Podcast: Successful business built on purpose

In this episode of Farmer’s Inside Track, Paul Kim, the co-founder of People Flow, a software company that develops paperless HR solutions for blue-collar enterprises, talks about how to build a successful business based on purpose versus profit.

In the same way as the objective of a car in life is not always to keep its fuel tank full, but rather to drive you to places and to make your life easier, the purpose of a business is to achieve the same goal, Kim explains.

He says the objective is to make a profit while also moving the company’s purpose forward so that it can continue to be successful while also providing you with an income.

Aim precisely where you want to go

According to Kim, if you are not making any progress towards your goal, you will eventually come to the realisation that you need to evaluate whether or not it is really worth your time.

“You have to define success upfront that will allow you to know how much you willing to pay in order to achieve that – that is success.”

He says he used to have a narrow idea of what success was, and that his idea of success was tied to how well he did financially. Following this, he realised that there are more things to know and keep in mind in order to give them the same amount of attention to make his business a thrive.

“Something simple like being able to work on the problems that you want to work on, instead of having to work the job because you have to. Now I understand there’s a lot of South Africans who are in that position.”

There is nothing wrong with that, he says. On the other hand, if there is an option for you to avoid doing so, you should define success based on the amount of money you make as a person and the kind of work you are doing.