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PII 088: To Succeed, an Entrepreneur Needs to Know Some Friends and Relatives May NOT Be On Her Side

I state truths that many will find uncomfortable in this piece. But they need to be said, because they are based on realities of life.

Bob Marley, the late Reggae music legend saw enough of it, to sing about it in his song “Who the cap fit”. So I know I’m in good company as I take the plunge to write this 😉

Let me begin by stating a bias that I have developed based on personal observations and experiences over the past 14 years, as follows:

To get along – and remain on good terms – with most friends and relatives, I would suggest that you DO NOT BECOME AN ENTREPRENEUR.

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Tayo Solagbade's Performance Improvement IDEAS(PI Squared) Newsletter

Tayo Solagbade’s
Performance Improvement 
IDEAS
(PI Squared) Newsletter

Monday 16th October 2017

Logo - Tayo Solagbade's Self-Development Academy


NB: This PI Squared newsletter will be published weekly, on Mondays, in place of the Speaking/Web Marketing IDEAS newsletter, starting from today – 15th February 2016.
 I’m reinventing my Monday newsletter content and theme, to accommodate my vision of serving the growing audience of serious minded individuals and organizations reaching out to me, with information, education. news and research findings designed to help them do what they do better.

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View Tayo Solagbade's video tutorials and demonstrations on Facebook Productivity Tips, Web Marketing, and for his Custom MS Excel-VB driven software applicationsJoin the SD Nuggets community on Facebook.comConnect with Tayo on Twitter.comConnect with Tayo on Google PlusConnect with Tayo on LinkedIn.com

PII 088: To Succeed, an Entrepreneur Needs to Know Some Friends and Relatives May NOT Be On Her Side

I state truths that many will find uncomfortable in this piece. But they need to be said, because they are based on realities of life.

Bob Marley, the late Reggae music legend saw enough of it, to sing about it in his song “Who the cap fit”. So I know I’m in good company as I take the plunge to write this 😉

marley-worst-enemy

Let me begin by stating a bias that I have developed based on personal observations and experiences over the past 14 years, as follows:

To get along – and remain on good terms – with most friends and relatives, I would suggest that you DO NOT BECOME AN ENTREPRENEUR.

Now, before I explain why I hold that opinion, I must ask you to note that owning a business enterprise will NOT necessarily make you an AUTHENTIC entrepreneur.

There are specific distinguishing attributes that set a real entrepreneur apart from the crowd of others that people may see in society.

Quite often an authentic entrepreneur would be one who makes a habit of straying from the established path or traditional ways of doing things.

S/he would be the one to fearlessly venture BEYOND the realms of the familiar to break new ground and test new ideas way outside what others consider sane or possible.

You know those kinds of people who try to do what no one has ever done before – and who refuse to let others, no matter how wise their counsel, tell them it’s IMPOSSIBLE.

Yes. Entrepreneurs are dreamers – and they are typically willing to go out on a limb, to put everything they own on the line, to pursue and achieve their dreams, even when NOT assured of success!

Since the larger majority of people in society tend not to be so willing to think and act as crazy as described above, most authentic entrepreneurs may tend to find themselves regarded as crazy or odd.

And so even though they would love to have people around most “normal” people would carefully avoid staying too long around them. As a result they would tend to be alone – at least until they achieve the inevitable breakthrough that makes them “famous” or successful. Then suddenly, in typical predictable human fashion, most people would suddenly want to be associated with them!

However, it’s the period before they arrive at “successville” that this article refers to, in discussing the kinds of people an entrepreneur needs to exercise caution in relating with

Failure to do so could cause him/her to get easily sabotage by people with ulterior motives – some of who could be close friends and relatives!

Yep. I say this without apology: Some so called friends/relatives can play roles that amount to sabotage in the life of an entrepreneur they claim to “love” or care for.

marley-worst-enemy1

I once read an article by an entrepreneur who in describing his startup experiences stated that after trying without success to get him to change his mind and venture into some other area they considered to offer more realistic chances of success, some close relatives “folded their hands and watched, waiting for him to fail”.

In other words, rather than give him the help he needed, they chose to leave him hanging. And what did he want? It was that they purchase equity in his business, or loan him money. Luckily he found willing others, who were more or less total strangers but who saw the potential in his business idea.

This happens more than most people realize. Relatives can be the most critical and unforgiving of those an entrepreneur may have to deal with. Especially when you are yet to achieve a sustainable breakthrough.

Under certain circumstances, in certain cultures, one could actually be right to assume that some friends/relatives could pose a DANGER to an entrepreneur’s ability to succeed (or keep succeeding)…

Those who fall into this category have the tendency to believe that being close to you, makes them an authority on what you can or cannot do.

You see, our close friends/relatives will often be the ones who SEE us when we fall, fail, make mistakes, have setback etc.

Quite often some of them will be the ones who help us get back on our feet – or at the least they will be witnesses to the PROCESS we went through, to find our feet again.

Now, until we hit it big and achieve that crucial breakthrough into the big leagues, so long as we’re still not up there, people like that can develop what amounts to a SUPERIORITY complex of sorts.

Lacking the insights to understand that the failure we experience are TEACHING us how to succeed, many of them typically sit back in their armchairs passing comments and judgments about how they “warned” so and so, but s/he would not listen.

Then when you achieve some notable success, they conveniently pretend not to hear about it, and so do not pas THAT bit of news to the fan club they’ve been talking about you to.

Why? Because if they did, then it would look like they did not know what they were talking about earlier when they criticized you to them!

And that’s what makes these kinds of people potentially dangerous!

What I have learned from YEARS of personal experience as well as careful study and observation, is that even your so called close friend or relative can feel threatened by your success if, for instance, s/he believes it will make him/her lose face!

So, if/when s/he finds him/herself in a position to play a role that can determine if you achieve THAT major breakthrough, to success that you’ve announced you’re capable of (and which s/he has told everyone you’re not up to), s/he could choose to BLOCK it.

A relative you do not see eye to eye with during family gatherings, and who you make a point of calling out for bad behavi0ur, could insist to others that your disposition to him/her implies you would not be able to relate well with clients. And based on that justification would discourage them from buying into the business you wish to start – arguing that your customer relations would be lacking to keep clients.

That of course does NOT follow – but people like that who secretly have an axe to grind with you, would latch on to any opportunity to pass judgment on you in that manner.

Beware of The Ones Who Pretend to Believe!

marley-worst-enemy2

I prefer people who let you know what they think, to those who hide their true feelings just to take advantage of you.

Most times you would never get to hear what they did. But every once in a while, you would meet get wind of what they said through an innocent third party, that was present, but who may  not even know you’re related to the person they heard it from – and that YOU were the subject of the discussion!

Some people are skilled in pretending to be on “your side” – so they can fool you into letting them come close and gain access to inside information about what you’re doing, and how you’re getting on.

Then they take that information obtained via privileged access to you, and go sharing it with others that you’re not as close to – using it to get bragging rights.

However, they never speak on your behalf – and actually share the negative views about you, or your chosen path, that are held by the others – only they do not say so to YOUR FACE!

If you have a friend or relative like that, you’ll have to work hard to unmask him/her!

Such people are called “Anchorless Social Chameleons” in the bestseller titled “Emotional Intelligence”.

There is a real danger that you may not discover you have an Anchorless Social Chameleon in your inner circle, until you’ve been dealt a painful “blow” of sorts by such two-faced or duplicitous individuals!

I recall the story told to me by the relative of a diplomat I once worked with. He explain that a cousin of his, who was a niece to the man, had gotten admission to study overseas in a US university.

They had run around to get the needed funds and when they needed a passport, had naturally reached out to this diplomat relative to help with THAT.

To their amazement, he not only failed to help process the application, but actually SAT on all the documents claiming he’d misplaced them, offering no alternative for them to pursue, UNTIL the time for submission elapsed.

The girl’s mother never forgave the man. It might interest you to know that this person had BOTH his own kids already schooling/working abroad – so it was not that it was a new experience for him. Like the young man who told me the story, that was the reason for the bad blood I’d asked him about that I noticed between the man and his less well-to-do sister (the girl’s mother).

Except you’re psychic, it’s impossible to know if a particular person(s) harbor(s) ill feelings towards you e.g. what they say when you’re not there i.e. behind your back.

It goes without saying though that NOT ALL friends/relatives will be like this.

Of course not!

The challenge will however be for you to LEARN how to identify those who can be TRUSTED and to what extent EACH can be trusted.

Life can be so complex and confusing sometimes. Why can’t things be so simpler? Why do human beings have to be some difficult to predict.

Well, I’ve asked myself those questions so many times over the years as I dealt with the backlash of gossip, innuendo, even vicious backstabbing from those I least expected it: close friends and relatives.

And I’ve come to the conclusion: You’d have to become GOD to fully answer those questions!

So I’ve learned instead to keep my own counsel, guarding myself and my vision as I pursue achievement of my valued life goals.

But whenever the opportunity presents itself, I do not hesitate to give direct feedback to any persons I find guilty of acting without integrity in relating with me – along the lines discussed in this article.

That is the best one can do – as life cannot be lived without these potentially negative experiences. Truth be told, they ultimately build us up, forcing us to grow and mature in ways we would otherwise probably NOT have done.

Here’s wishing you good luck as you continue in your pursuit of success, while learning to handle relatives who may play roles that test your limits and/or your patience!

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SDN Blog™

New posts from last week*

Monday:

[Wednesday]:

[Thursday]:

[RECOMMENDED] DIY Africa: Empowering a new Sierra Leone – Kelvin Doe, Self-Taught Engineering Teenage Whiz From Sierra Leone, Wows MIT Experts (VIDEO) – As seen on CNN, HuffingtonPost, Wikipedia etc

[Friday]: 

N/A

[Saturday]:

N/A

[Sunday]:

The FARM CEO (Issue 96) – FEEDING SNAILS: Researchers Discover Moringa Can Do It Better & Cheaper!

Tayo K. Solagbade*

Self-Development/Performance Improvement Specialist and Multipreneur

*Best Practice Farm Business Support Specialist & Founder of the MS Excel Heaven Visual Basic Automation Club and Competition

Mobile: +234-803-302-1263 (in Nigeria) or +229-66-122-136 (in Benin Republic)

http://www.tayosolagbade.com

Tayo K. Solagbade is a Location Independent Performance Improvement Specialist and Multipreneur (i.e. a highly versatile/multi-skilled entrepreneur), with a bias for delivering Best Practice solutions to Farm Businesses and others.

Since 2002, he has earned multiple streams of income providing individuals and organizations with personal development training and coaching, custom MS Excel-VB solutionsweb marketing systems/ web hosting, freelance writing services, and best practice extension support services (for farm business owners).

Tayo is the author of the Self-Development (SD) Bible™ and the popular Livestock Feed Formulation Handbook. He is also the developer of its accompanying Excel-VB driven Ration Formulator™ and the Poultry Farm Manager™ software.

He has delivered talks/papers to audiences in various groups and organizations, including the Centre for Management Development, University of Lagos, Christ Baptist Church, Volunteer Corps, Tantalisers Fast Foods and others.

In May 2012 he was the Guest Speaker at the Centre for Entrepreneurship Development’s Annual Semester Entrepreneurial Lecture at Yaba College of Technology in Lagos.

On 1st April 2013, Tayo (who reads, write and speaks the French language) relocated to Cotonou, Benin Republic to begin slowly traveling across the West African region.

His key purpose is to deliver talks, seminars and workshops on his key areas of focus and interest to interested audiences (Email tayo at tksola dot com for details).

In a previous life, before leaving to become self-employed, Tayo served for seven years (October 1994 to December 2001) as a high performing manager in Guinness Nigeria. He rose from Shift Brewer to Training & Technical Development Manager, and later acted in senior roles as Production Manager and Technical Manager.

In addition to constantly challenging the status quo and influencing positive work changes, he built a reputation for using self-taught spreadsheet programming skills (starting with Lotus 1-2-3, and later moving to Excel Visual Basic) – in his spare time – to develop Automated Spreadsheet Applications to computerize manual report generation processes in the departments he worked. Over four(4) of his applications were adopted for brewery level reporting.

Tayo holds a B.Sc degree in Agricultural Extension Services from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, having graduated top of his class – with Second Class Upper Division honors – in 1992. He is an Associate Member of the UK Institute & Guild of Brewing, a 1997 National Finalist of the Nigerian Institute of Management’s(NIM) Young Managers’ competition, a Certified Psychometric Test Administrator for Psytech UK, innovator of Spontaneous Coaching for Self-Development™ (SCfS-D™), and Founder of the Self-Development Academy (SDAc).

When he’s not amazing clients with his superhuman skills (wink), Tayo works as the creative force behind his Daily Self-Development Nuggets blog – on which he also publishes The Farm CEO Weekly Newspaper (sent via email to paid subscribers) and his Weekly Performance Improvement IDEAS newsletter.

You can connect with him on Twitter @tksola.com and Facebook.

Visit Tayo Solagbade Dot Com, to download over over 10 performance improvement resources to boost your personal and work related productivity.

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[IMPORTANT NOTE:====

On 4th May 2014, Tayo’s 9 year old domain (Spontaneousdevelopment dot com), which hosted his website, was taken over by Aplus.net.

Within a few days however, Tayo used his advanced self-taught web development skills to build a SUPERIOR “reincarnation” of it the website http://www.tayosolagbade.com.

But updates are still ongoing to URLs bearing the old domain name in most of the over 1,000 web pages, and blog posts he’s published.

If you experience any difficulties finding a page or document, email Tayo at tksola dot com.

Click “Tayo, What Happened to SpontaneousDevelopmentDotCom ?” to read a detailed narrative about how the above event occurred :-))

Here’s an article Tayo wrote, to inspire others to defy adversity, and bounce back to even greater reckoning at what they do EVERY time:

Succeed by Emerging from Adversity Like a Phoenix

(TayoSolagbade.com launches extra Hosting plan with FREE Web Marketing!)

And he wrote the one below, to explain why losing a domain name, no matter how old, NO LONGER determines your online success or otherwise:

A Proven Strategy to Find Profitable Buyers Regardless of Your Domain Name
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View Tayo Solagbade's video tutorials and demonstrations on Facebook Productivity Tips, Web Marketing, and for his Custom MS Excel-VB driven software applicationsJoin the SD Nuggets community on Facebook.comConnect with Tayo on Twitter.comConnect with Tayo on Google PlusConnect with Tayo on LinkedIn.com

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