Monday, 8.40am
Sheffield, U.K.
Everyone has an invisible sign hanging from their neck saying, ‘Make me feel important.’ Never forget this message when working with people. – Mary Kay Ash
I’ve spent the last 20 years learning about business.
And there are two things I would advise myself to do ten years ago.
1. Build deep knowledge
Surface level knowledge is not enough.
Deep knowledge comes from working on an area of interest. Building craft skills, technical knowledge and muscle and brain memory.
We’re all good at different things.
I know people who would rather clean their cars than spend time with a book, while I’m the opposite – I do not like manual work but I’ll spend hours with words or numbers.
It’s the thing you do differently, almost obsessively, that you get good at.
And it’s that deep knowledge that lets you create new products and services.
2. Build wide relationships
We spend our careers looking down at our work but we need to also spend time looking around and seeing who else is out there.
Build your network early.
It takes time – and the one thing I wished I had done more is reach out and connect earlier in my career.
The more people out there that will take your call, the better your chances of reaching customers for your business.
Deep and Wide – That’s the secret
A good business creates value for a customer.
You create value through deep knowledge. And you create customers by drawing on wide connetions.
Get these two things right and it’s hard to fail.
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
Handcrafted insight 