Success is one of the least understood concepts in modern business. Ask a room full of SME entrepreneurs to define it and most will offer similar benchmarks: revenue milestones, luxury lifestyles or the freedom of early retirement. Yet few may have stopped to question whether these outcomes are what they truly want. 

Champion auctioneer and podcast host Andy Reid spent 30 years on what he calls the ‘conveyor belt’ – building high-performance cultures in hospitality, sales and real estate – before pausing to consider his own definition. The journey of self-discovery that followed culminated in a book, Success Curious, and a confronting conclusion: the reason many people never feel successful is not because they lack drive or discipline – it’s because they don’t understand what success means to them. Finding the answer, he argues, begins with curiosity.

The Comparison Trap Is Dangerous For SME Owners

Reid says too many SME owners get caught in a comparison trap fuelled by social media. “It has turned success into an us-versus-them, highlight reel pedestal that makes a lot of small business owners go, ‘How am I ever going to achieve anything like that?’” he says “Because of the sheer volume of it, it’s really difficult to not compare yourself.”

The beauty industry might be worth billions thanks to social media, but Reid points out the self-improvement sector is also sizable, often benefiting from the vulnerability of businesspeople whose backs are against the wall. “The amount of money that gets siphoned off of small business owners through the dangling of a carrot: ‘A shortcut is here if you do this,’ ‘I have the magic pill for that, ‘Do this then you are going to 10x your business,’ blah, blah, blah,” he laments. 

He says it’s natural that SME owners would seek to level the playing field, especially when they find themselves caught up in the painful paradox of quitting a 9-to-5 job only to end up working 24/7. To break this cycle, Reid suggests owners stop looking for a cure to their discontent. “Prevention is way better than cure,” he says. 

“The reason why we feel we need to work 24/7 is because we have grown a level of concern for others that far outweighs the concern for ourselves.” He follows with a lesson he wishes he’d been given as a child. “To be the best version of you for everyone around you, you must first become the best version of yourself.”

Permit Yourself To Find Your Own Definition Of Success

Reid says some people find traditional ideas of success are so entrenched, they have to grant themselves permission to deviate from the norm. But it shouldn’t be that way.

“Success as a definition means something completely different for every single human because that notion of success is determined by experience,” he explains. “And there is not going to be one person on this planet that’s had the exact same experience.”

He acknowledges stereotypes will satisfy some. “For some people, success is material and it is the Lambo, it is the jet, and if it is then good on them. We’re not here to judge,” Reid says. But others, he notes, should define success according to their values – albeit not what he calls “cereal box values,” like integrity or transparency, that come free with the box but mean little.

“You’ve actually got to put in the work to understand what your values are that define you as a human being, because without that you’re stuffed right from the word go,” Reid warns. He draws a business analogy: “You can’t sell what you don’t know. If you don’t know your product well enough, you can’t sell it well enough. If you don’t know yourself as a product, then you can’t sell it. You can’t give yourself the best opportunity to be able to connect with people.”

Become A Student Of Self And Success Will Follow

Determining values requires a type of learning not spruiked in social media ads. “You have to become a student of self,” Reid says. He came to appreciate the importance of self-knowledge when navigating mental health challenges a decade ago. 

“Whether it’s financial pressures, life pressures, business pressures, whatever label you want to put on it, if you don’t become a student of yourself, there is no pill in the world that is going to fix it,” Reid insists. “It’s just going to band-aid it and make you feel better for a small amount of time until you get worse again.”

He says self-awareness is particularly important in SMEs, where the line between professional and personal identities can blur.Identifying these “DNA values” helps to redefine not just success but failure, allowing mistakes to become data points instead of sources of regret.

“If you don’t learn to evolve as a business, you’re either going to become stagnant, which then sees you drop off, or you’re going to go down a deep, dark hole making the same mistake over and over again and costing yourself what you want from a success perspective,” Reid says.

It is a process most founders never undertake and it costs them. “The level of clarity that one gains from doing all that work allows you to see success in all its glory for yourself,” Reid says. “Understand that there’s no such thing as a perfect human being. There’s no such thing as an undefeated business person. Vulnerability is the key to true professionalism.”

Find Your Flow And You’ve Found Success

So, how does an SME owner redefining success know when they’ve found it?

“I think that success is very much attached to how aligned you are with what you do,” Reid explains. He cites his own example, which came at a real estate auction, long enough ago that it was captured on VHS tape. “It was chaos around me and all I had was sandy beaches and sunsets in my head. I felt calm for almost the first time in my entire life. I explored that. I became a student of that. I used to refer to it as escapism, which has a negative connotation. But then I discovered that no, it’s not escapism. It’s where I’m supposed to be. It’s my flow.”

Reid believes that when who you are and what you do are in sync, your mindset shifts away from self-preservation and becomes less risk averse. “It automatically flicks from ‘Should we do this?’ to ‘How can we do this?’” he says. “It instantly turns into a calculating machine.”

He adds there’s another, more simple sign of success: goosebumps.

“Whenever I say my values, I get a little shiver,” Reid says. “My values pre-doing all this work was those words: drive, passion, ambition, action. Now, it’s connection, fun, and simplicity.” The pursuit of success stops being a chase. “If you learn how to do that, success is really not that far away and it will find you.”