Founder · Lead trainer · Built the programme
"I'm Ryan. I built Human Tools™ because I needed it."
For twenty years I built companies. Across nine countries. Raised, deployed and spent over $150 million. Employed thousands of people. Served in the British Parachute Regiment before any of it. Founded Inari Capital. Sold Sample Me App to private equity. Built Ofika Group into one of Eastern Europe's fastest growing print companies. Founded Verticroft Holdings, a fully vertically integrated food security operation across the Middle East.
I had the anxiety. The sleepless nights. The relationships I kept blowing up without knowing why. The calls I made at 2am that I couldn't stand by at 9am. The anger I couldn't always control. The version of me my family got at the end of a hard week was not the version I wanted to be.
I did the therapy. I did the breathwork. I did the silent retreats and the cold plunges and the books and the podcasts. Some of it helped. None of it stuck. I kept ending up back in the same place: running on a brain I had never been taught how to use.
That's the part nobody tells you. You go through school. You go through university. You go through your career. And at no point does anyone sit you down and teach you how to think. How to make a decision. How to solve a problem. How your mind deals with stress. You're handed the most powerful thing you will ever own, and nobody shows you how it works.
So I burnt out. Properly. The kind of burnout where the wheels come off and you can't pretend any more.
What I found on the other side wasn't a recovery story. It was this: the same thinking I used to build companies (break the problem down, find what is really causing it, fix the root) had never been turned on the human mind in a way a normal person could use. There was therapy. There was philosophy. There was self-help. But there was no curriculum. No simple, measured way to learn the thinking skills we all should have been taught at twelve.
Human Tools™ is what I built so other people don't have to spend twenty years working it out the hard way.
Over 1,350 people have now been trained. We measured 253 of them before and after with validated tests: 99.5% improved, and 100% would recommend it.
But I'm not the polished version of this. I still catch myself in the same thinking errors I teach people to spot. I still default to intensity when patience would serve me better. I still get it wrong with the people I love most. The difference now is I have the tools to catch it, name it, and choose differently. That's what Human Tools™ is. Not a guru system. Science-based tools you learn in five days and use for the rest of your life.
If you've read this far, you're probably looking for the same thing I was. You'll find it here.
The tools were tested on a real life before they were taught to anyone else.
Served before any of the companies.
Founded by Ryan.
Built, then sold to private equity.
One of Eastern Europe's fastest growing print companies.
A fully vertically integrated food security operation across the Middle East.
Then he burnt out. Nothing he tried stuck. So he built Human Tools™: science-based tools that take you from where you are to where you want to be.
Ryan's companies, as covered by the press.
A trained CBT and ACT practitioner. The founder and lead trainer of Human Tools™, and the person who built the curriculum from the primary research.
Not a registered psychologist, psychiatrist or medical practitioner, and not registered with the HPCSA. Human Tools™ is education, not therapy. If you need clinical care, we point you to it. See the disclaimer.
"How much of what you call you is a story your mind made up? And what happens if that story isn't true?"
Ryan's talk from EO Unleashed. Three hours with your team, free for company staff.
Four minutes shows you the thinking error behind yours. Or write to Ryan at ryan@humantools.co.za.