🧱 Build for Succession
🌱 Next Generation Entrepreneurs
🥂 20 Year Overnight Success
🧱 Build for Succession
The late Steve Jobs challenged the "built to sell" mindset.
He said, “I hate it when people call themselves ‘entrepreneurs’ when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on. They’re unwilling to do the work it takes to build a real company, which is the hardest work in business… You build a company that will still stand for something a generation or two from now.”
Steve’s quote resonates with me. Over two-thirds of Sticky Branding’s clients are multi-generational family businesses. What I can say about each of them is they are innovators with a long time horizon.
Their commitment to the long view is their competitive advantage, because they tend to make bigger commitments to their employees, partners, and the company itself because they want it to be here in a generation or three.
That longevity gets rewarded. Brands get better with age:
- Relationships grow stronger.
- Market awareness grows further.
- And if the company is innovative and well run, it garners exceptional customer loyalty.
One Stat to Watch
1,446 Years
Founded in 578 A.D., Kongō Gumi was the longest running company before being acquired in 2006. Talk about a succession plan! 🤯
🌱 Next Generation Entrepreneurs
My parents taught me what it means to be an entrepreneur.
Growing up in a family business, my parents had a stated goal to develop my brother and I into entrepreneurs. Transferring the company was not the intended outcome. They wanted us to learn how to grow businesses.
To grow a business through the generations requires a culture of entrepreneurship. If you’re not evolving, you’re dying!
In this marketplace, change is a constant. The strategies that made the first generation successful won’t remain relevant forever. To drive longterm growth, businesses must continually rethink their business models and reposition their brands for the times.
Developing next generation entrepreneurs is a core responsibility of the first generation.
Too many founders don’t let go and hold onto control for too long. This is a mistake. If a founder holds onto control for too long they’re cursing the next generation to be caretakers, not entrepreneurs.
Caretakers are great at maintaining the strategy and persevering, but they lack the essential skills of repositioning and pivoting the business. If the next generation can’t pivot, the business won’t survive.
There’s no guarantee that the strategies that are working today will be relevant tomorrow. Actually, it’s a safe bet to assume they’ll be displaced in the not too distant future. Technology, markets, globalization, and other trends are moving too fast. This means next generation leaders need to think like entrepreneurs, and always be building for the future
🥂 20 Year Overnight Success
Almost every overnight successful business was twenty years in the making.
Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither are Sticky Brands. You can’t go out and buy a Sticky Brand for your business. It takes years, often decades, to build a brand that resonates in your market and brings customers back again and again.
Companies that stand out the most are not built overnight.
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