The Story of Your Life

story

Don’t worry, this isn’t a lead article with some in-depth analysis of the recent One Direction hit bearing the (almost) same name as my headline. No, it’s much more substantive than that.

I’m writing this just a few days after our National Event at Wembley Stadium. There were over 800 members there that day and the highlight was undoubtedly Jim Lawless’s presentation entitled “Taming Tigers”.

I know so many people took such a lot of value – and inspiration – from Jim’s clear articulation of his 10 rules, underpinned by his stories of becoming a jockey and also Britain’s free-dive record holder. For me, the biggest take-away from his talk was the notion that we are all, today, writing the stories of our own lives.

Of course, none of us knows how many pages we’ve got left (!) but we are in control of what kind of story we tell. Is yours a blockbuster, full of action, excitement and fulfilment?

It made me reflect on my own life and how I’m doing (I scored good!) and, in the process, I was reminded of a very influential teacher of mine at Temple Moor comprehensive school in Leeds over 30 years ago. His name was Mr Bentley and he taught us for Maths. He was best the teacher I ever had.

He made maths come alive and every day, in his class, was mind bending. I bloody loved it. (Interestingly, I can barely remember any of my other teachers, but I digress).

Anyway, one day Mr Bentley, veering off-topic himself, asked the class “What’s the greatest of all virtues?”

We all sort of stared at him for a while and then suggested things like honesty, generosity, self-discipline…to which he replied, “No, none of those are correct”. “The greatest of all virtues” he said, “is courage, because if you don’t have courage, you’ll never live out any of the other virtues”.

The fact that this incident happened 32 years ago, and that I can recall it as if it was last week, tells you what a profound impact it had on me and I was reminded of it once again during Jim Lawless’s talk.

Jim’s opening rule for taming the tiger is “Act boldly today – time is limited” and I know that made an impression on quite a few people there because I’ve had eleven emails from people acting boldly and asking/proposing/suggesting something that they want to do with me/EC. And that’s good.

But, what does understanding that the greatest of all virtues is courage actually mean and how can you utilise it in your business on daily basis?

Well, I reckon that one of the key elements of courage is conviction. In a business context, that means that you have to believe that what you’re doing is good and valuable.

When you know, deep down, that what you sell has a rock-solid centre, it lends you a conviction and confidence that ‘bluster’ alone can never replace. The next step then is communicating that conviction to the wider world… conveying your deep sense of confidence to them.

It seems to me that if advertising is the making of promises then virtue is the keeping of those same promises. Lots of businesses have failed by only doing one or the other.

Think about that last sentence carefully. I’ve definitely fallen foul of it myself in the past. Some businesses overpromote and over-promise – and then fail to deliver. Ultimately, they fail. Many more, however, are fantastic at delivering on their promises but never amplify their message or convey the conviction and confidence in what they do and, as a result, whilst they may not fail completely, they are destined to a life of massively unfulfilled potential.

I know, for a fact, that there are lots of EC members in this latter category. You could be one of them. I promise you, lifetime success flows from both the making of promises and the keeping of them.

I told a story at Wembley about a new member of our team here at Botty Towers. His name is Graham Jelfs and, at his interview, he told me a story about when he used to work with Chris Blackwell at Island Records in the early 80s (about the same time that Mr Bentley was getting me to think deeply in maths lessons!).

Graham told me of a poster on the wall in the Island offices that said, against a background of a palm tree and the azure blue sea, “A terrible thing happens if you fail to promote….” – Then, down at the bottom of the poster in very small print was the word, “Nothing”.

Too many businesses lack the courage and conviction to embark on a proper campaign of promotion of what it is that they do. They’re not making the promises – even though they’re keeping them. Make sense?

This is arguably one of the most profound and meaningful articles I’ve ever written for this Circular and I hope I’ve done it justice because I know that such a high proportion of our members – including you – could take so much from it.

Allied to the lessons in Jim’s presentation, it really could be life changing but only if you have the courage to not just read it but to do something about it.

As ever, me and the team are on standby to help you in any way that we can. All you’ve got to do is call….

Have a great month