Tailoring Your Company for Long-Term Success

There have been plenty of companies that hit their peak too soon and fall miserably to the bottom of the market, where they lay sad and forgotten. These companies have one thing in common: they couldn’t see the future. Of course, this is ridiculous; no one can see the future. I don’t mean the “That’s So Raven” kind of future seeing, but I mean the calculation and anticipation of the company’s long-term success.

Some businesses are so obsessed with week-to-week survival that they bury themselves in short-term statistics that tell then nothing about the future of their company. They want to know how many clicks their website got, or how many users signed up this week, or how many products were sold. These are all wonderful statistics to have, but you need to start thinking about the long-term.

There are a few things you can check to measure the durability of your business. After all, what a company needs is for it to grow and last a long time, as opposed to tripping over the finish line that came miles too soon. One thing to check (with an impartial perspective) is the quality and irreplaceability of your product. If you sell something that tons of other businesses sell, too, then most of your profits will be wasted away on the competition. To escape that problem, your product needs to be 10 times better than anyone else’s. Products that are entirely new and nearly impossible for someone else to duplicate are key to creating successful monopolies.

The second thing you can check is potential for popularity. Being smart about how you spread your product can help determine future success. This is kind of common sense, but now that the times are a’ changing, you should focus on the modern aspects of today’s marketing schemes. If everyone is online, don’t spend more money on poster-ads than on web banners.

Third thing: does your business have the room for growth? Peter Thiel, author of zero to one, once wrote, “A good startup should have the potential for great scale built into its first design” (51). If a business wasn’t built to become huge, then it will never grow bigger than its design allows.

The last thing is branding. The image of your business should be attractive and modern. However, keep in mind that you could have the best branding in the world, but your business would not launch unless your product is amazing, too.

Overall, there is no set way to make your business a roaring monopoly. The only thing business owners can do is keep learning and finding new ways to lead their company to success.

One of the core values we have as a company is to inspire and empower people in all aspects of their lives. Additionally, if you want to read about our Custom Software Solutions and Consulting Services, please visit www.isucorp.ca

Forgetting About Competition could Save your Business

By Jonathan Mansilla

There has been a lie floating around the world for too long. The idealization of competition is a negative instigator to success. Winning the fight was and always has been considered the ultimate goal for students, rivals, and businesses. Setting this false goal can be destructive and distracting to the greater heights everyone should be aiming for.

The way it works is this: people who are aiming to reach the top suddenly realize that there are others reaching for the same spot. Once they see them as a threat to their success, they become so obsessed with defeating the competition that they forget why they needed to eliminate them in the first place. This creates a hostile competitiveness that ends up killing both rivals, and no one reaches the top, which is a denial not just to them, but to society as a whole.

Let’s say there are two innovators who want to create the best way to make commuting more convenient. They want to make the breakthrough product first. They both come up with ideas to remove the traffic and improve the environmental cost of all the congested cars heading towards the big cities and realize that they both have incredibly similar ideas. They get frustrated and decide that the only way they’ll reach the top is to get rid of one another. They start sabotaging each other’s marketing campaigns and ideas. They become so engulfed with the thought that the only thing standing in their way of success is each other, and it becomes a fight to the death. In the end, no one wins. They spent so much time focusing on each other that their original goals were forgotten. The commuters don’t get the benefit of their ideas, and the competitors don’t find the success that they so wanted.

Each rival doing something different could have solved this. If they focused on their idea, improving it and making it different and wonderful, they wouldn’t have bothered with each other. Setting your eyes on the proper goal is imperative for actually reaching the success you want. So, throw competition out the window. You shouldn’t need competition for motivation to reach your goals: your goals should be motivational enough. Improving this world for the better is what we have to focus on, not on the other people who are trying to do the same.

One of the core values we have as a company is to inspire and empower people in all aspects of their lives. Additionally, if you want to read about our Custom Software Solutions and Consulting Services, please visit www.isucorp.ca

Keep Your Personal Image Clear

More than anything, it is important to keep your online image neat. How people perceive you in the World Wide Web is so important for your business. The Internet has set the public eye on everyone: the moment you leave your mark online is when people will begin to formulate opinions and ideas of who you are as a person.

Right now, it’s up to you to decide how the world is going to see you. However, you should always strive to be as authentic as possible, or people will smell insincerity and fraudulence coming from your general direction. Just keep in mind that being authentic doesn’t mean sharing the ugliest bits of your personality. Being in the public eye means that you have to begin thoroughly thinking through what you post. You can relax and be yourself, but you should take extra care in being respectable in what you do. The moment someone famous, say a celebrity, posts a very poor and cringe-worthy tweet, everyone who sees it will lose a little bit of respect they had for that person.

Think ahead to the long-term consequences of the actions you take today. Once you’ve got a certain image going, it’ll be very hard to change it in the future. This image can influence many things in your future! Employers tend to take a little Internet adventure before hiring an employee to see how they present themselves online. The same goes for potential business partners or clients.

Wouldn’t it be great if what they found was a respectable, responsible, and genuine person?

Be true to who you are and, whenever you´re projecting yourself on the Internet, do yourself a favor... present the best YOU possible.

Inspire and empower people in all aspects of their life is one of our core values as a company. Additionally, if you want to read about our Custom Software Solutions and Consulting Services, please visit www.isucorp.ca