How your company can avoid the typical pitfalls of business ownership, and ultimately learn from others' mistakes.
Recently, BNG Holdings Inc. was awarded the #2 fastest growing company in North Dakota, by Inc. 500, and were also awarded the honor of #1769 on the same Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in America.
In light of that, we wanted to share with you the 4 lessons we’ve learned along the way, with the goal of hopefully inspiring you and your company.
Brady Nash, our CEO, often says to our team, and our prospects, ‘we earn your business everyday.’
This means that BNG Holdings and all of our sister businesses work tirelessly to ensure all of our existing clients and customers are taken care of through every single interaction.
We aspire to leave nothing left on the table. We strive to take care of our customers' problems, because we ultimately serve our clients and customers, not a balance sheet.
As a business owner, if your sole goal every day is to simply make a sale, then you’re in business for the wrong reasons. A sale, or engagement, is the result.
Your goal should always be to help others get to where they want to be by serving them, and ultimately solving their problems through some sort of product or service solution.
Companies without a clear direction are boring.
And BNG Holdings is far from boring. See how we break the status quo of boring here.
One of the best ways for your company to avoid sucking, and ultimately becoming boring, is to develop a mission and vision statement, along with a set of core values.
Creating these was one of the best exercises we ever completed.
Your core values show others why you’re in business and what’s important to you. Think of this as your credo or “higher-calling.”
At BNG Holdings, we have six guiding principles or core values.
Your mission statement and vision statement are a bit different.
Your mission statement defines the purpose of your organization and what you do, while your vision statement defines the desired future state of your business, or what your business wants to achieve over time. Think of your vision statement as your "north star."
These core values, along with your mission and vision, should align with your prospects and clients, and they should want to do business with you because you embody these values.
These principles, or guidelines, help us strive and persevere through each day. But more importantly, these core values point us to whom we serve.
Our Chief Marketing Officer, Dave Scott, used to coach boys soccer. The teams he coached were older boys, in the 16 to 19 year old age brackets.
One of the most valuable lessons taught to these young men was the concept of making mistakes. It’s okay to make mistakes. Make these mistakes, get them out of your system, and play with confidence.
These boys were taught that it's okay to make mistakes, but when you make them, make them fast and move on. In life, there’s no sense in dwelling on the mistakes from the past.
The same worldview applies to business. When failures and mistakes happen, (and they will) move on and move on quickly. Don’t dwell on your mistakes. Rather make the wrong a right, if need be, then move forward.
We are a family at BNG Holdings Inc. We don’t give up on each other.
And as hard as business can be, we make a conscience choice to work through the hard stuff, each and every day.
This attitude and purveying mindset is also known as grit, or perseverance.
As a business owner, you need to care about your employee’s and team members. You need to treat them with respect and love them, as people, and value their efforts that they give your business and your customers.
If you treat people like garbage, micro-manage them, talk down to them, fail to listen by talking over people, and choose not to care about them, you may find success, but as an entrepreneur you’ll be miserable doing it.
Persevere through the tough stuff. Don’t give up on your clients or your team members, and make the decision to stay the course.
There’s so much more to being successful in business and running a growing company.
As a mentor of ours once said, the devil’s in the details.
Undoubtedly, there are many more details to being an entrepreneur.
As a part of being awarded the famed Inc. 5000 list, the team at BNG Holdings Inc. wants to acknowledge how grateful we are to be where we are and say thank you to all our employees and customers who made this possible.
Without you all, the Inc. 5000 award would simply be a possibility and not a reality.
If you ever want to learn more about who we are and what we do at BNG Holdings Inc, contact us here.
