Small businesses leaders should start thinking about how their business will function without them, according to Anton Ressel, senior consultant at development firm Fetola.
Ressel was speaking today at the Informal Economy Micro Enterprise Summit in Cape Town, South Africa.
“Unless you take steps to allow for those eventualities, make yourself redundant, your business will not grow beyond you,” he said.
According to Ressel, at times business owners hold back their business without realising it, by making themselves indispensable, with such businesses doomed to failed.
“Make yourself dispensable,” he said. “As soon as that one person goes, the business is no longer.”
He believes a business should impose good systems that are not dependent on individuals for their proper functioning.
Businesses owners should create greater access to resources, he said.
“Often we get that big order but we don’t have the infrastructure to complete. You’re not going to grow that way,” he said.
“You have to separate yourself from your business. There is a reason businesses are registered as separate legal entities from ourselves.”
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