Successful entrepreneurs have to beat the odds.

It takes a special kind of person to start a business. It takes skill, energy, dedication and luck to make it successful. The stories told by three entrepreneurs in the following article will sound familiar to every founder of a midsize company.

The statistics surrounding the survival rate for small businesses have long been subject to fervid debate. Depending on who you’re talking to, the predicted life span for a startup can elicit grim to cautiously optimistic responses.

One commonly cited figure is that half of all businesses go under in the first year while 95 percent fail within the first five years. According to a study done by the Small Business Administration, two-thirds of all new small business survive the first two years but only 44 percent will still be operating by year four.

Common culprits for failure include undercapitalization, cash-flow crises, and overexpansion. Then of course there are a host of external factors that nobody can predict — let alone adequately plan for — such as volatile credit markets and unstable economic cycles.

To gain insight into specific practices that enable small companies to keep going and growing even during difficult times, BusinessWeek profiled three entrepreneurs who have reached benchmarks in their companies’ life cycles: three years, five years, and 10 years. Their stories and strategies follow.

Read the article by Stacy Perman for Business Week on CRM-Daily.com.

Standing out in a crowd. What crowd?

One of the biggest problems for any marketer is getting people’s attention. OK, great products, customer-focused messages, enticing offers and amazing customer service aren’t easy. But once you have all those other things, you have to do is get noticed.

Yesterday, I was reading Seth Godin’s blog. Seth knows how to get noticed, but that’s not my point… at least not entirely. He was describing his alternative MBA program. In his words, “Unaccredited, residential, free and six months long. A new way to learn about a new way of doing business.”

Most of the nine “graduates” left the program ready to start or grow their entrepreneurial companies. One, was determined to land the best job ever. What makes Susan Lewis different is her approach. She isn’t submitting hundreds of résumés (crowd), she’s inviting potential employers to apply to her (what crowd?).

Imagine life as a game.

“Imagine life as a game in which you’re juggling some five balls in the air. You name them work, family, health, friends & spirit and you’re keeping all of these in the air.

You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls — family, health, friends and spirit — are made of glass.

If you drop one of these; they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.”

– Bryan Dyson, CEO of Coca-Cola

Leadership Mantras

Not a mission statement or an elevator pitch, they are quick and easy statements that capture the essence of what you want to accomplish. Leadership mantras work like product taglines, imbedding a message in employees’ minds with repetition. To work, a leader must use them and act on them consistently. For example…

“You will miss 100 percent of the shots you do not take.”
“Hire slowly, fire quickly.”
“Hope is not a strategy.”
“Work is not a place.”

Marketing isn’t always external. Leaders must sell their vision to employees and customers. Mantras can be effective, if occasionally hokey, tools.

What’s your favorite mantra? How do you use it? What has it helped you achieve?