TOP ENTREPRENEURS
LEADERSHIP
Getting Started… In a developing economy such as ours, it’s not easy starting your own business. We ask a few Western Cape entrepreneurs to share thier experience and offer some starting points. By Yazeed Kamaldien
Barnabas Xulu – Senior attorney and Director at a Cape Town-based law firm, Xulu Liversage Inc. Attorneys, established in 2007 How did you start this business? After years of experience in our respective field of practice, my colleague Robert Liversage and I decided to start this firm from scratch. We both brought two different areas of expertise to enable a broad spectrum of law to be covered by our firm. Five years later we had a firm that has acquired a respectable clientele, which continues to expand yearly. Our firm was built on passion, which is the one thing that we both have a lot of. Passion serves as the foundation to the success of Xulu Liversage. What is the size of your business? We’re a team of eight persons. Individually, we all have our roles to play to add to the functional value of the firm. Working in synergy allows for the operational value of our firm to constantly deliver to our clients. We are a small but effective team of individuals that understand the core purpose of Xulu Liversage to comprehensively serve our clients’ legal affairs. How do you deal with business challenges? Running a business is like life, there are always obstacles and challenges. The most important thing is how you approach these challenges. What’s imperative to mould a brand into a successful entity is to evaluate where things went wrong and then implement a strategy to resolve it. Communication is central to ensuring there are less challenges to deal with in the work space. It gives employees a feeling of belonging to something greater than what their job requires them to do. Do you have a hands-on management approach at your office? Yes. Having an interactive relationship with employees allows different mindsets to share views on anything that can improve the company as a whole. When hierarchy does not exist, and each employee feels trusted and valuable to the firm, their best efforts are always put forward as they too want the firm to succeed. Do entrepreneurs face a lot bureaucracy? Unfortunately, yes. There are incompetent government officials that are entrusted with the duty of ensuring that business is conducted in
“RUNNING A BUSINESS IS LIKE LIFE, THERE ARE ALWAYS OBSTACLES AND CHALLENGES.”
a favourable environment. Government becomes the main culprit, for example, with late payment of fees for services rendered. Also, you have to share the views of the current political party in power in your province if you want to get work from government structures in the Western Cape. How do you manage your business growth in terms of staff development and retention? When the firm started there were only four employees. As business grew, there was a need for the company to expand as well. It was also important for Xulu Liversage, as a brand, to update itself if it wanted to grow. Our firm hired a brand strategist to guide the internal structure growth and to, most importantly, give reach out to the public through social media platforms. South Africans, at times, can lose faith in our judicial system. Part of our marketing strategy is to play a role to instil hope in the public that justice will be served in South African courts. How do you attract the right staff? Our main aim is to work hard while being able to communicate with all employees as we all work together to achieve one goal. We are a law firm that prides itself on transparency. Staffers need to be outspoken individuals that will go through any obstacle to ensure that, at the end of the day, we live up to our core purpose of delivering an excellent service to our clients.
TOP300 WESTERN CAPE
WC entrepreneurs.indd 1
2013
91 2013/02/18 9:27 AM