What It Means To Have A Successful Business

Once you start a business, what would it mean for it to be considered a success? Who decides success? Do you decide it, or does some other imaginary group decide it? Or is the outcome of the business binary, with success if you become rich, and failure if you don't? In this article we will go over some of the business psychology for determining whether your business is ultimately successful or not.

Binary thinking

It is easy to fall into a linear line of thinking that if the business earns millions of dollars, then it is a success, and that anything short of that is failure. Even if your only goal is to become a millionaire, and your business is not going to do that for you, it is still not failure because very likely you got quite a bit of experience and learned from that business. So your next business will have a bigger chance to help you achieve that goal. So even if your business is not a success in the direct sense of the word, it was a step you took on your way towards your goal that made you stronger as an entrepreneur.

Learning from your business as a measure of success

Every day of running a business, there are so many unique business challenges that the entrepreneur can't help but learn every day. No matter how long you work on your business, even if it is not a great success, you still come out of it much stronger as an entrepreneur than you were before. You know what to look for during planning of a business, and what mistakes to avoid while starting and executing the business. You also know what sorts of things worked, and you will be quicker to do make sure you do those things for your next business.

Connections and friends

Additionally, as you build and grow your business, you inevitably meet people along the way. While some of those people do not stick around, you do make long-term relationships with some of the people you meet. Typically, the long-term relationships that are formed are ones with people with whom you get along well and can work well together.

Studies show that if you start a business with partners with whom you have worked together before, the business will have a far greater of success compared to starting the business on your own, or with partners with whom you have never worked together before.

Enjoyment and exhilaration

Even though starting a business is difficult and stressful, it is at the same time absolutely exhilarating and exciting. It allows you to dream big and pursue your dreams. It gives you hope and lots of excitement along the way. So the process of having started your own business is something that can be enjoyed as well. And for that reason, even if you ultimately did not achieve your financial goals, the business gave you a chance to have an amazing time where you were free to pursue your goals and dreams.

Biggest Measure of Success

Of course, no matter how much you may have learned, or how much you may have enjoyed starting your own company, there is nothing like achieving financial success. Typically, financial success can be achieved in a few ways. The most coveted outcome is typically for entrepreneurs to ultimately sell their business to a larger company for a large sum of money. Another, very rare occurrence is for the company to do an IPO (initial public offering) in the stock market. But that is incredibly rare and requires the company to become truly very big before that can even be on the radar.

But the simplest way to achieve business success is to make sure the business earns revenue and makes a profit from that revenue. That way you can pay yourself a nice salary and have the business support you financially, which is already a great sign of business success.

Article by Alex Genadinik