There Isn't One Right Way to Build a Successful Business

One of the things I’ve learned from working with people in business is how quickly we turn someone else’s success into a set of instructions.

Someone builds a successful company, grows a large team, creates a strong personal brand or becomes a top producer, and naturally we want to know how they did it.

What time do they wake up? How do they generate business? What does their morning routine look like? How many people are on their team? What technology do they use? What do they outsource? How often do they post?

There’s value in learning from people who have done something well. I do it all the time.

The problem starts when we confuse how someone became successful with how success has to be built.

Those are two very different things.

A strategy doesn't exist separately from the person using it

I've spent much of my career working with real estate agents, and it's one of the best environments for seeing this play out.

Give ten agents the same business plan and you won't get ten versions of the same business.

One person can build an amazing business through relationships and referrals. Someone else thrives on prospecting. Another is exceptional at creating community. Someone loves being highly visible and builds a recognizable personal brand. Someone else has very little interest in being known publicly and quietly builds an equally successful business.

The strategy matters, of course.

But so does the person using it.

Their strengths matter. Their personality matters. Their appetite for risk matters. The way they communicate, make decisions and build relationships matters. Their stage of life matters. Even what they actually want from the business matters.

We tend to talk about those things as secondary considerations.

I think they're central.

We copy the visible parts of success

This is one of the reasons business advice can become confusing.

We see what successful people are doing now and assume those things created the success.

Sometimes they did.

Sometimes we're looking at decisions that only make sense because of what has already been built.

A large team may be the result of a successful business, not the reason for it. A significant marketing budget works differently when you already have an audience. A CEO's highly protected calendar looks very different from the calendar they had when they were trying to get their first hundred customers.

Context matters.

So does timing.

The right strategy at one stage of a business can be completely wrong at another.

That's why I'm more interested in understanding why something worked than simply knowing what someone did.

Once you understand the principle underneath the strategy, you can decide whether it applies to you.

The business has to work for the person building it

I think we underestimate how important this is.

A business can look fantastic on paper and still be completely wrong for the person running it.

You can build a large team and discover you don't enjoy managing people.

You can build a business around constant networking when you would rather spend your time working deeply with a smaller number of clients.

You can create a personal brand that requires you to be visible every day and eventually realize you don't want your life to be content.

None of those models is inherently wrong.

They're wrong when they're built without considering the person who has to live inside them.

And that's why I don't think the first question should always be:

What's the best way to grow this business?

I think we need to know more first.

What are you particularly good at?

What kind of work gives you energy?

What do people naturally come to you for?

What are you willing to do consistently?

What do you want your role to look like as the business grows?

And perhaps most importantly, what are you actually trying to build?

Because “successful” is not a specific enough answer.

Success can look very different

Two people can work in the same industry, earn the same amount of money and have completely different businesses.

One might want a large company with employees, infrastructure and growth.

Another might want a highly profitable business with very little overhead and complete control over their schedule.

Someone else might be building toward an eventual sale. Another may want a business they can run for the next twenty years. Another wants enough income and flexibility to support everything else they care about.

We tend to rank these models as though one represents greater ambition than another.

I don't think that's particularly useful.

The better question is whether the business is doing what the person who built it needs it to do.

Learn from everyone. Copy no one.

There is tremendous value in studying successful people.

Take their ideas. Look at their systems. Understand their decisions. Ask what they learned the hard way. Pay attention to what you might be able to do differently because someone else has already figured something out.

But then bring yourself back into the equation.

Does this make sense for me?

That's the part we sometimes skip.

The goal isn't to find the person who has figured out the perfect way to build a business and replicate what they did.

There isn't one.

The goal is to learn enough about business — and enough about yourself — to recognize what is worth borrowing, what needs adapting and what you can leave behind.

Because the best business isn't the one that looks most like someone else's success.

It's the one that works for the person building it — and supports what they're building it for.