Business owners urged to nurture interest of their children

Mrs. Rebecca Oduro, the Chief Executive Officer of the Akroma Plaza, a hospitality outfit in the Sekondi Takoradi Metropolitan area, has encouraged business owners to nurture the interest of their children in the businesses they operate.

She believed such initiatives would not only help the children to participate in the businesses, but also be able to take over later in life with sound business principles that promote sustainability of indigenous businesses.

Mrs. Oduro, during a panel discussion at the Access Bank-Graphic Business SME Clinic in Takoradi said, “Our family business is surviving today though our parents are no more due to the active commitment and involvement my mother imbibed in us”.

She said many indigenous businesses and Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) had collapsed over the years because owners failed to make their children an integral part of the business…

“What the children know is that this is my father’s or mother’s business, I only come in to take from it and how it grows isn’t my business.”

The clinic, third in the series of exercises organised by the two institutions, was to help SMEs to adopt some best business practices, and to expose them to digital tools for trading to advance their potentials particularly the aftermath the COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Abigail Padi, a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Business, Takoradi Technical University, urged SMEs to canvass support through crowd funding, donations from family and friends to grow their businesses.

She also encouraged businesses to adopt best business practices and be mindful of the important role customers played in sustaining any enterprise.

Mr. Ebenezer Ato Yawson, the Chief Information Security Officer of the IT Consortium, noted that self-denial and self-aggrandizement in the initial stages of their business to reach the new pedestal…”we didn’t pay salaries to ourselves, and we make sure any money we take from the business is paid on time.”

He also entreated businesses to leverage on the numerous platforms created by social media to boost their businesses.

Meanwhile, 20 percent of start-ups have collapsed within one year while 50 percent of such businesses also collapsed within year one to five according to Mr. Kafui Bimpe, the Group Head of Business Banking at Access Bank.