WHAT KEEPS A SAVAGE ANCHORED

The Ink Link is an ongoing CN&CO project about tattoos, the people who wear them and the stories carried around on their skin.

We started it more than a decade ago because many in the team have always liked the fact that tattoos challenge the idea that “what you see is what you get”. There is almost always another story. Often a far more interesting one.

This one belongs to my friend Charles Savage.

Most people reading this will know Charles as the CEO of Purple Group and EasyEquities. I know him as that too, of course. But I also know him as a friend, a surfer, a husband and father, an occasionally infuriatingly intense human being and someone who is nearly always thinking about what comes next.

Usually about ten steps before the rest of us.

I have worked with Charles for many years and one of the things I value most about him is that he keeps me on my toes. He is strategically brilliant. Demanding. Restless. Impatient with excuses. Intensely competitive. He sees connections and possibilities before many people have realised there is even a problem to solve.

That can be exhausting.

It is also great fun.

And it has helped build something extraordinary (biased as I am!)

EasyEquities was launched with a fairly audacious idea: investing should not be reserved for a small, wealthy or financially sophisticated group of people. It should be easy, accessible and available to everyone – including rich people but not limited to them. Our last Purple Group reporting talks about a business built to scale and a client base whose engagement continues to deepen. Charles himself describes his purpose as using technology, markets, leadership and strategy to make investing easy for everyone and, ultimately, to change the financial fabric of the countries in which we operate. The value of which will only be fully realised after we are dead!

Big ambition.

But look at the tattoo on his back and you see something else.

 

 

You see names.

Dates.

A compass.

The sea.

A horizon.

Things that locate a person rather than propel him forward.

And, to me, that is the more interesting Charles.

Anyone who reads his excellent Savage Take regularly will have noticed the same thing. Yes, he writes about markets, technology, AI, scale and the future. But increasingly he writes about time. His children. Sarah. Loss. Travel. Friendship. People.

In his recent reflection on turning 53, after running through a year of business growth and big plans still ahead, he returned to what he wants more of: time with Sarah and more life shared with Tristan, Kirra and Mika.

That tells you quite a lot.

Earlier this year, writing from Vietnam, Charles reflected on money and time and on how much harder goodbyes become when you understand that time is finite. It sat alongside the extraordinary growth of EasyEquities towards R100 billion in assets. The numbers mattered enormously. But they were not the whole story.

That distinction matters to me too.

I love business. I love growth. I love winning. I love seeing an idea become something tangible and meaningful. I suspect Charles and I will continue arguing, building and occasionally driving one another mad for many years yet.

But business is part of a life. It isn’t the life.

Family matters.

And by family I mean both the people we are born to and the people we collect along the way. The friends, colleagues and fellow travellers who become our people.

Charles understands that.

I respect it enormously.

Perhaps that is why the maritime imagery in his tattoo feels so appropriate.

Charles is a serious surfer, so the sea connection is hardly accidental either.

The ocean teaches an interesting combination of confidence and humility. You can prepare. You can read conditions. You can choose your line.

But you are never entirely in control.

Not a terrible lesson for markets, business or life.

And tattoos themselves have made a similar journey.

Once strongly associated in the West with sailors and particular subcultures, tattoos have moved firmly into the mainstream and are increasingly recognised as serious artistic work. The Smithsonian describes tattooing as moving across the boundary between folk and fine art, with the human body quite literally becoming the canvas.

There is something rather EasyEquities about that evolution too.

Take something historically viewed as belonging to a particular group.

Remove the gatekeeping.

Make it accessible.

Let everyone decide for themselves.

Mainstream it without stripping it of meaning.

That may be stretching my metaphor slightly, but I rather like it.

The best tattoos, like the best businesses and the best lives, are not just decorative. They tell you something.

Charles’s tells me that beneath the intensity, ambition, strategy decks, numbers, targets, markets and relentless focus on what comes next sits something much simpler.

His people.

They are the compass.

And whatever else changes, that seems a pretty good thing to have permanently inked into your skin.