Business Success - Key Factors

The road less travelled, Antibes along the Cote Azur (Blue Coast) 

I am by no means the entrepreneur who has 'made it'. I am still making a living by every day by 'scrapping  in the schoolyard'. By that I mean that I am very much going to work day in day out and doing what I do best, creating opportunities for my company by means of quotations, customer visits, meeting with overseas principals and manufacturers and a whole host of other coordination works from invoicing, delivery orders, making deliveries for parts and coordinating project works. Its facing daily challenges and trying to find solutions ever so often. 

It is what I do best and I have been in this small niche of the giant global technology industry which is still 'bricks and mortar' providing quality assurance solutions to products to enhance their reliability. By that we provide test equipment such as chambers, ovens and vibration simulation equipment to diverse industries such as automotive, aerospace, defence, sports,electronics and their subset semiconductors and now the internet of things.

The title of this post is Business Success  - Key Factors. After almost 16 years of ups and downs and ups again, I think it is a combination of 5 key factors with the percentage weighting factors added in  as shown below :

a) Luck  20%
b) Resilience 20%
c) Diligence 20%
d) Domain Knowledge 20%
e) Intellect (incorporating Vision) 20%

Although I give equal importance to each of the 5, in practice it is rarely so, and the factors will be coming in and out in varying degrees due to varying circumstances. To manage it, the boss literally needs to be 'on the ground' determining the course of the battle (I call it battle) - every single day.  

Hence, if a new entrepreneur tries his hand at, say, a restaurant, if he has luck and intellect (vision) but after surviving the first tough year without going bankrupt but is not resilient when his back of kitchen staff (eg chef) leaves and he can't find a replacement, then he is likely to close up the business.

Its a very tough world, and with the geek economy turning everybody irrelevant if we don't invest in learning new skills, trying new strategies, and moving to new markets we may all end up facing a very uncertain future.

So with world economy facing an uncertain 2019, I have decided to buckle up, push harder for more customers and lower costs to the barest minimum.