In 2023, 5.5 million businesses and 3.7 million babies were born in the US. You might have given birth to one of them, and I bet yours is the most beautiful of them all.
And just like no two babies are born alike—not even twins—no two businesses are born alike. We all bring our strengths and weaknesses, our heritage, and our baggage. Some of them are beyond our control, but most are not. This is true of a business you started, or the one you came to lead. Large and small, and everything in between.
Your business could become the next Amazon, the next Disney, the next American Express.
Or it might become one you run for years or decades before selling it —or leaving it to your (human) babies.
Where it gets to will depend on so many things—and I want to focus on what I call the Six Superpowers: creativity, output, business model, data & tech, funding, and people and relationships. Some may be more important to certain types of businesses than others. Creativity is probably more crucial to a TV production company than a car wash (although Jason Derulo, whose Rocket CarWash is worth $2bn, might disagree.)
The Honest Mirror
Since few people will want to come across as critical of your business (after all, it is your baby!), it's incumbent upon you to do an honest assessment of how it got here, and whether you have what it takes to get there...