You cannot build a business alone. A business is the orchestration of people serving a common goal. Establishing the success ecosystem of people around your business – those who will advise, direct, recommend and implement your ideas – means carefully choosing people who have experience, integrity, loyalty and honesty. It is not one person but a community of trust principals who may or may not have direct influence into your business. And, of course, you participate equally in this ecosystem, which is reciprocity in action.

The most significant part your people ecosystem at this stage of building your company are business mentors. You will have more than one mentor but start with a financial mentor who will talk straight and provide you examples. This mentor is NOT a bookkeeper, but an experienced Certified Public Accountant (CPA).

CPAs have examples of both very good and very bad companies and they focus on the numbers (the language of business). This mentor can show you exactly where the turning points and trends of business are because they have dissected the lifeblood (tax returns) of hundreds of businesses. They know the secrets, the shortcuts, the mistakes and the key performance indicators that you must know and have in place to be successful.

Accountants are not advisors – they are historians. Let’s repeat that for impact – do not listen or take advice from an accountant on the strategic direction of your company. DO use an accountant for proper examples as to how to maximize inflow of money and reduce expenses. (We love accountants and do not recommend sending a cat into a dog fight by asking them for visionary direction!)

Key Point: The language of business is accounting. Do not let ideas or fantasy determine how you will build your business. Everything you do will take longer, cost more and require more people than you expect at the outset. In the end, it is the numbers that require first consideration. This is how success in business is measured. And, it may seem counter-intuitive, but the more tax you pay, the more successful you are, so get used to paying taxes. Even more, actually enjoy paying taxes as a celebration of your success.

The place to begin thinking about your your business or company is actually from within – because your business will eventually weave who you are through its operations, systems and corporate culture.

To that end, your corporate culture needs clear guidelines from which to make decisions and take action. You must know and define your core operating values for yourself as you build the company, cultivate relationships and set the foundation for your business.

Your core values do not come from your ego, which is a conglomeration of conscious and unconscious values and beliefs that represent your assumptions about how life is supposed to be… rather, your core values determine the choices you make, the actions you take and the life and business you create.

An interesting point of information about values is that we often live by the values we inherited from our parents, authority figures and childhood socialization. The irony is that we who have grown up in a culture where freedom is prized above all else are often operating from unconscious or assumed values from someone else. Very few people consciously choose their values, much less build a living for themselves and others based on them.

To know your values, look around you right now – what do you see in the choices you’ve made and the lifestyle you now live? More importantly, is that what you want for your business or is this moment an invitation to go beyond where you’ve been to create something new?

One of the most essential skills required for business success is to be a high communicator. Essentially, communication means transmitting a message, the other person receiving it and confirming their understanding back to you and, likewise, understanding the messages being transmitted from that other person to you.

Communication is the exchange of our ideas, our path to understanding other people’s perspectives and our ability to solve problems. The act of communicating happens on three levels: verbal (spoken words), non-verbal (body language) and paraverbal (intonation, cadence, volume and pace of speech). Since it’s actually impossible for you to NOT communicate (at the very least through body language), it’s a good idea to develop your communication skills in order to say what you mean.

The best business people are strong communicators, demonstrating emotional intelligence as well. Emotional intelligence is the ability to perceive both your own feelings and emotions as well as those of the people around you and using that information to inform your thinking and taking action. This is a huge field of study that is impossible to convey here; the point is that you cultivate your mastery of your ability to communicate and connect with others as a personal skill for business success. By relating well with others, your success ecosystem can flourish.

To develop a method of business decision-making, look to your core team. Rarely can a successful business be built with only one person; two people create a situation of polarity. There are “sides” to decision-making when two individuals unite to find a solution.  If you haven’t yet found your core team of three, consider adopting what we refer to as the Divine Decision.

For example, let’s say that you have a critical decision to make about a business opportunity. You narrow your choices down to two – you proceed or you reject the proposal. If you and any of your partners, principles or core decision makers cannot come to a united decision, then you all agree to leave the judgment to the Divine Decision. You find the nearest coin, choose a side for each position or decision point, then flip once. Decision made.

Now that may not sound reasonable or easy. It is neither. However, when you adopt a method of chance and divination for making decisions, your mind becomes more rational. For dispute resolution, this is a practice that goes back thousands of years. Sigmund Freud explains this more eloquently: “I did not say you should follow blindly what the coin tells you. What I want you to do is to note what the coin indicates. Then look into your own reactions. Ask yourself: Am I pleased? Am I disappointed? That will help you to recognize how you really feel about the matter, deep down inside. With that as a basis, you’ll then be ready to make up your mind and come to the right decision.”

Ideally, a third person can break ties or be a mentor who understands the dichotomies of doing business as well as the personalities actually involved. Each person within the core team will have a perspective and needs which must be addressed. So, while the decision process occurs in twos, three people are required to effectively make decisions that need a complete perspective or holistic view of the impact and potential outcomes. All parties must agree to decisions; the unity created from decision-making matters. And once a decision is made, universally detach and embrace.

Note: Your team can be made of up more than three. 😉

Money is a unit of measurement, and, being human, we measure our success through how much money we are able to generate, attract and maintain. This measurement is a social standard, reinforced through community judgment that we then internalize. The danger is that we learn to assign our value based on the money, status symbols and material accumulation, confusing those things as a measurement of human capability and capacity rather than valuing skill, expertise, opportunity and intelligence. For some people, it’s that very concept of being measured by and valued for money that becomes a prime motivator for significant achievement.

Throughout the entirety of our lives, we walk around with the vision of money guiding us in making choices and taking action – essentially, money becomes the holy grail. Many entrepreneurs (or entrepreneurs in the making), think ‘I could do this if only I had money…’ or ‘I have to keep my day job until I have the money…’. The tragedy with such thinking is the time lost in pursuing a full life filled with serving the world, navigating change as a way to grow personally and professionally and, frankly, the false limitation being in charge of their lives, preventing them from taking a chance in the first place.

“Money was never a big motivation for me, except as a way to keep score. The real excitement is playing the game.” ~ Donald Trump

So what do you need to know about this in order to do something different and build your business? Only this… money is a tool, just like a hammer or any other garden-variety tool. The only meaning it has is what you give it; that is, just like any other tool, it’s useless unless you know what to make of it and how to use it. You must detach yourself from anything that you have made money mean in your life so you can learn how to use it effectively. It’s hard to see a kite if you’re attached to seeing a heap of paper and sticks in a pile on the ground.

 “Successful people make money. It’s not that people who make money become successful, but that successful people attract money. They bring success to what they do.” ~ Wayne Dyer

People often embrace money as though it were life force itself; rather, it’s a symbol that measures the exchange of energy between people. Money is very literal – it’s a tool – so it doesn’t judge where it should go and who should have it. The money paradigms, or systems of beliefs that you developed over time about how you predictably understand and relate with money, including your expectations, habits and behaviors, actually determine your experience with money.

In general, the money exchange system as we know it is about paying for value provided. People package resources into solutions that other people want, need and are willing to pay to get… and for those consumers to have the money they trade to get what they want, they had to understand their own access points to attracting, creating and having money.

In my personal experience, focusing on money has always led to bad decisions and bad people. Sure, it is a necessity for life and family but it cannot, and should not be your primary motivation for starting, managing, leading and operating a business.

Play the game, find other players of which you like and trust, the formula will solve itself.

Choose to hire people who live according to values that you respect rather than focusing on specific skills. Someone who is living to a higher order – loyal, loving, committed, of integrity, as just a few examples – exudes a feeling that you know when you encounter it, and that is a person who will make the right choice when under duress.

For example, if a customer has a problem at closing time, the person without values could cut that person off and handle the situation abruptly (which means you have to fix it later IF you get the chance); however, a person with values will likely choose to hang in with that customer to resolve the situation to its most reasonable outcome. And that’s the difference that you will experience from your hiring decision.

That being said, whenever there is a question about integrity, dig into a given task and institute a process to handle it so you don’t have to rely on that individual’s values to run your business. It can also be helpful to make sure your guiding principles are visible and known to each employee to support their ability to consistently make good decisions aligned with your values.

Key Point: Think twice before hiring friends. While your friends might be talented, they also know you as a friend. In a stress situation, they could default to getting personal rather sticking to business. They might also expect you to cut them slack. And, in a worst case scenario, it becomes that much more difficult to let them go if that’s needed.

So, choosing who to do what in the fulfillment of your work in the early stages of your business will not be difficult because everything is going to need someone to do something. Once you are functional enough to have employees, your guiding principle is that you have to do less. Try to manage what is executed with people who are lower cost resources than you are; that means that you are one of the higher cost resources for your company. Your time is an asset that may be irreplaceable. Your influence and tenacity to bring the business to life and sell product to people who want to buy it, to bring solutions to a market who you’ve determined needs and desires it, to show its capabilities, will take you far in the business. As a company, not so far…

Your goal is to reproduce your enthusiasm to the people you hire so that they live and breathe it along with you on a daily and operational basis. If, for any reason, your employees either can’t or won’t catch the enthusiasm, have a conversation – find out what’s happening. This could be an indicator of something in their personal life that needs attention. When the people around you have happy, healthy, balanced, whole lives, they bring that to work with them. If they are having challenges, maybe they need the invitation and support to handle something. But, lastly, if they really cannot work up the enthusiasm for what your business is about, it could be that they really aren’t a fit for your business. In that case, let them go and move on. The good ones will thank you and the bad ones will curse you on their way out the door.

“Hiring people is an art, not a science, and resumes can’t tell you whether someone will fit into a company’s culture. When you realize you’ve made a mistake, you need to cut your losses and move on.”

~ Howard Schultz, Founder of Starbucks