What Defines Success?

What’s your definition of success?

Everyone defines success differently. How about you? Particularly as a business owner and entrepreneur, this topic comes up quite frequently. The related question that also comes up is to ask when enough is enough. The two are actually directly related within my definition of success as there is no end point, only milestones.

Success is the company as a whole:

• The culture: Creating a work environment where the staff is happy and excited to come to work, proud of their accomplishments, and able to build their own career path to follow. Work is work but does not need to be a dreaded destination, which should be left to the dentists. Receiving feedback from the staff letting me know that they enjoy their job and work environment and receiving awards such as Best Place to Work in WNY are affirmations that the building of the desired culture has been successful.
• The people: Building strong and self sufficient teams of highly skilled and devoted employees is one of the goals. Finding “diamonds in the rough” is another component of success through people as it related to building a successful company. While there is no end to the search for high quality employees, the staff we have allow the company to feel as though it has been successful in this aspect of business.
• The customers: Happy customers, repeat business, referrals from accounts, feedback highlighting staff assistance, and a continuously expanding customer base indicate that we have been successful in this area. Thousands of new customers each month and dozens of emails highlighting our performance prove that we have been successful with our customers.
• The growth: Internal growth and improvements combined with overall company growth of customers, employees, revenue and profits are significant reminders that we have built a very successful company with a desire for a continuous effort to improve and be even more successful down the line.
• The dominance: Viewing the competitive landscape and doing so from a dominant position in the marketplace is a level of success that we enjoy today. While there are many more competitors than a year ago, we have been successful in maintaining a majority stake of the overall online retail sales of VoIP hardware.
• The profitability: Many young companies never reach profitability and just as many tech companies continue to grow, yet do so running in the red. It has been exciting to see our company grow and do so profitably and for businesses, this is a huge sign of success.
• Enough is never enough: While there are exit plans and strategies, within my definition of success, any exit is designed to create multiple new entrance points into the next opportunity to build something successful.