My challenge to a room of entrepreneurs

In my ongoing engagement with the Bloomberg Philanthropies and Goldman Sachs initiative to accelerate the development of small businesses, I recently addressed a room full of entrepreneurs in Baltimore along with a diverse panel of coaches from Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs, and Johns Hopkins University. After a long day of Shark Tank style sessions where one entrepreneur after another came to the front of the room, delivered a business pitch, and was then peppered by questions and suggestions from the panel, the coaches were asked to provide some closing remarks to the entrepreneurs.

I challenged the group with three things:

1. The best way to do business is to create success that benefits a larger community.

2. Relentlessly ask yourself, "Why?"

3. Always be thinking of the next move.

Speaking with some of the program's participants after my remarks, I appreciated that the message had been received that these three charges are key ingredients to making a lasting impact, to building sustainable success.

Starting a small business is risky, scary, shaky - and often the whole enterprise ends up being temporary. But if one is consistently focused on examining what's working and what's not (continuous improvement) and benefiting a community beyond transactional customers (sustainability), then one can tip the scales away from being temporary toward being an engine of growth that increases revenue, creates jobs, and expands locations, thereby improving additional communities.

I believe that these three points are applicable to any business:

By playing a positive role in the communities in which your business is located and has customers is the most authentic way to differentiate your business from competitors (given that you've done the work to have a valuable product or service).

Relentlessly asking yourself why you're investing in one thing over another, why you need to hire one role over another, and why a customer would pick your offering, is like an internal auditing mechanism - it helps guard against inertia and drifting to places where your company should not operate.

And consistently contemplating your next move--as well as your competitors' next moves--will keep you nimble. You'll have an appetite for measuring where the market is going, you'll stay sharp on what your competition is doing, you'll seek out data on how to improve your business.

Developing these practices establishes a framework that will provide stability and direction when facing hesitation, risk, and fear - and enable you to overcome them, to ultimately succeed and grow.