3 Components to Small Business Success

I was recently asked what one thing separates the entrepreneurs who succeed from those who ultimately fail. I thought for a moment and answered with a single word - adaptability. Since that conversation, I've given considerable thought to the question.

I've actually identified three major components to small business success. The first is passion.  If you have a strong enough belief in a product, service or business concept that you are willing to step out from the crowd and publicly stake your claim and begin chasing down your dream, you've got passion.  Passion is energy! It's attitude and belief.  Passion is fuel for the entrepreneurial spirit. If you lose your passion, your out of gas.

The second component is Vision.  You have to be able to look into the future and know where you want to take your company and what it will look and feel like once you get there.  Visualizing a future checkpoint is only half of the equation though.  The big miss for many would-be entrepreneurs is also to have a vision of the hard work, the challenges and the climb to the summit.  If the passion remains strong, then the vision becomes clearer, and the day-to-day climb becomes enjoyable.

The third and final component is determination.  As a small business owner, your commitment to your passion and your vision will be tested regularly.  Randy Pausch, in his last lecture titled Achieving Your Childhood Dreams said this, "The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.  The brick walls are there to stop the people who don't want it badly enough."

Being determined enough to run into the wall harder and harder isn't always the answer.  Sometimes you need to figure out how to get over or around the wall, and that brings us back to adaptability.  Determination and adaptability work together a lot like a teeter-totter.  It's the ups and downs that make it a game and keep it interesting.  

In summary, it's passion that fuels the engine, vision that provides navigation and steering along the way, and your determination to stay on the road until you reach your destination that makes you successful in business.

Using Your Business Plan as a Management Tool

Most small business owners don't understand the value and importance of developing and maintaining a written strategic business plan (SBP). They see taking valuable time out of their business day to develop a written plan as an unncessary task that they don't have time for and don't really need.

I've had many small business owners tell me that business plans are for large companies or for businesses who are approaching a bank to borrow money.  My response to that line of thinking is this:  All companies, regardless of size, should have a written plan.  For small companies particularly, having and using an SBP as a management tool can ultimately make the difference between success and failure.  An effective business plan can save you time and money by helping you prioritize and focus your business activities.  An SBP can give you control over your personnel management, marketing activities, finances and day-to-day operations.

Packaging your business in document form and telling the story of your company in print almost forces you to view your business objectively.  Your plan should clearly present your current position, your vision for the future, including specific measurable goals, and your detailed action plans for realizing those goals and your vision.

As a business consultant, one of the benefits I bring to my clients is that I ask a lot of questions.  By asking questions like why do you ...?, how do you...?, or why not...?, it forces them to not only explain the reasoning behind their process, it challenges them to consider other alternatives.  As a small business CEO, you should constantly be looking at your strategic business plan and asking questions of yourself, and your entire team, as though an outside consultant were asking those questions.

Your written SBP provides a valuable management tool that you can use to clarify and improve every moving part of your company.  It also forces you to measure actual results against written objectives, which, believe it or not, is all too often a key missing link for measuring the financial health of most small businesses.

My challenge to you is to make the commitment to develop or update your SBP over the next ninety days.  I am confident that you will find that the value of getting your entire business operation broken down on paper is well worth the time and energy it takes to do it.  If you decide to tackle the planning process yourself, a good resource is a book by Rhonda Abrams, titled Business Plan in a Day.  This book provides a good frame-work for most small businesses to start from.  Don't be fooled by the title though, you can expect to spend far more than 8 hours developing your plan.