For #WomensMonth, we speak to FNB’s Palesa Moeletsi, an SME Development professional with more than a decade of experience helping entrepreneurs start, grow and scale their businesses, about the lessons she learned growing up in an entrepreneurial family in Soweto and what it takes to turn a hustle into a sustainable business.
Palesa Moeletsi | image supplied
Her career has taken her from working directly with entrepreneurs through business advisory, training and incubation to designing and leading larger-scale enterprise development initiatives.
Today, she brings those experiences together at FNB, helping shape programmes and investments aimed at giving SMEs access to skills, funding, markets and opportunities.
She reflects on the resilience of entrepreneurs, the challenges still facing women in business and why supporting SMEs requires more than simply providing funding.
You grew up in a family of entrepreneurs in Soweto. How did that shape your own career?
Growing up in a family of entrepreneurs in Soweto meant that business and the spirit of hustling was always around me. Those experiences weren’t limited to my family; they were part of the community I grew up in. There was always someone running a side hustle, trying a new idea or finding another way to put food on the table.
I saw the excitement when things worked, but I also saw the uncertainty and the losses when things didn’t work out. Those experiences taught me quite early that I probably didn’t have the nerve to be an entrepreneur myself. But they left me curious about why some businesses seemed to stand the test of time, remaining relevant through different seasons, while others disappeared when a particular trend or opportunity ended.
I didn’t have the language for it then, but I wanted to understand what made the difference. What made one business sustainable while another died with the season?
So, when I had the opportunity to further my studies and discovered that entrepreneurship was a field I could study, the choice felt natural. It gave me an opportunity to explore some of the questions I had grown up with but didn’t yet know how to answer.
That decision ultimately shaped my career. More than a decade later, I have worked alongside entrepreneurs at grassroots level and progressed to designing and leading SME development interventions at a strategic level.
I may not have become the entrepreneur, but I found my place in helping entrepreneurs build stronger, more sustainable businesses that are better equipped to grow and stand the test of time.
When did your interest in turning a “hustle” into a sustainable business begin?
It started at home, but I think my interest was less about the hustle itself and more about what happened after the hustle started.
I watched businesses around me respond to what people wanted at a particular time, but when demand shifted, some of those businesses disappeared with it. Sometimes, along with the money that had been invested.
That always stayed with me, and I wanted to understand how you take that initial hustle and build something that can survive beyond a season. How do you build a business with strong enough foundations to remain relevant, grow and, ideally, become something that can be passed from one generation to the next?
Over the years, working with entrepreneurs has helped me understand that the hustle is an important starting point. It teaches resourcefulness, gets you into the market and, in many cases, helps you survive.
But there comes a point where, to move from survival to scale, an entrepreneur must build beyond themselves and their expertise. They need to understand their customer and numbers, put systems around the business, build the right capabilities and know when to tap into external expertise.
Looking back, I realise that this was the missing piece I was observing in many of the businesses in our communities growing up. The entrepreneurial spirit was always there; what was often missing was the development support to help turn that hustle into an enterprise that could grow beyond the individual who started it.
That transition has really been at the heart of my career.
What has more than a decade of working with entrepreneurs taught you about resilience?
It has taught me that the failure of an idea does not mean the failure of the person behind it.
I've seen entrepreneurs put everything into an idea and have it not work. I've also seen those same entrepreneurs come back with a different approach, a different product or sometimes a completely different business.
I think we sometimes talk about resilience as if it is something people consciously choose. Often you don't know how resilient you are until you have no choice but to push through a closed door or find another way.
And strangely, some of the best ideas are born in those moments. When the original plan is no longer an option, you are forced to think differently. That is often where innovation happens.
What are some of the biggest challenges women entrepreneurs still face?
Navigating perceptions about what industries women belong in, what roles they should occupy and, sometimes, even how ambitious they should be remains a challenge.
Even today, women still speak about entering traditionally male-dominated industries and feeling that they have something to prove before they have had the opportunity to demonstrate what they can do.
That requires a tremendous amount of psychological muscle. And this is over and above the normal challenges every entrepreneur must navigate in building a viable business, accessing markets, funding, finding customers and remaining competitive.
So, for some women, there is still an additional layer to navigate while still having to compete on the same business fundamentals.
To overcome this, we need to continuously build business environments where women’s participation across industries becomes increasingly normalised, so women can focus their energy on what ultimately matters: building competitive, sustainable businesses and demonstrating what they are capable of through the businesses they build.
What do you think is holding more women back from growing their businesses?
I think many of the challenges that hold businesses back – funding, access to markets, networks and the right business skills – are not unique to women. These are realities most entrepreneurs will face at some point in building a business.
Where I do think the experience can be different for women is in the number of roles we often carry at the same time.
You can be building a business while also being a mother, partner, daughter or caregiver, and those responsibilities don’t disappear because the business needs more of you.
The constraint then becomes capacity: having the time and headspace to build networks, develop new skills, pursue opportunities and do the strategic work required to move a business from one stage to the next.
This is something we need to acknowledge more when we talk about supporting women entrepreneurs.
It is not necessarily that women need a completely different set of business interventions, but we should recognise that the circumstances in which they access and apply that support may be different.
If time and capacity are part of the constraint, then we should also be thinking about how development programmes, networks and support ecosystems can be more responsive to that reality.
Because sometimes creating greater access is not only about making an opportunity available, it is also about making it possible for people to participate meaningfully in it.
How can financial institutions better support women-owned SMEs beyond providing funding?
Financial institutions have much more to offer entrepreneurs than money.
We sit within incredibly powerful ecosystems with customers, corporates, suppliers, industry expertise, networks and information. The opportunity is to use more of that intentionally.
Sometimes an entrepreneur doesn't need another cheque as much as they need a customer, an introduction or someone who can help them understand why their margins aren't working, or even better, access to an industry they have been trying to break into.
Having worked directly with SMEs and now working at a more strategic programme level, I have seen how important it is to understand what is holding the business back before deciding what support is needed.
Funding matters, but it becomes far more powerful when it is combined with business development support and real access to opportunities.
What has been your most rewarding moment working with an entrepreneur?
There isn’t one moment that I can single out. What stays with me are the messages from entrepreneurs saying, “I got the contract”, “the funding came through, “I’ve hired someone”, or simply, “my business is finally moving.”
Those moments never get old.
Earlier in my career, I worked directly with entrepreneurs, sitting with them, understanding their businesses, facilitating training, helping them access funding and looking for opportunities that could move their businesses forward.
Today, I operate much more strategically, designing programmes, deploying investment and working with partners to support businesses at scale. But that grassroots experience has never left me.
When I look at a report showing businesses supported, jobs created or businesses that have grown, I don’t only see a KPI. I know there is a real person behind that number and, very often, a family whose livelihood is connected to whether that business succeeds.
I know that personally because I was once the little girl in Soweto whose family was making those plans and trying those businesses to keep things moving at home.
So, for me, the impact of supporting an SME rarely stops with the entrepreneur. It reaches their employees, their families and, in many cases, their communities.
Seeing something that we once designed on paper eventually translate into a real opportunity, a growing business or a changed livelihood is probably the most rewarding part of what I do.
What advice would you give a woman with a business idea but no clear path to making it a reality?
Start with the idea but get close to the customer very quickly.
Sometimes, you don’t need to have everything figured out before you start. Speak to the people you think will buy your product or service. Understand the problem you are solving. Test it, ask questions and be open to discovering that your first idea may need to change.
Then, as the business starts to take shape, be deliberate about building around it. Know your numbers. Understand your customer. Build relationships. Find people who know what you don’t know and don’t be afraid to ask for help.
One of the biggest lessons I have learnt from working with entrepreneurs is that you cannot always take a business to the next level with the same skills and thinking that got it started.
At some point, you must be willing to learn, bring in different expertise and allow the business to grow beyond you.
Most importantly, don’t allow one idea that didn’t work to convince you that you cannot build a business. Sometimes the idea fails. Sometimes the timing is wrong. Sometimes the market is simply telling you something you need to hear.
The failure of an idea is not the failure of the entrepreneur.
So start, as many times as you need to, even if the whole path isn’t clear yet. Listen to the market, learn as you go and keep building. You don’t need to see the entire road from where you are standing – you just need enough courage to take the first step, enough humility to learn along the way and enough resilience to keep going when the road looks different from the one you imagined.
