Team

To foster this culture, we hold a weekly meeting. At these meetings, the entire team sits around the table and each person discusses his or her goals for the week or month, and then presents a strategy to achieve those goals. Other team members are then encouraged to chime in to provide advice and feedback that might help another achieve his or her goals. We find this strategy extremely helpful in building a cohesive, respectful, and trusting environment.

Mentorship

Mentors are an invaluable asset to our team. They offer advice, connections, partnership opportunities, and sometimes financial investment. But mentor relationships don’t work without trust. While our mentors respected our mission, they were wise enough to know our business.

Creativity

We’ve also learned how rewarding creativity is. Of course, it’s important to creatively market your product or service to your target audiences; but some business owners overlook the importance of creativity in finding different paths to grow their businesses. As an early startup, we were forced to depend on our creativity to generate equity-free financial capital.

Technology

Reliable technology is necessary to create and sustain growth. More importantly, technology can be leveraged to create trust with customers. Use of an intuitive CRM tool will allow you to manage current relationships and nurture new leads. It is incredibly important to invest in great technology, especially when it comes to maintaining a strong reputation with your clients.

The reality is this: your small business will face seemingly insurmountable obstacles as it continues to grow. Throughout these challenges, you’ll need to lean on your team, mentors, creativity, and technology. It is imperative that these four pillars holding up your business are reinforced with trust.