How To Increase Business Success

How to increase business success, and elevate your future chances of winning?

Everyone wants their business to be a success. Clearly wanting it alone isn’t always enough. Nearly 6M businesses can be started each year, just in the US. You’ve probably only heard of a handful of them.

So, what can you do to increase your chances of success ahead, and boost your performance now?

The 3 Stages Of Business

There are three main stages of business that owners are concerned with success.

There may be multiple smaller subsets and stages. Yet, for the most part, your business can be broken up into what you need to really excel and maximize your odds of winning by these categories.

1. Preparing To Launch A Business

While there may be an ability to pivot and adjust and do things over later, one of the most critical areas is setting up your business for success before you even start.

It is getting the right foundation. One that helps you kickstart and launch successfully. As this is the phase in which 90% or more of startups fail, or which seals their fate.

A strong start out of the gate will give your business the best chances of survival and achieving the vision you have for it.

2. Growing Your Business

Once you get started, it is all about growing your business. Once you’ve started selling, or at least acquiring customers, the main focus is all about how you build on that and multiply it.

In order to keep on getting to the next level, you need to show growth and improvement. Which in turn will enable you to attract the funding to fuel the next leg of the journey.

Each company may focus on its own growth metrics. Yet, you have to keep growing in some way. If you aren’t growing, you are declining.

3. Exiting Your Business

While many startup entrepreneurs and business owners aren’t aware of this at first, successful businesses almost inevitably end up in an exit. And, for that to happen, you should know how to increase business success.

Very few successful entrepreneurs will stay on with their businesses forever. Eventually, you will be driven to step out and create something new again. Of course, your ability to do that, and the success of your next venture will also rest heavily on your exit from this one.

This may be through a big merger, an acquisition, or going public.

Savvy entrepreneurs are already thinking about, and are positioning for success in this stage before they even launch their companies.

Keep in mind that in fundraising, storytelling is everything. In this regard for a winning pitch deck to help you here, take a look at the template created by Silicon Valley legend, Peter Thiel (see it here) that I recently covered. Thiel was the first angel investor in Facebook with a $500K check that turned into more than $1 billion in cash.

Remember to unlock the pitch deck template that is being used by founders around the world to raise millions below.

Know What ‘Success’ Means To You

Success doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing for everyone. There can also be many metrics you use to measure your success.

It is important to understand what ‘success’ means to you. As well as to understand what a successful business looks like for others that you may need to enroll in the journey. Such as advisors, talent, investors, and acquirers.

Impact & Mission

For many startup entrepreneurs, their idea is born out of a mission and the impact that they want to have. They want to change or improve the world in some way. That may just be a better experience and deal for an essential product or service. Or something much larger.

This will be a guiding principle and personal measurement of success. Yet, it is important to remember that you will have to perform on many other tangible financial metrics to get the support you need along the way. As well as to keep this mission sustainable.

Profit

Unless you are starting or running a nonprofit or charity, then one of the main purposes of your business is to make a profit. In fact, the whole point of a business is to make profits.

Some delay real net profits for many years. Often as a trade-off for other metrics. Though profit cannot be ignored. Without a path to profitability, and strong profit margins, you may not really have a business at all. So, take the time to learn how to increase business success and profits.

Revenues

It has become much more popular to focus on revenues than net profit. It is often an easier metric to grow.

You may wish to achieve a certain level of revenue. Often benchmarked against the competition. Just make sure that you are differentiating between the top line and the bottom line. More revenue doesn’t necessarily directly translate into more profit. In fact, the opposite is often true too.

Customer Count

Tech startups, in particular, have increasingly been measuring success, progress, and value, based upon their customer counts.

How many total users they have acquired. Active daily or monthly users, and customer acquisition rates have all become common metrics to track.

Fame

Today, ‘success’ has often appeared linked to how famous you are. For some, it seems like the end game. Even regardless of the lack of tangible things, like profit.

Building a great and sound business can lead to all the things that successful people appear to have.

Though focusing on obtaining all of the things that appear to suggest success, like TikTok followers, fancy cars, and expensive suits do not always lead to real, underlying success. In fact, they may be counterproductive for many.

sing the biggest rounds by stage of funding often seems to become the goal.

It can certainly represent having built the framework of a successful business. It can help fund other metrics. Though funding alone does not necessarily equate to a sound and profitable business. But, it is critical when you’re working out how to increase business success.

How Much You Sell Your Business For

Like any investment, you can only really determine how profitable and successful it was until you cash out at the end. It is only once you’ve exited your business and put the returns in your pocket that you can do this math. How successful your company or product goes on to be after your exit may be a concern too.

Again, be sure that you are watching the bottom line, not just the gross price on paper. Depending on how everything was structured on the journey, a founder who sells a company for $1B, may end up pocketing less than a peer who only sold theirs for $100M.

Headcount

How many employees a company has can often be used as a barometer of its success. Not that this may be detached from profitability and sustainability as well. Though many owners pride themselves on how many people they have been able to give jobs to and employ.

Some even consider their most important success is how many lives they change when they sell their businesses and deliver big payouts to their team members.

Growth Rates

In all of the above metrics, succeeding and increasing success is often about how fast that growth is coming.

How fast are you growing your customer base, headcount, revenues, profits, etc?

These growth rates heavily impact the ability to raise funding, and the value put on the business by potential acquirers.

Learning

Experienced entrepreneurs say that “either you succeed, or you learn.” Though learning in itself is a form of success. You may not always hit all of the financial metrics you dreamed of. Yet, if you gain great knowledge that is a win too.

Would you like more information on how to get traction for your business? Check out this video I have created with detailed tips on how to make that happen.

Tips For Increasing Your Business Success

Business Planning

It is true that plans will change. You do not want to be bogged down in creating a voluminous business plan for a year that no one will ever read or refer to. Yet, the foundation for a successful business is a good business plan.

Doing your research upfront, creating a strong business model, and mapping for the years ahead will go a long way to concreting your success.

Advisors

Even as a repeat entrepreneur, going into a new business always comes with new learnings, unknowns, and new things to master. Great advisors can go a long way to ensuring you avoid the perilous pitfalls that will limit or bankrupt you. While also elevating your potential, and speeding up your success. From planning a new venture to fundraising for the next milestone to M&A, be sure you have the best advisors on board ahead of your needs.

Money

Running out of money is the most common reason for business failure. Money alone won’t fix a broken business. Yet, it can certainly help increase your success and multiply what you are doing right.

Your main job as a founder or CEO is to ensure your business does not run out of money. Raise before your needs, and have the capital to take advantage of opportunities. Understand how to increase business success by getting investors.

Test Before You Start

Whether it is a brand new business, or just a new product or service, or niche, test before you start. It is the best way to ensure you will be successful. As well as to tweak, fix, and optimize things to increase your success once you go all-in on it.

Go To Market Success

Marketing and sales are even more important than product genius. To succeed you have to have great marketing and sales. To increase success, you have to be strong in scaling and diversifying your marketing.

Scalability

It must scale. If your product, service, or company cannot scale profitability, you are going to hit a roadblock when trying to increase any past or current successes. Watching your unit economics is vital to this. Get these numbers and the model right. Then you can replicate it, and grow it.

Great Customer Service

Any successes will be temporary and very short-lived without great customer service.

You can pile in all the customers you can buy. Though if you can’t service them well, and keep them happy, your churn rates will be through the roof. You will always be treading water at best. Your costs and margins will always be inferior to the competition.

Prioritizing great customer service will lead to sustainability and efficient growth.

Listen to your customers, and create for them. Then great products and service will follow.

Be Resourceful

It’s not what you have, but what you can do with it.

Increase your success by being creative in how much you can do with the little you have. Then any additional resources you can pour in will be maximized.

Then look to leverage all the resources you can. That may be the knowledge and experience of others, the funding, or the customers and assets of partners, and those you may acquire or merge with.

Always Be Pushing Your Boundaries

If you want to increase your success, you have to be stepping out into new territory. Set big and uncomfortable, intimidating goals. Always be thinking about what’s next, and be pushing innovation.

Hire The Best Possible Team

There is only so much you can do on your own. Hire the best experts you can in every area of your business. Enroll the best marketers, fundraisings, M&A experts, and more. Empower and listen to them.

Summary

No matter how successful your business is now, or how confident you are in your idea, there is always something you can do to increase your business success.

Start with gaining clarity on what ‘success’ really means to you. As well as understanding what meaningful success metrics are going to be vital for enrolling the resources you need along the way.

Stay ahead by implementing these tips on how to increase business success, and keep multiplying your milestones.

You may find interesting as well our free library of business templates. There you will find every single template you will need when building and scaling your business completely for free. See it here.