Action is the foundational key to all success.

Customers' initial impression of your business often influences how much they decide to spend with your company. This is well known, but have you ever considered how first impressions affect how potential investors value your business? 

When raising capital, investors’ initial perception of your business significantly impacts their valuation, affecting both the equity you’ll need to give up for growth and the company’s value when selling. 

Many factors drive your company’s value, but perhaps the most important is how your business would perform without you. 

To get your company to flourish when you’re not around and growing business you need owner-like effort from your team. The inspiring owner-like effort comes from cultivating a vibrant culture inside your business.

 As entrepreneurs, it’s easy to assume that everyone likes the adventure of bushwhacking their way through life, not knowing what’s around the next bend. Most employees would prefer some consistency and structure. Systems are not the enemy of creativity. 

 Specializing, and giving your team standard operating procedures, gives your employees the mental breathing room to be creative and the structure they need to thrive. 

 If you’re a service provider, it can be difficult to separate the service from the provider. Your customers might demand you, which means you can’t scale your business beyond the number of hours you’re willing to work. 

 The secret to overcoming this dilemma is to “productize” your service. This involves marketing your service as is if it were a thing. When people start buying the thing, rather than the people providing it, you can grow well beyond the hours in your day.

   Focusing on your niche is one of many areas where the long-term value of your business is at odds with short-term profit. For example, if you wanted to maximize your short-term profit, you might avoid investing in new technology or hiring a head of sales, arguing that both investments would hinder short-term profit. The truly valuable company finds a way to deliver profit in the short term while simultaneously focusing their strategy on what drives up the value of the business.  

 Warren Buffett famously invests in businesses with a protective “moat” around them, which inoculates them from the competition and allows them to control their pricing. Big companies lock out their competitors by out-slugging them in capital infrastructure investments, but smaller businesses have to be smarter about defending their turf. Here are four ways to deepen and widen the protective moat around your business: