Mentorship, Business Development, and Discovering Your Brand
Who has ever seen, scanned, or read a sales or business book? I'm sure many people have; there are a plethora of ways to get business help in various forms: paper, online courses, print articles, social media...the list goes on. The best help I have ever received is from a mentor, someone who took me under their wing and provided guidance from their wealth of experiences, successes, and failures. My mentors would tee-up a lead or opportunity, provide advice, and let me develop it. Often that opportunity ended with a victory, however my mentors did let me fail...sometimes embarrassingly so, but always without consequence. (Besides of course, the consequential years of ribbing after the wound had healed) They gave me all the accolades for a win, but we shared the blame for a loss even when it fell squarely on my shoulders.
I did not know this at the time, but this open structure allowed me to develop a professional voice and personality that was uniquely my own. As long as I maintained discipline and self-motivation, my mentors allowed me to continue my career ascent with larger projects, bigger clients, and more responsibility. That open structure promoted rapid growth and development, enabling me to be a well-rounded business leader early in my career.
I left that environment to pursue a passion industry and more attractive opportunity. I left that environment not knowing what traditional, hierarchical work structure really felt like. I left that environment to discover the immense challenge of individualized growth while under the scrutiny of someone else's preconceived vision of success...all while trying to craft my own voice, in a new industry, in my own way. I found myself digging through cheesy sales books, searching for ways to unlock the success I had the master-key to only 12 months prior. Needless to say, after a dozen years of discovering my own sales voice and brand, I found it impossible to echo someone else's vision, using someone else's voice, while meeting their metrics for success.
I have read through a bunch of sales books, been to business seminars, and had many successes (and failures) building business. I have seen VERY successful business people operate in VERY different ways; extroverts, introverts, organized, disheveled, morning gym-goers, and late-night partiers. The key to unlocking your success isn't held within a book, a class, a set of rules, or an internet article. The key to your success lies within your ability to inject your brand and personality into your sales, business, and message. People buy from people. There are good tid-bits in all those sales books, but you must always be developing YOUR voice and YOUR message in YOUR way. Do not rely on recreating someone else's voice, whether it's from a book or a manager. The most successful business people transcend sales books and the overbearing structure of management to craft their voice and personality into their personal brand.
To the business owners, managers, and executives frustrated with mediocrity or floundering sales teams: let them develop their voice, fail, get back up, and fail again. Provide advice, not rules. Reward discipline, self-motivation, and enthusiasm; the results will follow. Hire and promote differences and uniqueness, not reflections of yourself or a preconceived idea of what success looks like. Be objective and open to new ideas. Be deliberate and thoughtful with your words, especially when criticizing. Most importantly, let your team members be the winners and celebrate those victories.
I didn't fully appreciate the runway I had until I no longer had it
I didn't fully appreciate the runway I had until I no longer had it, but without that contrast I would have never started Unispoke Design. Unispoke will always offer Unique and Bespoke solutions. As we grow and add personnel, I look forward to watching new people with individual personalities develop their unique voice and add bespoke dimensions to Unispoke.
Many thanks to my career mentors: Tom (RIP), Brian, Frank, Blejwas, Nick, Eric, Dawn, Sabrina, Nandita, Graham, Jim, Nick, Carmine...and many others. If you read this far, I am glad I was able to construct the foundation of my career, with your guidance, in such an independent and successful way.
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