their heads, food in their stomach and strives to free themselves of their ego every day.
We’re already on the hunt for the Patch Adams doctors of the world to serve our DIHs. Those who practice for the sake of healing humanity, one Social Entrepreneur at a time. We will work closely with farmers whom we will help pivot their workers into Fourth Industrial Revolution so that they may bring more automation onto the farms. In turn, they will help us deliver food directly to the DIHs.
Everything we do at these hubs will be recorded and put online for people to buy so that they can replicate the ideas. This money is then used again to tackle each sector of corrupt governments and create new projects that teaches people how to take ownership of their own lives and create jobs of the future.
The WordPress and WooCommerce community already has a large part of this mindset. They fully support one another by getting together and helping one another achieve their goals which is why we want to approach this community first in order to launch the first pilot project and help people like Lebo at SmartSentials.co.za, Lufefe from SpinacheKing.co.za and Antoine from Le-Coquin.com to bypass supermarkets and deliver food directly to the consumer.
We’re also calling on the Magento and Shopify communities as these are the main ecommerce platforms we’re familiar with but we are open to other platforms who have the same mindset.
Together with FreedomWon.co.za, can we convert more trucks into electric trucks so that food prices stay down? Can we clean up the planet of pollution in the process and can the robots and automation projects we build build our infrastructure or be taxed to pay for infrastructure in a 50 kilometer radius around each DIHs instead of people being taxed?
Thinking with the end in mind, can we ironically use technology to create more time? Time to spend with our loved ones, time to lead humanity back to values and principles, time to communicate our different cultures and beliefs so that we can create the most tolerant country in all of Africa from an inside-out approach. After all, if you ask most people at the end of their lives what they would have liked more of, they will tell you it is time.
There are many more layers to this but for now, this is a high level overview to give you an idea of what it is we want to achieve in the pilot project.
Expect major technology disruption and education to help many more people.
If you want to find out more, please contact James. [email protected]