One afternoon, I was moving around with my camera taking some pictures along a busy street for my photoshop.  I remember it to be a very sunny day; hence had to look for a place to get a glass of water or soda to quench my thirst. Suddenly, my eyes fell in front of a grocery full of drinks and other groceries. The grocery shop was well arranged, and many young men and women were doing some shopping for immediate consumption and home use. 

I quickly grabbed an icy soda in a disposable container, paid for it, and drank it immediately. It was not the first time I passed through that street, but what I wondered was the level of growth and sustainability mirrored through that shop. I was also struck by the customer care skills reflected by the shopkeeper who was busy handling all his customers all the time when I was there.

Once I finished my soda and threw my disposable in the bin, I asked myself what are the critical businesses success factors that I was missing. This question came up after I have remembered the number of business startup trials I made to establish small enterprises but closed in one to two years. I sat down, trying to conceptualize and agreed within myself that I needed to learn some business success tools. Another intelligent guy passed near me and asked if I needed any help because I looked sick and tired.

Then, I narrated my own story to the man, that I had started small businesses many times, but no single business lived for more than two years. It was out of many business trials I decided to be a cameraman not because I love it but because I have to look for my daily bread for my wife and the child. My real passion is to be a boss by establishing a small business that can grow into a great business. However, all my dreams could not come to reality since my businesses came to an end in a period of six months, one year, and the longest was two years. That killed my dream of being a boss of my own. I remained with my business success images that could not get realized. I lived with my question on what are the critical business success factors which I need to observe.

He then gave a story on a study that found a growing number of small businesses closing down and new ones coming up actively. He told me that he has been in business for over 15 years and was ready to share some simple strategies that for him were business success stairs.

1. Be your own time manager

One of the most common mistakes many small business owners make is focusing on doing instead of using more time on marketing. To increase your income, and ultimately to be successful in business you must identify as few activities as possible which you can perfectly implement. Such activities are preferably not more than three activities as the prime money-making activities. To become a successful business owner, keep as much of your time and attention on those activities.

Failure to manage time has been a common challenge for many small business owners. The reason is that of focusing on so many activities. Since there will be no one will tell you what to do, hence be your time manager, or else you kill your business. Successful business owners are keenly focusing on their role to manage time.

2. Look for a great sounding board

Business management is art with critical skills needed. Thus, it is essential to incorporate a business advisor for your business. Make sure to get an advisor who has achieved success to be your sounding board.

Give yourself time to learn from successful business owners, not from the failures. In this way, you avoid making expensive mistakes and create shortcuts to better results.

3. Know your capability

When establishing a business, it’s common for the owner to try and do it all. But it is essential to know your capability and apply the principle of doing what you do best and outsourcing the rest.  The ideal situation to grow a business in the fastest possible timeframe is for the business owner to stick to their areas of unique ability and outsource the rest to people with the appropriate skill sets.

4. Narrow your focus and niche your expertise

When you have so many things to handle, it may be challenging to take the message across. As a result, nobody understands what you are doing. Too much information and no one hears anything you say. While it may feel ridiculous to reduce the number of things you promote, it is essential to your ability to attract more attention, and you can make your market niche.

5. Give yourself time to think about your business and revitalize

Some researchers who studied the work character of self-employed people found that self-employed people tend to work six hours more a week than their salaried counterparts. It is worth noting that it is not necessarily correct that simply working longer and harder guarantees success. Instead, “work smarter” and create enough downtime to think creatively about how to grow your business.

Take home

• While it is a fact that running your own small business can deliver lots of great rewards, however, making it through the first few years can be highly challenging. So be careful and follow the critical business success factors.
• Focus on becoming a great marketer of what you do instead of being a great doer of what you do.

• It has been proved that it is not the most talented entrepreneurs that make it in running successful small businesses, but rather, it’s the ones who learn how to market the talent they have that usually wins.