Superpreneurs Are The Master Key To Development

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE PAPER 9
Continued from paper 8

In paper nine I will be dealing with rule number four in my fifteen golden rules for Super Entrepreneurship. In the last eight papers I have provided you with strong arguments for you to embrace the fundamentals of super achievement as I have outlined it. And I guarantee that anyone that follows my guide will most certainly come out the other end as a super achiever. This drive can be successful for entrepreneurs as well as professionals alike. However I have chosen to focus more on entrepreneurs as they stand the best chance of creating new jobs and contributing towards national development.

RULE FOUR:
In order to change your status, you must change your performance.

Most people would rather complain about their jobs or their status in life but they are never willing to do anything about it. They wine and cry that they are treated unfairly, they are marginalized, they are discriminated against but each time you check in on them nothing has changed, only the crying may have gotten much louder. SUPERPRENEURS see it differently they change their performance and their performance defines their status in business and in life.

In life as in everything the quality of your results depends almost exclusively on the quality of the work you put into it. If you did not read for an exam then it is most likely that you are going to fail that exam. If you do not treat your customers well then it is most likely that they will leave and get service from your competitors. If you do not train your children right, and they grow up to become rapists, armed robbers and drug pushers then you should not complain.

In some cases Life may have dealt you a poor hand. You have been born into a poor family; you have been raised in a poor neighbourhood. You have been exposed to drug dealing friends all your life. Yes I agree in some cases Life does deal us a bad hand. However you are not compelled to stick with the poor circumstances, you can break out and look ahead for exceptional opportunity and go after it as it is your right to do so. If you really want a better life, you want to dance with the stars. You want your name in lights; you want people to read about you and to talk about you. Then you have to up your game, there is no other way.

What kind of performance have you been putting out there? In every company, every organization and even associations of peers, you always have one or two people that can always be depended upon to get the job done. They are always there. They will make it happen, they will volunteer to do the extra work, and they will lead when it comes to a difficult situation. These types will always be the leaders. You have to figure out a way to join this group, to change your status.

How can you want it all but you are not willing to put in the effort it takes to get it? If you want to change your status please change your performance. Make sure that your performance is at a peak level, not just one day but every day. Make people want to do business with you. Make people want to reach out to you. Make sure that when it comes to your field, it is you that people are talking about all the time. And make sure that your performance is always of a World Class level. Striving for Peak Performance is a requirement for all super achievers, so if you believe that you will be the next Super Entrepreneur making billions in the process then you must follow these simple rules and rule four stands out.

CHANGING MY STATUS IN THE UNITED STATES

When I first landed in the United States, I arrived with nothing. I had just left Nigeria in which we were run by a half crazy tyrant called General Sani Abacha. So there were limited opportunities for young people at that time in Nigeria. I went to the United States and started life afresh. It was hard believe me, I worked as a construction worker with my brother’s friend’s company and they put me in the demolition department. So my job alongside many other sorry chaps was to take a sledge hammer and break down the walls of buildings that had been designated for demolition. It was very hard work, and what made it even harder was that I was a graduate of Applied Microbiology and Genetic Engineering from the renowned Prof Kenneth Dike led Anambra State University of Technology which gave birth to present day Nnamdi Azikwe University and the Enugu State University of Science and Technology. However with all my education back in Nigeria, here I was hammering on walls and breaking stones and going home tired and dirty.

I remember one day on the train I was sitting opposite a very beautiful African American lady and she looked longingly at me. I wanted to move seats to her side of the train, so I could chat her up and maybe even have a diner date with her that weekend. I stepped up to move over and then as I looked down at myself and it dawned on me. I was a mess. I was covered in white dust from the breaking of the walls we had done all day at a construction site. My work boots were still on, and they too were looking white from the ash dust which is released from demolition sites in the United States. For those that are not familiar with the way the houses in the United States are built, the internal walls are made of a special material that is made up of different white elements called sheetrock. It is not cement and certainly not blocks or anything we use here. Bottom line is that it gives out a powdery white substance when you hit it with a sledge hammer and that white substance covers your entire body.

Back to my beautiful co-traveller, her eyes were inviting and it looks as if she really wanted to talk to me. African American men are normally involved in construction work so I guess she was not too surprising for her to see me in this state. In any case many of the African American men around the Boston area were not interested in hard work so I can see why this beautiful girl would be interested in me. I was working so I guess and that was good enough for her. I on the other hand could not stand to see myself looking the way I did and chatting up a girl. I sat back down looked myself over once again and I made up my mind that very day that I was going to change my status.

The words came to me, “If you want to change your status, you have to change your performance”. What did that mean? Did I have to knock down more walls or get involved in more construction and more demolition? I thought not, I felt that what I needed was a total over haul. I needed to understand this society better and I needed to break into the main stream of the US society. In my mind that would change my status. In order to change my performance I felt that I needed to offer a superior service in an area in which I had a core competence and for which I could be passionate. I was lousy at the construction and the demolition business, and everybody knew it. In fact my fellow workers would laugh at me when it came to lifting things outside the demolition areas as they knew this was not for me. When it was lunch time they ate together and I ate alone. I knew I did not belong and they knew it too. I had nothing against them, in fact they were really good guys but they were construction workers, in Nigeria they would be Labourers paid on a daily or weekly basis. And I on the other hand had prepared myself for greatness and I had no business breaking walls at a demolition site in Boston USA.

I took matters into my own hands and went out to look for a job. Many Nigerians that had come to Boston had resigned themselves to doing construction work, or driving taxis or working in McDonalds. However I set my sights much much higher and I strongly believed that if only I could be given an opportunity to prove myself that company would never regret that decision. Eventually after a long hard search I got a job as a recruiter for an international Hotel chain. Don’t ask me how I manged that. The irony is that my first Job in the United States as a recruiter interviewing Americans and other Africans who wanted a job in the Hotel and Catering business. Back home in Nigeria, my father owned a hotel, so I had embellished the fact that I was responsible for recruiting and training all his staff. I knew that I could get the job done if I was given a chance and I really knew that I did not want to go back to that construction and demolition site. My drive and passion to get the job was clearly overwhelming and it must have overwhelmed the managers of that Hotel chain as I was given the job.

So here I was with no experience, hired as a recruiter for one of the most prestigious hotel chains in the entire World, and I got the job with nothing more than share determination, it was my drive to change my status from a lowly construction and demolition worker to that of a recruiting executive for a prestigious Hotel chain, that did the trick. I gave a great account of myself as a recruiter. I also experienced a lot of drama as well. For instance, I had never used a computer before in my life.

And on my first day on the job I was given a computer and asked to input all the data from the applications manually. I just stood there looking at that computer all day, I knew I was in trouble as I had no clue as to what next to do. After a while I summed up the courage to speak.

I went to my manager and I will never forget the words I used. I knew that my future in that company depended on the words that would come out of my mouth in the next few minutes so I composed myself and I spoke.

“Miss Jennifer, as you know there are so many systems and software used by several companies. I have been familiar with a different system. If you or someone were to just show me exactly how to use this system, including how to turn it off and on safely I am sure I can get the hang of it in no time and I would be able to do a superior job as a result”

After a short silence, that seems like a lifetime, Jennifer said

“t’s okay Nicky, I had no clue how to use that thing when I first got here, I will ask the IT folks to come and walk you through,”

And that is how I changed my status for good. I have never looked back since that day. Remember folks in order to change your status please change your performance.