It use to be that to start a business, you simply decided on a name and a concept and hung out your shingle. Success was based on bottom-line revenues and numbers of items sold – period.

No more! Success in the new Entrepreneurial Renaissance requires that you look much more deeply at why you started (or want to start) your business, and who can benefit from what you are selling. Connecting with these ideal customers (what we call your “tribe”) is then the key that opens the door to long-term relationships, larger impact with your work, and ultimately more sales too.

In this series, we reveal the 12 factors that are required for a successful Purposeful Entrepreneur™ business, two each week.

1. Purpose: the Essence of Your Business

The first factor is Purpose. Every business has both an implicit and an explicit purpose, and ideally both need to be aligned and congruent. For example, if a business says it is committed to timely delivery of its programs, but every communication is late and deadlines are frequently missed, its implicit and explicit purposes are incongruent.

The foundation of a business that will succeed long-term is a commitment to center all of its decisions regarding which products or services to launch, which staff to hire, what policies to adopt, and which customers to serve around a cohesive business purpose, consistent with the owner’s life purpose. It is then clear to both internal staff and external customers what the essential benefit and purpose of the business is – and what values flow from it.

This factor answers the question “Who are we/what do we stand for?” for the new business.

2. Passion: Fueling Your Vision

Whether you are the only person working within your business or you have dozens of staff, how you each“feel” about the business, its products and services, and their role within it comes through on an energetic level in every business interaction. The level of passion in the business is indicated by such things as the “mood” of the owner and staff, how they communicate with customers, even facial expressions. Whether or not customers are valued and respected – or whether staff go the extra mile to ensure that the customer gets what he/she needs – are additional external indicators of the internal passion.

This factor answers the question, “How do we feel about what we do?” for the new business owner.

To assess your business on all 12 factors, take the Purposeful Entrepreneur Compass assessment here.

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