Vital Stats
- Player: Pepe Marais
- Company: Joe Public United
- Claim to Fame: Medium Business Entrepreneurs of the Year Award, 2018
- Visit: joepublicunited.co.za
Pepe Marais and Gareth Leck haven’t built South Africa’s largest independent agency by accident. It’s taken focus, dedication and discovering the personal and business purpose.
Here’s how Pepe views the role of mindset in building something of value.
Q: What is the best advice or mantra you live by that has defined who you are today?
Seek to uncover the greater purpose of both your life and of your business. I cannot overstate this point enough. Once you find it, it will profoundly alter your course. It will give you the clarity you need to perform at a far greater level across all areas of your life. It will not make your life easier, in fact, it may even make it more challenging.
But it will at the same time make it far more fulfilling.
Q: Do you have a daily ritual that positively impacts your success?
I have a 25-year plan, broken into an annual plan, a monthly plan, a weekly plan, and a host of daily actions and rituals. Let’s just say I am a man with a plan.
I have absolutely no doubt that success is linked to our ability to have a very structured approach to life, and a very powerful daily routine.
One of my most powerful rituals is looking at myself in the mirror at 5am every morning and telling myself that “I love myself, I am great.” And then my one-hour gym session thereafter.
Q: Do you look to role models or experts to learn and develop yourself?
I am an avid reader. I have read extensively for the past decade. I don’t touch fiction and am extremely interested in unlocking human potential. My only role models are of a higher order, in no particular order – Madiba, Gandhi, Jesus.
But mostly I enjoy self-development. I am currently studying A Course in Miracles.
Q: What is the most impactful bit of learning that has caused you to alter something concerning mind, body or soul?
Sleep. I attended Robyn Sharma’s Titan summit in Toronto, Canada. One of the speakers spoke on the importance of 7,5 hours sleep per night in order to ‘wash’ my brain. It just made so much sense.
I immediately put it into my system and changed my habit. Before then I was sleeping on average only four to five hours per night. Since then I have been sleeping 7,5 hours per night, most nights of each week.
It has fundamentally improved my creative thinking ability. And ironically something my wife, Heidi, had been telling me to do for 20 years.
Q: If you consider the circumstances of your childhood or earlier life, which have been transformative in terms of rejecting or embracing that have resulted in shaping positive outcomes for you today?
My childhood was pretty challenging. I started working at the age of 12. Let’s just say that without my childhood I would never be where I am today. I have a sense that the greater your challenges in childhood, the greater your chances at success as an entrepreneur. Especially if you are a first-generation entrepreneur.
Imagine the opportunity for entrepreneurship in our country if my sense turns out to be true. Especially given the challenges our mass market face each and every day.
