Hi, I’m Stew!
...and this is for anyone that might be interested in my story. :)
I was first bitten by the entrepreneurial bug as a teenager when I found out that one of my high school teachers was a closet millionaire. Not even the other teachers at the school knew about his alter ego, but for some reason he had told me. When I asked the inevitable "how?", he mumbled something that I think we both knew I didn't understand.
The next day after class, he pulled me aside and said "if you really want to know how I've built a little wealth for myself, start here". He reached out his hand; in it was a copy of Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.
It's odd looking back at how our younger minds work. I can still feel the heat in the air of a Perth summer as I started reading this book. We lived in an old asbestos house and my parents had just managed to afford an air conditioning unit at home, but we hadn't managed to afford switching it on yet!
Over the next couple of days I'd lie on the floor in the lounge room. The blinds were drawn to keep the light and heat out, but I'd dance with the light shimmering through the crack between the window shades and sill to glimpse some light on the pages.
I loved the book and everything in it. Or rather, almost everything. There was one fatal flaw with the book; Kiyosaki was adamant that in business, “the most important specialised skills are sales and marketing”. Not good. I was known to be a numbers guy, not a talky guy.
Thinking about talking to someone made my knees knock and voice drain to a pathetic whimper; how was I supposed to sell to them?! Also, what's "marketing"? Naturally, I resolved to find a second opinion and disprove this “sales is a must” claim; in a manoeuvre now known as "seeking confirmation bias".
Not long after, I found myself at the library and a magazine with Richard Branson on the cover caught my eye. Back then, it wasn’t very cool to aspire towards becoming an entrepreneur; in fact, "entrepreneur" might not have even been a word yet. In those days, Branson was pretty much the only role model we had; and I loved him.
This guy had his own record label, his own planes, his own island, wanted to go to space (this was pre-Galactic days) and was always surrounded by glamorous ladies (a key metric for teenage boys when picking idols).
The article in the magazine was in Q&A format and one of the questions was "What does it take to achieve success in business?". His answer came in three parts.
"Firstly, you have to be passionate about what you’re doing". “Check”. Like most passions, I'm not sure I could tell you where it came from, it simply existed. "Secondly, you should do something you have fun doing and try to do it with people that you can have fun doing it with". "Well, that sounds pretty good to me". "Thirdly", he said, "it’s really handy to learn how to sell".
I think I must have stood motionless at the magazine rack for 10 minutes trying to figure out how to reverse time and un-read what I had just read. My main problem was, I couldn't think of another source for a third opinion. Plus deep down, I think I knew it to be true.
I surrendered and spent the next year hyping myself up to get a job in sales. After graduating high school the following summer, I applied for an ad in the window of a clothing store in my local mall, sweated and fumbled my way through the interview and somehow landed the job. Luckily for me, they were desperate.
A few years later while still at uni, I managed to get a job at what was then considered the premier sales company in Australia. Salesforce (not the software company) was known for its exceptional sales capabilities and had just been bought by Australian communications giant Salmat for $60 million (back then $60 million felt more like $600 million does today).
Instant. Regret. I'd bitten off far more than I could chew. It was one thing helping customers try on clothes, but this was sales sales, and I struggled immediately. For starters, I was still a bundle of nerves talking to someone, objections threw me into neither fight nor flight, just freeze, and "closing" seemed like the sort of shadowy mysticism I would never comprehend.
For over a year, it felt like the gap was too large for me to close. Maybe I just wasn't cut out for sales; maybe it was best to give up. Yet something inside me wouldn't let me quit. I think it was partly not knowing how to have the conversation with my manager (ironically), a bit of hanging my head in shame, but most of all, I started to recognise that this was a major skills deficit for me.
Many years later, it occurred to me the incredible kindness my managers showed in not firing me. It's fair to say that I was not adding value to their P&L! My gratitude is in experiencing first hand what it's like to have a management team care for my development and doing everything possible to get the best out of me. I believe this was a pure luck first experience, yet one that helped me decide what type of manager I would aspire to be.
The turning point, as is often the case, came not from me but from those around me. I remember one day confiding in a colleague, Mark (who, like so many others, had taken me under his wing), that I would get incredibly nervous and break out in sweats, literally, every time I spoke with a customer. His elegant response struck me like a bolt of lightning; “Don't worry Stew”, he said. “Sales is less about talking and more about listening”.
Funny how a throwaway comment can change everything. Over the next few weeks, I slowly felt like I could finally see for the first time. Until then, it hadn't occurred to me that simply listening could be considered a skill, let alone a useful one. I could do listening! In fact, I preferred it!!
That was my watershed moment. Over the years, I was fortunate to be given many wonderful opportunities, from selling on the floor, helping clients build and implement sales journeys, being a part of winning new business and being trusted with the performance of teams and business units. I credit people like Mark for any success I might have had along the way.
I'm also grateful for Kiyosaki and Branson for getting me on this path. An unexpected surprise I've found working in sales is that you get to be part of creating opportunity and success for everyone involved; sometimes in a very direct way, other times in a way similar to how Mark did for me.
I’ve observed (within myself and in others) that as people feel like they have opportunities, they're happier and become radically open to other point-of-views. It seems to me that opportunity is the antidote to divisiveness because when we're thriving ourselves, we naturally want to understand and help others.
So if businesses that are passionate about people can create opportunities and thrive, then the people they touch will also have more opportunities and thrive, right?
Along the way, finding ways to create these opportunities is challenging, sometimes frustrating, yet still always fulfilling and ultimately a whole bunch of fun, and can deliver the type of intangibles that really makes life joyful.
If you feel that working with people-centric people who love creating opportunities through delivering excellence sounds like a good idea, I’d love to connect. 😀
Until we do, thanks for reading!
Stewy