The Drive to Aim High Read online

  In my last year of university studies, I began working as a sales agent at a telecommunication company. I use the word “telecom” company, but actually, it was a paging company. Paging is now outdated, even antiquated. But, it’s important to note that paging was the beginning of texting and consisted of very short messages. Many times it just displayed a phone number to call back. But still, this was the genesis of texting. When I began working there, I was 27 years old.

  My girlfriend Brindusa (now my wife) got a job at the paging company before I did. I was surprised how easily she got that job because she was shy and not a salesperson type. But for me, getting a position as a sales agent in such a place as the paging company would have meant so much. It’s difficult to comprehend now just how important getting that position would have meant to me. This was all related to my childhood impression about what my stepfather back in Liberia, starting as a sales agent, had achieved.

  The company was called Bel Pagette Romania. It was owned by a Serbian-Canadian businessman named Zoran. It was one of the top paging companies during the mid-1990s in Romania.

  I applied for the job and to my sheer joy, got it. As sales agents, our pay was strictly commission based, no salary. There was a one-day training and off we went, looking for customers on the market. I was assigned to a team leader that would supervise our day-to-day activities. Brindusa was also working under his supervision, so we quickly formed a team. I was responsible for setting up the meetings, making the presentations and negotiating, while she handled calculations and contracts. Fortunately, we both excelled in our areas of responsibility. Therefore, we made a great team.

  Being new to the business, I sat in the office the first several days, observing how my colleagues were working. On the wall there was a list of general managers at certain companies considered unapproachable. But those were the biggest companies in Romania, and therefore, had the highest potential to buy pagers.

  Inquiring why my colleagues couldn’t contact these companies, I discovered the problem was that they couldn’t get past the secretaries. The phone calls would not be transferred to the managers, the decision makers.

  My strategy was to get to the office before 7:30 in the morning, a time when I knew that the secretaries weren’t going to be on duty, yet. Therefore, that’s when I started to make my sales calls. During those days, there were only landlines. The mobile telephone was not yet available. When I dialed the number, guess who answered the phone? The general manager/CEO. Why? Most of the major companies during those days were managed by expats. Expats went to work early in the morning.

  I think I realized that because of my dad. Although he was an ambassador, he used to leave the house very early to go to the office, earlier than the rest of the staff. Assuming that could be a trait shared by other CEOs, I expected to find them alone in their offices early in the mornings, long before their secretaries arrived for work. It turned out my hunch was right!

  Once I had unlocked that secret, it became my routine to go to the office early, make my calls, and then set appointments with those companies, previously considered untouchable. When I arrived at Bel Pagette, the highest number of pagers ever sold on a contract was somewhere around 10. The commission system was beyond generous for that amount. But, when you sold more than 10 pagers, the reward was more like heaven on earth.

  My first contract, together with Brindusa, proved to be an astonishing feat! Do you want to venture a guess of how many pagers we sold with a one-year subscription? Sixty-six pagers! The commission we received from that first sale crippled the company that month. It was outrageous; but for us, truly amazing. The company changed the commission system immediately after that. With that opportunity, I proved that with passion and innovation one can work wonders. I was thinking outside the box, and it worked.

  Upon my graduation from university, I was promoted to sales manager. Soon after, I went on to become sales and marketing manager at Bel Pagette. That was the beginning of my career in Romania. The company’s philosophy was centered on the passion concept created by Zoran. I was most definitely full of passion.

  Zoran is also one of the best salespeople I’ve ever come across in my entire life. At Bel Pagette, passion meant how the people, attitude, service, sales, and innovation created an outstanding culture. This was the essence of their philosophy, and it was tied to my own beliefs about passion and success.

  Every step of my life, every aim, every accomplishment, my sense of purpose - all of these are deeply connected with my roots, the beginning of my ride. Remember, my first stepfather back in Liberia embodied my idea of becoming a salesman first. It was the first rung on a ladder toward reaching success as a businessman. That’s why following in his footsteps was part of my dream. I followed that dream with dedication, commitment, and passion, and therefore, delivered excellent results.

  Also, starting my career at Bel Pagette kept me on the path of remaining in Romania. Because of my successful experience at Bel Pagette, I would go on to work for other top companies like Vodafone Romania and Exact Software Romania, and, ultimately, would set up my own business.

  What I learned by applying the passion mindset to my work life was that it served as a constant springboard for opportunity. Why? People could see my passion, which translated to them as a spirit of commitment, coupled with a can-do attitude. I’m sure you have seen the powerful difference you feel, for example, when you hear someone who exudes passion when singing or acting. You get engaged. You want to cheer them on.

  Take a moment to think about the top three things you currently are most passionate about. Then, go to three people you know well and ask them what they think your top three passions are. See if they match what you think. Often they will share insights that surprise you. You see, we often don’t realize that we might not be tapping into our passions to leverage our lives.

  So, I encourage you to go once through this exercise of interviewing your friends and family. Then, on a daily basis, write more about your passion. Follow the steps below to grow your passion mindset.

  Steps to Integrate the Passion Mindset into Your Daily Life

  Many people do not know what they are passionate about. The first step to creating a passion mindset is acknowledging what you love. The second step is pursuing it.

  Ask yourself regularly, “What am I most passionate about?” I’ve been asked so many times by friends and others what keeps me connected to my business, or why I’m so passionate about my business. So, here’s my question to you: what are you most passionate about?

  Look at those achievements in your life where financial drive wasn’t your main motivator - you just wanted to do your part. If you were onstage at the National Opera, or playing tennis on center court at the US Open, you were where you wanted to be, fully engaged in your passion. For me, one of my main passions is running my advertising agency. Part of what drives that passion is that I see this as all about providing the best services possible to my clients.

  Reflect on what you love doing so much that it doesn’t necessarily matter if there is a financial benefit. Picture the final moments when you finished something you loved doing - the feeling of self-accomplishment, your smile - it’s a sign of your passion mindset.

  Choose one or two passions that you can go back to when faced with other challenges in your life. It could be building Legos, doing crossword puzzles, biking cross-country, cooking, painting, playing tennis, going to the gym, and so on. Doing activities that you love brings back your confidence and relaxes your mind.

  Get coaching. If you don’t know what brings you passion, the solution is simple. Seek coaching to discover what your passion is. There are life coaches, mentors, even family members, and friends who can help you discover your passions.

  05

  THE COURAGE MINDSET

  “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”

  —Winston Churchill

  Churchill’s quote eloquentl
y shares insight that constitutes the most important mantra you can carry throughout your life. It’s something that I know has had a major influence on my path to success. Even as a young child, courage was necessary for me to just get by on a daily basis.

  As a little kid, I used to walk with my mom and my dad between villages. This was a long, grueling walk as there were many kilometers between one village and the next. And you had to constantly stay alert because there were hazards each step of the way. I think part of my natural bravery comes from the fact that I had the perfect environment to develop courage in my early childhood.

  I grew up in a place where bravery and courage were part of daily life. Going into the woods to look for dry wood to make a fire, down the road to bring water from the creek, or staying out of the way of wild animals, or just walking to the farm required bravery and courage for both adults and children.

  The fact that I was brought up with different families, and was there to serve those families, impacted me differently. It’s not like I was a foster child where I was given all the same benefits as their birth children. Yes, I was treated humanely, but I had tasks to perform every day in exchange for the care I received. I had to wash dishes, iron clothes, and go on errands to purchase bread and to shop. That was part of my preparation to become brave, and to later overcome difficulties with the courage to move on.

  Courage is not the absence of fear. It is the ability to do something that frightens you even if you are scared the entire time you are doing it! Up until this point it sounds like things were hard or difficult for me, but they were not insurmountable or frightening. Later on, in my professional life, I was faced with situations even more frightening that I believe anyone else may have given up entirely had they been faced with the same obstacles.

  I lost everything when I went through bankruptcy. I had to borrow money from friends. I was sued. Friends and investors turned on me and filed false reports so that I wound up being investigated for fraud in Romania. Without a courage mindset, I would have given up and never survived. That’s why I think this is one of the most helpful and powerful mindsets to develop.

  I graduated from university at age 28. The Bel Pagette position as sales and marketing manager was the job I held until graduation. This was where I developed my drive for passion that still lives in me today.

  As is typical in the world of fast-evolving technology, the Romanian telecom market changed dramatically when mobile phone service providers entered the market. Paging service companies lost most of their customers virtually overnight, leading Zoran to immediately sell Bel Pagette.

  When the epidemic started, my team went out in search of new opportunities. My role at that moment was to support them. I supported them with advice on how to prepare their Curriculum Vitae and wrote them letters of recommendation. In the end, I also needed to move on.

  That was when I applied to Vodafone, without even knowing if they had any job vacancies. I just submitted my CV and letter of intention to the Human Resources Department. I was called a few days later. I guess Vodafone already knew about me because they also hired most of my sales team from Bel Pagette. Perhaps, they read the many letters I wrote and signed as sales and marketing manager of Bel Pagette.

  Still, this was not an immediate offer of employment. I had to jump through many hoops and go through several interviews. It was a long, arduous process. But, my gut feeling was that it would all be worth it. I think I had six interviews, starting with Human Resources. Next, I completed assessments in the areas of sales, marketing and advertising, and finally, I interviewed with Karla, the Vice-President of Sales and Marketing.

  During that final interview, I told a joke by asking Karla if Vodafone wanted to hire me secretly as the new CEO because my first name was the same as their current CEO, Al. I joked that hiring me as the new CEO to replace him might make it easier for the staff to accept the change. As it turned out, all of those other departments I had interviewed with wanted me. Now, following my meeting with her, the Vice-President had the final decision.

  I felt really good. This was a unique feeling, unlike anything I ever had before, just knowing that I did well in front of those other managers during the interviews. When Karla shared that information with me and offered me the job, I became even more confident. It was a major aha moment. I was ready to play my role at the next level.

  I was placed in charge of the dealer’s network. At that time, I was managing about 500 dealers in Romania. I supervised the dealer’s network from the channel marketing point of view. This included overseeing how they communicated, what marketing activities the dealers implemented with the support of Vodafone, and how they developed. It was a good job, and a great company to be part of.

  With Vodafone, I traveled across Romania, doing my job while having fun at the same time. But after a year, I decided to leave because I didn’t see myself growing there. Don’t get me wrong. When I arrived at Vodafone, it was a beautiful job. I had good colleagues and actually enjoyed the work. But, I soon found myself stuck. I realized why I wasn’t reaching my full potential. I was no longer in sales; yet, sales was my passion. Sales has always been my passion and my dream.

  So, I decided to leave and to start up my own business. At that time, I remember my director telling me, “Al, if you decide to start up a business in the telecom area, Vodafone will support half of your investment.” That was a phenomenal offer! So, my first idea was to set up stores around the country to become dealers for Vodafone. I actually got the okay in principle for their support, which could have been an amazing opportunity.

  Although it was still my dream to have my own company, I soon got a job offer that I couldn’t refuse. This came from a Dutch company, Exact Software Romania. They dangled a major carrot in front of me: to become their sales manager for Romania. It was sales, and since that was my first love and passion, I took the job. I then went for training in the Netherlands, and when I came back, formed my sales team and set sales targets.

  This was exciting, but things got better. After a short period of being together with my team, we far exceeded the set targets. This was amazing and very gratifying. I got the highest appreciation from the regional Vice- President of Sales and Marketing from the company headquarters in Delft. This was when I realized that I could sell any business idea that I wanted. It added to my ability to believe in myself.

  I worked at Exact for one year. But then, I had to leave to start my company because I discovered something else about my selling skills shortly after my arrival: I could sell high-value services and products as easily as I sold inexpensive products. Enterprise Resource Planning software, consultancy, and implementation services were very expensive during the early years.

  I had no savings to speak of. But, at that time, I was very close to going out on my own. I probably had about two paychecks saved up from Exact. So, I basically started my first company without any capital, without even thinking about what was awaiting me. I was in Romania, a foreign country. It was the year 2000 when I founded my company. This was 11 years after communism had collapsed. Romania was at the beginning of its economic development and was becoming an emerging market.

  At the time I started my own company, my only true asset was my belief that I was going to succeed, no matter what I was going to do. I believed in myself so much that I made the decision to quit my job. I devoted my time and energy to develop the idea of setting up my own business.

  This is when I came up with a definition of courage as it related to my own life. For me, courage is about believing in yourself enough so that you turn every obstacle around you into windows of opportunity - jumping in points from which you can learn and progress. My belief, my mindset, that I was going to make it no matter what I found ahead of me, empowered me to make this fairly risky decision.

  I also believe that this courage actually blinded me from seeing the risk of failure. I was setting up a business in a country that was still developing. But, because I believed in my
self so much, I was pretty oblivious to the specter of potential failure even though I had no capital.

  Let me make it clear: my courage was not related to my business idea. My business ideas have changed so many times in the last 19 years, it’s not funny. My courage was based on my ability and the confidence I had in myself that I could sell whatever services I chose to offer to the market—plain and simple, and no looking back.

  It happens all around us. When you get hired at a company, you accept a job based not on what you already know about the job. You accept the job based on your abilities, and how you think you’re going to perform. Not only that, but there are the expectations of the company that’s hiring you. That creates more than a little pressure.

  You don’t accept the job because you believe so much in what you already know about the job requirement, or because of the brand/company that you’re going to work for. If they have a stellar reputation, that, of course, helps build your confidence that much more. Ultimately, we assume things in our lives because we believe in our abilities to deliver.

  For me, the fact that I was so oriented towards sales took me back once again to my first stepfather, the successful businessman. He was a businessman working with foreign companies. That was my first dream job, to become like him. Setting up my own business was living the dream that I had since the age of 10: to become a businessman.

  There I was in 2000, at the age of 32, leaving my steady, lucrative job. But I wanted more. I wanted something of my own, something I could build and watch grow. So, I went about setting up my own company. This is how things started.

  Courage Can Overcome Worry