In business, ‘TIME’ is your greatest investment!
‘Trust In Me -Time is also your best friend’
I started my first business in March 1986, Priority Stainless Ltd and before doing so and having considered all options open to me, the one recurring question was, did I want to stay in the comfort of a secure corporate environment, earning reasonably good money for my age with a new company car and all the usual perks of working for a major corporation?
The answer was yes and no, yes to the security of being cocooned in a professional environment and no to the bureaucracy of restrictive practices within such a working environment. What had taken ten years to attain, could be lost in a ten minute decision to leave.
Every deed has a motive and in August 1984, I had just lost my mother to cancer when she was only forty eight years young. At that very sad time in my life, I needed to focus, having just lost my best friend and I was twenty five with a very creative imagination and a maverick mind towards business development. For once the book would stop with me in terms of debits and credits of all business decisions that I would make. Sales & Marketing were my strong points; my expertise in other areas of business was to be put to the test or the sword.
RISK
‘To discover new oceans, you have to lose sight of the shore’
I knew that once I walked through ‘my own business door’ that said ‘RISK’, having closed the door behind me, the sign would read, ‘No Going Back’.
I had read the start up books, done my research, spoken to banks and was ready to start the game and what a game it has turned out to be. There are 64 squares on a chess board and I could fill every one of them with a business subject. Each subject would have its good, bad and ugly side and would incorporate the opening, middle game and end game of business life as seen through my own eyes and hopefully for the benefit of others starting out or just wondering what is around the next corner of their existing business.
‘ASK’
‘Attitude, Knowledge and Skill’
In a business environment, you need to possess the right attitude, knowledge and skill to succeed. Attitude, includes being positive, confident, enthusiastic, persistent, punctual, humorous, presentable and professional. Knowledge, applies to all areas of business that one is engaged in and in particular, your product knowledge, competitor activity and general business awareness including for example your statutory duties, as in my case, executing the role of company director.
I you don’t ask, you don’t get and as business is a journey and not a destination, one is learning all the time and acquiring knowledge to apply to your business. Possessing the right attitude and having acquired the knowledge, we should hopefully possess the skill to achieve our goals and desired business results to overcome market forces that we have no control over.
‘I BELIEVE’
‘Good Judgement is based on experience and experience is based on bad judgement’
It sounds familiar and the insurance industry make a considerable living from our own experience or the risk of a bad experience.
This leads me on to the subject of Director Disqualification, a subject which is in the ‘Public Interest’ for the protection of the public at large and my own six year experience of this so-called ‘Rogues Gallery’ a product of the Government Agency, the Insolvency Service. I therefore dedicate ten years of my life to the DTI, August 1997 to October 2007.