To succeed in business, you need more emotional skills than technical skills. Technical skills like accounting, budgeting, taxation and all the other things being taught at business schools can only take you so far. If technical skills alone were necessary for spectacular business success then by now there should be no unemployment in the world.
In 2012, 286,529 people took the GMAT exam in preparation for graduate management education all over the world. In the five year period from 2008 to 2012, over 1.3 million people took the GMAT graduate management exam with over 70% of them opting for a MBA/EMBA degree. If each of them started a business that employs a minimum of 50 people each, we would have at least 46 million people employed today which would make a huge dent in the number of unemployed people today. As of today, there are over 190 million people unemployed in the world today. How many of these business school graduates became successful entrepreneurs, started successful businesses that employ hundreds of people? Well going by what you see around you, not very much. (All data is gotten from the International Labor Organization and Graduate Management Admission Council)
Note: I’ll let you in on an open secret; majority of them attended business schools solely for networking purposes.
It’s not that technical skills are not important, far from it. It’s just that they aren’t enough; they must be combined with emotional skills. Emotional skills determine how well you use your technical skills. Your technical skills (budgeting, accounting, programming etc.) are similar to a race car while your emotional skill is similar to an experienced race car driver. An average race car if driven by an experienced and savvy race driver can do wonders in the grand prix! In the words of Dale Earnhardt, a prolific American race car driver,” the winner isn’t the one with the fastest car, it’s the one who refuses to lose.”
Every time you are rejected and you become angry and you despise people, you will become bitter and slowly begin to lose your ability of mastering the emotional skills you need to succeed in business. But every time you respond well to rejection, you deepen and build the emotional muscles you need for succeed in business and life. The wrong way to respond to rejection is becoming angry, and losing faith in people. It’s not that everybody is perfect and unselfish, most people aren’t. You don’t want to lose faith in people so that you won’t shut out the opportunity of meeting and working with the bright, energetic and optimistic people out there in world.
You need to realize that rejection is not the end of the world. Nobody’s rejection of you or your product has the ability or power to end your life or kill your God-given talents. A strong realization of this fact will let you dust off any rejection you may encounter on your journey to taking control of your finances and life. And if someone rejects you, there’s someone else out there who will accept you, your business and what you have to offer.
When all the established restaurants, bars and hotels rejected my produce, I eventually found a new restaurant that was just set up in my neighborhood which accepted my produce with open arms. The new establishment was a combination of a car wash, restaurant and a dry-cleaning business all rolled into one. I started supplying them catfishes regularly and we did good business together.
Accept rejection as a necessity in your journey to becoming a successful business owner and develop the right attitude to it and every rejection you face will be turned to a wonderful and glorious opportunity for your success.
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