From evaluating the return on investment to gaining others’ trust in your mentorship, here are 16 answers to the question, “How do you measure success?”
- Through the Growth of My Team
- True Success: Making a Positive Impact in the Lives of Others
- By Others’ Trust in Your Mentorship
- I Measure Success by How Happy and Fulfilled I Feel
- By the Freedom You Have
- By Setting Proper Goals and Working to Reach Them
- Progress, Progress, Progress
- Let Your Happiness Be the Gauge for Success.
- Work Towards Your Own Definition of Success
- The Right Measurement for the Right Phase
- Customer Satisfaction
- Being Able to Move On
- Evaluate the Return On Investment
- Performance Reviews
- Finance Statments
- Being Exemplary in Every Aspect
Through the Growth of My Team
There’s no denying that it’s each team member’s success that contributes to the overall success of the business. If I notice that my team members are each growing individually by upskilling, expanding their horizons, getting out of their comfort zones, and accomplishing things beyond their roles, I find that I’ve been a successful leader. Moreover, the more they grow, the more you benefit in the long run, and this is why I use my team’s success as a yardstick for my own.
Harry Morton, Founder, Lower Street
True Success: Making a Positive Impact in the Lives of Others
Success is all about making a difference in the lives of others. It’s the knowledge that your work has helped someone land a job, put food on the table, or turn their life around. It’s the satisfaction of knowing that you’ve positively impacted someone’s life. True success isn’t just about personal achievements; it’s about helping others achieve their goals and aspirations.
If you want true success, focus on making a difference. By doing so, you’ll not only sleep soundly at night but also wake up each morning with a renewed sense of purpose and passion. So, strive to be the change you want to see in the world, and let your success be measured by the positive impact you make in the lives of others.
Bill Lyons, CEO, Griffin Funding
By Others’ Trust in Your Mentorship
You have to admit that nothing feels as amazing as it does to be respected as a mentor. Nothing comes close to being approached for help and guidance, because this shows your employee trusts your expertise enough to use it for their own path. Once you’ve reached a certain level of success, helping others feels the most fulfilling and rewarding, and I measure my success through the people I’m called to mentor.
Peter Monkhouse, Founder and Managing Director, ICL SA
I Measure Success by How Happy and Fulfilled I Feel
For me, one of the most important ways to measure success is by how happy and fulfilled I feel in my life or work. If I feel a sense of purpose and fulfillment and enjoy what I am doing, then I consider myself successful. While external factors like income or recognition can be important, they are not the only measures of success. So, I believe that success is about living a fulfilling life that aligns with my personal values and brings me happiness.
Will Gill, Event Entertainer, DJ Will Gill
By the Freedom You Have
More often than not, leaders and employees meet the parameters of success, but they lose all autonomy and freedom in the process. While it can be beneficial to be open to compromise, true success can be measured by the freedom you give yourself. Whether it’s by having the freedom to say no or the freedom to pursue what you want, freedom has always been a yardstick for me to measure my success against.
Guy Sharp, Relocation Advisor, Andorra Guides
By Setting Proper Goals and Working to Reach Them
I simply measure success through the tracking and reporting of the goals I’ve set out for myself. I put a lot of time into setting goals that are effective and make sense for my own growth, so reaching these goals is a huge step toward success when it happens. Once I reach certain steps on the ladder each week throughout the year, I feel like I’ve accomplished a goal I’ve set out for myself.
It all starts with setting goals that are effective and achievable for you so that when you reach them you can be confident that you’re making progress. Through the setting of proper goals and the work I do to reach them, I am able to measure my own success.
Brian Porter, CTO, Dream Home Studio
Progress, Progress, Progress
I measure success through progress, like most people do (and should) when analyzing how they are doing. Success is different for every person and organization, so there is no one way to measure things other than consistently seeing growth in the work you are doing. If you are improving and are getting closer to reaching goals, then that is success.
Obviously, this gets more complicated when you begin to understand how fast you should be seeing progress and when you need to reach certain levels, but it is a way to measure success on a basic level.
Shaun Connell, Founder and CEO, Stoic Quotes
Let Your Happiness Be the Gauge for Success.
For me, the biggest indicator of personal success is my happiness. Many people define success by how much money they have, but not me. A man can be financially rich but spiritually poor. I know I’ve found success because I look forward to waking up and starting each day with gratitude.
Nabeel Abdullah, CEO, Sapphire
Work Towards Your Own Definition of Success
I measure success based on my own definition of success.
We live in a capitalist culture where the dominant definition of success is ownership of status symbols, including but not limited to owning fancy homes, cars, and designations; holidaying beyond means; and sending kids to expensive schools at the cost of one’s well-being.
Such a definition of success forces people to hustle and grind at work. For a large part of my life, I too subscribed to the mainstream definition of success. However, in the last decade, I’ve begun to take a deeper look at what I truly want and how I define success for myself.
Today, success to me is having creative freedom in my work, spending time with family and friends, and contributing meaningfully through my work. I work towards this version of success for myself. I measure my progress on these parameters. It’s often challenging, as it’s counterculture, but I keep working towards what’s meaningful to me. It keeps me content, grounded, and moving forward.
Sampada Chaudhari, Business and Career Transition Coach, NA
The Right Measurement for the Right Phase
I try to match my success measurements to the right phase of my business. Early on, I measured success in my marketing business more in terms of outreach and visibility. Breaking into a new industry takes time, so looking exclusively at revenue and number of clients wasn’t the best metric. As a more mature business, I increasingly measure success in terms of client retention and profitability. I’m sure at some point in the future I’ll need to find a measure for success that fits the future needs and goals of the business.
Temmo Kinoshita, Co-founder, Lindenwood Marketing
Customer Satisfaction
One of the biggest ways I like to measure the success of my business is by gathering positive feedback from my clients. If customers are happy and have only great things to say about your business, you as a business owner, and your employees, then I feel you have created a successful brand. It’s tough to measure success in multiple ways, and money isn’t always a good indicator. When you have other ways to measure success, like the satisfaction of your customers, then you can really start to feel that the efforts you made for your business were truly worth it.
Allen King, CEO, Fun Join
Being Able to Move On
I measure success by how willing I am to move on from something that would be considered a failure. If you can get enough motivation to move on from a failure, then it wasn’t a failure, it was a success. Learning from your mistakes is an important part of growth. When you pull a lesson out of a failure or mistake, then you are much more capable of making that failure a success the next time. Trying is succeeding, no matter the outcome.
Daniel Climans, Senior Manager, Digital Marketing and Partnerships, StickerYou
Evaluate the Return On Investment
If you want to measure success, start by evaluating the return on investment (ROI). When there is an increase in profit that exceeds the cost, then success has been achieved. It is also important to assess whether or not any measurable benefits were derived from the project or endeavor in question. Was there an increase in customer satisfaction, employee retention, or better efficiency? If so, this should be considered a measure of success. Even our personal goals should be evaluated in terms of ROI. How much time and money did you invest? What were the results? Did you achieve what you set out to do? If the answer is yes, then you’ve been successful in what you set out to do.
Nick Rivadeneira, Founder, Racebuilds
Performance Reviews
When measuring success, it is important not to forget about your employees, who are the backbone of your business. Without them succeeding, you would have a difficult time running and growing your company. An excellent way to measure business success is through performance reviews to check in on how your employees are doing and see how well they are fulfilling their roles.
It’s good to do this twice a year. These reviews let you see how satisfied your employees are and how well they are completing their tasks. They give employees an understanding of what they need to improve on and give their managers further information about their workload. For example, you can see whether or not they are overburdened with work or possibly want to do more tasks. Doing performance reviews can make your employees happier, is a good way to measure business success, and increases workplace productivity.
Brandon Aversano, Founder and CEO, The Alloy Market
Finance Statments
We all know money is important when you have a business, and to adequately measure the success of your business is to understand how much money you are making so you can stay afloat.
The three integral financial statements you can utilize are your income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement. The first measures your business’s profitability; the balance sheet shows the health of your company; and the third gives you an idea of how much liquid cash you have.
To really measure your business performance, you have to analyze the money flow of your company, and to check its profitability, you must check the financial statements.
Matt Bieber, CEO, Queries AI
Being Exemplary in Every Aspect
I measure success in a utilitarian sense. This means your worth as a person is determined by the good you bring to society, your family, and yourself. If you are a good person for your environment, but you are depressed, you are not successful. If you live a good life, but your environment suffers, you are not successful either. True success means becoming exemplary in many aspects of life, not just one.
Simon Niklaus, Founder, simonniklaus.com
