Positive & Negative Influences For Business Startups

When starting a new business there's a battle raging in most of us. I'm not talking about getting the guns and swords out, but a battle with the effect of positive and negative influences. This article discusses how to deal and overcome some of these issues.

In my life’s experiences I’ve seen how just a few words of discouragement can have such devastating effects, but on the flip side a few words of encouragement can have such a powerful effect.

When I was halfway through my studies years ago, I found one of subjects was not going very well. But it was not just me that was finding it hard, in fact most the class. After submitting one of my assignments, and getting a mark that was not impressive to say the least. The tutor then took us out the room one by one for a minute and told us we would fail, unless we drastically pull our socks up. The two guys I used to sit with from my class at school heard the message they were going to fail and abandoned their studies that day. I was not particularly impressed the attitude of this tutor and the eternal consequences for those two guys, yet with a bit work I passed the subject no problems.

Years ago, my mother left teachers college and taught 5-6 year old children. She really struggled in the first few years, was about to give up, until my father encouraged her about what she could become. She never gave up, but pursued and died 25 years later. When clearing out the family home I was amazed to find about 20 letters from other schools, which she had visited, and how she had encouraged other new teachers.

I’ve noticed negative comments quite often come from those who do not understand the full picture of a situation and cannot see what can be achieved using your resources, skills and talents. They may have negative experiences in a similar situation, and what didn’t work for them think it wouldn’t work for you.

Sometimes with negative words, it just that little extra effort to dig a bit deeper and find out why other people are responding in that way. I went through a government run course for people setting up their own business a few years ago. Though the course itself was excellent, but assessment of my business plan was a complete an utter shambles. I received a very poor assessment, including slurs against my previous career. It was absolutely riddled with inaccurate, deliberate misleading, missing information and littered with negative comments. Needless to say I did not get my business grant.

I was absolutely devastated, but I started digging a bit deeper into the antics of the woman who evaluated my business assessment and found apparently 80% of business grants had been declined. I started digging even deeper, made a few complaints to my MP and cut a long story shot only started getting action when I started to contact a current affairs television program. The government agency finally admitted there had been a lot of complaints regarding this woman’s assessments and her contract had been terminated. They also themselves admitted serious mistakes. And 2 years later though I was offered this business grant, I refused as I had no longer developed any confidence in this government agency, but for me it was a personal breakthrough.

It was obviously a very low negative experience in my life, but it did teach me a few things about life. I found as a result of this experience some positive things did come out of this. It taught me a lot about how to deal with difficult people, to look each year at what I’ve learned. Also when circumstances don’t go the way you’ve planned you’ll find there is a golden lining to any situation.

The world is full of encouragers and discouragers, I’ve found its been helpful identifying these types, but ignoring comments of a negative nature and sometimes even taking action where necessary.