Small Business Lessons That Can Be Learned From Large Corporations And All-Star CEOs

The lessons that can be learned from large corporations and successful CEOs are immense. With the internet, it is possible to read about all kinds of business obstacles and how you can improve your business. All large companies had to start out small and all business has some form of issues to overcome. Growing pains are another issue that corporations can teach small businesses about. For this reason, scalable processes need to be put into place so the processes will not crumble if a huge client comes on board. The following are lessons that can be learned from large corporations as well as CEOs that run them.

You Are Never Too Big To Get Hacked

Target and Home Depot having data hacked shows that no company is ever large enough to avoid a hack. Hackers can see larger companies that have more of a mainstream name as a trophy in their hacking career. For this reason, optimizing all cybersecurity needs to be done regularly. Passwords to certain accounts need to be on a need to know basis only as former employees might lead the passwords or try to get revenge on the company. Employees should also never log in to company emails or platforms on an unsecured device or on an unsecured network. The last thing a small business needs is distrust from their customer base due to a data breach. This can cripple or cause a small business to go under so eliminate the possibility of this completely.

Never Be Afraid Of Hard Work

A multitude of CEOs let people know frankly that you are going to have to hustle in order to be a big success. Ryan Hibbert, the CEO of Riot Hospitality Group is quoted when asked this “Advice to someone pursuing a career path in what you do: Put your head down and work. Period. It’s not a secret, hard work pays off sooner or later if you keep at it.” Hard work also means efficient work so looking to improve business processes early will pay dividends later.

Be Transparent With Customers…….Facebook

Facebook made a huge mistake leading Zuckerberg to have to testify in front of Congress for the management of user data. Facebook sold the data to outside parties for profit which upset quite a few users. The lesson that can be learned from this is to be transparent and honest with customers regardless if you have bad news for them. Lack of honesty with a client can lead to missed deadlines that ruin a relationship between two companies. Most customers/clients will appreciate an honest answer if a project simply cannot be completed in the specified timeframe.

The Market Can Catch Up To Your Business Idea

Amazon is a great example of an idea that was a bit before its time and grew immensely once the market caught up with the idea. The ecommerce giant originally was created to sell books online only to morph into one of the most influential companies of all time. If you see that your product/service is profitable at this point but not everyone “gets it” remember that it takes time for certain people to catch up. The world of SEO and marketing is very much the same as a decade ago SEO was only known by those in the marketing space. Now nearly every business does some form of online marketing in order to rank higher on the search engines.

As you can see there are so many lessons that can be learned from already established businesses. Take time to research the paths that giants took in specific industries to see where you can model parts of your business off of them.

 

Adam Hansen
 

Adam is a part time journalist, entrepreneur, investor and father.