A harsh fact about owning a small business is that most of them will fail. For instance, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 50% of businesses fail within their first five years and only about 20% survive for 20 years. If you are thinking about your future or are struggling to keep your business afloat, you may be asking, “How could I keep my business thriving for the years to come?” and I want to say that the answer is simpler than you think.
As a business owner, it is not enough to ask important questions about your business’s success. You should be thinking about how to develop habits that allow you to outlast your competition. Here are six habits that you could start working on now to help you develop success in the future:
Knowing Who You Are
Businesses that can last over many decades tend to have a good sense of who they are and what they can do. To have staying power, you should think about developing a strong brand identity. Your brand identity is your company’s voice to your target audience, and it sets you apart from the rest of your competitors.
For instance, some brands choose to build their brand identity by focusing on creating a single product and ensuring that they do it well. These businesses identified a target market, such as tent rentals, and established themselves as leaders in their industry by tailoring their products to their audience’s needs. Developing a brand identity like this will help strengthen your appeal, and it gives customers insight into your values and culture.
This also means you need to evaluate what success means to you. People start businesses for many reasons; maybe you have a passion for making bread, want to build wealth, or you want to be your own boss. And it is fine if you have forgotten why you started your business in the first place. But you must have a clear sense of what success looks like to keep your business running in the future. Moreover, you should think about why you continue to run your business and whether these reasons align with what you are doing right now.
Knowing Your Customers
Another important habit to develop is understanding your customers. While many companies focus on acquiring customers, the ones that last over time rely on retaining them. You should look at what your customers want and find ways to meet their needs.
There are several ways you can identify your customers’ needs. These include utilizing social media and creating surveys that allow customers to share information about your products and services.
Harnessing Your Community
There is a well-known adage: “If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.” For many small business owners, the journey of entrepreneurship is a lonely endeavor, but it does not have to be. There are many legal, financial, technical, and operational challenges you will face, and finding a community to help you with these challenges will be among the most valuable contributors to your success.
There are many ways you could find your community. You could turn to peer learning, mentorship, and professional networks to help move your ideas forward. But you should also find good lawyers, accountants, and other professionals who could help you succeed in your business. Finding good professionals who know how you work could save you from legal and financial issues in the future.
Managing Your Emotional State
A powerful tool that could set you apart from other businesses is harnessing the power of emotional tone. Emotions are often contagious; we “match” the emotions of our friends and feel sad when they tell us a sad story. Our emotions can have a widespread impact on how others feel and can influence our behaviors without us even realizing.
This is especially important in business because you can create an environment with your employees where better decisions are made and build better connections with your customers, ensuring that they return for years to come. For example, if your business creates a positive environment for employees and customers, this influences how they evaluate your customer service, intention to return, and whether they would recommend your business to others. These are all important factors that influence the longevity of your business.
You can consciously influence your professional interactions by:
- Diagnose: Try to identify the emotional state of the room
- Modulate: Choose the most effective emotional state for your encounter with your customers or employees.
- Observe: Did your behavior change the atmosphere of the encounter?
Managing Stress
Likewise, managing stress will be an important part of keeping your business running for many years. We all know that there are a lot of things to worry about as small business owners. You have to manage issues such as labor shortages, demanding clients, and sophisticated technology, all while maintaining a positive morale for your company.
Mental Health
One of the best ways to manage this level of stress is through promoting mental health. Some mental health practitioners suggest proactively monitoring stress and talking about each other’s needs, such as workload and scheduling. By doing this, you can positively impact your stress, the mental health of your staff, and customer experience.
Stress-Free Leadership
You can also practice stress-free leadership. If you wish to lead with emotional intelligence, there are a few practical steps you can take:
- Making mental health a regular topic of discussion: By normalizing these conversations, you give the go-ahead to speak up.
- Preserving psychological security: Employees will have less anxiety on the job when they know that their employers will intervene.
- Coaching employees: Create avenues where employees can find solutions independently, and guide them through the process rather than providing directives.
- Acknowledging work: Make sure that you recognize people for what they are doing to build a sense of belonging.
Learning How to Adapt
Lastly, keeping track of key trends and leading with adaptability will help you as your business evolves and grows.
Practicing Adaptability
By using adaptability as a survival strategy, you could remain ahead of the curve and help your company survive when many others can’t. Some ways include keeping up to date with technological advancements, such as AI and cloud computing, to automate repetitive tasks. But this can also include keeping your operating structure lean to test new product concepts quickly. For instance, this approach was used by a successful tent rental company, and it allowed them to develop durable tents and create a business that has operated for over 30 years. By implementing these strategies, you will ensure that you have high-quality products, while also implementing ways to respond to uncertainty.
Community Engagement
As stated above, finding your community is important to reduce your stress as a business owner. But this could also be effective for your business model as well. You can adopt a purpose-driven approach where you aim to build trust, loyalty, and brand reputation through community engagement. This can include sponsoring local events, implementing environmental practices, or starting volunteer programs. This allows you to build for the future by integrating your community into your commercial success.
Putting It All Together
When it comes to thinking about the future of your business, you may have to ask difficult questions, but the solution to your success is very simple. More often than not, all you need to do is follow certain patterns for your business to be more efficient and effective in the long-term. And you only need to take small steps to ensure the success of your business. By developing the habits above, you can build tools that will help your business now, but also in the future.
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Disclaimer: This article is based on publicly available information intended only for informational purposes. CanadianSME Small Business Magazine does not endorse or guarantee any products or services mentioned. Readers are advised to conduct their research and due diligence before making business decisions.
