When Shark Tank South Africa’s youngest-ever participant, Marnus Broodryk, addressed dozens of accountants at the Radisson Blu Hotel in Port Elizabeth early Friday, his message to the industry was anything but predatory.
The energetic Harrismith born-businessman was the keynote speaker at a South African Institute of Professional Accountants’ (SAIPA) membership gathering which carried the theme “Breakfast With A Shark” – and the self-made millionaire’s message was simple: “2018 is the year of a sharing economy and we must do more to share”.Broodryk, whose long list of achievements includes his founding of one of the country ’s most sought-after accounting firms, The Beancounter, and his authorship of the bestseller 90 Rules for Entrepreneurs was at pains to debunk perceptions of accountancy as a boring occupation.
Underpinning Broodryk’s philosophy for success is his belief that people create their own realities.
“I started looking at other businesses and other entrepreneurs. Each person defines success in their own way. What I regard as success might not be regarded as success by someone else. So I started to look for the one thing that was common to all successful people and found that it came down to self-belief.”
“It has been an 18-year journey [business] for me. I have found that the biggest lesson in life is that people think that life comes at them. But the reality is that your life comes from you,” said Broodryk, who started his first business at 22.
“Success is not always based on just one big thing. It can come from making many small changes in your life and collectively all the small changes will ultimately make the big difference, ” he said.
Broodryk listed the creation of a one-page plan, surrounding oneself with “giants”, meditation and reflection, the incentivisation of employees, putting one’s self in a customer’s shoes, and the idea of striving to be better than average as being among the small changes people and entrepreneurs could make to improve their lives and prospects for success.