First of all let me apologies for the long absence. The last few months have been a tremendous learning experience, but also very busy. I will use the next few posts to reflect on some of the lessons I have learnt in the last few months. An issue I would like to discuss today is the power of relationships. To explain my understanding of how relationships play a role in business success, I would reference my experience with direct selling.
All things being equal, people would rather do business with people they like. A popular saying goes, “No man is an island unto himself”. Human begins are very much interdependent hence no one succeeds in life by themselves. In order to get where we want to in our business or in life, we have to pass though gates, which are often kept by people. These gates could be getting a loan, getting customers, or getting appointed to a position. Whatever it is, often time’s human beings are guardians of the things we require to succeed. Hence our ability to get along with people plays a critical role in our success. As a Christian, I ultimately believe that silver and gold belongs to God, and that if he favors us no man can hold us back. However, God has entrusted other human beings with resources on earth, and he expects us to learn to deal with them in a pleasant way. Failure to do so can mean we miss out on certain things we need to succeed.
Doing direct sales, I quickly learnt that the most critical factor to making a sale was building a personal relationship. Simply put, people buy from people they like. My ability to make a sale was increased considerably once I was able to create a personal relationship with my prospect. People would rather buy from a friend than a stranger or even worse from someone they don’t like. How many times do you leave yourself in the position of “a stranger”? In business you have to make a conscious effort to create a personal relationship with your customers and the people critical to your success.
I once read a quote from a Jeffery Gitomer book that said, “You would never hear a person say, I definitely did not like that guy, but I bought from him”. We humans our social beings, hence a lot of our decisions have subjective elements. There are perhaps a few people out there who make solely rational decisions; however for the majority of us, our emotions play a big role in our decision making. People are more likely to see the merits in your business proposal or product, if you have built a personal relationship. Creating a personal relationship requires you to treat people the way you would like to be treated, show a genuine interest in them, and most importantly establish common ground. Finding things you share in common with someone, such as hobbies or membership to similar organization can foster understanding and trust, which helps build relationship.
Recently, I had a $500 phone bill. My initial reaction was to ignore it and act like the problem didn’t exist (lol). How many times do we try to ignore our problems away? It doesn’t work. Anyway, I eventually summoned the courage to start fixing the problem, so I called the phone company to enquire about the bill. I am told I did in fact incur the costs, and that I had a month to pay it. I got off the phone without asking if there was any way they could help me reduce the bill. Even though I had nothing to lose by asking, I was hesitant to ask. A few days later, it occurred to me to ask. It turned out that they were able to reduce my bill by 50% which they did. This incidence reminded me of an important principle, which is that we miss 100% of the shots we don’t take. There was a certain possibility of success and certain possibility of failure. Most likely the possibility of failure was higher than that of success, so let’s say for argument sake there was a 30% chance of success and a 70% chance of failure. If you don’t make the attempt you reduce your 30% chance of success to 0. If I didn’t ask, I would definitely have lost the $250 credit. As long as there is a chance of success, please take the shot, because you might score. Remember, you miss all the shots you don’t take. 
Everybody at some point has had to depend on the leadership and guidance of another person. As kids we had our parents and teachers, then our professors and eventually for some people their Boss’s. This idea of being guided and supervised by someone else is perfectly normal in human societies. It won’t be strange to see a 45 year old manager under the guidance of a CEO. This General dependency on the leadership and guidance of others makes stepping into a leadership role an adjustment for many. Leadership is a different game entirely, and requires a different mindset and set of skills. Most people would however tell you that the adjustment into a leadership position isn’t impossibly difficult, especially with the right guidance. However, I would like to make a slight distinction in leadership. There is leading other people and there is personal leadership i.e. leading you. Both could be challenging and are important to entrepreneurial success; however I would like to focus on personal leadership in this blog entry.
All over the world, an increasing number of youths are becoming idle. The global economic recession has contributed to the global idleness by making it increasingly difficult to get a job, stay in a job and do profitable business. In the case of Nigeria, the recent ASSU strike left a lot very intelligent young people idle for a long time. The strike is extremely sad, for a country that seeks to be one of the top twenty economies by 2020. Vision 2020 must be the biggest “April fool”, if our government still puts such little value on education, as evidenced by the nonchalant attitude towards the strike. This blog post isn’t about criticizing the Nigerian government, even though I feel the need to make a few remarks. Rather this article is to warn against a very dangerous thing called Idleness. At the beginning of this post I hinted that a lot of youths had become idle because of factors outside their control (credit crunch and co). The truth is no one but yourselves can make you idle. Idleness leads to a lot of vices. I’m sure many of us have found ourselves idle for a prolonged period of time, and you can testify that it leads to mischief and negative actions. Not only is our capacity for self defeating actions increased, it also demoralizes and puts us in a rut. I would like to encourage that we try our best to never become idle. Even if the activity we would rather engage in is not available, we should take it upon ourselves to find work to engage ourselves. There are millions of opportunities to work for free. You are better of offering your services for free than sitting idle. Start taking some new classes, learning some new skills or volunteering with an NGO or for profit organizations. The most important thing is that you avoid the decay that comes with idleness, by not being idle. Equally important is our commitment to stay busy. Though you are doing the work to stay busy, do it like it’s the most important task. The time would eventually come when work you desire would become available, especially if we keep busy.
We all have dreams as kids. As a child I wanted to a soldier, in retrospect I think the movie “Rambo” had something to do with this. As we grow older, we let go of our childhood fantasies. In my case I am very positive I don’t want to be a soldier, though I still think it would be pretty cool to have military training(be a super badass marine kind of guy, that doesn’t have to go to war). However as we become older and more aware of our unique personality, most of us find a new more realistic dream. By realistic I mean not based on a movie or something that fascinated us as kids, but more based on our passions and personality. However I have come to realize that the real world is quite a big bully. Many people start out adult life trying to pursue their dream and the “big bad world” just bullies many out of it. The world (reality) scares our dreams out of us in many ways; it could be through the fear of bills to pay, or the inevitable initial challenges and failures we face. However, I have come to realize that whether we like it or not, our dreams our meant to be challenged. We have to have a battle mindset when it comes to our dreams, knowing that everything that can challenge our dreams and visions would, and it’s our duty to protect them. The unfortunate truth is, if you wake up in 40years disappointed because you abandoned your dreams, it would be your fault and no one else’s, not even that really difficult situation or person. I believe the reason many people let go of their dreams is because they don’t realize it’s their duty to keep their dream alive. I have only spent a short time in this world, and I can’t tell you much about what it’s like to live without a genuine dream, but from what I hear its one of the great tragedies of life. If you have let go of your dream, this article is not trying to rub it in your face. I want to let you know that we can always put on our gloves and start fighting again. This is one of the most worthy battles in life. The whole of humanity is depending on us to make our unique contributions to human existence. There seems to be this pervasive idea that chasing your dreams and fulfilling your potential is meant to feel natural and be easy. I think this is a bloody lie. It is a battle from the beginning, there will be weeping, gnashing and heartache involved. But I understand it’s most rewarding. Most times we hear about the results of someone who pursued their dreams, and not the numerous nights they doubted themselves or the hurting of being doubted and mocked. The path to true success is narrow and rough, however the result of not taking this path is perhaps more tragic. Peace out.
Earlier today I was thinking about fear and how it hinders us from success.Hence I decided to write a blog entry about fear. In the process of writing this article, it occurred to me that fear isn’t something many people understand enough, including myself. It is such a powerful emotion yet due to its camouflage nature it can often go undetected. Some people argue that fear is one of two most powerful human emotions, the other being love. It is a very powerful emotion in the sense that it has the ability to control us. I have come to understand that fear has the ability to determine how we perceive our world and also the decisions we make. How many times have you made a bad decision simply because you were afraid? Or, done less than you were able to because of fear? Well, at this point I have good news and bad news for you. However I would start with the bad news, which is that, everyone one of us will be confronted with fear at major points in our life. Also the fear we face tends to be bigger when we challenge ourselves, or strive for something big. The good news though is that fear can be beaten and the more we learn to face fear and beat it, the better we become at it. Many people have faced great fears and have overcome it. Personally I have come to realize that when I am afraid it is either a sign that there is danger ahead or my mind is playing tricks on me. Hence I assess the situation to see if there are any potential dangers; if none seems apparent then I keep going. This process of acting despite the fact that I’m afraid is the only way I know how to overcome fear. My mind tends to stop the games when I persist in doing that which I am afraid of. If you persist in doing what you are afraid of, the uneasiness of mind (fear) tends to stop or get better with time. However it is a tragedy to let fear stop you. This is a major reason a lot of people accomplish less than their able to. Would you let your mind cheat you out of the good things in life?