Grow a billion dollar business

Want to build a billion dollar company from your small town? David Thomson wrote the book on it, Blueprint to a Billion, profiled on Fortune Small Business. (Brought to our attention by Be Excellent.)

Here are the seven principles Thompson postulates:

1. Create and sustain a breakthrough value proposition. Create an entirely new market for their products and services, redefine an existing market or simply suck all the oxygen out of a market by underpricing the competition.

2. Exploit a high-growth market. It’s kind of tough to hit a billion in sales if the total demand for your product doesn’t exceed a billion dollars.

3. Focus relentlessly on cash flow. As a result they are able to finance their own growth at less cost than competitors who take on debt or give up equity to investors.

4. Leverage big-brother alliances.

5. Pack your board with industry experts.

6. Use marquee customers to build credibility.

7. Build an inside-outside leadership team. In most such partnerships, one leader concentrates on internal operations while the other leader represents the company for clients and investors.

Thompson did three years of research and quantified his data. If you are looking to grow into a super big company, give it a read.

small biz rural entrepreneurship David Thomson Blueprint to a Billion growth

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About Becky McCray

Becky started Small Biz Survival in 2006 to share rural business and community building stories and ideas with other small town business people. She and her husband have a small cattle ranch and are lifelong entrepreneurs. Becky is an international speaker on small business and rural topics.