- Entrepreneurship is said to be the answer to unemployment challenges and slow growth, but to foster entrepreneurship we ideally need business leaders and owners who don’t give up.
- In this article, Lyle takes us through his journey and experiences of quitting his well-paying job and starting his venture from scratch.
- Lyle Malander may today run a successful firm offering business advisory, recruitment services, and financial advice to large and mid-size entities but there was a time — when he had to make a tough decision to move out of his safe corporate environment and start a business.
- Lyle is a qualified Chartered Accountant and the Co-Founder of Malander Advisory.
Growing Up
My name is Lyle Malander a Chartered Accountant from South Africa. I am a Director and co-founder of the Malander Group of companies.
One of my mottos is that Your past doesn’t define your future, meaning that where we come from shouldn’t determine where we are going.
I was born in Cape Town and being colored in South Africa, meant that I came from a previously disadvantaged background. I grew up in and around the Cape Flats and was surrounded by poverty.
My parents never had access to proper tertiary education growing up and opportunities to grow financially were very few and far between.
That being said, I will always appreciate the efforts my parents made to give me a good upbringing, and seeing them struggle too has always been and continues to be a huge motivation for me.
Becoming a Chartered Accountant
Growing up I never considered myself to be a smart kid, but I always challenged myself to improve.
Also, I always wanted to be a medical doctor, as it was a respected profession that makes a difference in people’s lives.
My dream of becoming a doctor came to a crashing end when I realized that I can’t stand the sight of blood, which could have made me a terrible doctor. So studying to be a doctor was completely ruled out.
That is when I decided to opt for Commerce. While studying at University I didn’t know what a Chartered Accountant was until I had to choose a course to study at University.
I did some research and at the time CA seemed like one of the most prestigious business degrees available, and boy was I right.
In my honors year at University, I was a below-average student and I made it into the final exam by the skin of my teeth.
It wasn’t an easy road to qualifying, and I think I was a bit too social at University. I must admit that I did not believe that I could pass that year, but I never gave up hope and I gave it my all and managed to pass.
It just proves that anything is possible if you put in the right amount of effort.
I did my articles at one of the Big 4 firms in Johannesburg and finally qualified as a Chartered Accountant.
Quitting my Job and Starting an Advisory Business
After finishing my articles, I went on Secondment to Chicago, USA through the same Big 4 Firm. Thereafter I came back to join the same firm in an advisory division.
I worked for about 2 years before deciding to quit and start my own business.
I have always had the desire to make a difference and one of my career goals was to become a CEO of a large listed entity.
One route to becoming a CEO of a large listed entity was to work my way out of the corporate ladder, the other was to try and start building a large listed entity from scratch. And I guess I subconsciously went for the latter approach.
Once I had my goals clear, the easiest place to start then was with an area that I was familiar with, which was Accounting. Hence the birth of the idea of the Advisory business – Malander Advisory in 2015.
In chatting with my now co-founder, Shaveera John, she immediately stated that she wanted to join the business and that made the decision easier.
We were now two Chartered Accountants jumping into the unknown.
Here is our Growth Timeline
2015
Funding our Venture
- My co-founder, Shaveera John and I started the Malander Advisory business with no real savings. We had cashed out our pensions from our brief corporate career and started the business armed with two laptops.
- We started a business in October 2015 and at the time, our business consisted of a logo, two laptops, and two Chartered Accountants. That’s it.
- We did not incur any unnecessary costs and we didn’t rent any office space in the first 3 months in which we operated.
Getting our First Clients
- I would say we got clients through engaging with people we have had personal business connections with first and building on that.
- We definitely had to prove ourselves in every project and we did, and still do, treat every project we do as our first as consistent and quality delivery is the cornerstone of what we pride ourselves in.
- This then allowed us to expand our client base through positive delivery and word of mouth.
2016
Renting an office space
- In January 2016, we made our first big decision and rented a small 2-person office in a serviced office space.
- Being risk-averse Chartered Accountants, we did not want to enter into any long-term obligations and the serviced offices ran from month to month, which was perfect.
Hiring our first employee
- In January 2016 we also hit the milestone of hiring our first temporary employee, as we had just won our second client, albeit small, it was a step in the right direction.
- This was at a time when we were still very much in the infancy stage, but we could not serve any more clients and if we were to grow, we needed to increase our capacity as scary as the decision was, it was a risk we had to take.
Our Big setback – No Clients Lined Up
- Our first big setback came in May 2016, when a project we were working on came to an end and we had no clients lined up.
- We suddenly realized that we were spending so much time working on the business, we had neglected to work on our business and build our client pipeline and the frantic search for clients began.
- Soon after we were fortunate to have signed another large entity as a client and the rollercoaster began from there.
Focussing on business development
- We were conscious of not making the same mistake twice and continuously focused on business growth.
- We did all this while maintaining service excellence.
- Needless to say, this involved many many sleepless nights.
Starting a recruitment Business
- We experienced good growth in the latter part of 2016 and therefore decided to expand our business through the introduction of our Human Capital recruitment business.
- This was done to save recruitment costs by bringing the function in-house, but also to expand the service offering to our growing list of large and listed clients.
2017
In 2017, we continued to grow our large and listed client base.
2018
- We were lucky enough to have been presented with an opportunity to do a project in London and jumped the opportunity to expand our reach.
- In May 2018, we identified an opportunity in the United Kingdom and opened our London office. A major milestone for us as we were now taking our brand global.
- It was a daunting prospect, as both myself and my co-founder have never spent time in London before, but we always had the desire to grow a global brand and this was a step in the right direction.
