"If I opened the business today I'd have online advertising in my corner clients would find and come to me. "I had to convince them to let me in and give me a chance. "They actually said to me, "are you Marnus? Is your dad also Marnus? Is he coming?'" he laughs. So much so that when he arrived at his first client - a referral from a client he'd serviced in Harrismith - the husband and wife team looked past him and asked if his father was joining them.
The problem was that he was a very fresh-faced 22 year old. He wanted to give business owners real information from their financial data that would help them to assess which business units were working, which products or services were higher earners with better margins, and where the opportunities for greater growth or cost savings lay. He wanted to take the boring out of accounting. I needed to start earning before my money ran out, so the most urgent need was a client - just one client." "I had R37 000, which was a small window. And so the small town boy packed up his life and moved to Joburg. The idea for The Beancounter was forming - an accounting practice that would help SMEs build bigger, more sustainable and profitable businesses - but he also knew that Harrismith wasn't the right place for his business. It was this realisation that spurred Marnus into action. I wanted to add value to companies, and I just didn't see how audits did that." "In my last year of articles I was part of an auditing team that was heading up a big Afrimat audit as part of their bid to list on the JSE.
But if I didn't, if I could put those skills to work, then I'd have a pretty good life."īut he was also having a crisis of faith in what he'd chosen to do. If I died that day my life would have been wasted in a file room.
#The beancounter south africa free#
I'd read an article in Rapport that CAs were the best paid professionals, so I applied for bursaries and internships at local auditing firms in Harrismith in the Free State, and applied to study accounting through Unisa. "I was going to need a job to pay for my degree if I wanted one. "There wasn't any money for me to study," Marnus says. The team said they were broadcasting live from Randburg, so Marnus found a flat near Randburg.Īnd that's where he set up The Beancounter, a revolutionary approach to accounting services that was quite literally going to change his fortunes. His only other knowledge of Joburg and its surrounds came from watching Carte Blanche every week. But he also knew there was no way he could afford rent in Joburg's economic hub.
While doing his articles at an accounting firm in Harrismith, he'd travelled often to Sandton and loved it. He'd arrived in Johannesburg two years earlier in a rented bakkie with all of his possessions – a bed and R37 000 in the bank. Marnus Broodryk was a self-made millionaire by the time he was 24.
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