When you are in trouble, you are counselled “count your blessings”. To be grateful for the good things you have and stop badgering of the bad things you are beset with. What are the good things a business has given you? Let me name them one by one:
1. Grateful forever: Business gives you the sense of gratitude; you pay the salaries and wages to your employees; you file the tax returns regularly; you meet your obligations squarely and finally you reward yourself for the trouble you are taking in running the business
2. Lasting friendship: You traverse the friendship bridge. Everything you do in business is in good faith upholding noble virtues of friendship and team spirit. If you take one of these out your business flops. Alfred A Montapert put it succinctly: “All lasting business is built on friendship”.
3. Nothing but the truth: Earth has a core of minerals and melting fire; fruit has core of plum and seed. Likewise, business has a big core; not made up of metals or flesh; but with layers of truth. You strive to be truthful in all your dealings, which we call in plain word as integrity. In a small business integrity is the key strength. No surprise that John Greenleaf Whittier declared: “As a small businessperson, you have no greater leverage than the truth”.
4. Morality to the fore: Ethics and responsibility of business is a subject of debate after the Gulf fire caused by the British Petroleum (BP). US administration is now taking efforts to bring criminal action on the company’s miserable failure in not putting out the fire in timely fashion. For an ordinary business person morality shall remain the binding cord between him and people whom he associates with, in the conduct of his business. “Every young man would do well to remember that all successful business stands on the foundation of morality”, admonished Henry Ward Beecher. Morality, therefore, remains larger than life picture in your business
5. Winning Attitude: “Success or failure in business is caused more by the mental attitude even than by mental capacities”, says Walter Scott. Not a whit of doubt about it. So many guys with brilliant ideas enter the market but fail to make their mark and wither away. What is going wrong with them? Attitude, positive attitude. That is what they lacked. A sought after boon from your business is the kind of winning attitude where upon success is premised such that even if you run into snags you come out with a broad smile
6. Drive you Crazy: Pause for a moment; look at what business bestowed you now. The burning desire to do, to perform and to succeed. The coals never stopped smouldering within you. You go ahead whether rain or sunny. That is what keeps you in trim and shape, not the treadmill you work out in the evenings. Still you have to drive the business like a car or perhaps your wife. What happens if you don’t? B C Forbes gives the answer: “If you don't drive your business, you will be driven out of business”
7. Grow tall & grow big: Looks like childhood stuff. Never mind. From toddler to kid; youth to middle aged you continue to grow; so must be your business. Unless you build up your business big and tall you leave no signature of yours. Will Rogers put it this succinctly: “If you can build a business up big enough, it's respectable”. Your business gives you that dream; let the dream becomes a self-fulfilling vision
8. Never Stop running: Ostensibly, business makes you run in marathons. Success must breed further success. Any complacence skittles you off from your turf. You remain tethered to your business till you finish your marathon line and breast the red ribbon. Sample this from Thomas J Watson “Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops”
9. Cosmic Blessings: My final piece as always is to talk about how cosmics make you as a business person. I looked at what Thomas Carlyle has to say about cosmics. “ “Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness”. See how pithy and philosophical the statement is. Cosmics are aspects hidden within you influencing you in your business life. If you can understand and evaluate your cosmics you can get into right business. When your cosmics are firing in all the cylinders, you wake up in the morning, feeling in high spirit as a triumphant business person.
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