3 Building Blocks to Develop Sustainable Small Business

sustainable small business

Sustainable small business is something that can be created only from the most successful entrepreneurs. What are the basic building blocks of sustainable small business?

I have worked with many small businesses and their entrepreneurs in creating and building their companies. In that process, I have identified many factors that will help them in their intentions to build something sustainable and successful.

But, it is not always easy to achieve sustainability. Many times, for existing companies there is the wrong foundation on which they build their business.

According to this experience, I can say that there are many things that must be done. But generally, to simplify the process I usually use three important building blocks on which we work with all entrepreneurs.

Here I would like to share them and talk about these important factors.

Before I start with a brief description of them, I would like to mention that these three building blocks are mutually depended with each other.

This means that they can be implemented as a whole if you want to build a sustainable small business and succeed as an entrepreneur.

Their existence here is to help small business to become sustainable businesses.

Let’s look at each of them briefly.

sustainable business

1. Customers.

First thing as a first. Sustainable small business will always need customers. That means your small business will need to always work to create new customers, but also to generate additional revenue from repeated customers. It is not an easy task, and this part of your sustainable business will be related in large part on the next two building blocks of your company.

For example, to generate new customers and the need for repeated purchases from existing customers you will need to have excellent products and services but also the systems in place that will support this work.

2. Products.

The next important building block of your sustainable small business is your products or services that will be offered to your customers. Someone will ask why this building block is not the first one? It is the second because I think that you will need first to work on generating customers and then on building your products or services.

The main idea behind this is that a sustainable small business is customers centric company, not product-centric. If you create your ideal customers, you can easily find what they want and how you can deliver the value to them.

Many entrepreneurs make a mistake when they start with a traditional way of doing business in which they work on creating products and services and then start working to find customers and try to sell their products and services to them.

3. Systems as the Basis of Your Sustainable Small Business

The third building block is also important because the previous two building blocks can’t succeed in building a sustainable business without this one.

In my experience, many entrepreneurs succeed in building one of the two or all two earlier described building blocks. But they don’t succeed in building systems. In such a way, they can’t build long term sustainable business.

Success in the first two building blocks will give you short-term success. But you will not be 100% sure that your small business will repeat the success and become a sustainable company.

The main goal of this third block is to support creating and maintaining customers and at the same time building value to them.

Question: How you approach when you want to build value for your customers?