From the Introduction

In your life there will be many phases of learning and the school phase is just one of them. Moving from the school phase to the worker bee phase is a true lesson in reality. The halls of knowledge tend to be an idealistic environment inside a vacuum where studies are not putrefied by greed or anger. You may read stories of corporate mismanagement and perform case studies on unsavory business dealings but that can’t approach the reality of being involved in such a deal. Yes, it’s a jungle out there.

The lessons that we have to learn are vital to our survival on our own and they apply to just about everyone. Whether you are an entrepreneur, manager, artist, software developer, candlestick maker or everything in between you will need to learn and apply these valuable lessons. The folks who have a focus on non-business type programs may even be at a deeper disadvantage then those who studied business. Most liberal arts or technical curriculums barely touch on topics that our young people will NEED to know in order to survive in the business world. After all, even the greatest painter or greatest java programmer needs to know how to be a business person in order to survive and thrive in this world.

From Lesson One

Honest people get beaten all the time in business deals and you don’t want it to happen to you. It may have happened to you before and it might happen again. In your working life you’ll deal with businesses both big and small. You’ll deal with individuals as well. You’ll deal with people as an employer and employee. You’ll deal with people as a service provider or service receiver. In every one of these situations there is the potential for you to be taken advantage of. Not everyone makes the choice to treat others so badly, but the ones that do can make your life miserable and put a serious dent in your plans for the future. It’s because of this fact that the best way to protect yourself is to treat all of your peers in business in the same manner.

From Lesson Four

If you have a dream, idea or business on your mind then you have to be the first and foremost salesperson in order to make it happen. You can do everything else right but without sales skills your efforts to forward your ideas will be severely hampered.

Compounding the lack of emphasis on the importance of sales in business (and life) is the fact that we come to view the sales profession as a sleazy group of old men going door to door trying to sell vacuum cleaners or useless life insurance. How about those folks that call you up in the middle of dinner or your favorite TV show trying to get you to buy a time share or a satellite TV system? Those unsolicited types of sales definitely give the profession a bad name because they are annoying people.

From Lesson Nine

If you’re having trouble dealing with the many curveballs that life can throw at you then you’re probably reacting rather than anticipating. Anticipating in life and in business will make the difference and give you and edge over your competition. Anticipating is all about knowing what you’re going to face in any situation, deciding how to prepare and then taking the appropriate action. In short, you cannot be a success unless you learn to anticipate!

Knowing your business is one great step to mastering the power of anticipation. The next step is to take the time to plan. Planning is the action that creates value from knowing your business. Good planning makes the act of anticipation possible. Just like everything else that is necessary, planning takes some more time out of your day. Planning takes time out of actually executing your business, which is what many people are so great at. You must take the time to plan though. The most successful business people are the ones who learn that taking the time to plan can make all the difference in a tough business situation.