Elijah Norton had set out from humble beginnings—namely, a telemarketing company selling vehicle protection plans and employing no more than two people. That was back in 2011.
A decade later, he is the executive chairman and president of Veritas Global Protection, a major player in the U.S. vehicle service contracts industry and a company generating over $50 million per year in annual revenue. The company is also fast expanding its operations to many countries across four continents.
So, how did he achieve such spellbinding success in such a short time? Recently, Elijah Norton sat with a business magazine to talk about his journey as a business entrepreneur and what he believes to be the most critical aspects for a business seeking to stay competitive in a challenging business atmosphere.
Elijah Norton’s 3 Tips for Growing a Business
1. Making Customers Your Top Priority
As Elijah Norton puts it, without customers, there is no business. Accordingly, all businesses need to adopt a customer-centric approach to stay competitive and succeed in the long run.
Elijah clarifies that when he says customer-centric, he does not only refer to excellent customer service and communication. Although those are extremely important, according to Elijah, taking a customer-first approach means, first and foremost, creating a set of values that will be driven around the goal of utmost customer satisfaction and fulfillment.
Talking about his own company, he says that the core values driving Veritas Global Protection forward include transparency, honesty, responsiveness, accessibility, and innovation.
A business must stay accountable to its customers and partners. If you commit, stay true to it. If your customer is expecting a response, respond as fast as possible, even if the truth is hard to communicate at times.
You may suffer temporary setbacks due to this. However, covering up things will only harm the business in the long run. That is why Elijah Norton reveals that the company motto at Veritas Global Protection is: the truth will set you free.
2. Innovation and Patience Are Pivotal to Success
When talking about the almost meteoric growth of Veritas Global Protection, Elijah Norton mentioned that if he had to single out one factor that helped him find this success, it had to be innovation.
Elaborating his point, the successful entrepreneur said that sustained innovation is key to the success and growth of any business, no matter what niche or industry you are in.
However, before innovation comes the act of recognizing the pain points in the industry, in other words, one needs to identify the customers’ expectations and learn about things they are most frustrated about.
For example, when he started Veritas Global Protection, Elijah Norton knew that he was working in a highly underserved industry that came with immense scope for growth.
The customer service was poor, the vehicle protection plans were not customer-friendly, and the industry stagnated.
And if Veritas Global Protection achieved its success, it was because it could address those problems appropriately. But how do you keep innovating?
Elijah says that business owners should always lookout for new opportunities. To that end, one must stay current with all the new trends and practices. For example, the technological landscape is evolving at a rapid rate.
Many novel technologies (IoT, big data, AI, machine learning—to name a few) are making their way into the business world. So, as a business owner, you need to stay up-to-date with all this stuff and identify what new technologies you can adopt for your business to facilitate an improved customer experience.
Similarly, one needs to learn from global trends. Elijah says that his company is looking to expand its operations in many countries across the globe because it wants to learn new things about the industry through this process.
As global citizens living in a global society, the more we expand our horizon of thought, the greater scope there is for innovation.
Apart from innovation, Elijah remarks, the other key component for growth is patience. Success never comes overnight. In the journey toward growth, all businesses face many obstacles and difficulties.
This is why business owners need to stay patient and keep persevering. A business may have lofty ambitions. But owners must realize that those ambitions will not come to fruition in one day. Entrepreneurs need to break down those ambitions into smaller and realizable steps and chart one’s progress based on success or failure.
3. A Great Team and A Healthy Working Atmosphere
Finally, Elijah Norton says that businesses need to build a great core team of competent professionals. There are so many aspects to a business; no matter how good you are as a leader, success will be hard to find unless you have a great team to support you.
This is why Elijah says he is very particular when it’s time to hire a core team member. He will only hire if he feels that the person will be suitable for the position and will be able to perform their duties satisfactorily enough. If not, he would leave the vacant position instead of hiring someone he does not have complete faith in.
Moreover, having a great team also helps create a healthy work atmosphere within the organization. And this, again, is crucial in terms of productivity since an excellent work atmosphere goes a long way in taking out the inevitable stress that is part and parcel of today’s highly competitive business world.
Elijah Norton is a great entrepreneur and has built Veritas Global Protection into the booming business that it is today. He has great business advice, and if you follow these three easy tips, your business has a greater chance of success.
