Setting achievable business targets requires more than ambition, it requires a genuine sense of purpose that extends beyond the entrepreneur’s own personal gain, according to Investec’s Peggy-Sue Khumalo, who has worked closely with entrepreneurs across South Africa’s public and private sectors. A purpose bigger than oneself gives a founder something to sustain motivation through the setbacks that inevitably come with building a business.
Founders who define success purely in personal terms, income, status, personal achievement, often struggle to sustain motivation through the genuinely difficult periods every business faces, since personal gain alone tends to feel insufficient justification for the sacrifice required during a hard stretch.
Purpose beyond personal gain sustains motivation through setbacks
A founder whose sense of purpose extends to customers, employees or a broader community tends to find more durable motivation during difficult periods than one motivated purely by personal financial outcomes, since a bigger purpose provides a reason to persist that survives any single setback.
Relationships and accountability shape who a founder becomes
The people in a founder’s life, mentors, employees, customers, partners, both shape who that founder becomes over time and hold them accountable in ways that matter for sustained success. Treating these relationships as central to the business, not peripheral to it, tends to produce more resilient founders.
Work-life balance is better understood as integration
Rather than searching for one universally correct split between work and personal life, founders are better served treating the different parts of their life as needing to work together as a whole, rather than existing as competing, separately balanced priorities. This integration framing is more realistic than expecting a fixed, perfectly balanced ratio to hold consistently. Gallup’s wellbeing research has consistently favoured this integration model over a strict work-life balance framing.
Achievable targets are still meaningfully ambitious
Setting a target that is genuinely achievable does not mean setting a small or unambitious one, it means setting a target grounded in a realistic understanding of the business’s actual current capacity, which is more useful than an aspirational target disconnected from what is realistically achievable in the near term.
Frequently asked questions
Why does having a purpose beyond personal gain matter for sustaining a business through difficulty?
Because personal financial motivation alone often feels insufficient justification for the sacrifice required during a genuinely difficult period, while a purpose extending to customers, employees or community tends to provide more durable motivation.
How do relationships specifically affect a founder’s long-term success?
The people around a founder, mentors, employees, customers, both shape who that founder becomes over time and provide accountability, making these relationships central to sustained success rather than peripheral to the business itself.
Is there one correct way to balance work and personal life as a founder?
Most founders find integration, treating different parts of life as needing to work together as a whole, more realistic and sustainable than searching for one fixed, universally correct balance ratio.
Does setting an achievable target mean lowering ambition?
No. An achievable target is grounded in a realistic understanding of the business’s actual current capacity, which is different from being unambitious, and is more useful than an aspirational target disconnected from present reality.
Is this purpose-driven approach only relevant to a specific type of business?
No, the underlying principle, sustaining motivation through a purpose beyond pure personal gain, applies across business types and stages, not only to a particular sector or founder profile.
Further reading
Originally published in May 2017. Updated September 2026 and rewritten in house voice, dropping the event-recap framing while keeping the original purpose-driven advice intact.
