The Ink Link: The Windmill, the Work and Waylon

The Ink Link is an ongoing project at CN&CO that showcases the diversity of tattoos. One of the great things about a tattoo is that it goes against the commonly held viewpoint that “what you see is what you get”. There’s a misguided belief in certain quarters that only “some” people get a tattoo. We are putting paid to that perception through the stories showcased in the Ink Link. If you or anyone you know would like to be featured, please get in contact with us.

By Carel Nolte

I’ve known Waylon Smit for about a decade. I met him when he was wearing a suit and tie, have partied with him while he was dressed as a mermaid. And much else besides! We’ve both had multiple roles at EasyEquities over the years and for a period I was technically his manager. Of course, in many contexts he knows more than I do. I’ve always liked that about him. He is curious, he learns quickly, and he cares about doing things properly. Those traits matter in a business that exists to enable ordinary people to invest and build wealth.

Today he heads up client engagement at EasyEquities. That title sounds corporate, but the day-to-day is anything but. Client engagement is the coal face. It’s where excitement, confusion, gratitude and frustration arrive in real time. If you can stay human there while scaling, you’re doing something right. Waylon does.

For a long time I’ve been interested in the stories people choose to carry on their skin. Tattoos are underrated sources of meaning, identity, humour and memory. Ask someone about their tattoos and you will usually learn more about them than you will from a job description or a LinkedIn profile.

Waylon has four tattoos. The latest one is of a windmill and I was interested in the story. On the surface a windmill reads as rural nostalgia. For Waylon it is something else entirely. It represents resilience, self-reliance and continuity. The base isn’t perfect. Some lines are straight and others skew. The message is simple: things don’t need to be flawless to stand strong or serve a purpose. Imperfection is often where the character sits.

There’s also a deeper layer. The windmill honours a close friend who passed away. It symbolises partnership without bitterness, loss without melodrama and continuity without remorse. Something that still turns, still gives, still stands. The tattoo was done by Simone in Parys, who understood that the work needed character rather than perfection. The small inconsistencies aren’t mistakes. They are part of the story.

Waylon intends to add more elements over time. That makes sense to me. Good stories don’t end neatly and they shouldn’t.

There’s another angle worth pausing on. We tend to tell a one-dimensional story about financial services and the people who work in it. The reality at EasyEquities is that we have a leadership cohort filled with coaches, creatives, athletes, tech obsessives, farmers, teachers, musicians, quants and community builders. Waylon sits squarely in that ecosystem. He has played and coached across rugby, touch rugby and netball. He says yes when people ask for help. He works hard and he plays hard, and unlike most people who use that phrase, he actually means both parts.

Nothing about that is accidental. Diversity of personality, skill and lived experience makes our Easy business better. It expands how we think about clients, how we solve problems and how we show up when things are messy. In our world it’s a human who cares deeply about service, a tattoo that holds a lesson about continuity, and a guy who remembers that simplicity and modernity aren’t opposites. The old and the new can reinforce one another. AI and data don’t erase pre-digital wisdom; they build on it and make it usable at scale.

I’d like to leave you with one final thought: talk to your teammates about their tattoos. Ask them what the ink means and who it’s for. You will learn more about who they are and why they show up the way they do.

If you don’t know Waylon yet, I hope that you will one day get to meet him. He’s one of the good ones.