4 Cornerstones of Success as a Business Owner

I’ve started and run several successful businesses over my life and through those experiences, I’ve identified traits that are essential to both being a successful business owner and having a big life.

I literally wrote the books on this topic—Small Business, Big Life and Small Business, Big Life for Women. But back to the point: in my time as a successful business owner, I’ve identified what I refer to as the four cornerstones of personal greatness. 

These cornerstones are foundational to building a successful business. In fact, you must have them all in place before you start to design the blueprints for your business and your life. 

The four cornerstones are truth, responsibility, awareness, and courage. Let’s dive into each one. 

Cornerstone No. 1: Truth

This is about more than just telling the truth to other people in any given situation. This is about telling the truth to yourself. 

Entrepreneur reported that you need to know yourself, know your limitations, and be able to acknowledge them in order to be successful. The article noted there are three types of limitations: psychology, physical, and professional. When you know your limitations in each of those area, you can start to get honest with yourself about what you’re capable of and how fast you can build and grow your business. 

To be a successful business owner, you have to be honest with yourself about how difficult the path is going to be, how much money and resources you’ll need, and whether you are mentally and emotionally equipped to have success. 

On my podcast Wealth Gap Warriors, Joelle Martinez, CEO of the Latino Leadership Institute, noted that Latinos are oftentimes fearful of achieving business success. We might feel guilty for having more success than our families or unworthy of the good things that come along with business success. 

Be able to tell the truth to yourself, and you already have one of the four cornerstones of your foundation built. 

Cornerstone No. 2: Responsibility

Last month, I wrote about the Responsibility Formula. This is the idea that the Event + Your Response = the Outcome. 

As a business owner, you’re going to take responsibility for everything when it comes to your business. There are always going to be things out of your control, but you have to respond resourcefully and calmly to keep things going. 

This comes down to the difference between responding or reacting to an unexpected event.

Forbes reported that mastering responding to challenges versus reacting to them is the difference between business success and failure. Forbes illustrated the difference with an example: when you get prescribed a medication and you have a “reaction,” it’s usually negative. However, when you get prescribed medication and you “respond,” it’s usually a positive thing. 

When you respond to something, you take responsibility. Psychology Today noted that reaction is rooted in survival, usually accompanied by rash, not-well-thought out actions. Whereas responding involves using your executive functioning to problem solve, weigh risks and rewards, and consider long-term costs and benefits before you make a decision. 

Cornerstone No. 3: Awareness 

We all have blindspots—when we’re driving, when we’re interacting with people, and when we’re doing business. 

When you’re unaware of your blindspots when you’re driving, you might get into an accident. And when you’re unaware of your blindspots in business, you might make decisions that are not good for your business or your teams, reports the Society of Human Resource Management. SHRM defined blind spots as “pervasive yet often unrecognized behaviors that can subtly corrode a company’s culture and derail its performance.” 

SHRM further reported several different types of blind spots that might show up in leaders: the cowardly lion (somebody who avoids making tough calls); the prevaricator (someone who perpetuates false narratives to serve their own purposes); the condescending leader (somebody who won’t listen to anybody else because they know everything); and the bully (somebody who picks on people less powerful and blame other people). 

Self-awareness is key to identifying these blind spots and ensuring you can work on them so they don’t destroy your business. 

Cornerstone No. 4: Courage

Cornerstone No. 1 requires you to be able to tell the truth about yourself. So ask yourself: Do I have the courage necessary to make tough choices that will allow me to be successful in life and in business? 

I write in my book Small Business, Big Life for Women that courage comes from four things: knowing what’s right, doing what’s right, learning from your actions and acting right (even with no immediate reward in sight), and believing in yourself and your dreams.

On an episode of the Small Business Show, Shyann Malone talked with entrepreneur and author Ryan Berman, who wrote the book Return on Courage: A Business Playbook for Couraged Change. Berman noted that courage also involves overcoming our fear of change, building a framework to encourage leaders to be more courageous, and to identify fears so you can better overcome them as a leader. 

Being a successful business owner isn’t easy, and it takes courage to be able to do the work. Join my community for resources and worksheets on how to build your business and your life to be everything you want it to be.