What Do New Businesses Really Need to Succeed?

What do businesses need to succeed? When you first start your own company, it's easy to spend time and money on things you think you need to be successful, but don't. While things like a physical office space, a flashy website or a logo may feel like must-haves, in truth they are not at the core of what's required to run a thriving company.

5 Things Businesses Need to Succeed

A big part of having business success is understanding what your definition of success is. It could be money, time, freedom, influence or something else. Once you are clear on what success means to you and your company, you're empowered to focus on those tools and tactics that will move you towards your objectives.

Wondering what businesses need to succeed? Here are five things.

Clear and Measurable Goals

Goal setting can be both exciting and overwhelming. Business owners need to simultaneously see the big picture and focus on the right details to move their business towards success.

Setting large yet realistic goals is an important process for business owners to understand and practice. If your goals are too big, you'll struggle to implement strategies in which to reach these targets. If your goals are too small, you'll risk stagnating and could even lose the spark of why you started your business in the first place.

Financial Literacy

As tempting as it is to start a company on an impulse or a lark, if you want to run a successful business you need to understand numbers. No matter how innovative you are and no matter how much better your product or service is in the market, if you don't know your financial picture then you will struggle to get ahead.

Financial literacy is important for setting your prices, optimizing operations, filing taxes, making decisions and generating multiple income streams. Of course there are people you can hire to help with this area, but it's still important for you, as the business owner, to have a handle on your finances and understand which activities move the needle, and which ones don't.

Acquisition and Recruitment

Many businesses begin as a one-person show but in order to scale, key hires are often required. For new businesses, hiring the right people at the right time is crucial. Without people who can fill in the gaps or advise you on areas where you're not as knowledgeable, it will be difficult to be an effective leader or business owner. If your employees don't have the right skills, personality or expertise required for a position, you will end up doing much of their job for them, or spend extra time following up and correcting work. 

Strategic Marketing

Even if you're not running a marketing company, you still need to understand the basics of how to market your business. Many companies believe if they have a good product or service this is enough to draw people to them. While this may happen for extreme outlier cases, for the most part there is too much noise in the marketplace and if you don't have a way of getting your products in front of your target customers, then your business will not be successful.

Taking a strategic marketing approach means you refer to your unique business goals and objectives and plan your marketing accordingly. So, every marketing tactic or activity you consider will be measured against whether or not it will move you towards business success. That way, you can spend more time on what works and leave the rest without feeling like you're missing out on sales.

Health

We've all heard horror stories of entrepreneurs who started a business and then ended up spending all of their time, energy and resources working in their company. While there will be times your business requires more of you, it's imperative you have a good self-care routine in order to maintain your health.

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle comes down to a few basics: setting reasonable boundaries, investing in equipment that will allow you to sit with good posture and reduce strain on your eyesight, getting exercise, eating properly and staying hydrated.

In the end, what new businesses really need to succeed comes down to their individual goals and unique situation. There's no plug-and-play path to running a successful company, no matter what someone else tries to tell you. What works for one business may not work for another. Therefore, to have a successful business you need to understand what you bring to the marketplace, how your product or service stands out from everything else and how you help your customers. Once you know these keys, you'll be able to set goals and create a plan to reach your customers and inspire them to buy.

About Robyn Roste

Robyn Roste is a professional writer living and working in Abbotsford BC Canada. Her personal blog about freelance writing(http://robynroste.com) is listed in The 100 Best Websites for Writers in 2020 by The Write Life.