YOUR GREATEST BUSINESS RISK IS SENTIMENTALITY

One of the hardest things to do in business is to let go. Not because we do not know what needs to change, but because we are emotionally attached to what once worked. That old logo you designed at an internet café in town. That loyal team member who helped you when you had nothing but now slows everyone down. That pricing model you started with before the economy changed. That product you love but the market does not want. Letting go of these is difficult, not because they still serve us, but because they once did.

But here is the truth. What helped you survive will not always help you grow. And the longer you hold on, the more expensive it becomes.

Sentimentality in business is rarely talked about. Especially in Africa, where we build from pain, from scarcity, and from relationships. We are raised to value loyalty. We do not fire. We endure. We do not change what feels familiar. We protect it. We defend it. And in doing so, we let the past hold the present hostage.

You can love your team, but if someone consistently underperforms, costs you clients, delays delivery, or spreads negativity, that is not a staff member anymore. That is a liability. It is not cruel to let someone go when they no longer fit the needs of the business. It is cruel to keep them in a space where they cannot grow and keep others stuck while doing it.

You can respect your origins, but the way you operated when you had five clients cannot be the same structure you use now with fifty. That freebie you offered to gain traction at the start is no longer viable when you have bills to pay and payroll to meet. Yet many founders refuse to adjust their pricing, afraid they will be seen as greedy. But it is not greed. It is growth.

I once ran a business that refused to increase its prices for two years, even as input costs skyrocketed. Why? Because I was emotionally attached to the base we had built. I wanted to be the brand that stayed loyal. But loyalty without logic is how businesses quietly die. We bled until we had to make the hard choice or shut down. We raised our prices and almost all our serious clients stayed. The ones who left were the ones who never respected the value in the first place.

Even your offerings must be challenged. A product that sells but takes too much time to deliver, a service that eats your margins, a branch that never breaks even — these are not just numbers. These are decisions. And if your only reason for keeping them alive is that they were part of your journey, then you are not making business decisions. You are protecting memories.

This is where many founders get stuck. They confuse sentiment with loyalty. But your loyalty must be to the business. Not to comfort. Not to nostalgia. Not to the version of yourself that needed those things back then.

Real leadership means making peace with the past but building for the future. It means knowing when to say thank you and when to say goodbye. To a process. To a system. To a name. To a person. To a product.

There is honour in acknowledging where you started. But there is power in not being trapped there. If your business is to grow, it must reflect who you are becoming, not just who you were.

Because the longer you delay the necessary cut, the deeper the wound grows. And when the time comes to scale, you will not rise because of what you built. You will sink because of what you refused to release.