The Seven Pillars of a Thriving Modern Business

We no longer live and work in the same world we once did, and as such, we have had to make adjustments to the way we live. The same thing can be said for those who own businesses. They have had to adapt and change many aspects of the way they do business to become a thriving modern business. It’s no longer business as usual. However, with all the new shiny things out there, how does a business know which adaptations are likely to have the most significant impact on their profitability and long-term potential for growth? That’s where we come in. Today, we lay out the seven pillars for building a thriving modern business. If you build your strategy around these pillars, you’ll find success at the end of the rainbow.

Whether you’re an established business or looking to get started in the business world, you need to know how to build a thriving modern business by optimizing tactics built for the modern age and eliminating wasteful efforts that don’t contribute to your success. You must also balance the costs and returns offered by various business tactics to create the combination that best leads to success. Luckily for you, we have the information you’re looking for, and we’ll be sharing it with you below. If you would like to learn more, please continue reading.

Seven pillars of a thriving modern business

In the following sections, we present the seven pillars you need to build a thriving business. You should work toward optimizing your strategy related to each of these pillars. I recognize that small business owners often find themselves straining to find enough resources of time and money to implement all these tactics, but you should implement each one to the best of your ability while developing long-range plans that beef each one up over time. Always keep your eye on the ball to avoid wasting resources that don’t fit with these seven priorities.

Pillar 1: Having enough money

No business, regardless of size or industry, has enough money to implement every plan to its fullest. And, it certainly doesn’t have enough money to waste. Running a business, just like a household, often means making tradeoffs that result in the best combination of expenses. You can extend your resources using leverage. Leverage involves making your money work harder by doing things like:

• Renting equipment and facilities rather than buying them
• Using gig workers when you don’t have sufficient work to hire full-time employees
• Outsourcing non-critical functions to third parties that specialize in those functions
• Take advantage of buy now, pay later schemes
• If a supplier offers a discount for paying quickly, try to take advantage of it

By far, the most significant financial crunch most businesses face comes from cash flow, which leads to more business failures than almost any other source. Cash flow refers to the amount of cash you have available to pay bills.

First, you must get a handle on cash flow by making accurate projections of cash inflows and outflows. Offering a discount for prompt payment or charging a penalty for late payments can help balance these two accounts. Next, arrange for a line of credit or other loan to tide you over during periods when the inflows and outflows are out of whack. There are plenty of finance options if you know where to look. For example, you can apply to loan agencies and banks for a business loan. If you don’t want to take on debt, you can attempt to attract an investor. You have to convince them that you are worth the investment, and that is often the hardest part. Also, consider factoring your accounts receivable to raise immediate cash.

Pillar 2: Ongoing market research

How are you supposed to make optimal decisions about your business if you have no clue about what is going on in the market? Without data on external factors related to the economy, industry, competition, and proposed legislation, you are running blind, which leads to poor decision-making. You also need a host of internal data to plan for your business future effectively.

The first step is to build a business plan, which you’ll need anyway if you want to seek financing of any type. Build the business plan with data, not guesses, opinions, or prayers. You also need to become a learning organization that constantly scours the environment to build resiliency into your business. When it comes to internal metrics, you must develop a list of KPIs or key performance indicators that have the greatest potential to impact your performance. Tracking the wrong metrics leads to poor decision-making and wastes scarce resources. An interactive dashboard that visualizes this data transmits insights at a glance, allowing you to constantly adapt your strategy as new data arrives.

Pillar 3: Goals

If you want your business to thrive in the modern age, you need to establish SMART goals for both near-term and long-term growth. SMART is an acronym that stands for:

1. specific
2. measurable
3. achievable
4. relevant
5. time-bound

SMART goals are very specific for near-term strategies. For example, “grow revenue by 10% over the next 6 months” is a SMART goal. For long-term goals, you might have less specific goals that still reflect the notion of SMART. For instance, “complete the construction of our new warehouse within the next 3 years while keeping cost overruns less than 5%”.

Next, break down your goals into bite-sized chunks with objectives. Objectives flow naturally from your goals and lead you toward achieving them.

Over time, track your performance toward completing the goals and objectives. Evaluate why you didn’t reach one or more of them so you can create more accurate goals in the future, as well as develop better plans to achieve them. If you find that the goals were easily attained, consider building stretch goals next time that challenge the organization. If you find your results fall far short of your goals, it can act as a demotivator that leads to poorer future performance. Aim for goals in the Goldilocks region of not too hard or too easy.

Pillar 4: Strong marketing

Marketing is a crucial aspect of owning and operating a business. Without a strong marketing program, you’ll struggle to survive. No one will know you exist, few will understand the advantages you offer over your competition, folks can’t buy your products because they aren’t available where your customer are, your products fail to offer anything to your target market, your messaging doesn’t motivate your target marketing to make a purchase, and your price doesn’t reflect value. When it comes to marketing, you need to work out which marketing techniques are right for you and your business. There are plenty of techniques and strategies out there, as you can see below.

Matching your marketing strategies to your target market is essential to success. First, build market personas that reflect your different target markets. Flesh them out with elements beyond demographics and geographic variables, such as interests, behaviors, media choices, and more. For instance, if your target market is children, you might sponsor a kids’ event in your community or offer low-priced products that fit a kid’s allowance. If your target market is working women, you might offer easy-to-cook meals that fit their busy lifestyles. If you have an adult site that needs managing, you could work with an Onlyfans management agency. The key is to match every element of your marketing, including product, price, promotions, and distribution, to your target market.

Pillar 5: Build strong supply chains

As a business owner, one of your most important assets is a strong supply chain. You need suppliers and distributors committed to helping you deliver the right product, at the right place, at the right time, for the right price. That involves a lot of moving pieces that must work together like a well-conducted symphony, where each musician is a master of their instrument, willing to forgo optimizing their own part in the music to create a whole that’s bigger than the sum of the parts.

For instance, I had a client operating a chain of fast food restaurants. The supplier knew his employees would likely strike, shutting down the supplier’s ability to deliver a key ingredient required by the restaurant. Instead of hiding the fact from the restaurant owner, he not only informed them of the pending strike, but also made arrangements for an alternate source so the restaurant never ran out and could satisfy its customers without interruption. Now, you might think this is a risky strategy for the supplier, but it bound his firm more tightly to the restaurant owner. When the strike ended, the restaurant owner resumed purchasing from the supplier.

Supply chains aren’t a win-lose proposition. They involve negotiating a win-win where everyone is satisfied in the long run.

Pillar 6: Strong leadership

To build a thriving modern business, you need to be a strong leader. However, you don’t need the kind of leader who dictates and micro-manages the business. Modern businesses need the kind of leader:

• Who respects the people she does business with, from suppliers to the guy who sweeps the floor and everyone in between.
• He’s a good negotiator who ensures the business enters into equitable business deals.
• She’s a person who thinks strategically to build a solid future for the company.
• He’s uncompromisingly ethical.
• She’s willing to make tough decisions to ensure the company’s success.

Pillar 7: Stable website

Finally, how is your business website doing? A thriving modern business can’t survive without a great website in a world where 83% of consumers visit the internet before a physical store when they need something. You need a website that:

1. looks professional
2. provides value to visitors
3. subtly motivates visitors to make a purchase online or in the store
4. looks great on any device, and
5. is easy to navigate

Given the state of online marketing, you can’t even help your target market find you without a website with strong SEO, search engine optimization. If your content link doesn’t appear within the first 10 options on the results page, you might not even exist for them. Good SEO involves building your website through a good host, not one of those website builders like Wix, regularly creating valuable content, using keywords that reflect the query intent of users, and offering assurances of privacy and security to visitors.

Conclusion

So, there you have it: if you’re trying to create a thriving modern business, then you need to get everything right from the start. There are plenty of aspects that a business needs to stand the test of time, ensuring you handle each hurdle as it comes. Take your time with creating your company; you can’t expect it to take off overnight.

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Hausman and Associates, the publisher of MKT Maven, is a full-service marketing agency operating at the intersection of marketing and digital media. Check out our full range of services.