I build what the world will need ten years before it knows it.
I'm Petrus Van Der Merwe — trained as an industrial psychologist, founder of ECAHLI, and author of What Silence Builds. Twenty-five years building, running and restructuring businesses across three continents: from five wellness centres I owned and operated in Europe, to a development platform now registered in three countries.
Start With a Business Diagnostic → Explore ECAHLI →
Founder & Lifelong Chair, ECAHLI
Find out what's actually holding your business back.
A structured, independent diagnostic of where your business really stands — the numbers, the model, the pricing, the positioning, and the one constraint doing the most damage. Written up properly, then talked through with you directly.
Most owners aren't short of effort. They're short of an accurate picture.
See What's Included →Take any package within 90 days and the full $950 comes off the price. And if the report doesn't tell you something you didn't already know, you don't pay.
One throughline. Systems that hold.
Whether it's a 50-year development platform, a book, or an advisory engagement — the same discipline runs through all of it: design for what outlasts you, not what performs for a quarter.
ECAHLI
A global sustainable development platform converting underdeveloped land into governed, revenue-generating communities across Africa, Latin America and Europe — built on a 50-year mandate, not a 5-year exit.
Explore ECAHLI →What Silence Builds
A two-part memoir on what it actually takes to build something real — the quiet, unglamorous discipline behind vision, and what gets sacrificed to make it durable.
Explore the Books →Strategic Systems Advisory
Direct advisory work with founders, small and medium businesses, investors and institutions — turning ambitious ideas into structured, fundable, executable systems.
Explore Advisory Services →Most struggling businesses aren't doing anything wrong.
Seven years of my life have gone into building ECAHLI — across three continents, in a dozen countries and as many industries. And everywhere I worked, I kept seeing the same thing: good businesses, run by capable people, quietly not making it.
Not because they were doing anything wrong. Because nobody had ever helped them streamline how they actually operate.
Some of those owners started asking me for help directly — enough of them that I decided to return to consultancy properly, and open it to anyone rather than only the people I happen to meet through ECAHLI. Private sector, small, medium or large: the problem is almost never effort. It's almost always structure.
Whichever stage you're at, there's a structured path.
From a first diagnostic to a full turnaround — every price published in full, so you know what something costs before you talk to me.
Business Diagnostic
$950 · credited backAn independent assessment of where your business actually stands, and the single constraint holding it back. The front door to everything else.
See What's Included →Practitioner Launch & Growth
$1,400 – $5,500Consultancy, a business plan, financial modelling, a website and a marketing campaign — priced for practitioners starting with very little capital.
Explore the Packages →Startup Launch & Growth
$4,500 – $12,000The same structured launch system built for consultants, agencies, trades and service-based founders getting a business off the ground properly.
Explore the Packages →Turnaround & Restructuring
Diagnostic first, then scopedConfidential assessment, strategic restructuring and rebuilding for underperforming small, medium and larger businesses.
See How We Work →
One trusted person · Wherever life takes you
You've been strong for everyone. Now someone stands beside you.
You're carrying a vision, a move or a business that matters — and carrying most of it alone. The decisions pile up. The doubt stays hidden. Nobody around you can match your pace and tell you the truth without an agenda.
This is the service I wish had existed when I was rebuilding my own life in unfamiliar countries: one trusted person who holds the whole picture — strategist, practical problem-solver and steady companion — who travels with you, plans with you, and stays until the thing can stand without either of us.
- Remote or on location. Private video sessions, or I travel with you — sites, meetings, new countries, hard moments.
- A psychologist's eye, a builder's hands. I see the pattern behind a stalled decision early, and I can also fix the real-world problem.
- One person, no handoffs. You work with me personally. A confidentiality agreement is signed before you tell me anything.
- Exclusive by design. A small number of private engagements at any time, by confidential introduction.
Strictly professional and non-romantic. Not therapy, medical, legal, tax or immigration advice — where you need a regulated professional, I help you find and work with the right one.
Twenty-five years, eight countries, one question.
I left South Africa in 2006 and spent nearly two decades living and working across Europe — Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, England and Spain — before moving to Paraguay in 2022 to explore Latin America firsthand.
I trained as an industrial psychologist and worked inside some of the world's largest IT companies. Then I left, and spent years owning and running five wellness centres across Europe, alongside retreats, events and workshops. I know what it is to make payroll, price something nobody has priced before, and watch a good business quietly bleed money for reasons nobody can name.
Most people diagnose a system after it fails. Eight countries taught me to see the failure while the system still looks like it's working — housing that doesn't build wealth, development that doesn't create real jobs, growth that doesn't survive its own founder. I stopped waiting for the collapse and started designing against it from day one.
Land, people and profit — designed to work together.
Most green projects fail on the same thing: the beautiful design never met a business model. I design the whole system at once — the buildings, the farms, the technology, the revenue and the governance — so a community can feed itself, employ itself and keep going long after the ribbon is cut.
Design concept · Kisumu, Kenya
Masterplan concept · Campus & hospital
Sustainable Architecture & Masterplanning
Eco-housing, off-grid communities, green industrial facilities and rural revitalisation masterplans.
From $7,500Regenerative Farming Systems
Permaculture, agroforestry, irrigation and hydroponics — modelled for profit and food security.
From $5,000Eco-Technology Systems
Renewable power, water purification and waste-to-energy, integrated into the community from day one.
From $4,500Project Management & Consultation
Feasibility, budgets, risk, contractor oversight and funding structure — or a two-hour strategy session to start.
Consultation $850Landowners, developers, impact investors, NGOs and governments who want more than a render.
If you own land that should be doing more, hold capital that wants real impact, or carry a mandate to build something that lasts — this is where it becomes structured, costed and executable. It's the same design discipline behind ECAHLI's own community nodes.
Explore the Design Services → Discuss Your Project →Architecture, farming, eco-technology, project management, consultation, branding, web and content — one integrated team of thinking, not eight suppliers.
Images show design concepts and masterplans — ECAHLI's sites are in planning and pre-development, not yet built.
Don't take my word for it. Check it.
Anyone can call themselves a strategic advisor. Below is the part you can independently verify — registration numbers, awarding bodies and published works. The registers are public and free to search.
ECAHLI Limited
Registered at Companies House. Search the number to confirm incorporation, filings and status.
No. NI688194ECAHLI LLC
A registered US limited liability company, verifiable on the state register.
No. C1598798ECAHLI Global Holdings (KE) Ltd
Registered with the Kenyan Business Registration Service for the East African developments.
No. PVT-PQ1E2OM2
2025
Self-Sustainable Community Winner
Awarded for ECAHLI's integrated community development model.
Acquisition InternationalInnovative Community Project of the Year
Awarded for the scale and design discipline of ECAHLI's flagship developments.
CorporateLiveWire Global Awards
2025
Non-Profit Organisation Award
Awarded for ECAHLI's governance architecture and mission alignment.
Global Recognition AwardsSeven published books
Including the two-volume memoir What Silence Builds, in English and Spanish, and six titles on economic and development systems.
Free to read belowECAHLI's 110+ Node pipeline is a development plan, not a track record. Those sites are in planning and pre-development across Africa, Latin America and Europe — none is built yet. It matters because the scope of the design matters, not because it's an achievement. Anything on this site that is a projection rather than a result is labelled as one.
The commitments behind every engagement.
Four things I put in writing before you spend anything — because in advisory work, how someone behaves matters more than how they describe themselves.
Confidential from your first message
Not from the moment you pay. Your information is never shared, never used as a case study, and I won't even confirm you're a client. A mutual NDA is available on request, at no charge.
No commissions, ever
I take no referral fee or kickback from any supplier, lender, software vendor or professional I recommend to you. Advice you pay for shouldn't be quietly paid for twice.
Published prices
Every fee is on this site in full. No "price on application," no discovery call before you're allowed to know what something costs, no quote that depends on what you look like you can afford.
A guarantee that means something
If the Business Diagnostic doesn't surface something about your business you didn't already know, tell me on the findings call and I'll refund the full fee. No forms, no argument.
Conflicts of interest, data handling, retention and your rights are set out in full — including how my advisory work is kept separate from ECAHLI's own ventures. Read the Privacy, Confidentiality & Ethics page →
A memoir. A charter. Five more books.
Before asking anyone to trust me with their business, I put my own story on the record — then kept writing. Every title below is a real, published work, and all of them are free.
What Silence Builds — Books One & Two
The full, unflinching account of the hardship that shaped me — adoption, and the years that built the man now building ECAHLI. Available in English and Spanish. Not a founder's highlight reel. The whole story.
Inquire About This Book →The ECAHLI Community Handbook
Personally authored, not commissioned. The constitutional document governing every ECAHLI site — human and worker rights, equality, and a dignified living and working environment, binding on every resident, employee and contractor without exception.
See It in Practice →From Polycrisis to Prosperity
On the compounding, interlinked crises facing global systems today — and the design principles for building genuine prosperity through them rather than around them.
Download Free →The Full Library
All publications are free of charge — because knowledge built to serve people should be accessible to people. Browse all downloads →
Beyond the packages, bespoke advisory work.
Where a structured program isn't the right shape, I take on direct advisory engagements — scoped to the problem, priced openly, and built to keep working after the engagement ends.
Business & Financial Models
Turning ideas into structured, fundable, scalable business models with full financial and strategic alignment — the same discipline behind ECAHLI's own institutional-grade models. $3,500 – $9,500.
Market Entry & Expansion
Roadmaps for entering a new market or expanding into a new region, grounded in what is actually executable on the ground rather than what looks good in a deck. $6,500 – $15,000.
Systems & Strategic Design
Redesigning broken systems into structured, resilient frameworks across industries and institutions — diagnosing root causes, not symptoms.
Infrastructure & Development Planning
Designing integrated developments, communities and large-scale projects with genuine real-world feasibility and long-term impact.
Sustainable Economic Systems
Building long-term economic ecosystems that balance growth, sustainability and human development — not one at the expense of the others.
Government & Policy Advisory
Advising on national, regional and rural development strategy, economic reform and infrastructure systems grounded in what's actually executable.
Founders & Small Businesses
Turning ideas into structured, executable, fundable concepts — and fixing the ones that have stalled.
Established Businesses
Restructuring for resilience, efficiency and growth that survives its own founder.
Investors & Funds
Structuring scalable, high-impact projects with strong financial logic and long-term viability.
Governments & Institutions
Regional development, rural revitalisation, economic reform and infrastructure planning.
Start with an honest picture.
Whether your business is stalling, launching, or about to raise — the first step is the same: find out where it actually stands. Four minutes to tell me about it, and no payment to get started.
Tell Me About Your Business → Book a Free 30-Min Call →I read and answer every enquiry personally · Reply within one working day