BetterMan 1 | Page 18

"The one thing that I hold onto is that I will always outwork you" and exiting your comfort zone. I am still fundamentally an accountant, a boring accountant, so I’m not one of those guys who takes massive risks. My latest endeavors were a gamble, a 50/50 and it paid off. I’ll always take risks; but calculated ones and I think throughout my career I never gambled too much on anything. Well, apart from moving to Johannesburg: that was my scariest process thus far in my life and how I got over it is was to just get ‘into it’. I always say that if you take me on, the one thing that I hold onto is that I will always outwork you, and that has always been my comfort. I don’t care what you do, I can work harder than you can even while going through a ‘scary time’. I’ve just came from work and have committed to this interview, hereafter I’ve got other commitments, but I know I don’t need much sleep, I’d outwork myself over anything. ERIK KRUGER: That’s awesome. The next question then: If you could go back to ‘Marnus who just moved to Jo’burg’ and he has had no success as yet, and you can tell him, maybe spend 10 minutes with him, giving him some advice on business and life, what would you say to the guy? 18 | www.bettermanblueprint.com | ISSUE 01 MARNUS BROODRYK: I think one thing for me that is certain, and it’s easy to say it now because there’s 10 years behind me, is that my own thinking should have been a lot bigger. That is something that comes with experience, and age I guess, but when I left articles I had a dream salary and whatever it was, X amount and then a year later I got to that and then that was actually nothing, so I doubled it and then I got to that amount, and I doubled that, and I got to that amount. It’s probably X10 the original amount now but the bottom line is that I was coming from a small town, so my thinking as a whole lot smaller than what it is today. I think the bigger challenges that we take on, the more we succeed and I would definitely have taken on bigger things back then knowing what I know now. ERIK KRUGER: You obviously spend a lot of time with entrepreneurs, you work with quite a vast spectrum of business men and women, from those who are just starting out to guys those who are turning over millions and millions: what would you say are the one or two points that guys just don’t get when it comes to entrepreneurship, whether it’s limiting beliefs or a gap in their knowledge, where are entrepreneurs getting stuck? MARNUS BROODRYK: I think I’ll give one for the startup entrepreneur and then one for the established one. For the startup it’s that we think that entrepreneurship needs to be a unique idea. We think entrepreneurship is all about new ideas and patents and I promise you, if you think you’ve got a great idea and you spend enough time on Google, you’ll find out that somewhere, someone has already done that. Ideas are really nothing these days, everything is online, information gets shared and small businesses are really not about ideas anymore but rather all about execution. Steven Cohen the founder of Sage Pastel or co-founder recently said: If you’re an electrician and open up an electrical company you are just one of thousands of electricians in Jo’burg. However, if you open up a new electrical company, you phone your customer three days after you’ve been on site and ask them how everything is going, and you send them a newsletter at the end of the month with tips and tricks for electricity consumption, you’ll outperform every other electrician in Jo’burg just because you are great at your service and success is all about executing on your offerings. You don’t need a great idea to start that business, you just need to do it better than anyone else. I think that in my own industry there are so many accountants and accounting firms that we are outperforming just because of the way we execute our tasks and this includes the way that we use the technology on offer and not because we are offering a brand new idea. I think that that knowledge is crucial for new entrepreneurs. I think that for established entrepreneurs it is definitely to remove yourself operationally as quickly as you possibly can: get out of working the whole saying “don’t work in your business, work on your business”. Too many entrepreneurs spend too much time in their businesses, being operational, not being able to grow their business through systems and getting more customers and growing employees. Having said that, you don’t need to do that, there are many people who are perfectly happy just running a one-man show and generating a decent income, but if you want to grow your business into an expansive company, you can’t be ‘in the business’. ERIK KRUGER: Which habits do you have that you think contributes to your success? MARNUS BROODRYK: My morning routine sets me up for a great start to the day. I wake up at 4:00, I journal, meditate, listen to an audio book, and at 5:00 I go to the gym. I eat breakfast at gym and by 7:45 I’m ready to start my day. I’ve worked on my mind, my body and the rest of the day is work time. ERIK KRUGER: Which books would you recommend? MARNUS BROODRYK: Definitely Steve Jobs, it’s a bit of a hectic read, but Steve Jobs definitely. As well as Richard Branson, I just love that guy, and I’ve probably read his biography 20 times over and every time that I do I still get inspired.  ISSUE 01 | www.bettermanblueprint.com | 19