Book Review
display on my part.
But...the world did not collapse, my desk was still there, I still got my bonus that year, and life carried on. France carried on. It wasn’t my finest hour, but I could not live with myself if I just rolled over and prepared a pile of rubbish that wasn’t even being requested by our client.
Meyer’s book should be on the national curriculum – if kids growing up in the UK read this they would stand a far better chance of being successful
This “Tally Ho” attitude (without wishing to make Americans sound like Boris Johnson) is precisely the gift that Americans have which puts them at an advantage to Europeans, who tend to experience a sense of genuine pleasure at seeing a fellow European fail in their business / career / relationship / court case / fill in the blank. To demonstrate: this is a snippet from a conversation between two English ladies that I overheard in my local Starbucks recently;
Lady X: “Alice lost her job last week” Lady Y: “Oh? I always felt that she was way in over her head with that role!”
In America, Alice would have taken out a full page spread in the local paper, explaining her excitement at being free to focus on a new challenge and to say how much she valued working with each and every person at her former workplace. In America, when you drive past a large pair of gates at the end of the driveway to a big mansion, you think to yourself “one day, I’m going to live in that mansion”. In Europe, you think to yourself “one day, I’m going to get that bastard”. One of the best observations in Meyer’s book about the UK business environment is the way that the media enjoy attacking high net worth individuals as if they are in the same league as international terrorists or child molesters. If these individuals are not championed and encouraged to take a more active role in society as investors and drivers of changes, a massive opportunity will be lost.
Meyer hits the nail on the head in the chapter titled ‘Belief Is The New Currency’. Americans don’t take no for an answer (as I am married to one, I can tell you she speaks the truth) and this refusal to accept defeat is one of the key lego bricks that makes a successful entrepreneur, what Meyer refers to as the inner core of steel. She is right. Without this, it is difficult to survive as an entrepreneur because nothing will come easily or for free to you, you have to fight for every paper clip, post-it and staple. Meyer’s book should be on the UK second level curriculum in my view – if kids growing up in the UK read this book en masse and took proper ownership and responsibility for
their skills, personal development, appearance and
behaviour they would stand a far better chance of becoming 56
entrepreneurcountry
successful, law abiding citizens. A former boss told me when I was 24 “Dave, you are your own franchise inside Bank ABC”. Luckily for me, I worked under a broad mix of bankers at several financial institutions, including some world-class American TMT sector M&A bankers who subsequently moved to the City who embodied the ‘can-do’ attitude that Americans are (rightfully so) enormously proud of. Until us Europeans get on board Meyer’s train and start believing in our ability to create new economic models for creating wealth, we will never pass through the gates of this mansion. I am (naturally, as an entrepreneur similar to Julie Meyer) optimistic about the future.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60