Episode 17 · Simon Hareb

What It Really Takes to Scale Intentionally

27 August 2025

Growing a business always costs something. Some of those costs are worth paying. Others, like your health, your family time and the way you treat people, are not. The question is whether you choose them on purpose or let the business choose for you.

In this episode of the Scaling Business Podcast, John sits down with Simon Hareb, former managing director and co-founder of the Intentional Leaders Network. Simon spent nearly 20 years helping grow a Cape Town rope access business from a handful of staff to a couple of hundred people, including a spin-off working in oil and gas across Africa. He explains how the business moved from reactive to system-driven, what burnout taught him about delegation, and why leaders need to apply the same discipline to their own lives.

If your business has grown faster than your systems, or faster than you, this one is for you.

From Film Sets to Rope Access

Lessons from 300 Commercials

Simon started in the film industry, spending about seven years in Cape Town working on around 300 commercials and five full-length feature films, mostly for European clients. Every project was like joining a new business, which showed him two things quickly:

Systems decide efficiency: Crews with clear systems, down to how they unpacked the lighting truck, were always more effective than crews making it up as they went.
Leadership decides the experience: Looking at the heads of department on a call sheet, he could tell whether a project would be painful or a good one to work on.

Employee Number Six

Through product placement work, Simon met friends who were climbers with a business they wanted to take more seriously. He joined as employee number five or six. At the time the company did one or two big projects a year, mostly installing Christmas decorations in shopping centres. The team saw that their method of reaching work at height could serve many other industries.

He worked in sales and marketing, then operations, and later served as managing director for about 13 years after the oil and gas spin-off was sold to a Norwegian company.

Building a Brand People Trusted

Rope access was new in South Africa, and clients were sceptical. Many feared injuries and the liability that came with them. The team chose the tagline “professional rope access” and worked hard on visibility.

Bigger signboards on every site: A strong competitor pushed them to keep improving their brand presence.
Bright yellow overalls: Technicians on the side of a building became a moving billboard, and the photos worked well on social media.
Owning the skyline: On a given day Simon could drive through the city and see dozens of technicians on buildings, all recognisable as theirs.

Cash Flow, Pressure and People

Growth brought harder problems. While building the oil and gas side of the business, cash flow became so tight that Simon told his wife they might need to sell the house. Her answer, that they would make it work whatever happened, removed his fear of letting his family down and let him think logically again.

The business learned to manage cash carefully. When COVID locked down Cape Town for months, it had a reserve big enough to get through comfortably.

Labour was the other constant challenge. Skilled technicians were hard to find, and oil and gas companies could pay far more for offshore work. The team ran written and practical tests for every applicant. Sometimes ten people would arrive and none were fit for work.

Key takeaway: They decided to keep training people even if they left. Technicians who left on good terms often came back with new experience, and there was usually more work than technicians.

Becoming a System-Driven Business

To keep quality and safety under control, the business brought in ISO 9000 quality standards, chose a CRM, mapped its job flow and put serious time into safety paperwork.

“That was what defined our scaling from being completely reactional to being intentional.” (Simon Hareb)

Simon admits he was sceptical about doing values and vision work, which they did later in the life of the business. What surprised him was how much easier decision-making became afterwards. Managers could make decisions at their own level because they understood what the company stood for.

His approach to systems now:

Get clear on who you are: Your values work like the lines of a football field.
Get clear on where you are going: Long-term, mid-term and annual vision, plus the main objectives.
Find the bottlenecks: Then pick the system that gives the best result and return in the shortest time.

“You’re not building systems for where you are. You’re building systems for where you need to be.” (Simon Hareb)

Tip: Start with your accounting system as the base, then add a CRM or main operating platform to suit the type of business you run. Focus on the outcome, not the features.

Learning to Let Go

Simon struggled to delegate during the growth stage.

“That was an ego thing. Like if I’m being honest, that was me feeling like no one else could do it as well as I could.” (Simon Hareb)

He would work full days on sites and with clients, bath his kids and read them a story, then work at his desk until 2 or 3 am. Nobody expected it of him, but with hundreds of staff living pay cheque to pay cheque, he felt responsible for keeping the work coming in.

Two things helped him change:

Martial arts: Training to compete, eventually at world championships, forced him to be strict with his time. He stopped drinking for the six or seven years he competed.
Divisions inside the business: After seeing how construction groups in Dubai ran separate trades under one holding company, the team split the business into cleaning, building refurbishment, anchors, rope access supply and signage.

Each division became a business within a business, with its own leader on a profit share. One manager who ran building refurbishment started as a deck hand. It took a couple of years to prepare him for the role.

Simon also learned that the shouting, heavy-handed style common on construction sites did not get results. Hearing feedback about how he was treating people was hard, but it changed how the whole organisation worked.

Partnerships Are Built on Respect

Simon credits his partners with carrying much of the pressure a single founder would face alone. His advice is to choose a business partner as carefully as you would choose who to marry.

“Difficult discussions lead to good results, and not discussing things generally leads to festering wounds that then become bigger problems.” (Simon Hareb)

Respect and authenticity, he says, are the biggest signs of whether a partnership or a leader will succeed.

The Intentional Leaders Network

Simon is now working with Mike Scott (episode 10 guest) and Troy, a medical practitioner, on the Intentional Leaders Network. The idea came from Mike, who applied his business systems to his own life after selling his business. The program takes the tools that work in a business and applies them to the person running it:

A day away: Leaders step out of their usual environment to think more clearly about identity, values and vision.
Tools to implement: Practical tools to turn the vision into habits and processes.
A network: Support, accountability and shared learning from peers.
Quarterly reviews: Like a business, progress is reviewed and adjusted as life changes.

The network talks about integrated lives rather than balance. Sometimes you need to focus hard on one area. Simon’s view is simple.

“If you’re going to do it, do it intentionally and do it in a way that’s sustainable.” (Simon Hareb)

Final Thoughts: Treat Yourself Like the Business

Many owners commit fully to systems inside their business and never apply the same thinking to themselves. Simon’s advice is to start with self-awareness, then work out where you want to go and who you need to become to get there.

If you want to lead with more intention, start here: