As MediPurpose celebrates its first 10 years in business—and perhaps because this is also the end of the year and the close of a decade—there's been a lot of reflecting around the office.

Like with MediPurpose founder and CEO Patrick Yi's recent blog, my contemplations have toggled between reviewing our company's success and the trajectory of my own career—including the last four years that I've spent at MediPurpose.

Similar to most senior sales and marketing professionals, I have worked for a range of companies that span a spectrum of sizes, scopes and requisite responsibilities. Although I don't have any illusions of having complete clarity with how MediPurpose achieved its success, I do believe that my experiences have given me some perspective.

More specifically, my current perspective is that there are three fundamental reasons for why MediPurpose has not only survived, but has thrived and is poised to continue doing so for another 10 years and beyond. After all, an estimated 50 percent of startups fail, and MediPurpose has had the additional challenge of being a single-line medical device company in a field of Fortune 50 healthcare titans.

Reason #1: MediPurpose has Always Been Customer-Centric

This exceeds the standard "the customer comes first" credo. Any business that doesn't put the customer first is doomed.

A company that wants to do more than "not fail" and truly achieve success must be customer-centric. To me, "customer-centric" sensibilities means:

• Embracing an honest, straightforward approach to problem solving that simultaneously puts in a fix to prevent the problem from resurfacing.

• Always assuming accountability in the eyes of our customer.

• No excuses. No fluffy explanations.

Reason #2: MediPurpose Founder CEO Patrick Yi has Never Forgotten His Experiences as a Struggling Entrepreneur

Remaining grounded to those early years-in spite of our 10-year success-has produced a unique workplace culture.

Not only is there still a sense of excitement and discovery in our ongoing business our first product, the SurgiLance® Safety Lancet, but it's fostering a sense of empathy and understanding for new medical device inventors within our Medical Device Innovation division, as well as with medical product companies looking to bring medical product innovations to the market through our Medical Product Distribution Services division.

Reason #3: People Come and Go in All Companies

The litmus test for a company that claims to provide the nurturing environment for the good to get better is when its talent comes back after spreading its wings.

I've seen it at MediPurpose quite recently with the return of VP of Sales and Marketing Mark Stoppenbach. His return reinforces the notion that although we will always learn from our mistakes, we fortunately make more wise decisions than not.

Pleasin' Reasons

Although I would agree that this is certainly not an exhaustive list of factors for success at our company, I will say that they are essential elements.

In my entire career, I have seldom seen them all come together as consistently and effectively as they have at MediPurpose, and that alchemy has me very excited for the next 10 years.