By Dr Farah Sleiman

It is every entrepreneur’s dream to build a unicorn when he decides to embark on the long and tortuous journey of entrepreneurship and most new comers to the club think that all it takes is hard work, creativity and perseverance. While these attributes are definitely must-have they are not sufficient to take your business from a corner shop to a billion dollar valuation.

So what does it actually take? I can sum it up in two things:

• How you present yourself to the external world (the market)
• How you present yourself to your internal world (your employees, business partners and suppliers). 

So first let us discuss how to present yourself to the world .To have a consistent and clear positioning in your customers’ mind ,all the “stories” told by your company should be aligned, congruent and consistent. But how does a company tell a story?

Well marketing folks will tell you its all about your marketing strategy. The messages you are using in your ad campaigns, your pricing strategy, the channels you are using to distribute your products and the benefits you are communicating about your product’s features and functionality build your brand story. All of this is true, but there is more to it than just getting your 4Ps right and making sure your logo , website and social media pages look pretty and align with your brand personality. The biggest “stories” told by companies comes from their employees. Your employees are your brand ambassadors both when they still work for you and also when they leave you (or you leave them). The way they present themselves to the client , the level of their knowledge, their business etiquette and the kind of narrative they use to promote your products and services, all tell your brand’s story. A simple example, you can’t expect your customers to perceive you as a premium brand offering premium services if your employees dress code is shabby, their product knowledge is low or their communication skills leave much to desire.This kind of picture reflects mediocrity not excellence.

The second thing you need to worry about and have in check if you are looking to build a unicorn is how you are presenting yourself to your internal world, that is your employees, suppliers and business associates. Employees will enact and mimic with your customers the patterns of behaviors they witness and are subject to in your company, if your leadership style is characterized by impulsivity and short temperedness, your employees with act impulsively with your clients. This is neuroscience 101, the human brain records the patterns of behavior it gets exposed to on a chronic basis and reproduces it on an unconscious level. Thus watch out for what kind of behavior you are modeling as a leader inside your company. Your employees will repeat in front of your clients the kind of behavior you are pulling in front of them. They will talk with your tone, use your words and vocabulary, model your body language, mimic your attitude and adopt your standards and values. If you are looking to build a unicorn, your behavior and leadership style should reflect a high degree of self-awareness and self-mastery and most of all integrity .These are necessary to create a healthy working environment that will foster creativity and innovation and reduce your employees’ turnover and the negative word of mouth that inevitably results from it. So you got your marketing strategy right, your employees are happy and well behaved, is that all? Shall we start counting the millions? Well not so fast. To be able to get your stuff together on both aspects we discussed above , one crucial condition is needed , that is to have a clear, efficient and effective process that glues all the pieces of the puzzle together. When it comes to business growth and sustainability , process is king!!.Yes , process, process, process!!Anyone who tells you a standardized process is not needed in the early stage of the growth cycle and it can hinder creativity and innovation, tell him go make your first million dollars then come back and give me advice on growth strategies and operational planning.

If you don’t set standard processes for all your business functions from the early stages of your company life, this will be the driver for the first major crisis you will encounter when your company will try to transition from a small size to a medium size corporation .It could be as well your last crisis as few companies are able to survive the exponential number of problems that emerges once leads grow rapidly, customers requests overwhelm the sales team and your production line starts running at over capacity. If you don’t have adequate processes in place at this stage, error rates will skyrockets, quality will drop suddenly , and this whole new influx of potential customers that nobody has the time to talk will turn into dissatisfied clients that will spread negative word of mouth about your company products and services. When you are a small start-up struggling to acquire your first couple of clients , your main focus is external , it is about creating brand awareness and trying to monetize it as quick as possible. If you have 3 salespeople each one has his own way of promoting your product, your accountant (if you have one) decides himself (depending on how much he likes the client) how many days he is going to give him to settle his bill and you as a founder are struggling to find the right price and value proposition to hit the magical product/market match. Operational chaos is the norm at the seed stage and maybe it is needed because a lot of experimentation and trial and errors are required to reach the product/market match. But once you hit this milestone, your first priority should be to establish standardized processes. A standardized process will ensure the scalability of your operations and the consistency of your products’ quality. It will also ensure all your company touchpoints whether with your internal or external stakeholders tell the same story, your brand story. This is how you build your company reputation in the market and ensure you are building a sustainable business that is going to still be prosperous 10, 20, 30 years from now. Don’t build a business that will only pay for your grocery bills this month, invest in your process. A good process will ensure you start a small entrepreneur and emerge a wise millionaire.