How to Make Your Business Last Longer Than 15 Years
By leadership author and keynote speaker Ross Shafer
Thanks for finding the Relevant Leaders Club, this is a resource for leaders who want to take away new ideas to boost your business and your career. It’s also a forum to help make everyone a better leader.
Today I want to talk to you about what you can do to sustain your business for longer than 15 years. I picked 15 years because that is the average length of time a company is able to stay on the S & P 500 list today. (in 1980 the average age of an Standard & Poors 500 company was 48 years) But a 15 year lifespan means that a company falls off the S & P 500 list every two weeks. 75% of the S & P will turnover in just 11 years.
So what causes companies to expire? Most business analysts would say, “It’s all about technology” and certainly technology has accelerated the velocity of change in every industry. Faster pace and speed-to-market has had a staggering effect on how long a business can last – even the very successful ones. But is it only technology? I was in Seattle doing a keynote speech for an IT company and the question everyone was talking about at lunch was “How is it the Rolling Stones have lasted 50 years?” They just grossed over $400million on their last tour. The answer is relevance. They remain relevant by giving their audience the songs they love and by integrating a current concert experience with high cranes over the audience, light effects, and video clips. Think Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift.
So there was another element the Rolling Stones have maintained for half a century. The music itself was emotional. That’s the value proposition of a song. Their lyrics spoke directly to a teenager’s swirling emotions about the opposite sex, work, and parental control. Their songs got airplay on tens of thousands of radio stations worldwide. But you only get airplay when listeners request the songs over and over again. And why do listeners request songs? When the song stirs their emotions. If you hear the song enough times you associate the song with a memory. Memories last forever. No doubt you remember where you were when you heard certain songs.
Now back to you. If your goods and services can emotionally trigger positive memories for your customers, then your business will last a lifetime. In one of our reports, our consulting partner, Michael Burger, talked about the emotion stirred up by a company that has sustained for over 100 years…based upon a single product they painted bright red. The product was the Radio Flyer wagon and the fan base is larger than the Rolling Stones. Again, they offer a high quality product…that delivers an emotional experience every time.
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