The Ten Commandments of Building a Successful Business

In the United States, we are fortunate to live in a country that allows us to gain the benefits of our hard work. Often people see the rewards of their hard work. Recently, we have seen people attacked because of their success.

The uninformed or inexperienced may think success is easy and undeserved or that we as business owners/managers did not create our success, “someone else built that”. I am sure you have experienced and seen for yourself what it takes to create a business. I say “create” because the process is ongoing, it does not stay there unless it is created everyday. If you take your eye off the ball, the ball rolls off the table and on the floor, sometimes rolling into the basement.

The following are ten laws (commandments) that all successful enterprises use to keep the ball on the table:

1. Someone had a dream. All big businesses started out as a dream in someone’s head usually in a garage. You name it…Facebook, Microsoft or Ford all started off as a bright idea. If you don’t have a dream you won’t have a business.
2. All successful businesses have a well-defined basic purpose. The purpose drives and pulls the business forward. The purpose creates a bond between the employees and is a common goal everyone works toward. One person always defines the purpose, usually the guy or gal who started the business in their garage.
3. Having a product or service that is needed by someone; ideally a lot of someone’s.
4. Production of a quality product.
5. Honest handling and care of the customers of the business.
6. Quality control. A system to correct and improve poor products and to correct the employees who produced the poor product.
7. A program of hiring and training employees to expertly help and handle customers.
8. Hard and consist work towards achieving a goal.
9. Consistent and targeted promotion of the business to people who need the product or service. You have promoted on an ever-widening basis, resisting all urges to pull back.
10. Continually promote the dream and purpose of the business. When a business starts operating based on making money, neglecting the dream and purpose, that business soon loses focus and soon shrinks.

So the next time you hear some pompous politician say, “big business did not build that, someone else did” you know that they themselves have never really built anything. Every big idea that was turned into a howling success was first thought of by one man or woman and was driven by that person to success.

Business big and small and the people working in them create the prosperity that is the United States of America.

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