Tosyn’s Ten 10s: (Business) lessons I learnt from a lovely week Editor

By Tosyn Bucknor

Last week was lovely; and full. When I wasn’t doing a Google hangout with Bovi, I was snooping in on Lami’s video shoot to see what was going on.

And between all of that, I learnt some business lessons; some of which I will s.h.a.r.e here!

10. Stop saying ‘I can’t’.

I was trying to convince a friend of mine to work with me on some project and kept saying ‘…cos I can’t…’, ‘…don’t know how to…’ And so on. He said to me, ‘Stop saying I can’t because then you really won’t be able to’ Or something like that.

While it is okay to put teams together and hire people who do some things better than (or differently from) you, surrounding yourself with negative statements is never a good thing.

How many ‘I can’ts’, ‘I won’t understand’, ‘no’ and more do you say? Cut them out today!

9. Be an Oliver Twist and always want more, but don’t forget to appreciate what you do have it is easy to in life, want what someone else has- the grass IS greener.

But how about today, taking a second to appreciate what you do have and celebrate what you have achieved?

You may want a million naira tomorrow but celebrate that hundred thousand you made today.

If you don’t learn to appreciate the things the universe brings your way, you’ll never enjoy anything you earn or are.

8. Oh and by the way, the grass is greener because they water it! So water yours!

7. Know it, but be able to communicate it too so I was chatting with this cute guy and I mentioned a project I worked on in the past. He said he had never heard of it/us. Now in my head, what I said or wanted to say was, ‘we may not have been successful with hyping our work but we were very effective’.

What I ended up saying was- ‘/:(;?!,.5#;?6′;66g;’/6’ He WAS cute so maybe that affected things, but if you can’t communicate what you know, you might be just as bad as the person who doesn’t know what to communicate.

6. Models have brains too cliche?

Well, this chick walks in and first, all I saw were legs. For days. But we started chatting and my goodness! I learnt more about branding, positioning and making crucial business decisions in one thirty minute cab ride with her than I had learnt in business law class.

I kid you not.

5. Wanna be a millionaire? Find something you love doing and get paid millions to do it.

This advice came from my friend who lives a charmed life. And that is his secret- he does exactly what he loves (travelling, making videos and movies) and gets paid to do it.

4. No one’s going to force you to do it but when you’re ready, you won’t be able to stop the calls.

Sometimes we complain about how no one is calling us for gigs or helping us do stuff. But it might be we have not made the first move.

Put yourself out there and let people know you’re available for whatever work you want. And use every resource at your disposal.

Don’t be shy to make those calls and knock on doors.

3. ‘I want what she has’ is #LastBorn behaviour; not business behavior if you change business policies or make business decisions not based on your core competencies or even your passion but because someone else does it or has it and you like it, you’ll confuse your customers and yourself

2. Great conversations are all well and good but you have to follow through.

Gavin DeGraw says it best really, ‘so/since you wanna be with me/you have to follow through/with every word you say/And I/all I really want is you/(For) you to stick around/I’ll see you everyday/But you’ll have to follow through

He is of course talking about a girl, but it’s the same thing. You get a good vibe about something, have a brilliant idea, meet a great person you could work with?

Follow up, follow through

1. This has absolutely nothing to do with business, but I just wanted to take a minute to make a shout out to guys you have great conversations with who never ask for your number.

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