The Five P's of Small Business Success

Small business success can mean many different things to many different companies; from financial growth and prosperity to growth in products or markets to the number of people they help.

Regardless of how you define your business' endeavors, there are five major principles that that all business owners must adhere to if they want to succeed - the Five P's of business success.

Persistence - Persistence is a key force in any business' success. All businesses will face challenges regardless of size and industry. Further, there are times when many of these challenges appear to be fatal to the business. But, from an old cliché; winners never quit and quitters never win. Same is true for your business. In my many years of helping small businesses, not one of them is still the same company now that they were when the business was first started. These businesses either changed with the times, innovated to overcome new challenges or simply reinvented themselves to better serve their targeted consumers. Bottom line, they never gave up, insisting instead to face any and all difficulties head on, no matter how hard the challenge or how high the obstacle, they just persisted in finding ways to overcome on their path to success. Remember, if what you are doing is not working, stop and try something else - don't give up.

Patience - Good things always come - might not be as fast as we want or in the exact form we expect but - they will come. One simple example, in building an online presence for my business, I worked diligently trying to gain page rank on major search engines. Day after day, month after month, I persisted in following all the rules and guidance that I could find from both the search engines themselves and other SEO experts. Each morning I would pull up my site only to be disappointed in the results. Doubt would rear its ugly head in my mind telling me this was not working. But, I knew in the bowels of my psyche that my efforts would eventually pay off. So, I waited and continued, day in and day out. I did so knowing that what I was doing, while not getting the results as fast as I wanted, was not harming my business in any way. And then, one day, there it was, my goal. Not only did I achieve what I was so assiduously after, but it was bigger and better than I could have ever hoped for. Bottom line, if it's not hurting, it can only help if you have the patience to outlast.

Planning - Planning in this sense is not a do-it, forget-it business plan. It means having a clear understanding of what you want your business to be and a path to get there. Moreover, planning includes planning for flexibility. The flexibility to innovate as new market conditions materialize, to change mid-stream and take your business in a whole new direction, or simply the flexibility to change as your business needs to change. Here, I am reminded of IBM. IBM is hardly the company it was when it was founded in the 1880s. IBM has evolved with the times from dial recorders to a leader in information technology. How has IBM been able to persevere for such a long time? Planning. From its beginning, IBM incorporated into its culture a sense of flexibility. It planed to change as the world changed. And, what is more remarkable is that it continues to change as its customers, its markets, and its industry changes. Bottom line, it planned its path to success and further planned to change its business to ensure continued success.

Philosophy - However you define your success and work to achieve it, your business must instill, early in its life, a philosophy about how the business will operate in its industry and with its customer. If your path to success will be built on quality or integrity then that philosophy has to be ingrained into your culture from day one. When businesses build solid cultures around the principles of honest business practices from the way the firm's products or services will be made and delivered to way it will treat its employees and customer builds a strong footing for business success. It has been clearly documented that when businesses get away from their core philosophies, not only will they not fully achieve their success, but they may crumble (think Enron).

Passion - Growing a business from start-up to success, will require a ton of your time. Therefore, you must have passion in your business, in your products or services, and in your customers. Without passion, your business will not last past its first major hurdle. Further, passion allows business owners to look beyond the minute, every day details to find way to improve and innovate - benefiting both themselves and their customers. Passion is the driving force to ensure that all of the other four P's are in place and ingrained into the company.

So, no matter how you define your success in business, adhering to these simple five principles will guide you and your endeavors through any challenge and over any obstacle.

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