Small Business Blog

3 Critical Success Factors for Small Business Owners & Entrepreneurs

Right, what are the 3 Critical Success Factors for small businesses? Simple; Focus, Knowledge and Behavior. It doesn’t really matter if you are a small business owner or budding entrepreneur, if you can increase each of these 3 simple factors with respect to YOU, then I believe it must lead to improved results and success.

After a few years of working with small business owners, and of course considering my own business ups and downs, I became increasingly frustrated with why some business owners and entrepreneurs achieved amazing results and others did not. I wanted to know what it was/is that makes the difference. Through a highly non-scientific method I summarized my thoughts as the 3 small business critical success factors; Focus, Knowledge & Behavior.

I've seen 100's of business owners, and trust me, why businesses fail is always one (or more) of these three things.

Small Business Critical Success Factor No. 1 - Focus:
No clear goal or vision and/or no strong reason why you want to achieve it.

Small Business Critical Success Factor No. 2 - Knowledge:
Lack the specific knowledge of how to best improve each area of the business.

Small Business Critical Success Factor No. 3 - Behavior:
The decisions and actions taken on a daily basis.

Does that make sense? With better Focus, better Knowledge and better Behavior…. Better Results will follow.

If you have poor 'focus', then it's like getting into a boat and expecting to arrive at paradise when you have no crystal clear idea of the destination and why you choose that destination not another. Without 'knowledge' we can never expect amazing results. Many business owners have excellent product knowledge, which is great, but fall well short of great knowledge in the other areas of business. In most small businesses you don't have a marketing manager, a sales manager, a finance manager and an HR manager and even if you do, without a certain level of knowledge in that area you're not qualified to know whether they are any good or not! Think about that. So, it's up to the owner to continually up skill. And 'behavior', well … simply put, it's the choices you make every day about how you invest your time which will determine your outcome.

So ... if you want a successful business then remember that you need accurate Focus, increasing Knowledge and excellent Behavior.

Action Points

Get out a piece of paper. Divide the page into 6 even boxes. Label ‘Focus, Knowledge, & Behavor’ down the left hand side axis, and ‘Working Well & Needs Improvement’ along the top. Now get brainstorming!