The Structure of Success

Amazon Bestseller in Strategy & Competition, Business Mentoring & Coaching, and Small Business & Entrepreneurship

Nonfiction Book Awards Silver Medalist

A simple framework for success

Creating success, and avoiding failure, for small and medium-sized businesses has proven―over a sustained period―to be the direct result of the decisions and actions made by their leaders about the internal structures of these businesses. By focusing on building a strong core, business founders, owners, and executives have the power to ensure success, rather than falling prey to failure.

The Structure of Success provides a simple framework―consisting of approaches, methodologies, and tools for assessing, determining, planning, and implementing decisions―for building the internal structural components of a business, and, specifically, focusing on the eight most important categories that have been shown to impact success and failure for small and medium-sized businesses:

• Governance models and governance team composition
• Management team models, composition, engagement, and compensation
• Adjustments and pivots
• Growth and infrastructure development
• Business disputes and breakups
• Acquisitions, mergers, exits, and other business transactions
• Disaster preparedness and management
• Succession planning

When leaders of small and medium-sized businesses address these categories and revisit these topics regularly, they will produce the core structural components that will help them to meet their business goals, manage the risks and threats that arise, and position themselves―and their businesses―for success.

Patrick Esposito is an entrepreneur, business executive, attorney, advisor, and board member (and most importantly, a father and husband). He has helped to found, lead, and advise small and medium-sized businesses in technology, consulting, retail, banking, real estate, and other sectors, as well as U.S. government organizations, for more than two decades. During his career, Esposito has advised start-up executive teams, family business owners, large publicly traded company executive teams, and leaders in the U.S. Department of Defense.

Currently, Esposito serves as president of ACME General Corp., a leading public sector innovation advisory business based in New York, Austin, and Morgantown. He also serves as counsel with Spilman Thomas & Battle, a Mid-Atlantic regional law firm. Esposito recently launched Initiative Labs LLC to help small and medium-sized business leaders apply the approaches, methodologies, and tools from this book to create the conditions for success in their business ventures.

Prior to his role as an advisor and attorney focused on supporting this broad range of clients, Esposito held many different positions. He was a co-founder and CEO of a family-led, venture-backed software company (Augusta Systems, Inc.) based in Morgantown, West Virginia. That firm pivoted three times, became an early Internet of Things pioneer, made the Inc. 500 list, and was acquired by a publicly traded, multinational technology company. Esposito was a co-founder and board member of an innovative vehicle components technology company (Resilient Technologies LLC) based in Wausau, Wisconsin. The firm was acquired by a leading vehicle products company. He was also the Chief Legal and Risk Officer in a publicly traded, high-growth financial services company.

Esposito graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center with a juris doctor degree. Prior to attending Georgetown, Esposito earned a master of studies degree in modern history at the University of Oxford, England, studying on a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship. Esposito graduated cum laude from West Virginia University (WVU) and the WVU Honors Program with two bachelors of arts degrees in four majors―the first in economics and political science, and the second in history and international studies―under a WVU Foundation Scholarship. Esposito and his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters, Natalie and Elizabeth, reside in Morgantown, West Virginia. This location enables an efficient existence in a university city and supports a life that focuses on family and business clients.