So You Want to be a Business Guru
By Steve Hill
When Enigin Distributors start out in their own energy saving business they have dreams of becoming business leaders and Enigin are happy to help them to achieve this goal - but they also learn that there is more important things on life than just work and business.
Top performing entrepreneurs and business gurus add to their fame and fortune through publicity, books and speaking tours, amongst other strategies, but they rarely tell all.
They all talk about the need for vision, how to handle all sorts of people, how to face challenges and seeming disasters plus loads of other valuable stuff that are the ingredients and cliches of the corporate speaking circuit.
To reach top though sacrifices are required and the choice as to whether to make those sacrifices is left to each individual - a middle ground will suffice for most and shouldn’t be knocked. There is more to happiness than a great balance sheet.
Why is such a great sacrifice needed, consider some of the points you often do not hear business guru admit to:
Sleeping on planes and dealing with jet lag. In most, if not all large organisation, a business leader will spend a large amount of time on planes. The routine is simple: one glass of champagne and one melatonin pill forty minutes before take off, and sleep all the way. Business class is not for fancy meals and watching movies: it is for work or sleep.
Working in vehicles. If you need to be able to work in taxis and cars, or you will waste more time than you can afford. Staring out of the window mindlessly is not good.
Dieting. Business leaders are surrounded by biscuits and other high sugar/calorie foods, plus the lunches, dinners and breakfasts. You need to start to love fruit, or start exercising. If not you will die early as an obese alcoholic.
Ruthless time management: queues let leaders catch up with emails and phone calls; ditch or delegate everything you can; fix appointments around your diary, not around other people’s. A friend of mine spent a brief time waiting for a train with the business leader of a well known chain of pubs in the UK. He was amazed when this entrepreneur picked up a lot of legal documents and deeds and threw them in the trash - all he wanted were the profit and loss figures, he stated he had no time for the rest. You may not need ot go that far, but the guys business has gone from strength to strength since that time.
Work the politics. Find the right assignments, right support and right mentors. Set yours and others expectations well. Negotiate budgets hard. Wake up to the reality of corporate life.
Be ambitious, for your business and yourself. Stretch yourself and your team to achieve more than ever; keep on learning and growing. Don’t accept excuses, don’t be a victim: take responsibility.
Learn to speak well. To small groups, to individuals and to large groups. Most people find this very hard, visiting the dentist is preferable for some and often listening to such people can result in the same sentiment. Learn to speak in public, it is a skill anyone can develop - I have seen people who said they would never able to utter a word before an audience became very able public speakers who can hold the attention of thousands or just a few. So get on a course or become self taught in public speaking.
Put these qualities together you will become a driven individual which will not make you popular - it is your choice keep your humanity and all that means or become a business leader. What do you want out of life? Success or happiness, are the two separate? Usually they are in the business world and those who get to the top postpone their humanity and often do not get the breaks to ever achieve that true happiness - but their business life is a success.
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