Vital Stats
- Player: Marnus Broodryk
- Company: sme.africa and The Beancounter
- Visit: sme.africa and thebeancounter.co.za
Marnus Broodryk learnt the value of a success mindset from a young age. He grew up in a small town in a poor family. Determined to make something of himself one day, he started reading business books and biographies.
He also put his head down and worked as hard as he could, studying accounting in the evening and doing his articles as an intern during the day.
While everyone around him was partying, Marnus was working, studying or catching a few precious hours of sleep.
It shaped a mindset that has only developed over the past decade – and Marnus is reaping the rewards.
Q: Do you have a daily ritual that positively impacts your success?
Waking up early – 03h50 – with a morning routine. There is something magical about the first few hours of the day, a time when everything is quiet, there are no disturbances, no ringing phones, no nagging staff – just a time to do whatever you want to.
It’s a time to tick something off your to-do list and it enables you to start your day with a much better energy than if you wake up and immediately rush to get dressed and go to work, still half asleep.
Q: Do you look to role models and experts to learn from and develop yourself?
I grew up in a poor family in a small town and I did not have anyone to coach me on how to start a business. I’m partly glad about this, because it taught me the biggest lesson about mentorship: That you can find it in books. Books are extensions of the people who write them and, if you can’t find those people in a coffee shop, you can still draw on their insights in a book store.
It became a huge part of my own development and it is incredibly valuable. You don’t ever have to reinvent the wheel; you can learn from people who have done it before. These role models range from the biggest global entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Richard Branson, to successful South African entrepreneurs like Brian Joffe and Raymond Ackerman, to the average guy on the street who share lessons.
Q: What is the most impactful bit of learning in the past 3 years that has caused you to alter something concerning mind, body or soul?
To practice mindfulness more through meditation. Meditation is often something we Westerners don’t want to talk about. We think it’s some sort of religious technique, borrowed from the East, but meditation is much more than that, and there’s science behind it.
There are more than 3 000 studies that show the great effects meditation can offer us all, but, more especially, entrepreneurs and business people.
It has had incredible benefits on all aspects of my life.
Q: What do you wish you had known 10 years ago that you know today that would have enabled you to build greater success faster?
In business, focus is everything. You need to give all your attention and energy to one business, and its problems, at a time. You can build five average businesses or you can build one big business – but you can’t do both.
The proverb goes: The man who chases two rabbits, catches neither. And this applies in the business world. Entrepreneurs can easily become involved in too many different opportunities.
Of course, as an entrepreneur that is part of your DNA: When you see a problem – and there are a lot of them – you want to solve it. The result is that you get involved in too many ventures at the same time.
The world has made us believe that ‘serial entrepreneurs’ are the ultimate success, but we assume that they ran their businesses in parallel, rather than sequentially. They don’t. Most serial entrepreneurs start a business, focus on it exclusively, make a success of it and only then move on to the next big thing.
Parallel entrepreneurs are the ones juggling many businesses simultaneously. It might sound impressive when you hear about their ten businesses but they very seldom succeed in making any of them a huge success (never mind all of them). This was one of my biggest mistakes. The Beancounter only took off once it had my full attention.
