Opportunity is all around you but do you have the foresight to grab it

On a scale of 1–10 how entrepreneurial would you say you really are? 🤔

Be honest — especially considering most of us are terrible at judging our own abilities

Do you view everyone you meet as a potential buyer? 🤑

Do you look for the haggle in everything you do? 🤝

Do you see the opportunity to market your businesses at every event you attend? 📣

People who say yes to the above are the exception I’ve discovered; the simple reality is that most people need to be physically hit over the head with an opportunity before they realise it’s there. 😒

I once was in a bar with a friend who was moaning about how difficult it was to meet women in London without using a Dating app, when a lady sat at the end of our table joined in with our conversation empathising with him.

10 mins later when she left, I pointed out to my friend that he had just met someone naturally so was surprised that he hadn’t asked for her number — he was flabbergasted as he had completely missed that. 🤷🏻‍♂️

In a similar way, I am often surprised when debriefing with a team member after a client meeting about how they missed all the hooks the client was throwing out. 🙁

The good news is that you can develop these skills

I’d say that in the last 5 years (since I started Shiageto Consulting), my entrepreneurial muscle has grown exponentially. 💪

I now can’t help but spot opportunity all around me in all aspects of my business.

Some of my best recent sales have come from spotting the opportunity, selling to:

• someone I met at a friend’s wedding 💒
• someone I went on a failed date with 💔
• someone who saw me deliver one of my talks 🧑‍🎤
• someone who heard me on a podcast 🎙️
• someone I met at a networking event 👥
• a cold caller trying to sell me recruitment services 📞
• someone I hadn’t seen in over 10 years
• someone who used to be my junior team member who liked working with me 👨‍👦
• someone who reads this newsletter 🗞️

Some of my best marketing ideas have come from nowhere:

• doing crazy challenges 🎈
• sponsoring my local football team ⚽
• giving out branded socks at the end of every workshop 🧦
• using a billboard campaign for a major insurer to promote my own business 📰
• doing stand out pitches 🎤
• sharing my journey 🫣

And I now always look to negotiate or squeeze a little something out of everything:

• I always look to swap client products, services or office space for our services if fees are not forthcoming
• I always try to make the most of client engagements with holidays or other such perks
• I always use client engagements to promote the business
• I regularly swap membership of some fantastic members clubs for one of my public talks
• just this week I renegotiated the fees on our accounting, banking and other subscriptions getting an average of 10% off each
• heck I even talked my way out of a recent traffic fine

The sooner you can flick your own entrepreneurial switch the better

Let’s be honest building a business from scratch is hard enough and you really need to fight to stand out from the crowd so getting your entrepreneurial muscle built up fast is vital.

Here’s 3 steps to make it happen:

1. Partner up with someone who is really good at it already and just observe; go to meetings together or brainstorm a situation together and compare notes to see what you might have missed
2. Look at every situation the same way your arch competitor (aka a nemesis) would; i.e. ask yourself each time what would they do (invariably they would ask for the sale, they would pick up the phone, they would make that post) and then do that
3. Add 17% to every idea; you can stretch every idea you ever have to make it a little bolder, e.g. it could be asking for 17% extra on your fees, or upgrading your email by 17% (aka by making the language more definitive or even better making it a phone call) or pushing to chase clients that are 17% bigger.

[P.S. 17% is just a number to make you stretch yourself (10% is so conformist after all but you can pick another number if you like)]

Do these 3 things and trust me, you will start to see a return and the results will start to flood in. 🙌

In fact, I’m so confident that I await all the stories of the benefits you get; that’s what I Love about sharing such powerful techniques 😊

See you on the other side of having bigger entrepreneurial muscles 💪

Faris

Faris is the CEO and Founder of Shiageto Consulting, an innovative consultancy that helps firms and individuals sharpen their effectiveness. Connect with him here

Success = IQ x EQ x FQ

Want to assess your levels of IQ, EQ and FQ? click here

Originally Published on https://farisaranki.medium.com/

Faris Aranki Strategy & Emotional Intelligence

Having spent over 20 years delivering strategic change for the corporate and non-corporate worlds, Faris has experienced first-hand the fine differences between strategic success and failure.
His work has spanned numerous companies (from global behemoths to small start-ups), in numerous countries, across a range of sectors, supporting them all to unlock strategic success.

He came to realize that often what hinders institutions from achieving their goals goes beyond the quality of their strategy; it is their ability to engage effectively with others at all levels and remove barriers in their way. This has led to his passion for improving strategic effectiveness within all businesses and individuals and the foundation of Shiageto Consulting.

Over time, Faris has worked to distill his knowledge of how to solve complex problems in a structured manner combined with his skill on engaging effectively with others and his ability to quickly determine the barriers to a strategy's success. This knowledge has formed the foundation of Shiageto’s workshops, courses and methodologies. Faris believes that any firm or team can adopt these improvements; all it requires is a little of the right support -something Shiageto provides!

On top of leading our business, Faris is now an accomplished speaker and contributor for a variety of outlets.