Business strategy is a very fancy term for a series of steps that help a business to gain customers and make a profit.

As cited by marshall Gold smith, having a profitable business can seem to be simple but in fact is not easy at all! As he says, many things are “simple but not easy”.

Much to the chagrin of many a failed entrepreneur, there is no one blueprint, that can be applied towards achieving business success. It is this very anomaly that attracts a host of wanna be entrepreneurs, who very quickly find that they are way out of their depth.

After nine years in business, and with 10 years prior to this in a variety of  different industries, I have come to the following conclusions.

1. An entrepreneur / business person who starts a business is a unique individual with the vision, passion and drive to believe that their business idea is worth working on in creating business success.
2. A true entrepreneur will seek to make life better for people; they are typically excellent at visualizing how their business can work to help others even before they start. This is critical, as many of us have dreams but the question is, do we put our money where our mouth is and start! It is scary to start and it takes guts and courage to step up and follow your dream.
3. Ultimately the many entrepreneurs that I have met, the true ones that is, are creatives at heart. They are innovative, passionate and often times become the figurehead of the business. In some respects and in some cases, the business owner becomes central to the overall brand of the business. Effectively successful businesses create a brand persona.
4. A brand is in fact how a customer or potential customer FEELS about a business. Many business owners get caught up in fonts, colours and websites, but ultimately people buy from people and businesses who tell stories about their business, the business owner, the staff, about what their brand MEANS, what their brand stands for, why they started the business and so on, will do far better than a business who just has a nice website.
5. Once a business starts there are steps of stairs, like everything and initially there is a sense of just surviving. This is very much a business phase, where the business owner, staff and customers are figuring things out. The business may well get some things wrong at this point, the successful ones, will quickly learn from any mistakes and will make changes.
6. Having come through the survival stage, which can be long or short, depending on how quickly the entrepreneur learns to outsource and grow the business and not just do everything themselves. The next step is THRIVING, this is where a business begins to grow exponentially, the brand has gained a foothold in the market and things are very much on the upswing. The key here is to stick to core branding principles, that is to stick to the original brand, because this is what customers bought into from day one.
7. Once a  business is thriving, the organisational part of the business begins to change, there are typically is a growing staff, the business owner / entrepreneur has to either become a CEO that is to say a leader of the company and or hire someone to do the job. Some businesses can lose their way for a while at this stage, they become so immersed in running the business they ironically lose the essence of the brand of the business. The key to this mistake is that a business sometimes makes the mistake in focusing on operations rather than the needs of the customers. This can be a fatal mistake, luckily however most entrepreneurs, realize their mistake before too long
8. At this critical juncture of growth a business owner / entrepreneur benefit greatly from mentors, business coaches who have been there and done this before and who can help them lessen their mistakes and shorten the road to greater business success. As the saying goes, success leaves clues, learn from those who have achieved success and know how to help you grow your business.
9. As part of growing a business, and as part of an overall business strategy, it is key to honour all the aspects of a strategy that is to say, a CEO / entrepreneur must understand or employ people who understand, MARKETING (this is critical to grow the business) what got you here may not get you there, finance, HR, logistics, and so on depending on your business.
10. Having an overall business and marketing strategy is key to business success. It means that there is at least a guide as to what the business intentions and goals are and how they are going to be achieved. Think about it, you might like to holiday in Australia but if you never sit down and map out what you need to do at the very least, you just won’t get there!

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