It’d be convenient to think that the world is a straightforward place, especially for those of us who are either in or aspire to be in positions of power in any capacity.
Whether we’re talking about a manager, the president of a student-run organization on campus, or soon-to-be entrepreneurs gathering a team for their next startup, we might like to think that what goes into success comes down to two things: finding people who produce good work and, as the authority, making sure things stay that way.
Author Simon Sinek, however, begs to differ. In a TED talk on leadership, he provides a compelling argument that trust is not only the lifeblood of success, but that being a leader goes well beyond simply fulfilling the expectations of a leader.
“Make no mistake of it,” Sinek says. “Trust is a feeling, a distinctly human experience. Simply doing everything that you promised you’re going to does not mean that people will trust you, it just means that you’re reliable. And we all have friends who are total screw ups and yet we still trust them. Trust comes from a sense of common values and belief.”
Sinek is the writer behind the book “Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Action.” He is also a motivational speaker who has given many popular speeches on the subject of leadership, including this separate TED talk on the art of inspiring people to action.
Production and results are indications of the progression of any organization, no doubt, but Sinek says that focus should also be afforded to something less tangible, but perhaps much greater. He says it is trust that has the ability to inspire, push and motivate people to not simply succeed, but to act in ways that typically lead to revolutionary success.
“The reason trust is important is because when we’re surrounded by people who believe what we believe, we’re more confident to take risks,” the New Jersey native said. “We’re more confident to experiment, which requires failure by the way, we’re more confident to go off and explore knowing that there is someone from within our community, someone who believes what we believe, someone we trust and who trusts us who will watch our back, help us when we fall over and watch our stuff and look after our children while we’re gone.”
This is no groundbreaking discovery, and neither is his advice that has been re-popularized by the news. Simon Sinek did indeed speak these words over two years ago, but in a world that is seeing tech startups spring up literally everyday, with equally interesting stories and ambitions, it might be important to revisit the foundations that the legends of the industry embodied.
Steve Jobs, who left Apple and had to come back, Howard Schultz, who left Starbucks and had to come back, and Michael Dell, who left Dell and had to come back, were all businessmen who were not only good at what they did but, as Sinek reminds us, but also fueled their companies to the top by promoting visions that they got everyone at their companies to believe in — the significance of this ethic and their influence underlined by the fact that all of their companiesneeded them to return.
It’s one thing to be a consistently fantastic entrepreneur, but it’s a completely different thing to harness the power of trust. Trust is the idea that, lest we forget, is so strong that it influences people’s decision making in such big ways, like parents placing their kids in the hands of familiar teens rather than anonymous seasoned professionals.
“Think about that for a second,” Sinek says. “We’d rather trust our children, our most valuable possession on the planet, with somebody from within our community, with no experience over somebody with vast amounts of experience but we have no idea where they’re from or what they believe. Then why do we do it differently at work?”
The suggestion that Sinek makes is simple. If anyone aims to replicate the revolutionary success or, at the very least, the effectiveness of the greatest leaders of our time, he or she must accept that it’s important to consider the questions that those legends considered themselves.
“Why are we so preoccupied with someone’s resume, and where they’ve worked and what they’ve done for our competition?” Sinek asks. “And yet we never think to consider what they believe where they’re from. How can we trust them, how can they trust us?”
None of this goes to say that experience doesn’t matter but, after considering Sinek’s words, a better understanding of what it takes to succeed might follow and that understanding might align with something like this: once we marry a search for the right people (skilled people, good people) fueled by the the goal of finding common ground, motivation and beliefs between us, we will understand what great leadership is because it’s important to remember…
“Leadership tells us why we’re here in the first place, it reminds us why we came here. Authority tells us what to do or what goal to achieve.”
No one wants to hear it. Getting turned down hurts. Sometimes there is just no explanation. Imagine chasing your dream only to hit a dead end. All that time you spent preparing amounts to nothing. Whether it is getting your product line into a store, securing a venue for an event or signing a contract to offer a service, life and entrepreneurship is hard.
For entrepreneurs, rejection also sparks a desire to change that “no” to a “yes.” A “no” is not permanent, but rather, it is just a “not at this time.” Knowing how to get that “yes” response is a key amongst the most successful entrepreneurs. Follow these tips and you will be on your way to entrepreneurial stardom.
When someone tells you “no” in entrepreneurship, the first step is to sit back and think about why they said no. Are your products not ready or can you not meet their demands? Have you not done enough marketing to get into a big box retailer? Did someone undercut your pricing or quality for a service you offer? Maybe they just are not expanding in your industry at that time.
Finding out why is the first step. The next step is improving upon what went wrong. Make sure that next time you approach them, you have everything properly prepared. There is no reason that you should not be able to cultivate your relationship with them and turn that “no” into a “yes.”
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An example that stands out came when I was launching my skincare company, Game Day. Skincare, for both men and women, is a hyper-competitive industry, and it is so hard to get people to put products on their faces. Everyone claims they have sensitive skin. Due to this, I knew that I had to provide something to an initial distributor in order to get the ball rolling and hopefully acquire others.
I started by offering free samples for distributors to include in their orders to get their existing clients interested in the products. I then sent those distributors a small initial set of inventory and the files needed for their sites. The products sold fast with great feedback, allowing me to have successfully turned a “no” into a purchase order.
Persistence is the name of the game in entrepreneurship. Those that do not push will never achieve. You simply cannot give in. The first step towards achievement is getting your work in front of the decision makers. Have you ever seen “Wall Street” where Charlie Sheen sends Gordon Gekko a box of his favorite cigars on his birthday? That is what I am talking about here. Make sure that you are in front of the proper people and they recognize you. If not, you are just another fish in the ocean.
You need to stand out in a way that no one else is. Why do they want to do business with you? If someone says no three times for various reasons, and you are still there pushing, you will have their attention and you will ultimately be able to do business with them. Give some time in between pushing your investors, though. Make sure that you are not bugging them. Prove to them through your persistence that you want something, you will not go away, and you have the diligence to prove to them why they should do business with you.
One of the basic ways of achieving a goal is to pick one area to attack and expand from there. A fellow entrepreneur was starting a lacrosse stick company and knew that if he wanted to be successful, he needed to get into only one of the big online lacrosse stores. After consecutive rejections, he finally broke through on one of his targets, and it resulted in every store needing to carry his products in order to meet the new demand. While all of the stores initially turned him down multiple times, he was able to break through on all of them by being persistent and proving that he could deliver.
Just because you are turned down once, don’t be discouraged. Through hard work and perseverance, you will achieve your goals. You simply cannot let anyone get in your way. Just keep trying, be persistent and chase your goals. Use your creative knowledge to build relationships and open new doors. Remember, every product you see and every successful service available on the market had to open doors to get off the ground and finally launch. Those who do not power through fail. Those that persevere succeed.
Achieving success is a lot like walking up a ladder — a very, very tall and slippery ladder. We start the climb with a burst of energy and are usually able to maintain a good pace for a decent amount of time. But then our limitations kick in and we begin to feel a soreness in our forearms. After a while longer, our knees being to wobble and our ankles start to give. We slip.
If we’re quick and smart about it, we catch ourselves a few steps down. If we are less lucky, we slip to the bottom…sometimes, sad to say, never to attempt the climb to the summit again. Endurance is the name of the game and the men or women that are patient and focused enough to push themselves forward continually are the ones that are most likely to be successful.
We all know that being successful — reaching our goals — is not an easy task. Anyone who has attempted such a feat understands all too well just how tall that ladder is and how slippery it can get, especially when it rains. The ladder itself poses an optical illusion; while at the bottom, the peak of the ladder seems not too far off, however, as we begin to climb and climb, we notice that the goal rarely seems to be getting any closer. Although we are constantly climbing, putting one arm and leg ahead of the other, the distance between us and where we want to be seems fixed — the goal unattainable.
Success means different things for different people. Most associate it with fame and money. Others don’t like the attention and aren’t in need of many material possessions and prefer to live a simpler life filled with simpler goals. Simpler goals are more readily achievable than those involving riches and fame — for a simple reason: the larger the goal, the more money or fame you are looking for, the more people you have to connect with in order to achieve that goal.
If your goal is to get married, start a family and be the best father that you can be, then I promise you it will be a whole lot easier than making your first billion dollars. This is not to say that one purpose is better or more honorable than the other. However, when your goals only involve a handful of people rather than thousands or millions of people the fact is that your task will be more easily accomplished.
It’s the goals that aim to affect or make a difference in the lives of masses that are the most difficult to attain — that have the longest ladders. I myself am attempting such a climb and I can tell you that it’s tiring. It’s frustrating. It’s stressful. It’s demanding. And the view — so far — isn’t worth the calluses. If you’re one of those hanging on to one of the ladders around me, then I’d like to share some advice with you because you’ll need it.
I know that you’ll need it because I need it and as much as I am writing this for you I am also writing this for myself. There are just some things that people like us need to hear or instead risk losing everything in the process.
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Business requires money. Period. There are those who were lucky enough not to have to start at the bottom, those that have a safety harness tied around their waists by their parents or some form of inheritance or another. I’m not one of those lucky few and chances are that you aren’t either. Most people don’t realize how much money is needed to run a business.
You can calculate your overhead, your recurring costs, you can estimate some extra expenses that you are likely to have along the way, yada, yada, yada. What most entrepreneurs don’t calculate is how much money they need to stay sane — to live maybe not comfortably, but comfortably enough to keep their sanity and to allow them to continue their climb.
Writing a business plan will tell you how much startup cash you need to get the project going. It can also tell you how much you will need to put into the business weekly, monthly, yearly. What most people overlook, or rather underestimate, is the amount of money they need to stay happy enough to work efficiently. You will need to make cutbacks and I am sure that if you have any experience at all or did any reading, you already know that.
But do you know how much you can cut out of your life before it starts taking a negative toll on you and on your work? I am sure that you can live on dollar pizza for a year. You can stop drinking, stop going out, minimize the amount of time you spend with friends or lovers. But you can’t do so indefinitely. Although these things may seem to be less important to you at the moment, it’s because they are less important to you — at the moment. After months of depriving yourself of the little things that make you happy, your perspective will change and what you need will change.
You can’t cut out the smaller pleasures in life indefinitely because they are necessary. You can’t eat crap food forever. You can’t not see your friends or family forever. You can’t wear the same pair of jeans forever. Believe me, you can’t. I have tried and it simply doesn’t work. You can cut certain things out for certain periods of time, but eventually you will want them back and over time that want will grow to take precedence over your other wants.
The real problem only presents itself when you find that you have been cutting down on certain things for longer than you expected. You told yourself that you could live without A, B and C for a year or maybe even two if you had to. Yet, it’s now almost three years and although you are still climbing, it’s without A, B or C.
It’s a balancing game more than anything. For everything that you cut out of your life, there will be some sort of setback. Immediately you may get nothing but more time and money to invest in your climb towards success, but as time goes on you will begin to feel a need for those things. The longer you deprive yourself, the more damage you will end up doing until you find yourself at the point where deciding to allocate time and money back into those little pleasures will be more beneficial than continuing to deprive yourself of them.
But what if this could all be avoided? What if you can — in a sense — have your cake and eat it, too? Okay, maybe that’s taking it too far…but what if you could have your cake and dip your finger in the frosting from time to time? Wouldn’t that be amazing? A relief? I believe it’s possible as long as you have your priorities straight. And what should your priorities be?
Only you know that, but the top two have to be you, first and foremost, and your main goal or purpose in life. If you understand what you need to stay healthy and not unhappy and what you need in order to achieve that dream of yours, then the rest is what you can give up. Because what you and your goal require is most likely to be time and money, you should focus making as much money as you can in as little of the time that you have left.
You can’t do everything. You have to pick and choose and make priorities. Don’t get stuck working on things that don’t do enough to add to your well-being or the well being of your business. If you are working side jobs in order to support yourself, then only work those that have the biggest bang for your buck. The only point of such jobs is to support your main priorities — you and your business. Don’t work the jobs that are comfortable and low paying. Don’t work the jobs that are too demanding of your time and energy.
Find jobs that are easy to do, easy to hold down and give you the most for your minute. Too many people spread themselves thin because they put themselves into the work they are doing for careers they never want to have. Too many people are spending time and energy with those they don’t really care about and allow their health and dreams to suffer for it. Too many people choose instant gratification over fulfillment in the future. If you are climbing the ladder, then your goal should be to make that climb as comfortable as possible.
This does not mean that it will be comfortable — because it never is. But you can make it less painful for yourself. You just have to make decisions consciously and weed out the people and activities that are unnecessary. And, above all else, make that quick buck because that quick buck will do much more for you than that job you enjoy, but don’t love. If you are lucky enough to know what you want out of life, then don’t take anything short of it.
Do all you can to get there as quickly as possible because the longer you hang on, the more difficult it becomes to hang on. Most people fail because they become fatigued — fatigue that they could have avoided had they planned out their lives more efficiently.
Our twenties are our most pivotal time when it comes to setting up ourselves for the future. All the work we put in now will be crucial to our success later in life. This is the foundation for the rest of our lives and it is important that we do it right.
This time is valuable and it is important that we don’t take it for granted. We are at a sensitive age. All the pressures of growing up are upon us as we try to figure out what we want to do with the rest of our lives. We can’t manage to handle our own needs, yet we somehow convince ourselves we need a relationship.
Relationships now only keep us away from the prize of being successful. They are extremely time consuming and honestly a waste of our energy. Invest your time and effort into something that will actually bring you good returns. Here are the reasons why you should invest your time in a career rather than a relationship:
A career will be there in 5 years, your relationship won’t.
Let’s be frank, relationships in our generation just don’t last. This is both a gift and a curse, but it is the honest truth. So don’t waste your time trying to hold on to something that won’t work. Focus on your career as it will prove to last longer than any relationship you will ever experience in your 20s. Build a solid foundation that will last you the rest of your life, people come and go, but your bank account will always be there.
Careers will make you money, your relationship will only waste it.
Relationships are a financial burden, everything costs money and constantly going on dates is rather difficult. Why would you waste your time and money on something you know won’t work out when you can build something that will eventually add value to your life? Getting paid in this world is essential to your existence; don’t waste your money gallivanting with a significant other, there is plenty of time to do that after you succeed.
Your relationship cannot be sold on the Nasdaq.
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Life is all about the long-term perspective, you must prepare now for the way you want to live in the future. Keep in mind that holding on to a worthless relationship will never get you ready for what is to come. Business is all about moving through the ranks and learning, you can never get comfortable. Your relationship will only cause you stress with hardly any rewards close to seeing your company ticker on the New York Stock Exchange.
A title change in your career is actually a good thing.
There are only two reasons why you would change your title in a relationship, either you’re getting married or you’re getting divorced. Marriage is just as good as a death sentence these days and the title change comes with hardly any additional perks. Your career title change, however, may come with a company card, or even some added bonus at the end of the year. How can your relationship beat that?
You don’t have to bring your career home with you, if you don’t want to.
Once your significant other meets your parents, then it is time for you to take a deep look at yourself. Sometimes you may end up dating the type of person your parents may not approve of, well good luck keeping this a secret in today’s age. Fortunately, you don’t have to experience this because you will no longer concentrate on a relationship, but rather build upon your business career.
Your career doesn’t talk back.
Like in any relationship, there will always be hardships and difficulties, but we all know how hardheaded your partner can be at times. Although your career may be stressful, you don’t ever have to worry about it giving you attitude or talking back quite like your significant other.
Your career has limitless potential, while your partner’s days are limited.
There are no boundaries as to what can happen with your career. You may start out working the mail room, but throughout the years, you will notice that there is upward mobility if you just keep working hard. In a career, you get out what you put in, while no matter what you do, you know your relationship has an expiration date. You partner’s days are limited and that’s just the truth.
You don’t have to take your career out to dinner, your career actually takes you out.
Life is all about cycles, and in your career cycle, it’s all about inputting hard work in order to get out what you hope is a good return. Enjoy the fruits of your labor, go out and engulf yourself in the finer things in life, you earned it. Remember that your relationship will only put a hole in your wallet, especially today when people’s cooking skills are becoming more and more limited. Imagine having to pay for a dinner for two constantly. Your career will help you pay for it more than your partner will.
Loyalty isn’t an issue with your career, you never have to worry about your career cheating on you.
With our generation, keeping loyal is one of the things we find ourselves wrestling with on a constant basis. The temptation out there is just too great and many of us aren’t built to avoid the temptation. Well let’s just say when it comes to your career, you never have to worry about it leaving you for someone younger, faster or stronger.
A hidden past is only something you find in a relationship.
You never have to worry about finding out some weird facts about your career ever. Unlike a relationship that may come with extra baggage, a career comes to you with open arms and it is as transparent as Wikileaks. Your partner, on the other hand, can be hiding things from you that you would never imagine. There is nothing worse than hearing about your partner through a third party. Although it may be shocking, we can’t really expect people to actually say who they are upfront.
The founder of Sam Adams, C. James Koch, was announced a billionaire last week whenBloomberg Billionaire’s index new evaluation added him to the ranks. Koch’s ascension is an accomplishment not just of his hard work and brilliant vision behind the Boston Brewing Company, but also a pat on the shoulder of beer consumers all over America. Slowly but surely, drinkers have begun to follow their tastebuds away from traditional options towards more interesting beers.
Koch, completely unrelated to Republican manipulators Charles and David, steered Boston Brewing Co. into 1.3% of the total market share, the fourth largest market share in the industry. 80% of the industry is controlled by the duo of Anheuser-Busch Inbev (Bud, Natty, Corona, Stella, Becks, Hoegaarden, Leffe, Bass, Labatt, Michelob, St. Pauli Girl, Boddintons, Rolling Rock, Shocktop, O’Douls and many others) and MillerCoors (Magnum, Olde English, Fosters, Steel Reserve, Redds, Miller, Coors, Keystone, Peroni, Killians, Milwaukee’s Best, Molson, and more).
Despite going up against such huge competition, the craft beer market is making strides. In 2012, it captured 6.5% by volume of the market, but over 10% of the market in dollars, both representing the highest market shares for the craft brewing sphere. Not only is that an achievement in itself, but this is also happening at a time when the beer industry is losing sales to wine and spirits, meaning the losses are mostly afflicting the giants MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch InBev. Consumer preferences are decidedly shifting.
Why celebrate this? Why am I presenting this information as a good thing?
I like good beer. Although I do drink Budweiser and Coors Light on occasion (I think those are tolerable beers), I advocate that we as consumers should try different beers, decide which ones we like, and support those companies with our money accordingly. Now is a wonderful time to be a beer drinker; a veritable golden age of American Brewing, with over 2,300 craft breweries as compared to 12 in 1980.
The craft revolution is putting pressure on the titans of the beer industry to adapt to changing consumer taste. InBev AB bought out Chicago based craft brewery Goose Island in 2011 for $38.8 million, a move that made longtime brewmaster Greg Hall step down.
There is legislation in progress right now to lower the excise tax on craft brew products, but it has no momentum with more imminent issues taking the focus. If this bill were to pass, though, it would help smaller companies turn a profit. More profit would then allow them to invest in growth and experiment with more recipes, giving us, the drinkers, the chance to buy more quantity and of a larger variety.
Do yourself a favor: go grab a variety 12-pack from Magic Hat, Sam Adams, or Kona. Figure out what you like, what you don’t like and why. And then go try some more.
The cynics will always tell you otherwise and so will the “realists.” Everyone, they’ll argue, can’t be great and not every person can achieve success by just “trying hard enough.” For every person who dares to dream big enough, it seems that there will always people who will try to keep their ambitions in check.
But when it come to the true leaders and icons of this world, those who have actually reached dizzying heights of fame and fortune, they all cite the same ingredients for success. From Donald Trump, to Jay Z, to Jim Carey, to Steve Jobs — you name the industry, we’ll find the icon – truly successful people all sing from the same hymn sheet.
They praise the attitude of never giving up (no matter the amount of failures experienced), and they all emphasize the role that passion plays in fueling one’s road to achievement (no matter how much people scoff at the idea of doing what you love).
This video is a comprehensive reminder of what it takes to reach the greatest heights of success, featuring the motivational words of people who actually know what it’s like to do just that. It’s straight to the point, it’s direct, it’s real, it’s from people who know what they’re talking about and it is a must watch.
In August, writer Jonathan Brill contributed an article to Forbes regarding the things people could do to raise their kids to become entrepreneurs, and the reason behind doing so was simple. Let’s face it, the prospect of becoming a self-made mogul has filled the hearts and dreams of many in this day and age. His article also elucidated the feelings that push businessmen and women to reject the idea of simply being a part of something instead of taking on the task of totally creating another.
“Working for someone else felt very unnatural and made them unhappy to the point where doing their own thing was inevitable,” Brill said in this article. “The best founders I’ve worked for never thought about the risk of entrepreneurship vs the alternative because the alternative was never viable.”
It’s simple to understand why some entrepreneurs just had to do it their way. Working for everyone else was so unfulfilling that really the only option was for them to create work for themselves.
But then, what does that say about “everyone else.” What does it say about the tons of established companies out there in the world and the broad brush strokes that people paint them with?
If we’re going by immediate assumptions and impulsive reactions to simple words like “work,” “the office” and “cubicle,” then the question is easy to answer. It’s no secret that people associate these terms with a repetitive, mundane lifestyle and, at worst, the potential for misery with the “traditional” and stiffling office setting.
That idea is likely to be even more common amongst the millions of students who are about to trade in the comfortable, social activity-filled life of the college campus for a world of unknowns.
But for the seniors whose time at the university has finally ended, there’s good news: the picture of the standard office place is changing and, better yet, some of the world’s biggest and best companies are at the forefront of this progression.
In a report released last week by CNN Money, discussing the 50 top employers for new college grads, Google was ranked at the no. 1 spot, while companies like Microsoft, Apple and Ernst & Young also made the list. The names are significant not just because they represent some of the most respected companies in the world, but also for their status as some of the most innovative institutions out there.
They make good products and provide exceptional service, but they are also renowned for there enjoyable work cultures. Besides being the world’s undisputed leading search engine, the world’s most popular video sharing site and the Android mobile operating system, Google is also known for it’s service to its employees, with their offices typically distinguished by scooters, free laundry and dining in an all-around atmosphere that oozes creativity.
Microsoft has been described by CNN by as a company looking for employees who will bring “energy and ideas” as opposed to a willingness to be static pegs fitting into tightly defined holes. Oh, and the mention of break rooms stocked with Xboxes doesn’t sound too bad, either.
Ernst & Young has been praised for undergoing sweeping changes and a revamping of its brand. Then there’s Apple, which needs no description. The company has arguably defined an era of innovation with its groundbreaking products.
Regardless of which leading company we’re talking about, the point is simple. At time goes on, the biggest of names are continuously updating themselves. The cob webs are being shaken off, new ideas are coming in and new ways of managing the people who bring in those ideas are coming along.
But even that fact doesn’t form the meat of this argument. It isn’t the upper echelon of businesses that should give hope to the young employees who are dreading their entrance into the workplace, it’s the next generation of companies that should inspire them.
Startups are all founded in a different source of inspiration, but they do seem to share one similarity: breeding a work environment that embraces youth and energy, which usually propel the youngest of companies.
An uncomfortable tie and a pair of slacks are no longer necessary; jeans and t-shirt will do. You can actually tolerate your co-workers now and your bosses are no longer distant and unapproachable. Whether it’s San Francisco based startup Jack Rabbit, or online shoe-selling giant Zappos, it’s no surprise to see bosses sitting side-by-side with their subordinates, locking arms in a spirit of togetherness that is now typical of the most enjoyable office places.
In summary, our old folks may have created a standard for the office place that suited them (fair enough), but we hate it. Now, though, as younger and younger CEOs emerge, as newer ideas become priorities, so will newer styles of business and, inevitably, a much different, improved and more enjoyable office place.
