[evanperryg]

1) have an identical (or mostly identical) practice bot. My team has made a second robot since 2013, and the last 3 years have been our most successful ever.
2) good mentors, across the board. Have a diverse group of dedicated mentors for all technical skills, and multiple good mentors for outreach/business. Their many unique ideas will help your students gain a wider perspective on FIRST as a whole. This year, my team lost two of our leading mentors from the last few years, but we were able to fill the gap with multiple new, dedicated mentors. Their new, refreshing ideas and skills helped propel us to our best season ever. Our old mentors have left an amazing legacy, and our new mentors have done an excellent job pushing our success even further.
3) sponsors, sponsors, sponsors!!! Don't just look for money, find sponsors who will provide you with mentors and special machining capabilities you couldn't have otherwise. One of our leading sponsors, Industrial Kinetics, does all our welding. Also, just because you have one sponsor contributing $10k+ doesn't mean you can't find more sponsors willing to pitch in that much.
4) start other FIRST teams. FLL/FTC students come in with a better-than-average understanding of STEM and FIRST values.
5) communicate and collaborate with local teams. My team is blessed to be surrounded by excellent teams (special shoutout to 1625, 2451, 4655 and 111). We all bring our practice robots together to practice and get new ideas.
6) karthik's "don't make something beyond your means" paradigm is very true, but you MUST remember to push yourself. My team could have stopped at our collector, elevator, and can holder, but we pushed ourselves to make a pair of can pullers that could fit in the tiny amount of space remaining in our robot. It worked, and they were vital in making us competitive at the world level.