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“An entrepreneur is someone who has a vision for something and a want to create.
– David Karp, Tumblr founder and CEO
When building a business, you want to ensure you’re building something that lasts. Before you launch, you’ll need to make sure your product or service fills a need in the market. From there, you need to hire the right people and put the right processes in place to help you keep growing.
Planning well and putting in the work early on will set you up for sustainable success.
Most businesses don’t possess a deeper understanding of sustainability. From a broader perspective, a sustainable company is one whose purpose and actions are equally grounded in financial, environmental, and social concerns. But unfortunately, the road to sustainability for most businesses is not easy. Hence, these hacks will enable business leaders to shape a more sustainable future for the company as well as their community.
To help you do this, we asked members of Forbes Business Council to share some of the crucial things leaders can do to help build a sustainable business.
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1. Hire The Best Possible People To Represent Your Company
The most beneficial way to not only properly build, but also sustain a business, is to hire the best possible employees for your team. Your employees are a representation of the company as a whole and it is crucial to invest in hiring the right type of people that will embody the values and mission of your company. Top-notch employees are a company’s greatest assets! – Brittany Harrer Dolin, The Pocketbook Agency
2. Establish Multiple Revenue Channels
When building a business, it’s essential to have more than one revenue model. Whether you’re selling a product and provide additional services with that product, or you provide support services for a subscription fee, it’s imperative to ensure there are a few demonstrated methods you can drive revenue by. – Lauren Cooney, Spark Labs
3. Play The Long Game
The best advice I can give is don’t trade short-term gains for long-term successes. And have a trusted associate who is not involved directly in the business to validate your plans and vision. They can share a lot of good insights you may not see yourself. – Bruce Maxwell, MSI Management and Consulting Services, Inc.
4. Monitor Your Cash Flow
When building your business, it’s easy to want to enjoy the rewards of your success. But do not ratchet your lifestyle up with your cash flow. The time will come when that cash flow needs to go back into the business to grow. It’s hard to turn your lifestyle back down. I’ve seen so many businesses stuck in the mid-size range where the owner now is stuck and cannot grow. – Skyler Ditchfield, GeoLinks
5. Never Compromise On Your ValuesÂ
One of the most crucial things for a sustainable business is to build your value system from the beginning. Values will set the tone for the vision, company culture, people you want to hire, collaborations, product building, and running day-to-day operations. It’s the great values that build great companies and the best places to work for. – Neha Kesarwani, Vertoe
6. Don’t Do Everything Yourself
Nobody should shoulder all the responsibilities of a business enterprise by themselves. Not only is that the opposite of sustainability, but it’s also the perfect equation for you to burn yourself out and have your entire operation fall apart. That’s why I recommend business owners look at their processes to determine which ones can be automated, delegated, or deleted completely. – Jeff J Hunter, BrandedMedia.io
7. Choose People Who Embody Your Values
Surround yourself with the right talent. Ensure that your staff embodies the values of your organization and ethos. Look for qualities that may not be reflected in their resume. Are they responsive or solutions-oriented? Do they exhibit high emotional intelligence? These are just some of the innate characteristics to look for in people that will contribute to the success of your organization. – Susan Levine, Career Group Companies
8. Get Your Team Engaged In Your Sustainability Vision
The key to building a sustainable business is to find ways to get all team members from every level personally engaged and motivated in your day-to-day sustainability vision. As you align personal values to your business values, getting them to see what’s in it for them, you will begin to trust in delegation and give yourself the opportunity to work on the business, as opposed to in the business. – Ken Goodwin, Pacific Preferred Insurance Brokers
9. Let Your Team Own Your Business
Gone are the days when one leader would dictate vision and would end up managing every aspect of a business. To establish a sustainable business model and operations, you not only need to allow your team members and your customers to take ownership of your business, but you should also leverage their capabilities and insight to extend your business reach. – Syed Gilani, Safr Technologies Inc
10. Know Your Why
When it comes to leading a business, it should be clear to you first and foremost why you’re doing this and what you’re doing it for. Leaders with the clearest vision have an easier time keeping the business alive and making more sound decisions. A leader grounds the company in clear values and beliefs system that will guide both now and in the long-term. With clarity, everything flows. – Brian Chew, OC Wills & Trust Attorneys
11. Focus On Your Value Proposition
Creating effective value propositions may sound simple and straightforward, however, the process can be challenging because it needs to be unique and provide value to your target audience. Identifying your unique value proposition and offering a solution for what customer is looking for to their problems makes you distinct in comparison to your competitors. It helps in establishing long-term business success. – Beth Worthy, GMR Transcription Services, Inc
12. Close The Spending Gap Over Time
Watch every dollar coming in and leaving the business—maniacally. We all know that you must spend money to make money, and in a startup business, cash outflows will invariably exceed inflows at the beginning. The key is to never take your eye off the ball, as spending can skyrocket out of control very quickly. Close the spending gap and get profitable, methodically and predictably, over time. – Anthony Smith, Insightly
6 more extra-effective ways to build a sustainable business
1. Building your business on belief
One can change everything about your business other than your core beliefs. Building business on your beliefs is about value creation. Your business might be depending on what your beliefs are. If your beliefs are a little specific, localize your business or if they are more time-bound, then you must go back and revisit the business mission. But it has to be consistent with what you as a company are going to do to drive value.
2. Standing still and embracing change
When you change and act fast, you can be the biggest, boldest and brightest unicorn, but if you remain still and don’t change and adapt to the situation, then you are as close to extinction as you can.
For instance – In the 80s, IBM got as close to extinction. In fact, we were featured on the Forbes and Fortune cover along with Dinosaurs. So the idea is there’s no standing still every day. I may have a great idea that works, but it doesn’t matter how big is the idea until you actually find ways to take it to the market quickly.
3. Focus on creating a value proposition
It’s not that great people don’t exist; it’s not that the technology built was not the greatest technology, but it’s about figuring your go-to-market strategy that drives value, in terms of what the client is looking for to his/her problems. So if you don’t get the timing right and if you lose touch with the value proposition, then you can get completely lost.
Don’t ever lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day the business purpose is to drive value for your customers. Focus on creating high value, high capabilities useful for people. This doesn’t mean that you need to be an expert at everything; it’s about creating value on the top end with the existing resources.
4. Growth and comfort don’t co-exist
We are no longer in the 50s, 60s, and 70s eras. Things are changing in the blink of an eye. IBM had gone through very uncomfortable times, and frankly speaking, it still continues to be uncomfortable. It’s no secret that our industry is going through the biggest shift ever. But it’s not just the technology industry, the shift in the technology industry is creating subsequent shifts in every industry.
For Instance – If you are a banker, your new competitors are completely different. If you are in retail, now everybody is a retailer. Similarly, if you have been in the mobile business, then you can see that it’s no longer an industry; it’s a platform, it’s a capability. So, IBM is completely changing the Payments, Retail, Banking, and Mobile industry since they all are becoming capabilities on the cloud for everyone to leverage. Businesses should also focus on delivering value in innovative ways for their customers.
5. Focus on excelling in an areaÂ
It’s no longer about one company delivering value to every client at every place; it’s about being a part of an ecosystem. If you are not part of the ecosystem, then you are limiting yourself. You might have a successful start, but eventually, it starts becoming difficult. Further, in the bigger ecosystem, you are going to become a part of many ecosystems. In some, you might be a significant player and in others, you might be a small player. But in the end, it’s all about the contributions you are making in each of those ecosystems. So don’t try to be a big player in every ecosystem, rather look at how things work to drive the incremental value.
6. Focus on constant reinvention
When you are part of a company/single entity, then it’s all about constantly re-inventing what you do, it’s about reimaging how you do it and at the same time retaining a core belief system because you want your employees, your clients, and your partners to work with you and for you.
