By Remy Raitt

Back in the 90s, Stokes had one goal; to work really hard till he was 35 and be married with kids. “I’m 36 now and I’ve done that. Although I had hoped to have the bulk of the work out of the way by now, and that’s not quite the case.” He is still working, hard, but he loves it. “I do what I do because I love business, I love figuring out how to make a business successful – I really love that. I like people. I like solving business problems with people I enjoy and I like technology.”

All these elements are pooled together and presented as Quirk, an agency that was born digital and continues to push the boundaries of creativity and technology. This industry innovation has a lot to do with the way Stokes foresees and then approaches things. “I’m good at seeing patterns and joining things up in ways that sometimes others wouldn’t notice. I’m detail driven in that way, and at the end of the day 99% of all great ideas are just other ideas joined up,” he says. “And at a high-level business perspective I think I can join things up that might be relevant in three or five years’ time.” But don’t call him a revolutionary, he much prefers the term dreamer, “I dream a lot, I live in the future,” he says.

With offices in Johannesburg, Cape Town, Durban and London, Quirk, like Stokes’ fish and plants, continues to grow. He credits this largely to his teams. And putting teams together is something Stokes says he has a knack for; finding genuinely nice people who are excellent at what they do. He even has a formula for it.

“The formula used to be ‘expectations + skills = success’ but the 2.0 version is ‘expectation + skills + desire = success’. The desire is really important, you need people who want it to happen and are willing to do the tough stuff.”

Desire plays a part in another one of Stokes’ greatest endeavours; education. He says the abundance of technology and information in this world is available to everyone, if they want it. Stokes believes once people have access to the wealth of knowledge the internet has to offer, it is up to them to learn, ask questions and develop the skills.

One skill set he feels strongly about is software development. “It’s seriously in demand and it can be quite simple,” he says. The problem though is in South Africa most people are unaware that a job like that even exists. Stokes believes that if more people were made aware of the myriad of job opportunities available, especially online, these transportable and exportable skills could be learnt through self-study.

Quirk Education’s merger with the Red & Yellow School of Advertising last year and the fact that he released his comprehensive guide to online marketing eMarketing: the essential guide to online marketing under a Creative Commons license (making it available to anyone for free) further demonstrates Stokes’ fervour for learning and development. No surprise then that he is a firm supporter of bursaries and encourages other South African agencies to help increase the pool of locally available ones.

As for education in general, Stokes says South Africa has a long way to go. “Compared to the top 20 developed nations in the world, South Africa’s education system is, let me use the technical term, kak,” he says. “Yes, we have certain pockets of excellence but the education system isn’t viewed as the building blocks it should be. We need a dual-pronged approach. We need to get our fundamentals right.

His advice to those currently in the education system? “Start a business,” he says with absolutely no hesitation. “I give lots of presentation at graduations, and the parents want you to tell their kids how to get a good job and then I get up and say; don’t get a job, start a business. It makes learning so much easier. Learning is much easier when you have a bucket (context) to put it in,” he says. ”Also starting your own business, even if you don’t pursue it, helps you apply the things you learn to your own life.”

Curiosity and kindness are two other elements he credits imminent success too. And if, we learn from experience, a healthy interest in fish and plant farming can’t hurt either.

For more information, visit www.quirk.biz. Alternatively connect with him on Facebook or Twitter.