PPB May 2021

• How do I project my common sense and problem-solving abilities? • How well do I differentiate myself from others, not through education or experience but through personal qualities, strengths, attributes and resources as a unique human being? • How teachable am I? • How strong is my desire for growth, learning and domination of my field? Those questions are essential to building your foundation in the business world. Take your time to answer the questions. Dig deep to explore every possible answer you can give. Those answers are your start, and you’ll use them to build and maintain your business in congruence with the following five pillars of success. • Being Trustworthy • Being Innovative • Being a Relationship Builder • Being Loyal • Being Street Smart (Possessing Common Sense) Prioritize those five pillars in every interaction and business dealing, and you’ll see them compound countless times as you continue to grow. The ability to recognize and fine- tune those five elements will help you build your foundation into a reinforced stronghold that you can use to succeed and crush the competition. As I’ve said before, competition in general sets a low bar. Success starts out easy and doesn’t require any growth or change once you’ve reached the first milestone. Go above and beyond to implement the five pillars of success, and nothing will be able to stop you. For any new, highly profitable business idea, there are six basic principles I use to quantify a successful business model. I put those principles into play with Project Genesis and ask my team to consider them when brainstorming ideas that could take our business to the next level. If you can answer yes to the questions below while including each one of these six criteria for success, chances are, you have a winning idea. I first began to develop these criteria almost 20 years ago in 2000 when a friend invited me to a CEO group, thinking it would help with some challenges we’d been facing in our business. This group sat down together and challenged each other on every single aspect of their businesses. They challenged me too, with Shumsky and our other business brands, and I found that the points of differentiation I claimed to have were generally centered around myself and our employees. The problem was that my employees were taking our great concepts and watering them down, losing them in translation just so they could understand them. Unfortunately, that process was reflected in the final product that was delivered to the market, which, in turn, diluted our results. So, identifying average people within your organization is a good place to start the process of top- grading—of making the average exceptional. After all, a successful business model needs to be centered around engaged and successful people throughout the organization. Sustainable. Is this idea sustainable? Is this a one-hit wonder that just follows a trend, or can it scale for decades and/or evolve with the market? Can it last through a broad and diversified client base? Scalable. Is it scalable? Is there already a shortage of clients, or does the client base have the potential to grow indefinitely? Can we eliminate the risk of only serving one large client by having thousands of smaller clients? Prioritize those five pillars in every interaction and business dealing, and you’ll see them compound countless times as you continue to grow. | MAY 2021 | 63 THINK