5 Feb 2016

20 steps for success


  1. Articulate Your Vision. As a communicator, I am happy to see this step come early. Develop a vision for your company, imagining what it looks and feels like as it comes to fruition as a fait accompli, preferably in long hand. Ask yourself these questions: What is the workspace like? Are there other people in it or just you? What is the attitude and atmosphere there? What does your typical day look and feel like? What type of customers do you have? Are they local, national, global? Consumers or partners? What amount of money are you making? What does your lifestyle look like? When you know exactly what you are working toward, it is much easier to direct your work toward that goal.
  2. Inspire Others. Every time you enter a meeting, get on a call, or communicate with another through digital means, remind them of where they fit into your vision. Give them a little bit of your heart and inspire them to give a little bit of their own to advancing the vision with you. Then stay engaged about what you’re working on, and more importantly, why it matters. Collaborate on how they can be a part of your vision and you will be surprised how many people will be delighted to join in, whether officially or as an ongoing part of your “tribe.”
  3. Know the Nuts and Bolts. Engage with experts as needed. But progressively know all that you can about the nuts and bolts of how your business operates. This will allow you to tweak and improve the process as you go, and to make it more resilient as the company grows. Remember that one of your high objectives, in most every case, is to eventually build a company that can operate partly or entirely without you. (This was one of Young’s biggest secrets for the success of his company Laughlin and is why he can dedicate so much of his time currently to inspiring and growing other entrepreneurs.)
  4. Hire for More than “Filling the Gap.” Do your utmost to hire for attitude, integrity and “fire in the belly” – not for brightness, optimism or the right educational pedigree. If you feel in your gut that a hire is not right, act quickly. The business landscape is filled with thoughts of “but maybe if we manage her differently.” Or, “He was here with me at the start. I just can’t bear to let him go.” Perhaps some individuals can evolve and grow with you, but if you look at situations candidly, it should become clear that in many cases they cannot. Let them go, and by setting them free you’ll be doing both them and you a favor.
  5. Train the “Why.” Time and again, companies hire the right people but then fail to train and prepare them for their actual job, hoping they’ll jump in and figure it out on their own. This is a recipe for disaster. Remember, you don’t need to train them on exactly how they accomplish the steps in their job. But you must be explicit about the why — how their work fits into the overall results the organization needs to achieve. Train them with care and schedule follow-up trainings frequently to ensure the quality and depth of the work, and their commitment to it, remains on track (and to give them the opportunity to magnify the position and their roles with in the organization still more.)
  6. Get Clear on Your Message. This is not simply your vision. This is the outward-facing messaging of your company that you share with the world. Too many founders get so caught up in the weeds of getting the work done and landing the next deal they lose sight of the need to communicate their message clearly. Furthermore, remember that your customers’ role is not to make you successful. Their intention is to satisfy their own needs. So how can you help them to do that? Make that the crux of your message, not the success, the victories and the voice and persona about yourself that you want to be seen and heard. (My own note: This is also the crux of thought leadership driven public relations. Companies anguish about the need to be “telling their story” without thought to the stories their customers want to hear to answer needs of their own. Bear this in mind, always.)                      
  7. Market with Concerted Strategies. There will always be a myriad ways to market your product and business. But every company, small or large, has a limit on the marketing funds it can spend. Learn to be laser focused on what’s working for you. Who is your customer? Where do they hang out? What are they reading? How do they arrive at their purchase decisions? When you fine-tune your message well enough that only half of your audience runs away from you and the other half runs toward you, latch on tight, Young says. “That’s all you need. Only half.”
  8. Learn to Sell…And Keep Learning. You can excel in every other step, but your business success will depend greatly (if not entirely) on how well you can sell. Learn the art of selling. Get outside help where needed. Observe your customers as to what caused their eyes to either light up or glaze over, and when it happened. Perpetually hone your sales structure and strategy as it will be one of the biggest influencers (along with supply and the ability to support your growing customer community) on your ability to scale.
  9. Be a True Advocate for Your Business. Young observed a national insurance agency recently as it received an award for high sales. Every agent made ample visits to its customers, on site. They drove company cars, tastefully wrapped in great advertising. They were a walking embodiment of the values they represented. Likewise, the founder of WebMD (a friend of Young’s) is a walking advocate for the company. Seldom or never is he present in any location without the company logo appearing on his accessories, his notebooks, even his clothing  even now that his company has become a household name. How well are you and your employees acting as advocates for your business and brand? Where could you be doing better?
  10. Exceed Your Promises. Remember, customers will return and will spread the news to others when their experience exceeds their expectations. It’s never the other way around. For example, when Young purchased a Mercedes Benz car several years ago, he noted that when he picked up his car, as soon as he opened the door he was met by a collection of branded welcome gifts. Then a set of very nice key chains arrived two weeks later via mail to his home. When he went to the dealership for service he was offered espresso and chocolate-dipped cookies. The dealership also offered massages and manicures to its clients as they waited for service. None of these things were expected, but all were gratefully received and turned his good experience into a great one, and turned him into a fan.
  11. Create Strategic Alliances. There are some companies who go it alone, and others that become masterful at finding and forging strategic alliances. When you find an ideal partner (or set of partners) that makes it possible for you to cross market to each others’ customer lists, you may find yourself stronger within the partnership than either participant could have been on their own. To identify ideal partners, think of companies that have complementary products and services to your own. The tie does not need to be a direct one. For example, a cupcake shop and a pizzeria two doors down could potentially become an ideal partnership match. Remember, great alliance partners may be able to introduce you to potential customers for a much lower cost than required for you to find and reach them on your own. They may teach you how to be successful in a new market you hadn’t considered. And they can provide you with a third-party endorsement of your services. It is worth the effort to seek the strongest possible alliances, and to engage in them well.
  12. Keep Innovating. No matter how great your product, you must perpetually innovate your offerings or you will die. VHS customers evolved to the DVD market, for example, and are now migrating in droves to streaming content delivered online. Here’s a great case study example: Corning cookware has enjoyed a long history as a main provider in the cookware industry. But gradually their marketshare was eroded by foreign manufactures competing at lower price points. The solution? The company challenged itself to find all of the things they could do with their existing expertise and equipment, considering what they might do to survive. They arrived at 20 new ideas, including fiber optic cable (they are now the number one provider of fiber optic cable worldwide). And it was one of these ideas that lead to the creation of “Gorilla Glass” that now provides a growing share of the screens on smartphones worldwide.
  13. Empower Your Team to Fail Forward. You must allow your management team to run forward as opposed to micromanaging every aspect of what they do to mirror the way it would have been accomplished by you. Ideally, you should be hiring people who are smarter than you. Find people with the ability to play at the things you are required to work at. Allow the room for their innovation to grow. As they make mistakes, learn to value and share the learning opportunity that comes from every misstep. Allow them to “fail forward” with the company in all they do.
  14. Go on an Artist’s Date. The concept of the “artist’s date” comes from the book “The Artist’s Way,” by Julia Cameron. But put more simply it is vital that you create opportunities to get out and away from your business at regular intervals to detach your mind from the daily grind of your work. Find ways to do things that are completely different and even indulgent — walks through museums or afternoon movies. Young enjoys coming through thrift shops or going for horseback rides in the woods. Find the ways to stay energized, excited and alive. The effort will keep the business energized and alive along with you.
  15. Think of Your Company as an Asset. Have you noticed how many business founders refer to the business they’ve built as “their baby?” Instead, learn to understand and appreciate your company as an asset. If you were to sell, or to have the need to divert your time and energy elsewhere, could the business survive without you? What are its attributes that would appeal to a potential investor or buyer? Build a business that is “bigger than you.” This will allow you to keep the business vibrant and growing forever, with or without you, and to create something that is more than the sum of your own abilities and your day-to-day work.
  16. Keep Your Finances in Check. Poor financial management is one of the biggest mistakes founders make. There are three primary missteps that occur: 1) Founders leave early participants on the payroll long beyond the value they bring. The cost is astronomical, as payroll is destined to be your largest recurring expense. Furthermore, employees who are no longer growing and rising often become discontented and disengaged, creating even more harm to the business than the monetary cost they extract. 2) Marketing options and costs are never-ending. Continually test the medium and the location of all of your marketing avenues to ensure they are still pulling the level of leads that you need. Make adjustments where needed. 3) In many closely held companies, the founders will pull off all of the profits as they’re earned. It is their right (and can be a hard tendency to fight when in some corporate structures the owner is personally taxed on the company’s profits whether they are taken out and realized as personal income or not). But smart owners think of the company’s finances differently. They pay themselves a reasonable salary. But they also retain revenue needed for the development of new products and to aid in growth.
  17. Know When to Replace Yourself. If you are truly successful, you will create a company that will eventually outgrow you. The personality of a great entrepreneur is seldom the personality of an outstanding corporate manager. Too often, companies that grow to $5M, $20M or $50M continue to operate under the original founder well beyond the point they should. The founder becomes a bottleneck to continued growth and will frustrate a talented executive team. When the time comes to replace yourself, accept and acknowledge that this is a victory for you and the company — not a flag of defeat.

#   Invent or Improve. Many would-be entrepreneurs are stuck from the outset from the want of a good idea. But in Young’s mind, this is the easiest and most straightforward hurdle of all. Think about the people you know and the areas of pain they are feeling. Think about a problem you are having yourself, big or small, and what it would take to lessen the issue or even get it fully resolved. What can you invent or improve that could meet this customer need? As an example, consider the Dyson vacuum cleaner.

#   Determine and Define Your Market. Once you have a great idea, consider who your customer is and where (and how large) your market will be. One of Young’s close friends, for example, secured a publishing contract to write a book about dating strategies for men. She spent two years on the project, excitedly telling Young there was no other book like it. Well, it turned out the reason it was the only such book on the shelf was that men don’t buy books about how to date. There was no market for the topic and therefore no need for her product. Before investing your life, your time and your investment in taking a product to market, be sure you have a firm grasp on who your market is and how interested in your product they’ll be. (Thankfully, as a prologue to Young’s friend’s situation, a savvy publisher showed her how to flip her book topic around to address women, and at long last, she landed a fruitful publishing 

#  Devise Your Plan. To take your business to the market, what (and who) will you need? What will be your channel for delivery? Will you direct market your invention? Will you sell it in retail? Who and what do you need to achieve this, in terms of budget, materials, execution and inside and outside expertise? How will you measure the metrics of each of your efforts to determine how to tweak and evolve your plan as you go? Create a mind map of all of the various spokes in your wheel and then make a list and a timeline of the steps you will take to keep the project from overwhelming you. Of course you will evolve the plan as you go. But without a concrete plan, you don’t have a company. All you have is a general hope and a goal.


  1. Articulate Your Vision. As a communicator, I am happy to see this step come early. Develop a vision for your company, imagining what it looks and feels like as it comes to fruition as a fait accompli, preferably in long hand. Ask yourself these questions: What is the workspace like? Are there other people in it or just you? What is the attitude and atmosphere there? What does your typical day look and feel like? What type of customers do you have? Are they local, national, global? Consumers or partners? What amount of money are you making? What does your lifestyle look like? When you know exactly what you are working toward, it is much easier to direct your work toward that goal.
  2. Inspire Others. Every time you enter a meeting, get on a call, or communicate with another through digital means, remind them of where they fit into your vision. Give them a little bit of your heart and inspire them to give a little bit of their own to advancing the vision with you. Then stay engaged about what you’re working on, and more importantly, why it matters. Collaborate on how they can be a part of your vision and you will be surprised how many people will be delighted to join in, whether officially or as an ongoing part of your “tribe.”
  3. Know the Nuts and Bolts. Engage with experts as needed. But progressively know all that you can about the nuts and bolts of how your business operates. This will allow you to tweak and improve the process as you go, and to make it more resilient as the company grows. Remember that one of your high objectives, in most every case, is to eventually build a company that can operate partly or entirely without you. (This was one of Young’s biggest secrets for the success of his company Laughlin and is why he can dedicate so much of his time currently to inspiring and growing other entrepreneurs.)
  4. Hire for More than “Filling the Gap.” Do your utmost to hire for attitude, integrity and “fire in the belly” – not for brightness, optimism or the right educational pedigree. If you feel in your gut that a hire is not right, act quickly. The business landscape is filled with thoughts of “but maybe if we manage her differently.” Or, “He was here with me at the start. I just can’t bear to let him go.” Perhaps some individuals can evolve and grow with you, but if you look at situations candidly, it should become clear that in many cases they cannot. Let them go, and by setting them free you’ll be doing both them and you a favor.
  5. Train the “Why.” Time and again, companies hire the right people but then fail to train and prepare them for their actual job, hoping they’ll jump in and figure it out on their own. This is a recipe for disaster. Remember, you don’t need to train them on exactly how they accomplish the steps in their job. But you must be explicit about the why — how their work fits into the overall results the organization needs to achieve. Train them with care and schedule follow-up trainings frequently to ensure the quality and depth of the work, and their commitment to it, remains on track (and to give them the opportunity to magnify the position and their roles with in the organization still more.)
  6. Get Clear on Your Message. This is not simply your vision. This is the outward-facing messaging of your company that you share with the world. Too many founders get so caught up in the weeds of getting the work done and landing the next deal they lose sight of the need to communicate their message clearly. Furthermore, remember that your customers’ role is not to make you successful. Their intention is to satisfy their own needs. So how can you help them to do that? Make that the crux of your message, not the success, the victories and the voice and persona about yourself that you want to be seen and heard. (My own note: This is also the crux of thought leadership driven public relations. Companies anguish about the need to be “telling their story” without thought to the stories their customers want to hear to answer needs of their own. Bear this in mind, always.)
  7. Market with Concerted Strategies. There will always be a myriad ways to market your product and business. But every company, small or large, has a limit on the marketing funds it can spend. Learn to be laser focused on what’s working for you. Who is your customer? Where do they hang out? What are they reading? How do they arrive at their purchase decisions? When you fine-tune your message well enough that only half of your audience runs away from you and the other half runs toward you, latch on tight, Young says. “That’s all you need. Only half.”
  8. Learn to Sell…And Keep Learning. You can excel in every other step, but your business success will depend greatly (if not entirely) on how well you can sell. Learn the art of selling. Get outside help where needed. Observe your customers as to what caused their eyes to either light up or glaze over, and when it happened. Perpetually hone your sales structure and strategy as it will be one of the biggest influencers (along with supply and the ability to support your growing customer community) on your ability to scale.
  9. Be a True Advocate for Your Business. Young observed a national insurance agency recently as it received an award for high sales. Every agent made ample visits to its customers, on site. They drove company cars, tastefully wrapped in great advertising. They were a walking embodiment of the values they represented. Likewise, the founder of WebMD (a friend of Young’s) is a walking advocate for the company. Seldom or never is he present in any location without the company logo appearing on his accessories, his notebooks, even his clothing  even now that his company has become a household name. How well are you and your employees acting as advocates for your business and brand? Where could you be doing better?
  10. Exceed Your Promises. Remember, customers will return and will spread the news to others when their experience exceeds their expectations. It’s never the other way around. For example, when Young purchased a Mercedes Benz car several years ago, he noted that when he picked up his car, as soon as he opened the door he was met by a collection of branded welcome gifts. Then a set of very nice key chains arrived two weeks later via mail to his home. When he went to the dealership for service he was offered espresso and chocolate-dipped cookies. The dealership also offered massages and manicures to its clients as they waited for service. None of these things were expected, but all were gratefully received and turned his good experience into a great one, and turned him into a fan.
  11. Create Strategic Alliances. There are some companies who go it alone, and others that become masterful at finding and forging strategic alliances. When you find an ideal partner (or set of partners) that makes it possible for you to cross market to each others’ customer lists, you may find yourself stronger within the partnership than either participant could have been on their own. To identify ideal partners, think of companies that have complementary products and services to your own. The tie does not need to be a direct one. For example, a cupcake shop and a pizzeria two doors down could potentially become an ideal partnership match. Remember, great alliance partners may be able to introduce you to potential customers for a much lower cost than required for you to find and reach them on your own. They may teach you how to be successful in a new market you hadn’t considered. And they can provide you with a third-party endorsement of your services. It is worth the effort to seek the strongest possible alliances, and to engage in them well.
  12. Keep Innovating. No matter how great your product, you must perpetually innovate your offerings or you will die. VHS customers evolved to the DVD market, for example, and are now migrating in droves to streaming content delivered online. Here’s a great case study example: Corning cookware has enjoyed a long history as a main provider in the cookware industry. But gradually their marketshare was eroded by foreign manufactures competing at lower price points. The solution? The company challenged itself to find all of the things they could do with their existing expertise and equipment, considering what they might do to survive. They arrived at 20 new ideas, including fiber optic cable (they are now the number one provider of fiber optic cable worldwide). And it was one of these ideas that lead to the creation of “Gorilla Glass” that now provides a growing share of the screens on smartphones worldwide.
  13. Empower Your Team to Fail Forward. You must allow your management team to run forward as opposed to micromanaging every aspect of what they do to mirror the way it would have been accomplished by you. Ideally, you should be hiring people who are smarter than you. Find people with the ability to play at the things you are required to work at. Allow the room for their innovation to grow. As they make mistakes, learn to value and share the learning opportunity that comes from every misstep. Allow them to “fail forward” with the company in all they do.
  14. Go on an Artist’s Date. The concept of the “artist’s date” comes from the book “The Artist’s Way,” by Julia Cameron. But put more simply it is vital that you create opportunities to get out and away from your business at regular intervals to detach your mind from the daily grind of your work. Find ways to do things that are completely different and even indulgent — walks through museums or afternoon movies. Young enjoys coming through thrift shops or going for horseback rides in the woods. Find the ways to stay energized, excited and alive. The effort will keep the business energized and alive along with you.
  15. Think of Your Company as an Asset. Have you noticed how many business founders refer to the business they’ve built as “their baby?” Instead, learn to understand and appreciate your company as an asset. If you were to sell, or to have the need to divert your time and energy elsewhere, could the business survive without you? What are its attributes that would appeal to a potential investor or buyer? Build a business that is “bigger than you.” This will allow you to keep the business vibrant and growing forever, with or without you, and to create something that is more than the sum of your own abilities and your day-to-day work.
  16. Keep Your Finances in Check. Poor financial management is one of the biggest mistakes founders make. There are three primary missteps that occur: 1) Founders leave early participants on the payroll long beyond the value they bring. The cost is astronomical, as payroll is destined to be your largest recurring expense. Furthermore, employees who are no longer growing and rising often become discontented and disengaged, creating even more harm to the business than the monetary cost they extract. 2) Marketing options and costs are never-ending. Continually test the medium and the location of all of your marketing avenues to ensure they are still pulling the level of leads that you need. Make adjustments where needed. 3) In many closely held companies, the founders will pull off all of the profits as they’re earned. It is their right (and can be a hard tendency to fight when in some corporate structures the owner is personally taxed on the company’s profits whether they are taken out and realized as personal income or not). But smart owners think of the company’s finances differently. They pay themselves a reasonable salary. But they also retain revenue needed for the development of new products and to aid in growth.
  17. Know When to Replace Yourself. If you are truly successful, you will create a company that will eventually outgrow you. The personality of a great entrepreneur is seldom the personality of an outstanding corporate manager. Too often, companies that grow to $5M, $20M or $50M continue to operate under the original founder well beyond the point they should. The founder becomes a bottleneck to continued growth and will frustrate a talented executive team. When the time comes to replace yourself, accept and acknowledge that this is a victory for you and the company — not a flag of defeat.

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