As vice president of sales, content aggregation at American Express Global Business Travel (GBT), John Bukowski has worked closely with suppliers large and small and understands the operations of businesses of all sizes.

In connection to a special series GBT is doing to help small- and medium-sized businesses, he shares some of the business lessons he’s learned over the years.

One of his top tips? That you should consider your stakeholders’ needs just as much as your customers’.

“You may be able to solve one problem for a customer, but if that causes 10 problems downstream for other stakeholders, your strategy is probably not going to work,” he said. “It’s important to really think about the full ecosystem and not just the customer that’s in front of you or the suppliers that you work with.”

Find out what other suggestions he has for growing businesses by reading the full interview.