When Opportunity Knocks

I am writing this segment in the context of my Work Realm and I will be making reference to the positive impact in my Work Life of an affair I conducted with an older married man. Before you judge me according to your own values, I do it for you in Old Man’s Sweetheart. 1994 was a great year for me work wise. I had successfully launched multimedia kiosks in two disciplines tourism and voter education and found big sponsors to do so. Through these projects I met an older married man, whom I began a relationship with in 1993. He was director of a very high profile Out of Home company and through the very unusual nature of the projects I worked on I was able to secure a position in his company.

Yes I was sleeping with the boss

Yes it certainly did help initially that I was sleeping with the boss, but don’t ever let that fool you in to believing that my career path in the company was easy. Every move I made, every deal I struck was scrutinised in every way. The Out of Home industry was very male in those days and girls were in sales and were good for entertainment. The ad industry at that times was known for long boozy lunches, leading in to long drinking nights, I am not sure about drugs, although many tell me it was rife, but there was certainly sex and rock n’ roll.

Knowing that my relationship was an open secret within the company I knew that I had to work harder than anyone else to ensure that I was not judged on being the boss’ bit on the side. I actively sought out mentors within the company, advertising agencies and within my clientele. I had a real knack for the airport environment and I made the conscious decision to treat the business as if it were my own. I researched the medium internationally and locally, and I studied my up and coming competitors, because for years the company had had exclusivity and I didn’t want to be caught napping.

He taught me everything he knew

My boss was the most generous man I had ever met, not as you might think, because he showered me with material gifts, but, because he showered me with his knowledge about specialist advertising at Airports. He mentored me around every aspect of the business and introduced me to Nic Griffin, from Avis. Nic has mentored me for over 20 years and I consider him to be my role model in business relationships. Together these two men shaped my business acumen, that together with my experience gained in working many different jobs, afforded me great successes and helped my to handle my spectacular failures too.

A different approach

My real coup de gras was in the handling of the changes in advertising rights by the Dept. of Civil Aviation, the imminent tobacco advertising ban and the upcoming 1995 Rugby World Cup to be held in South Africa. My different approach to these helped add millions to the bottom line, and in the case of the tobacco companies it didn’t alienate their sister holdings in their liquor brands advertising spend either.

Although I didn’t have any experience in advertising, it also meant that I didn’t have any fixed paradigms about what couldn’t be done either. The advertising rights were, after an almost 20 year exclusivity, being opened up to the broader market with a huge shake up in rates too. The tobacco ban would be being enforced over the next few years and there was a huge reliance on cigarette advertising at the airports. I managed to put together a solution for both of these by increasing the rates tobacco brands had to pay in line with the Dept. of Civil Aviation requirements. This was just prior to the formation of the Airports Company Limited, now Airports Company South Africa. The brands naturally reduced the quantities of advertising boards they had to absorb this cost. With regard to the 1995 Rugby World Cup I put together a pretty audacious target of an extra R 1 million turnover for the month, that was equal to an extra 15% on the annual budget, and I succeeded. I hit the ground running with great successes.

I became the first female director of a Corporate Outdoor of Home Company

I grew in my role from strength to strength and was ready for when opportunity knocks, and within a few years I became the first female director of a corporate outdoor advertising company in South Africa. I loved my job and loved the industry, I got to travel the country and travelled internationally to research international trends. I consulted on a project around the advertising at Sydney’s Kingsford Smith International Airport for the Sydney Olympic Games and travelled to Athens to assess the new international airport that was being built for the Athens Olympic Games.

The impact of a corporate take over

Everything changed in my life when the company underwent a buy out around 1997. New shareholders and directors came in to the business, and everyone was under scrutiny. Lines were drawn and questions asked. It was a very rocky time for anyone in senior management. Ultimately my boss left and for a long time I was watched like a hawk until it was deemed I was on the right side. Take overs and buy outs are extremely stressful. I continued on a relatively successful trajectory, but there was always a cloud because of how I joined the group. In the roundabout of ups and downs I realised that there was no further scope for growth in a very male environment. I had some pretty classy golden handcuffs in terms of my package and earnings so I began to put money aside to save for my exit strategy. Once again I was going to be ready for when opportunity knocks. I had the desire to go out on my own, my colleague and co-director intimated she was up for it and so we bided our time.

Time to make a decision

In 2001 the group was undergoing another buy out, the names of the potential international buyers were being bandied about relatively openly. I started to do my homework on the management style of the favourites. By this time I had a lot of contacts in London and asked them in depth on the management styles of both. The rule of thumb was that both companies were very chauvinistic and arrogant. My mind was made up I was going alone. I had saved money to sit out my one year restraint of trade and plan my new business. My co-director was away in Europe and I called her to say I was resigning that day and she said she would do the same upon her return. I will never forget skipping down the passage way dropping off my 3 month resignation before flying to Namibia to secure advertising rights for the group. I may have been leaving, but I was ethical. My co-director was true to her word and resigned on her return from vacation. Three months later I was jobless, exhilarated, frightened and excited all at once. It was going to be a long year of waiting and planning, but I was going to be ready for when Opportunity Knocks.

Having read Be Prepared for When Opportunity Knocks I would hope that you realised that if you want to receive fabulous things, you have to expect to receive them – mere hope or wish is not good enough – you have to know and believe that what you desire is on its way to you and that you’ll receive it exactly when the moment is perfect for it to present itself in physical form. The trouble with most of us is we know what we desire, however when it doesn’t immediately present itself to us, we begin to doubt that it ever will; we simply lack faith and don’t believe deep down that it will happen as after all, it’s nothing more than a dream, an unrealistic fantasy! Your uncertainties, worries and doubts, the acids of your mind if you will, then systematically and clinically eat away at the picture of your desire until all that’s left is an unrecognisable mess, whereupon you then decide to let go of this image and build yet another one, a new desire, a new exciting fantasy, only to then repeat the same destructive acid-eating, image-crushing, mental process all over again. If you desire more then you have to expect to receive more, simple as that – and the more you practise this, the more you will realise what hugely important components faith and expectation are of the creation and manifestation process.

Questions:

• What dream or fantasy did you give up (maybe recently) and as you think back on that very moment when you gave up on it and let it go, how did that make you feel?
• Have you done this (letting go of what you desired) and experienced this before?

Exercise:

1. Recall something you really desired (this desire had very powerful emotions attached to it) which you gave up on.
2. Well done – do you still have a clear picture in your mind of what it is that you had desired?
3. Isn’t it amazing that after all this time, the picture of your desire is still so crystal clear?
4. When you first felt this tremendous desire, were you excited?
5. Removing fear, self-doubt and worry from the equation, were you both willing and able to have this desire back then?
6. What happened, why did you give up on this desire?
7. Did you find that your initial excitement around this desire shifted in to an unknowing, a sense of expectation which went something like this: “What if this never happens, am I just wasting my time here?”
8. If yes, what’s this telling you about your ability to believe (have unwavering faith) that what you desire will present itself to you?
9. Why is your faith letting you down so badly?
10. What is this telling you about what you really expect (deep down) to always happen?
11. Are you possibly shocked to discover that whilst you’d believed you were programmed for success, you’re not; that you’re actually programmed to receive far less than what you desire?
12. Is all this making you understand the growing yourself in to what you desire to be (when you’re there know this, you will receive your every desire) is a lifelong undertaking and not just something that you do for only six weeks after having attended some coaching programme?

My profound lesson:

If you desire something, then decide that it is yours, decide that there can be no other way than for you have it. The key word that I learned a huge lesson around, is “decision” and so this is what I want you to know and remember about decisions and decision making…

There is a single mental move you can make which, in a millisecond, will solve enormous problems for you. It has the potential to improve almost any personal or business situation you will ever encounter – and it could literally propel you down the path to incredible success. We have a name for this magic mental activity – it is called a decision. Decisions or the lack of them are responsible for the breaking or making of many a career. Individuals who have become very proficient at making decisions, without being influenced by the opinions of others, are the same people who annual incomes fall in to the six and seven figure category. Your whole life is dominated by this power. The health of your mind and body, the well-being of your family, your social life, the type of relationships you develop – all are dependent on your ability to make sound decisions. The person who fails to develop their ability to make decisions is doomed because indecision sets up internal conflicts that can, without warning, escalate into mental and emotional wars.

A very basic law of the Universe is ‘create or disintegrate’. Indecision causes disintegration. Armed with the proper information and by subjecting yourself to certain disciplines, you can become a very effective decision-maker. You can virtually eliminate conflict and confusion in your life by becoming proficient at making decisions. Decision making brings order to your mind and this order is then reflected in your objective world and your results. Decision makers are not afraid of making an error and if they fail at something they shrug it off. They learn from the experience but they will never submit to the failure. They cardinal principle they deploy is “decide right where you are with whatever you’ve got”. Most never master this because they allow their resources to dictate if and when a decision will or can be made.

Another huge life and business lesson I learned was that if you want to receive that which is “out-of-the-ordinary” you must to be prepared to do that which is “out-of-the-ordinary.” This requires you to do the bravest and boldest thing ever – few can – you have to “suspend disbelief”…

Most people operate with a mind-set that assumes success comes one step at a time and go about their lives trying to make incremental gains in their performance. Daily they walk the pathway of conventional growth and pedestrian performance results. Taking that quantum leap – means accomplishing far more in less time, with only a fraction of the effort you’ve been giving. Quantum leaps are enabled through praxis however they are not achieved through doing more of the same. Quite the contrary, you’ve got to shift gears and follow new patterns of thought and action.

Sooner or later you will reach the point where you just can’t try any harder. Mentally and physically, you are stretched to your outer limit and trying harder is just producing less and less reward. More effort simply isn’t the answer anymore. What is required is a new way of thinking, an abrupt change in behaviour and getting ruthless about doing things differently. Those who are prepared to do this set themselves up to experience an explosive performance jump that puts you far beyond what you believed was your next logical step. Such people search out and vigorously employ new behaviours.

You begin to think beyond what common sense would allow. You suspend disbelief and begin a process to abandon your rational thinking which is rooted in your own spectacularly personal mental junk. You train your mind in to a new way of thinking and you begin to act in a way as if you know that you know that you know that you are going to succeed.

Instead of doubting everything, you learn that if you must doubt something, then let this be your limits. You embrace the paradigm that ‘you don’t have to know how you’re going to get there you simply need to know where you want to go’.

You embrace reliance on invisible resources which are always there, in abundance, for you to tap in to. You abandon excuses, reframe problems and give yourself a new chance. Instead of wishing, longing, wanting, desiring, you pursue – you take definite action. You view failure as a resource – it helps you find the edge of your capabilities. You embrace being out of their comfort zone and most importantly, you claim your gifts.

I am eternally grateful to my mentors Bob Proctor and Dr Price Pritchett for teaching me these two incredibly valuable success lessons.

To your Success, with love

Suzanne Styles