The businesses I have built that are still operating today do not look much like the businesses I set out to build. Eclipse Management has evolved considerably since I founded it in 2013. Med Sailing Holidays has expanded into geographies and formats I did not anticipate when the company started. The fine art brokerages I founded developed their own character through the relationships and transactions that defined them over time. The original idea, in each case, was a starting point — not a blueprint.
This is, I think, the most important thing to understand about building for longevity. The first idea is a hypothesis. It is based on what you observe, what you believe about a market, and what you think you are capable of executing. Some of those beliefs will be right. Others will be wrong in ways you cannot fully anticipate until you are in the market and learning from it.
Conviction and adaptability: the real tension
"Too much rigidity and you become irrelevant as the market moves. Too much flexibility and you lose the identity that made the business coherent in the first place."
The founders and operators I have seen navigate this well tend to have a clear sense of what is non-negotiable — the quality standard, the client relationship model, the ethical line — and a genuine willingness to rethink everything else. That combination is rarer than it sounds.
The role of time
There is also something to be said for the role of time in building durable businesses. Short-term thinking tends to optimise for the transaction in front of you. Long-term thinking optimises for the relationship and the reputation that make the next ten transactions possible. In advisory work, in art, in charter — the businesses that last are the ones where the client feels, correctly, that the person they are dealing with is thinking about them in years rather than quarters.
I do not think there is a formula for building something that endures. But if I were to distil what I have observed across the businesses I have built and the ones I have advised, it would be something like this: stay close enough to the client to know what they actually need, stay honest enough with yourself to acknowledge when what you are doing is not working, and stay committed enough to the work that you do not give up during the periods — and there will be periods — when the result is not yet visible.
This article is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.