Four Business Tips From Floella and Humpty Dumpty...!

Last summer my 12 year old son jumped off a wall and broke his arm really badly.  Both bones needed pins and his recovery was very painful. Fortunately young bodies heal remarkably well and unlike Humpty Dumpty, who also fell off a wall, he was put back together again quickly, thanks to a great surgeon and his team.

Jack’s had to deal with a few things apart from physical pain as a result of his accident.

Simply jumping off a wall without checking the terrain on the other side has made him slightly more cautious perhaps.  He certainly has more empathy for others in pain - he told me the other day that he doesn’t find the tv show ‘You’ve Been Framed’ as funny anymore.

He’s had to find deep courage to help him through his ordeal.  The thought of playing sport again worries him. He’s nervous about being knocked down in Rugby.  He doesn’t trust his body as much as he did before. It’s a shame when you’re only twelve to have already faced the fact that you’re not invincible.

But the exuberance of youth is slowly coming back.  In spite of being convinced that he’d never be able to use his arm in the same way again, we caught him hanging from the monkey bars in the playground the other day.  At first I was terrified and cross!

Thankfully I quickly got a grip and took a photo to mark the occasion.

If only we could be so resilient in business!

If you’ve started a business that’s not going as well as you’d hoped, lost a contract or had a project go wrong, it can be easy to get down about it all.  If you’ve lost money or trust in other people because of the way they’ve treated you, it’s tough to put yourself back together, get back on the wall and jump off again.  

In business, in spite of projections and forecasts, planning and goal setting the terrain on the other side of every decision is uncertain.  Brexit, the economy, Russia, the US… all factors over which we have little if any control. We cannot predict the future.  Until we jump we don’t know if the ground is going to fall away and be far steeper than we expected.

The ups and downs of running your own business can be exhilarating and devastating, sometimes in the same week.  And yet once you’ve run your own show it’s incredibly difficult to go back to the corporate world. The autonomy, the coalface, the decisions that are yours alone to make.  The rollercoaster ride of a business owner can be quite addictive if you like a bit of spice in your life!

I had the privilege of hearing the wonderful Floella Benjamin speak the other day.

Floella of Play School fame is just as relevant to young people today as she approaches 70 as she was to us.

She’s now Baroness Floella Benjamin OBE and she's on a mission to change the world, one child at a time. I know she made a huge impact on her audience which ranged from tots to pensioners through stories about her youth and the retelling of the Three Little Pigs with all the squeals and arm waving you’d expect.  Even Humpty Dumpty showed his face!

Floella talked about the three C’s that she feels are so important for children to learn to help them become more resilient in life, all wrapped up in a fourth C.  But they’re vital for business owners to embrace too. I have paraphrased her tips here and applied them to our business lives.

Consideration - Don’t be judgemental.  If customers and colleagues aren’t reacting in the way we expect try not to take it personally.  We don’t know what’s going on in their lives.

Contentment - Have a happy and contented heart and don’t be too impatient in our efforts to achieve business success. Understand and accept that we are on a journey and that we are where we are.  We have to just keep on keeping on and be gentle with ourselves if things aren’t moving quite as quickly as we’d like.

Confidence - So much in business is about believing in ourselves and knowing that we’ll do a great job.  If we care about our customers and colleagues and truly want to support their success, if we’re committed to always learning and trying new approaches, taking responsibility and bringing our expertise and experience to bear we can be confident in our ability to serve our customers to the best of our ability. The more we give, the more we will receive.

Courage - Just like my Jack after his wall jumping experience, when things go wrong or if we suddenly find we aren’t quite heading in the direction we expected, we have to put ourselves back together again.  Sometimes a bit battered and wary, eventually we have to take a deep breath, let the enthusiasm for being in business seep back in, learn lessons and apply all that new wisdom, experience and know-how to the next project.

Running your own business is serious stuff.  Getting a job would definitely be simpler. But we’ve got independent, flexible, successful and exciting lives to lead.

We’ve discovered that the safety net of a steady job isn’t for us. We’re warriors and courageous, empathetic experts who understand our customer’s problems and can solve them.  

We’re doing this to create a better life for our families and our customers and if we keep Floella and Humpty Dumpty’s tips in mind we can be confident of a bright future!

References and credits

https://rockingyourrole.com/floella-benjamins-4-cs-philosophy-on-life/

https://www.floellabenjamin.com

Photos of Jack used with his kind permission :)