About
About
The business consultant of Lines to Live is Els Botha Standaert, born in Belgium but living in South Africa for the past 24 years. She is married to Cornel Botha and has 2 boys. She has experienced, early in her professional life (mainly in the medical and hospitality sectors), that research leads to solutions and improvements. She studied in Gent, Belgium (Bsc Speechtherapy and Language) and in Pretoria, South Africa (Bsc Operational research and Statistics).
She has built herself up from being an employee to being an entrepreneur through the research she has done of 100's of books and applying the results in her personal and business life. A few of her favorite authors, in no specific order, are Alan Weiss, Jim Kwik, Stephen R. Covey, Kevin Leman, Daniel Strauss, Benjamin Graham, Steve Wilkinghoff, David Rock and Hans Rosling. In 2023, she also attended the Billionaire Mindset seminar, presented by Daniel Strauss in Stellenbosch, South Africa.
She is not afraid to cross borders and her urge to research has taken her to Nigeria, Senegal, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Belgium, The Netherlands and Germany.
Having left the medical sector 14 years ago, she is now focusing fully on the hospitality sector in South Africa. She is currently a 50% shareholder of The Buck&Lion Group holding company, which owns shares in 4 different businesses. She knowns that there is big business in small businesses.
The Covid-19 lockdown has given her a lot of time to research and implement a lot of what she learned from her author mentors. A turnover growth of 110% was achieved between March 2020 and November 2021 by making the businesses vision-driven, changing the business’ corporate structure, hiring the right people, optimizing management processes, identifying non-profit zones and turning them into profit zones, expanding the businesses’ social responsibility & marketing and always have at least a 5-year plan in place.
Els would like to offer her expertise to other hospitality businesses and has therefore started Lines to Live Consulting. The name Lines to Live comes from all the underlining she does in her books and using the underlined knowledge to increase the quality of her professional and personal live.
The technical and menu consultant of Lines to Live is Cornel Botha, a South African with 17 years of hospitality experience, as a waiter, a chef, a manager and business owner and 18 years of Media experience, mainly in the printed media as designer, editor, salesperson and business owner. He also worked as a technical logistical coordinator. He studied in Pretoria, South Africa (Bcom logistics). He experienced early in his professional life that being hands-on makes sure that things are getting done. Cornel solves technical problems really fast and finds practical solutions to almost everything within any budget.
He travelled to Nigeria, Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands and Zimbabwe together with Els and his favorite past time was making sure there is good food on the table by being inventive with local ingredients. In Nigeria and Zimbabwe he learned to achieve a lot with little resources, from planning water supply to electricity to store rooms and living quarters, nothing was impossible.
He is also a 50% shareholder of The Buck&Lion Group holding company, which owns shares in 4 different businesses.
During the covid-19 lockdown he extended the menu of Cornel&Els' restaurant with pizzas and build his own pizza-oven with very satisfying results. In November 2021, the restaurant's turnover increased with 20% compared to pre-covid figures. The restaurant turnover has kept on increasing; tripling from March 2020 to March 2023.
When Cornel walks into a restaurant, guesthouse or lodge, he immediately looks at the flow of the establishment and the menu. Ideas for improvement pop in his head from the moment he walks in.
To start up their businesses Cornel & Els also received venture capital and have first hand experience in dealing with venture capitalists and being a shareholder together with a venture capitalist.
The name "The Buck&Lion Group" comes from Cornel being a South African with the Springbuck as national symbol and Els being a Belgian and more particular Flemish, with The Flemisch Lion as a national symbol.