For most entrepreneurs, being successful in business means managing a company that has a thousand employees, a lot of business assets and well as raking in millions of dollars as income. This however, is not always true. All businesses, irrespective of size or income, starts from the same point: an idea, however, not all businesses grow to become that successful. In fact, to a large extent, the success of a business, is determined by how fast it grows and only few businesses grow to attain the vision of their founders.
While every business has its own startup conditions, the beginning of every entrepreneurial venture is characterized by challenges and marked by uncertainty. The ability of the business to grow past its startup conditions is what makes it successful. While some businesses grow to become very profitable, others remain the same and some also fail. How successful a business becomes and the business’s ability to grow is determined by two factors: the vision of the founder(s) and balance between its long and short-term objectives.
The multi-million-dollar companies we find in the world today did not become big immediately. While some were started from garages, others had to struggle to raise capital or survive harsh economic conditions before becoming successful. Whichever the challenge faced, some businesses failed, while others survived and became successful. The ones which succeeded are usually the ones that showed a strong sense of vision and a high degree of innovation.
The success of any business venture, thus depends largely on the vision of its founder(s) and the balance of long and short-term objectives rather than the conditions the business face. An entrepreneur that aims at growing creates a balance between his/her short and long-term objectives for the business to ensure congruence and the most effective way a business can do this is by being growth-oriented. For example, one of the major challenges for most small businesses is access to capital. A business that aims at improving its income creates a balance between income with expenditure to ensure there is sufficient cash to meet the business’s long-term objectives.
As an entrepreneur, being growth-oriented is the best way of growing your business.
This is because while small businesses have different characteristics from large corporations in respect to size, employees and income, every successful business in the world started as a small business. However, while every successful business in the world started as a small business, founders of large corporations created a balance between short and long-term objectives for their businesses. This enabled them to grow their businesses by providing them with strategic opportunities. To create a balance between the short and long-term objectives for the business, an entrepreneur must:
Develop a unique business idea in order to define your own niche. Customers are the lifeblood of every business organization. They play a very important role in the success or failure of every business venture and without them, a business fails to exist. But, while customers are very important to in business, attracting and retaining customers for a new business can be very challenging. The challenges in attracting and retaining in new businesses usually rise as result of product and competition created as a result of product similarities. In fact, the challenge of product and price competition is one reason why most small businesses fail. Businesses with unique products hardly face much competition. The business idea of a business is very essential to the success of every business organization. It is what defines the target market of the business and helps attract customers for that business. To successfully start and manage your own business, you must first develop a unique business idea in order to define a specific niche in the market.
Develop a well-defined vision and mission statement. Developing vision and mission statements are one of the important tasks of entrepreneurs at startup. They help set an organization in motion and defines the purpose, reason and parameters of operation. Developing vision and mission statements helps entrepreneurs set the direction of motion of their businesses and enables them to appropriately direct efforts. A vision statement is a long-term objective that an individual or organization hopes to achieve after performing a set of activities while a mission statement is an individual or organization’s reason or purpose of being/existence
Effectively communicate your vision and mission with all members of the organization. While having well-defined vision and mission statement in place is important, communicating it with all members of your organization helps provide clarity and understanding between all members of your organization. The members of your organization may include, entrepreneurial team, partners/shareholders, employees as well as customers.
Develop a business plan to serve as a blueprint for implementation. Many new businesses fail not because the entrepreneur didn’t work hard nor because there was no real opportunity in the business idea, but instead, because they lacked a definite plan on how to achieve their business goals and objectives. In business, failing to plan is also planning to fail. While a business plan is not the single most important requirement for starting a business, however, it is one of the most important documents that an entrepreneur might have to prepare in the course of doing business. Developing a business plan is important because it will serve as a roadmap for long-term survival and competitiveness of the business.
Create Timelines for Targets. While a business plan helps identify and develop short to medium-term goals of a business, creating timelines is another important way of creating a balance between the short and long-term goals of a business. Timelines helps businesses to achieve short-term goals and provides a path and direction for the achievement of long-term goals and objectives.
Assess and evaluate performance periodically. Goals, objectives, targets and timelines are very important in business. They help in evaluating and assessing organizational performance and help in control. This sets a business on course to achieve its goals and objectives and very important in identifying, correcting and/or rectifying errors, deviations and underachievement. Growth-oriented entrepreneurs regularly evaluate and assess their organizational/performance by comparing actual results with expected and taking corrective action when necessary.