“To open a shop is easy, to keep it open is an art.” Chinese proverb
Every year thousands of businesses are started world over and thousands die. This is an important statistic to keep in mind while venturing into business. The most important fact about this statistic however is not the businesses that die, but the ones that survive and grow to mature success. At the helm of these successful business, is a business growth leader who takes all the brutal punishments that the business environment has to offer and survives.
How do these few successful business growth leaders do it?
We can understand this by answering the following questions;
- Are there unique traits that these leaders poses?
- Do unique strategies known only to a few business people exist?
- Do these business growth leaders have unique habits?
- Can anyone become a business growth leader?
Luckily with great emphasis to the last question, all the answers are yes.
So who exactly is a business growth leader?
A business growth leader takes a business from its basic form and transforms it into a successful business with, dedicated employees, happy raving customers, reliable and flexible suppliers, enormous profits for the owner/s and smooth systems and processes.
So what are the unique traits of business growth leaders
- Tough. A good leader if free from guilt of previous actions and is pragmatic. The leader looks a head by considering the advantages to be gained from lessons learned. Every successful leader has a story on how they made it; the challenges that they had to overcome and the mistakes that they had to make. The best of us look at these mistakes as lessons and not as failures. These few are the business growth leaders.
- High risk takers. No risk no reward. I learned this quite early in my business, it always comes to the point where you have to take a risk that may result in massive failure leading to major financial loses or loss of credibility; but with a well crafted plan that considers MOST of the dangerous scenarios, success is almost always guaranteed. Only a business growth leader is this reckless.
- High affinity for stress. Being a business owner and leader is the most stressful and Loneliest job in the world. The business growth leader has very few people who understand and empathize with the challenges of heading a rocky and uncertain business.
- Fearless. Only a business leader can consider fear a gain or a positive lesson. To the everyday person, failure in considered an end but to the business growth leader its a fresh beginning. The beauty of the aftermath of failure, is it shows the business leader one more way of how not to do it.
- Impossible to Satisfy. “The most dangerous poison is the feeling of achievement.” Ingvar Kamprad founder of IKEA. A business growth leader, must have an insatiable appetite for success. There is always one more thing to do and one more thing to accomplish. Without this drive, it is impossible to achieve earth shuttering success.
- Good influential personality. An excellent business growth leader has the ability to influence others to his side without necessarily being loved. People naturally gravitate around someone who delivers promised results and is pleasant enough. Most high achieving leaders are usually not easy to hang around, but you find many people who want to hang around them. this is because people value the ability to deliver and inspire above basic pleasantness.