Survival of the Fittest: Lessons from the Giants

The largest giants of the internet age – Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Google – have grown at a rate the world has not seen before. Considering these companies are so huge, you may not realize that they once started small and had many failures in the beginning. Here are some lessons small to medium-sized businesses can learn from the giants.

1) Embrace Failure

Eventually, every business is going to fail at something. If it doesn’t, it usually means the business isn’t taking risks. Focus on what your business has done the best at. When something fails, ask your team: 1) what worked effectively?; 2) what have we learned?; and 3) what can we change? Google has a huge graveyard of product failures, such as Google Notebook, Google Wave, and Jaiku. And they turned these failures in

to lessons – and used it to get to where they are now.

2) Employee Satisfaction

When it comes to where your business focus should be, you should always begin with your employees. Not the customer, you ask? Yes, of course also the customer – but the customer is happy if their interaction with your employees is a happy one – so start with your employees. Look at companies like Google, who have entire campuses built to ensure their employees are happy and thriving. This creates positive interactions with customers and endless innovation and creativity.

3) Patience

Google took more than 15 years to climb to the top of the internet mountain – success doesn’t happen overnight, as most business owners realize. In addition to patience, you also need to have plenty of diligence while building your business. Make short-term goals and long-term visions. Keep things in perspective, and be prepared to invest in upgrades and improvements to keep up with recent evolvements.

And of course – you will need to brand yourself. Contact us for all of your branded packaging needs, no matter your stage in the business life cycle.