Growing Your Business into an Industry Leader

When thinking about growing your business, you may be inclined to think about becoming an industry leader. When that state occurs, it’s a huge responsibility to undertake because of the underlying assumptions around the position.

Industry leaders are responsible for all sorts of decision and shaping the industry in the right manner. You can’t have an industry leader who’s meek or allow others to fuel your ego.

They need to be passionate, but about the right things and must undertake several years of careful consideration before joining the ranks of industry leadership. All eyes are on you, and you need to be increasingly aware of the negative consequences of one wrong move.

Let’s take the example of Elon Musk, who’s an industry leader in the space exploration and electric cars arena. A decade ago, he was an industry leader in online payments through PayPal. That’s where industry leaders shine.

They not only capture one market, or geography, but they have a good outlook on success and capture multiple markets and cities.

Elon not only managed to trump his competition, but he also has a great personality and plenty insights about being successful. He’s inspired a generation of thinkers and inventors, and his latest focus to go to Mars has every investor in the world vying for his attention.

He may very well become the richest man in the world through his companies.

Preparation is Key

Preparing for change is another key attribute that industry leaders are all too familiar with.

They begin their lives as a certain product or service and transition smoothly into another role. This is where they shine through and create magical experiences for customers.

Twitter began that way in the early years. It used to be a message to MP3 service which no one wanted. They then translated their original vision of “internet and SMS” and created a product that was actually revolutionary.

Adopting the right mindset and have the right approach to the market is key here.

You can’t simply repeat mistakes and expect different results. You have to be straightforward with your clients in business and create value for them.

When Instagram copied Snapchat, under the leadership of Mark Zuckerberg, Evan Spiegel didn’t hesitate. He continued doing what he does best – innovating.

You should rely on the “Lean startup methodology” which follows the principle of release early and releasing often instead of releasing the perfect product. This is how you continue to publish work and release it to the market.

Otherwise, you get so obsessed with making the perfect product that you end up over relying on your abilities. This way, you end up helping nobody.

You should capitalize a market as early as possible, otherwise you’re not going to acquire market share and won’t be able to become an industry leader.

By correctly identifying your KPIs and what metrics you’re using to deliver results, you can effectively create a continuous source of revenue for your brand and become a thought leader in the space you’re operating in.

This supports your pursuits and creates value where there was previously none.

Mistakes and learnings

You need to recognize your mistakes and learn from them effectively.

You shouldn’t be stuck in your existing situation and go ahead in life. When you learn from your mistakes, you can make decisions in life that help you craft your opinions in the industry.

When you create mistakes, you should be quick to admit them and make changes where necessary. You should study what went wrong and make a change in the way that you do things. Grit is a necessary tool in this domain, which helps you in persevering in your life.

Grit helps businesses and brands create change, domain expertise and thought leadership in the industry. Brands don’t fail, founders do.

And as a founder, you need to keep going.

When you don’t have passion anymore, and you’re left all alone, you can be a thought leader by leveraging grit in your business. When you plan your next venture or next move you should invest hours and hours of work into it to reap the benefits.

Be practical and keep going so that you can truly transform into a business leader.

Be flexible and adopt multiple insights

When you’re trying to go the distance, you shouldn’t do it alone.

You need to look at multiple ideas and insights, so that you can create one approach that’s coherent. This is where you can create success that’s beyond expectations.

This is also how you can cement your position as an industry leader.

You can add one idea, one insight or one thought to another and create incremental value for your customers.

To become that industry leader you have to adopt the micro-level of thinking – insights, revelations, execution and results, and combine is with the macro-level of thinking – strategy, gateways, business development, etc.

Don’t hesitate to partake in multiple ventures, ideas and associations so that you can drive results for your flexible approach.

You want to have a single vision for your brand, but you also want to have flexibility to reach profitability. If you’re already successful, then you need to adopt multiple avenues of growth so that you can push the industry ahead.

You don’t want to be stagnant after a while, because there is so much resistance in the industry either way.

Conclusion

When it comes to business success, all businesspeople want to get success early on.

When you look at Amazon and its’ acquisition of Whole Foods, you may be wondering why Jeff Bezos wanted to target that space. It’s because his goal is twofold.

One is to ensure that the business doubles its revenue growth projections and two because he wants to become an industry leader in the online and offline space.

He didn’t want massive stores labelled “Amazon” on the streets of these cities and instead opted to growing through acquisition. The space is competitive, but industry leaders find a way to achieve success no matter what.