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Editorial
How to Succeed in Business
There
are many clichés about success, and particularly about success
in business. They range from the practical—Success in business
requires training and discipline and hard work (David Rockefeller)—to
the motivational—Many of life’s failures are people who
did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up
(Thomas Edison). Like all clichés, there is a kernel of truth
to all of them.
After more than a dozen years of writing feature articles on successful
businesses in the window coverings industry, there are two common
ingredients that clearly stand out: people and planning. It takes
the right mix of people working toward a shared goal, and to keep
that goal in sight takes planning. This month’s cover story,
Window Products Management, Inc. (see page 20), seems to have hit
it right on both counts. John Edwards, Jeff Erbeck and Donna Buice
brought their individual strengths and personalities into a company
that began with a $10,000 initial investment in 2002 and created
a management company running two retail outlets that likely will
see sales hit $5 million dollars this year. Each has his and her
own role in the company and each supports the others in their responsibilities.
They describe themselves as great students, diverse in talents and
interest, but sharing personal standards of ethics and honesty.
Yet it takes more than personality, and even more than that lots
of hard work, to achieve success of this magnitude in three years.
It takes a plan. The team at Window Products Management will tell
you they run their little business as if it were a big business.
And it’s all written down: a business plan, a marketing plan,
an operations manual and an employee handbook. And just as important,
they also track and measure the results and make changes to improve
business as necessary.
Of course, even the best business plan wouldn’t mean a thing
if nothing in it ever gets done. The next step has to be to do it.
Kitty Stein once wrote in these pages, “You must plan your
work, and work your plan.”
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