A dream for a small business might be as simple as a sidewalk flower shop.  Or you have an idea for a cozy four-table breakfast shop.  Maybe your dream is to start up a concierge bookkeeping service.  No matter what the business is, it began with a dream.

As a writer, I’ve been absent from Women On Business for awhile as I was working on redesigning my business blog and art blog; beginning a new direction for my art – into ceramic mosaics [my home-based business revolves around my art business]; and getting into the thick of the art show season.  Now that the blogs are redesigned to my liking and I have three new mosaics done and on my gallery page and the season for shows is two-thirds complete, it’s time to pick up the pen again [so to speak].

I began a couple months ago to develop a list of 30 Entrepreneurial Tips.  As I get one polished I’ve published it on Twitter.  Today I’m writing about #1.  Once all 30 are done I’ll put them into a book.  This is a business plan, of sorts, for a bit of writing.  My dream for writing has always been to approach it as a conversation and to share what I know, or what I’ve learned or what I find interesting.  Writing fills one part of my personal creative quilt.  The other part is filled by my art work.  My dream with my art is to share my love for and passion for color – I believe that Life is full of color.

I once heard that a good definition for entrepreneur is:

• someone who organizes a business venture and assumes the risk for it
• a business independently owned and operated [could be a solopreneur business or one with many employees]
• a leader with the capacity to establish direction and influence others toward a common goal
• an innovator, someone who introduces something new

You hear a lot about people wanting to become entrepreneurs.  Well I think the “want to” comes from first having a dream – the business then gets built by taking that dream and then organizing it, assuming the risk for it, owning it, establishing direction and going forward.  But it’s got to start with a dream.  Why a dream as opposed to a goal?  I think within the term “dream” lives internal passion and drive…the kind and intensity that will see an entrepreneur through tough times and over rough roads.  Along  the way to building any business are roadblocks and boulders and naysayers.  If you don’t have the passion of the dream chances are those negatives will keep the business in the chrysalis forever.

I read of a pair of entrepreneurs [Dana Arbib and Farah Malik] who began with a dream and pulled together a very unique business called A Peace Treaty.  As I read their story I was intrigued because these young women, to my mind, are true entrepreneurs whose business plan includes a humanitarian element.  They aren’t the first to do this, to be sure, but these two 30-something year-olds seem to be making it work in a big way.   According to their story on their website: “…A Peace Treaty creates employment for skilled artisans working in places of socio-political strife, effectively supporting their craft while elevating their products to the level of high design for an exclusive, international audience….”

This is quite a business vision statement.   Can you imagine dreaming of having a business where you combine beautiful fashion accessories with elevating the livelihood of talented women artisans in areas of the world where these artisans have no ability to reach a broader market on their own?

Writer Brooke Kosofsky Glassberg is the fashions features editor at “O, the Oprah Magazine,” and it was in the newest [September 2010] issue that I saw her story about A Peace Treaty.   It’s only a one-page story but it was dynamic enough that it caught my attention and caused me to look up this duo’s business on the internet.  In her short article Glassberg quotes Dana Arbib as saying, “…Just as the two of us have transcended our political and cultural differences, A Peace Treaty tries to transcend obstacles to create something beautiful….”

Whether your desire is start a home-based business or a small business located in your community’s downtown or at an address on the world wide web, it should begin with a dream, one in which you have invested passion and belief.

One of the places I spent some appreciated time was Siesta Key Beach, not far from Sarasota, Florida.  Siesta Key is rather famous as it has the purest, whitest, softest, coolest-to-the-feet quartz sand.  It is beautiful.  The water of the Gulf of Mexico was about 80 degrees the past couple weeks so the hours I spent on this beach were a delight.  There is a snack bar, ice cream shack and beach accessories shop at Siesta Key Beach.  All were small businesses.  I appreciated the work of these people because they helped to make my visit pleasant.  Other small businesses that aided the vacationing pleasure of tourists were the fishing boats, para-sailing boats, bicycle rentals and kayak rental businesses.

Today I ran errands before settling down in my studio/office to do some writing and mosaic-ing.  While driving around town making my stops I noticed the work that some other people were doing.  There is a large lot on one street that is due to be home to an automobile dealership, but for now it is surrounded and the property protected by a fence.  I saw a man by a pickup truck with the logo of the fencing company on the side.  The man was doing some maintenance on the fence.

At a nearby gas station, a tow truck was loading up a disabled vehicle.  I recognized the company name and smiled because this same small business aided my husband and I a few years ago when we had some car trouble.  Made me appreciative that there are people who have tow services as their business.

My first errand this morning was to drop my husband off at the shop where he had had some repairs done to his van.  This one-man body shop has been in our community for some 30 years and I’m grateful for the skill and care that the owner/mechanic gives to his “patients.”

As I pulled onto my street headed to my driveway with my groceries and sundries, a delivery truck was in the street in front of a neighbor’s house.  It was a solo-preneur business, a one man delivery service.   All these observations give me the thought that small businesses are the spine, the backbone of commerce.

In the art world, where I live some of my time, there is an easy test for transparency that I’ve used in teaching beginning painting students…it works for both acrylics and watercolor paints.  I tell my students to never assume a color is transparent until it is tested.  Here’s what you do:

• on a piece of white paper, in the center, draw a thick line using a black Sharpie pen [Sharpie is my brand choice because it dries almost immediately and it is waterproof]
• take a color of your paint, like red, and brush some across the black line

If you can see the black line through the paint…you have transparency; if you can’t see the black line, the color is opaque.  To further test this, if the red paint proved to indeed be transparent, add some white to it and test again.  I think you’ll find that now the new mixture is opaque.  Adding white not only tints a color it makes it opaque.

Opacity means that light does not penetrate.  Opacity means that you can’t see what is underneath.  It kind of gives you the idea of “white washing.”  Ever heard of an old fence being whitewashed?  That simply means you’ve mixed up some white paint and painted it over the fence…hiding the old ugliness of it.  The problem with whitewash is that it will erode with weather and sunshine and time.  Eventually the ugly old fence shows its true self.

The businesses we’ve read about that seemed so “golden” and shiny on Wall Street that have fallen failed the transparency test.  They were whitewashed and when the paint peeled away the ugly was revealed.

Ask yourself: is my business transparent?  If you paint my business’s practices over that black line will you be able to see all the way through?  You want the answer to be “yes.”  Integrity in business should be a “what you see” is “what you get” proposition.   Your word should be your bond.  You should practice “truth in advertising.”  There should be no hidden agenda.

It’s like my grandfather used to tell me: if your name is on it or associated with it, you carry your whole family’s reputation with you.  It gives you something to think about whether your business is that of a huge Wall Street financial concern or a home-based business whose product is breakfast juice – being transparent is the color of integrity.

Here’s an exercise in semantics.  Ask yourself: do you work for success as an end-all or do you see your business as a means or tool for prosperity?  Aren’t success and prosperity the same thing?  I think that one of the key elements to business prosperity is dedication.  I think that dedication resides in that place between success and prosperity.

I remember years ago, when I was in high school and my mom was busy with her bookkeeping business, I once talked to her about success.  You’d have to know my mother to understand her response, but she said she did not believe she would ever be successful; her only goal was to be prosperous.  To her “prosperity” meant making a profit and success meant something beyond her ability to achieve.

One definition of “success” is the completion of a series of events [tasks] that accomplishes the intended goal.  “Prosperity” on the other hand, has within it the idea of thriving and economic well-being.  It could be that my mom never saw her home business as being complete…she didn’t see an end to it; it didn’t have a beginning, middle and end.  She did see her business as providing financially for her family.  Her business thrived and did achieve what she wanted in terms of prosperity.  Her goal was to make enough income by providing bookkeeping, taxes and payroll services to her clients to help pay the family’s bills.  In this she succeeded.  However, her goal was never to have a “successful” business.  She didn’t start her home business for the sake of having a business, she started it to help her family.  Maybe this is all just semantics, but for someone like my mom it was an important distinction.

Dedication was key to the prosperity of  Winnie’s Bookkeeping Service.  Mom was dedicated to providing the services she was good at and dedicated to helping my dad to meet the family’s financial obligations.

I think that dedication is crucial to both success and prosperity and lies at that place between the two.

Linda C Smith, http://www.intlnat.com

What is SMO? It’s Social Media Optimization.  And for my home-based business I’m much more interested in the ROI on my social media efforts.  [ROI?  That's Return On Investment.]

Investment isn’t always in terms of dollars and cents.  It’s also in terms of time.  For many home-business owners and other solo-preneurs time is a precious commodity.  When you are all your business has, you have to be very selective with where and how you spend your time.  Truthfully I’m not so concerned with SEO as I am with SMO because I invest more time in social media connections than I do with where I rank in a search engine.

And social media gives me positive ROI.  How do I know this?  I utilize Google Analytics.  Recently I was looking at the graphs and charts for this blog and discovering where readers are coming from.  In my business’s marketing plan, I use a 5-part internet strategy for exposure:

1. Twitter
2. Facebook
3. LinkedIn
4. Blog
5. Article Writing/Book Writing

The charts and graphs on my Google Analytics page tell me that time spent using Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn does indeed drive traffic to my blog.  In fact, for me, my ROI for Twitter is time well spent…for me, Twitter ranks #1 in referring sites.  For the past month, the top 5 in referring sites has been:

1. Twitter
2. Typepad
3. my former blog url address
4. Facebook
5. my Alltop

For the home-based business solo-preneur how can you use Twitter and Facebook?  In my book, “Beginners Guide for Home-Based Business Owners-Establishing an Initial Presence on the Internet,” I talk about Twitter’s value:

• make announcements relevant to your business: Product/Service launches, Product/Service changes, location changes, special events, special deals, staff changes
• post the title of your newest blog posts; post when you make changes to your business web page
• Twitter can help you to gain exposure for your business, market your business’s products and services, build relationships with customers, share, teach and connect

Facebook and LinkedIn, as I mention in my book, also have great fundamental value:

• viewers can see that you are a businessperson and have a business
• get a description of your business and see your qualifications
• get the web address for your business [could be your business website or business blog]
• get business contact information
• see the latest status update [link your Twitter account to both]

I found a great article at Social Media Today by Ira Kaufman, “5 Steps to Evaluating Social Media ROI.”  I like what Mr. Kaufman has to say about social media being more than numbers of followers…to me numbers of followers is not your return on investment; rather it is, as Kaufman says, “…The answer [to 'prove to me social media works'] will not come simply from growing social media followers.  Rather, it will come from the effect social media has on expanding and converting your company’s touchpoints. The marketing strategy of every company is to touch their customers, engage them, and move them to a targeted action….”

Kaufman talks about a “…Touchpoint Optimization Strategy…a 5-step process that tracks the conversion from a one way touchpoint to an “action point” in the customer relationship lifecycle….”  His 5 steps:

1. Listening: “…Sales and consumer insights measures include surveys, ad test, awareness tracking, contact centers, media tests, customer satisfaction studies, and brand tracking….” – all traditional marketing methods, which, truth be told, are always going to be necessary in my estimation.
2. Conversing: “…With the emergence of social media, the measurement response time has been shortened. Social media transforms listening posts into ‘conversation points.’… They challenge companies to be more involved and responsive, as they provide real time information needed to make adjustments in strategies and tactics. Furthermore, each conversation point can be developed into a relationship and build brand loyalty….”  Here’s where I concur – social media provides an element that traditional marketing methods simply can’t.  There is, however, an exception which I’ll get to in a moment.
3. Converting: “…the company needs to focus marketing efforts to convert the user to specific calls to action: downloading information, answering a survey, requesting a quote, or buying a product.  Effective Social Media Marketing targets these conversation points to be transformed into ‘action points.’…”  So true.  I think it means that you drive the conversation towards action, which can happen quickly in social media.
4. Analyzing: this hasn’t changed; whether you SMO or stick to traditional marketing, analysis is vital.
5. Evaluation: “…evaluation will determine a social media ROI and the most cost-effective mix of traditional, online, PR and social media to achieve the company’s goals….”  Social media adds to the evaluation mix…this is where you ask: is time spent on Twitter and/or Facebook worth it?

There is an old-fashioned, old-timey method of social conversing that we used to do and I found an interesting article at MyVenturePad by Becky McCray – she shared an article written by her friend Liz Strauss, “Why Small Town Small Biz Has an Advantage at Using Social Media Tools.”  In the article, “…My dad owned a saloon…what my dad did with his cash register I do with my computer.…”  She talks about the social in social media that used to be done face-to-face:

• “…a website is a store…keep it organized, clean, and focused on our key business…
• …a blog is conversation over the counter. If we put out information that answers questions and solves problems, the people who shop in our store get interested in us and what we know…
• …LinkedIn is a professional group, like the Chamber of Commerce It’s our chance to connect with people who run small businesses like ours…
• …Facebook is the company picnic. Our families and friends are there with us. Business is more casual and more about sharing events and news…”
• …Twitter is the world’s largest networking event.…”

I couldn’t agree more.  I had a time in my life when I worked as an assistant department manager for a major department store – it was a nice rather upscale type of place and those were good times – although hard on my feet I’ll admit.  Those were times of face-to-face marketing.  You handled the products, talked to prospective customers who became buying customers and hopefully returning customers.  The corporate office handled all the traditional outside marketing, but social marketing happened right there on the sales floor.  Social media is a bit like the sales floor.  Social media brings back into the mix the conversation which, like Mr. Kaufman points out in his article, hopefully converts to action [sales].

So. The ROI of SMO?  A worthy investment.  My emphasis – for my small home-based business – is on SMO much more than SEO.

Me?  I always found English class an easy class.  Remember those exercises in breaking down the structure of a sentence?  Remember conjugating verbs and tenses?  I’ve always been as at home with words as my mom was with numbers.  One of my former positions was as marketing director for a large nonprofit agency in the central valley of California.  One year I was fortunate to have the assistance of a college intern from the University of the Pacific in Stockton.  This young woman was in the communications department and wanted to go into public relations.  However, I spent quite a bit of time proofreading.  For her the words “then” and “than” were one and the same.

Being able to communicate and enjoying the process is what I believe fuels the popularity of blogging.  Humans love to talk to one another.  We love to share ideas and make known our thoughts and opinions.  All social animals love to do this.  Have you ever observed two parakeets?  They talk to each other all day long!

It is this love of communication that turned me to the career of newspaper reporter years ago and that a few years more recent, compelled me to start my own blogs.  I write one about business and one about art.  And last year I was encouraged to write my first book.  This was inspired by a discussion I had with a friend about starting a home-based business.  She was asking my advice and I was recounting some of the thought processes I went through when I first got started.  Then she asked me why wasn’t I writing all this down in a book?

“They” say that if you want to be a writer you should write about what you know.  I was a beginning solo-preneur at one point and struggled through quite a few issues.  What kind of business?  How big or small?  Did I want to eventually have something that became fulltime or did I want a home business that was strictly parttime?  Where in my home would I work?  Would my business be centered around a passion for something I already knew or had?  Or was I willing to learn something new and develop a business around that?  And once I had my business how could I coordinate my presence online?

“Beginners Guide for Home-Based Business Owners-Establishing an Initial Presence on the Internet” was the result of the seed planting my friend did in the conversation that day.  It’s not a big book, more of a booklet at 50 pages, but every word, every sentence was designed to give value.

From the Preface:

• “…I wrote this booklet in two parts because I have a heart for the owner of the very small business and recognize that it takes much thought to make the decision to start a business from home.  The first part of the book asks a lot of questions.  These are designed to help the reader think through the whys of starting a business…Part two of the book gives my suggestions for establishing an initial presence on the internet….”

Why put both in one book?  I think it’s important to include the beginning steps of being on the world wide web with the beginning steps of starting a business.  Not every business will put itself on the internet; however, in this day and age including a presence on the internet has great benefits…even if all you want to do is have a webpage of contact information.

“Beginners Guide…” helps you walk through the reasons for beginning a business from home.  It gives the reader ideas of what having a home-business can give: leverage of both time and money; freedom of time and money; pride of accomplishment.

Have you considered that a single person business, the solo-preneurship, has both a leader and a manager?  Just as with any large organization, leadership plays a vital role in setting the direction of a business.  A home-based business is no different.

• “…Vision – the leader in the organization holds the dream, protects the dream, polishes the dream and keeps it alive.
• Direction – the leader sets the direction by establishing long-range and short-term goals and objectives that will lead to fulfilling the vision.
• Thought Leader – the leader is always on a track of continuous improvement, eyes wide open to opportunity….”

From Part Two:

• “…Before the internet there was the phone book.  Businesses both big and small listed in the yellow pages and/or the white pages so that people (1) knew they were in town, (2) could find them and (3) had contact information available.  At the very least, these are the same reasons to give your home-based business a presence on the internet.  More and more people are using the internet to find all kinds of information.
• I remember when the internet was mostly a tool of research and a repository of information.  Since the 1990s it has evolved into a major player in world commerce….”

Whether your small business is local to your community or based entirely on the internet, coordinating your online presence is key to introducing your business, your products and services to a diverse population.

No one book can tell you everything necessary for making a success of a home business.  However, every tool you can add to your toolbox can help.

Beginners Guide for Home-Based Business Owners-Establishing an Initial Presence on the Internet is published and available through Amazon.com.

Most businesses of more than 10 employees have organizational charts, documents of policies and procedures and other ways of determining what their principles are upon which they run their enterprises.  The tiny business owner, the solo-preneur, rarely gives this much thought.  Some tiny businesses get born by a good idea and launched into activity without even a written business plan.   However, I’ve said it before – if you haven’t set a destination and know how you’ll get there, you’ll only run in circles.  Principles are important.

At its most basic, what is a business principle?  A principle?  Principles are those things and elements that represent what is desirable and positive for a business to do and they provide forward momentum.  Although principles hold within themselves policy, goals and objectives, they are actually more elemental and are meant to be the baseline governing factor in all manner of doing and operating your business.

Principles have within them the elements of norms, rules and values and these elements all have to be defined and determined individually for each business.

Norms are the “what is normal” guidelines for operations.  Kind of the “the way we’ve always done things;” the comfortable and the known.  Norms are the guidelines or practices you set down.  For example, you send out invoices on the 15th of every month – this is a norm for the accounts receivable function of your business.   You review your business plan on a quarterly basis…this is a normal function for your leadership role.

Rules are the authorities of operating your business.  These are the formal guidelines of what to do and what not to do in given situations.  You’ve set as a rule…and principle…of your business that you will return prospective customer calls within a 24-hour period of time.  Or, you’ve set up your business so that your family time has a priority level – meaning that you don’t take work home on the weekend…this is a governing rule and principle.  You may have set a policy for your small business that customer care issues take priority.  To make this policy work, you set up authoritative statements – rules – that let you know when and how to set aside other priorities to deal with urgent to semi-urgent customer care needs.

Values are the esoteric elements of your business.  These are the elements that are only known to a select few: if a solo-preneur, you and your closest business advisors for instance.  Even a solo-preneurship business has a culture and the values you ascribe to it will define the ideals and beliefs you hold about your business.  These values will tell you what is good and what is not.

You may hold person-to-person, relationship sales as a principle of your business and this may because you hold personal relationships of high value.   You may pay your business’ bills on time and in full every month because you hold financial integrity in high value and this governs how you handle money in your business.

Making sure you have a written business plan – as important for the solo-preneur business as the global conglomerate – will help you set down the principles upon which you operate your business.  Principles that:

• are the basic generalizations about your business that are true for you
• rules and standards of operation
• truths and authorities
• explanations of the how’s and why’s of your business

Recently while working on my newest mosaic piece, I went to the garage and grabbed a fresh bottle of water from the case we keep out there – being winter right now it stays cool.  I set the bottle on my work table and went back to the business of gluing tiny ceramic tiles into my design.  I looked up and noticed that the bottle had a big green box on its label with the words “Our Commitment” in dark green text.  I got intrigued.  My initial thought was that Arrowhead would be committed to providing good quality spring water.  However that’s not what the stated commitment on the label was about at all.  The label says:

• …”We’ve always been committed to monitoring our springs in order to assess their health and manage long term water supply: both now and in the future.  Be Green….”

In part that sentence does refer to the quality of the water, but it also speaks to sustainability.  So I went to the website.  Arrowhead Brand Mountain Spring Water says that its message is in its mission and says its mission is, “…to responsibly manage resources, reduce waste and maximize recycling efforts. Protecting our world isn’t just important now – but for generations to come.…”

This company appears to be committed to more than just providing its customers with good quality, good tasting water…it is also committed to safeguarding the sources of their product so that others who use those sources and future generations will have access to that same water.  This is, to me, is an example of business being committed to something beyond the framework of commerce.

This idea of not just you as business owner being committed to your business’ success, but your business having a commitment to something made me look further.  As I’ve mentioned in previous writings, I’m a late adopter of new technology so I must confess I just now got a smart phone.  This past weekend I got an iPhone [wow! so cool!].  So, I got curious about what is Apple Inc.’s commitment.  Here’s what I found:

• “…Apple is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings….”

Inside that mission statement I read a promise that this business plans to continually innovate.  In order to ‘bring the best personal computing experience…’ would by definition require innovation, invention, “thinking outside the box,” anticipating new technology, paradigm shifting and more…this is a huge commitment.

In my opinion the touch interface is just such an innovation.  As soon as I began to play with my phone I found its first obvious advantage: not having to use and navigate a mouse saves time and effort.  Using a fingertip to point and tap cuts out the need to negotiate a mouse – which also eliminates the need for added hardware…you don’t even need a stylus to tap…just requires the heat of your fingertip.

Is it a relevant question to ask of  businesses like that of life coach, business consultant, marketing consultant, web designer, writer, business coach and a host of other professions held by solo-preneurs and small business owners: what is your business committed to?  Beyond the initial vision when the business began, is there an element of something that is greater than the whole?  In years to come what would be the legacy that your business leaves to your successors?

What’s taken me awhile to figure out, however, is how to use the iTunes store.  I know that millions of people buy and download music, tv show, movies and more at iTunes, but for this old gal, it’s not intuitive.  I got in the mood yesterday for the music of my younger years, Simon and Garfunkle and Heart.  I made the purchase but then had a difficult time figuring out how to do the download and syncing…as I said, not intuitive.  Probably logical.

So what does all this have to do with business and my title of “A Sweet Song of Success?”  For any size business, from the tiny solo-preneur to the mega conglomerate, success is a matter of tonality.  Of chords that make sense and lyrics that speak true.

The iPod is a successful product for the Apple company because it provides (1) exceptional sound, (2) multi-functionality – you can listen to music, you can listen to books and podcasts, and you can view tv shows and movies, (3) portablity, (4) variety of options – everything from color to features, (5) accessories to tailor its use for the consumer and (6) value for pricing.  There are other provisions but these are good ones for any product.  Measure your product:

• Is your product exceptional?  Is it constructed well?  Will it hold up under ordinary useage?  Is it easy to use?  Does the paint chip?  Will it sun fade?  What is the shelf life?  If you have competitors who make something very similar, what is different about yours?
• Is your product a “do only one thing” product [nothing wrong with that] or does it have more than one function?  Multi-functionality can offset a product that generally is a one-time purchase rather than a repeat purchase item.
• Can your product be used in more than one location?  Is it easily transportable?
• Does your product have options?  Does it come in various sizes, colors or flavors?  Can you do more than one thing with it?
• Can the consumer purchase add-ons to extend the use and functionality of your product?
• Is your product priced competitively?  Do you believe your customers receive equal or greater value for the price charged for your product?  Do you offer any added value?

Interestingly, my iPod doesn’t replace anything – I have not gotten rid of our cd player…it has its place.  But I am enjoying both the small size of the iPod and, because of its size, the many ways and places I can use it.

As for my mention of the musicians, Simon and Garfunkle and Heart, they are proof that some “products” retain their “flavor” long after they are first produced.  How sweet is the success of having a product that retains a marketshare for decades.

• taking initiative
• building good relationships

Initiative has within it the idea that you go with an idea.  It is a “doing” word and means that you take action.  Successful entrepreneurs are those who can start something new and follow through.  In this time of economic downturn, more small and home-based businesses are starting up.  For some, a job layoff is an opportunity to follow a personal passion by starting a home-based business.  It takes initiative to:

• turn an idea into a business entity
• take that business entity to a functioning business

Once a business is up and running, it takes daily initiative (that ability to give energy to plans and tasks) to grow and prosper.

Building good relationships is what business is truly all about.  Relationships with:

• customers and clients – these are the people who already know you, love you (at least like you) and your products and services; these are the golden relationships because you want (1) repeat business and (2) referrals and (3) feedback.  Your current customers, if you ask them (take the initiative) will give you a heads-up on what they like and what they think could use improvement.
• potential customers and clients – how do you build a relationship with people you don’t yet know?  You make your public face approachable; you make your storefront friendly and inviting; you hang out a “welcome” sign.
• other publics: build good relationships with your community (through giving back, volunteerism – whatever fits with your business plan); your industry, your competitors

It’s not a rule that you should take initiative, nor a rule that you should build good relationships, but both are good guidelines  in building and maintaining a successful business.