Want a Company That Lasts Forever? This Simple Business Strategy is the Secret to Longevity

A company built to last won’t look at mistakes as breaking points — when something isn’t working, its an opportunity to pivot.

I founded my commercial real estate firm over 40 years ago and have seen tremendous disruption in my time leading it. While the coronavirus pandemic was in many ways unprecedented, our response was the same as it always has been: pivot and readjust. For instance, although we typically seek long-term tenants for our retail properties, during the holidays in 2021, we opened up availability for short-term leases to encourage retailers to rent the vacancies as a pop-up space.

Perhaps even more illustrative is our pivot in the early 2000s. We had been in business for over two decades, and our strategy up until then had been squarely focused on acquiring suburban strip mall properties — at one point, we had over 100 open-air shopping centers in our portfolio. However, around that time, I noticed my younger employees no longer purchasing suburban properties. Rather than buying a large house in the suburbs of Miami, they were choosing to purchase smaller fixer-uppers closer to downtown areas.

Our investment strategy had served us well for many years, but consumer sentiment had begun to shift, and I knew we needed to follow where the wind blew. We shifted focus and began investing in commercial properties in walkable downtown cores, and today we are the largest property owner on two of the city’s most iconic high streets.

The only way to maintain growth and overcome challenging business environments is to embrace the art of the pivot. Preparing for the type of growth that can be maintained for years and decades requires a specific mindset, and below I have outlined some frames of thought that are necessary to cultivate such a mindset.

SOURCE: https://www.entrepreneur.com/growing-a-business/want-business-longevity-this-strategy-is-the-secret/457055 https://www.entrepreneur.com/topic/business-strategy