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Ready to build a highly successful business? In this article, you will find the 10 tips for building a successful business.
Here are the steps to take to create a valuable and growing business that will last and see your idea through.
1. Get Expert Advice
You may be a genius, have entrepreneurship in your blood, and have gone to the best business school in the world.
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2. Get Clear
From the initial ideas you put in your business plan, consultants, networking, research and interviewing potential customers, get real clarity on your vision, mission and plan. Perhaps, all best packaged up in a solid and concise pitch deck.
Things may change, pivots may be necessary, and plans will change. Though you are going to get lost easily without a compass to keep you on track to where you want to go.
Your pitch deck is also what is going to get you funded, help you hire the right people, and keep the team together. A key takeaway when thinking about tips for building a successful business is that in fundraising storytelling is everything.
For a winning deck, take a look at the pitch deck template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) where the most critical slides are highlighted. Moreover, I also provided a commentary on a pitch deck from an Uber competitor that has raised over $400M (see it here).
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3. Put Together The Best Team Possible
No matter how educated, intelligent and talented you are, you can’t do it alone to build a successful business. You need to surround yourself by the right people.
The altitude and pace your business is capable of is all going to come down to how great your team is. If you learn anything from the leading entrepreneurs who have raised the most money it’s that startups are about people, the team and assembling the best possible team.
Do whatever it takes to recruit and bring in the most talented team, empower them to do their best work, and don’t let them go.
4. Get Organized
Unless you’ve organized your business it’s really just a hobby or a side hustle.
If you want to build a successful business, and one which can attract great talent, get funded and accumulate value to one day go public or be acquired for hundreds of millions or even billions, you need to be organized from the start.
That begins with forming your company legally, in the right locale, creating systems, and creating the foundation on which you can scale.
5. Keep Detailed Records
You’re not going to get far with fundraising attempts or selling a business if you don’t have detailed records and good accounting.
Yes, you’ve got plenty of other things on your plate, but you can skip these important parts of a company’s DNA. You don’t have to and probably shouldn’t be elbows deep in accounting.
You need to know what is going on, but you can hire someone else to handle all the busy and technical work. That means a good tax preparer, daily bookkeeper, system for logging expenses, and following up on invoices, and storing all of those records.
Go ahead and start a data room in the cloud now. You are going to need it at all of the important stages along the way. Doing it now will streamline those steps when you come to them.
Then you can really focus on a great fundraising campaign or exit, and not get lost in scrambling to get all this paper and data together.
6. Know Your Competition
Before you take any other steps or think about tips for building a successful business, you’ve got to know your competition. One of the worst fatal flaws among startups today is walking in blind.
Just armed with an idea and not realizing they are just creating a copy of a dozen other ventures, and maybe an inferior one.
Your business idea doesn’t have to be revolutionary in order to create a successful business. There are even Uber competitors who are doing very well.
Yet, you are really going to have something unique, a great way to differentiate and a better team or far superior technology if you are going to make it. To waste months or years of your life for being too lazy to do a little research and getting a second opinion.
This doesn’t just apply to starting up either. You need to constantly be in tune with the market and understand what your competition is up to. Know what benchmarks are there for everyday business metrics, company valuations, raising money at each round and in acquisitions.
7. Know Your Customer
Even more important than knowing your competition is knowing your customers.
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The company that knows its customers best and actually acts on that knowledge has a massive advantage. Money, talent and technology won’t mean much without really knowing the customer and how to wow them and give them the value they want most.
This is going to take being very intentional about constantly talking to customers, and making sure that data is being passed up the chain to leadership every day.
8. Keep Innovating
It’s not enough to just have one creative idea to ride your business on. There are going to be many areas that require innovation.
Things move so fast today, that if you are not far ahead of your time, you’ll soon be passed by.
Create a of innovation. Hire for it, foster it, and even set your business model up in a way that forces you to constantly be innovating and winning your customers’ loyalty every month.
9. Buckle Up For The Ride
It’s going to be a roller coaster ride until you build a successful business. It’s going to be like a coast to coast road trip through all types of terrain and weather and unknowns. It’s going to take a while.
You can make it. It will take commitment, patience, and flexibility. It will go far easier if you have the mindset that you are going to give your absolute best and just keep learning and gaining experience. Any financial gain that comes out of that is a fantastic bonus.
10. Raise Money
You may start out bootstrapping. There are plenty of benefits to that initial approach. Yet, at some point, you are going to raise money. Either to make acquisitions before selling your own company, to bulk up before an IPO or just to scale and expand once you’ve got product-market fit and a well-oiled model.
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