Business Depends on These Four Pillars and So Does DNotes

As a serial entrepreneur, for many years, I wondered why sixty percent of businesses failed within five years and up to 80% failed within ten years of their existence. Many of those that are still in business only enjoy intermittent success, barely enough to continue to keep the doors open. Instead of thriving, they continue to flounder.

One would think that ten years is enough time to master any business, but the reality is that it’s not - unless you truly understand that business success depends on four key pillars. They are the support pillars that anchor your business to your foundation. If you damage or neglect any one of these pillars, then your chances of business success will greatly diminish.

Here are the four key pillars vital to every business — and how to make sure they’re all as strong as possible:

1. The Leader..

Everything begins with you and your vision. The founder of any company is the head coach, star player, and creator of the business story. In that role, you must ensure that your vision is distinct, coherent, and so well-articulated that others understand it and buy in. Your vision needs to have an ultimate destination too, so team members can chart a clear path to reach it. Leaders must be truly passionate and deeply committed about what they do. After all, this is anything but another job, and everything depends on them. That approach, combined with a favorable and productive environment, will inspire employees to feel confident about their career path and align their personal goals with that of the company. 

2. The Leader’s Great Idea 

The leader’s great idea is what started the enterprise. It could be a product, a service, or a concept so new there isn’t even a term for it yet - so radically innovative that nothing like it has ever been tried before. But the strength of an idea is not its novelty, but its power to solve a real-world problem that customers face. At its core, every great idea is simply an answer to the question: How can we solve this problem for our customers? A leader’s challenge is to make sure this great idea is also connected to a unique selling proposition and a well-developed strategic plan. Innovation by itself isn’t enough.

3. The Employees.

You will not benefit from the economy of scale as a one-man operation and expect to be the lowest cost producer. To grow your business, you must be able to attract and recruit great employees who are the best fit for the business environment and culture you envision or have already created. 

Leaders can’t play a “solo game.” Instead, they must transmit their vision to their team so clearly that the team can act like clones, expanding the leader’s reach outwards to every employee. To leverage the power of every employee, you need an overall strategy of effective hiring and a continual focus on employee training and development. If employees are treated like worker drones, business goals can’t be achieved. In this cutthroat economy, everyone needs to be engaged, committed, and aligned with the same vision set forth by the leader. And leaders can’t be everywhere at once or do everything themselves. They need like-minded, high-performing employees.

4. The Customers.

It takes great leadership, strong ideas and engaged employees to create the right conditions to attract customers. But the decision to buy products or services rests entirely in the customers’ hands. Customers are why the company exists in the first place and they determine its survival. They are the real boss. Learn everything you can about your company’s customer base and make sure it’s going to not only sustain the business but grow over time. That requires full engagement with customers — and a nimble approach to allow the business to adapt to their changing needs.

No company ever becomes the best in class by accident, and there’s no magic bullet or special sauce for long-term survival. It takes a passion to excel and a disciplined focus across all four fronts, which means every department, every desk, every function, every exchange. No leader can afford to be blindsided by overconfidence or a misguided faith in a singular ability. Superiority in one competency will not mask mediocrity in others: brilliant ideas will not overcome uninspiring leadership; employees that don’t bring their skills to bear won’t help the business sustain or grow; and a shaky customer base is a foundation for failure. Imagine a panel of judges scoring the business: whichever organization scores highest on each of the four categories will be the one that wins.

Conclusion:

When you focus on the things that matter, you can drastically beat the odds of succeeding in business. Be cognizant of your strengths and select a business that you are truly passionate about. Then, make sure that there is true potential for real profitability and growth. With that foundation laid, you can then focus on these four key pillars to improve your odds of achieving lasting and sustainable business success.

These four key pillars apply equally to DNotes Global as our core mission is to provide the leadership and management to help DNotes gain mass adoption. After all, DNotes is managed as a business but not controlled as one.