WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

DAY 2of 30

WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

“Names have power.”
― Rick Riordan

Today my first search on Google for the word ‘Name’ turned out about 7.88 billion results in 0.45 seconds

I come from a rich African culture where much importance is attached to a name. This practice is indeed true in every sense, even in most parts of the world.

We are taking a close look into the nature of names as an important part of the success equation.

If words are powerful then It’s only logical for me to believe that names are much more powerful.

As a matter of fact, In my opinion your name will be mentioned or used about a billion times in your life time and probably beyond. A name has the capacity to outlive you.

A name is powerful and is so important, the God of the whole earth has a unique name and He introduces himself to everyone or anyone in every transaction with a unique name! As a matter of fact the lists of His names are endless in different languages of the world! And they all point to His unquestionable supremacy. (A discussion for another day on  spirituality post)

What makes names special? What is so spectacular and  amazing about names? I will shed some light on some today by God’s grace.

This is mind blowing!  I will try to get to it as easily as possible.

A name connotes beginning. A name is a hallmark of every meaningful beginning.  Imagine boarding  a plane/flight with no name at the beginning of a journey to nowhere, Imagine sitting at the cinema to watch a movie without a title, you would rarely start to read a book without a title or author, every huge project as a scope a  name a title. Even a baby at the beginning of its life gets a name that marks the beginning of a journey to person hood.

A name is your first priced asset in life. Think about it, no great business enterprise or organization takes off without uniquely defined name apart from it s vision and mission. The first asset a baby receives in life is its name, there even a whole of websites that specialise in helping young parents with this choice.

I love pets especially dogs. Have you ever imagined   what happens the moment you give a dog its name and it goes on to own it and answer that name? Names aren’t just words, even Yachts or Hurricanes have names... So I would like to reflect more on the nature of names.

Your name is your identity and a reflection of your attributes and personality. When a name is mentioned, something comes to mind, it might be closely associated with a problem or a solution. Your name is like a huge label around your brand. If you were a product your name is one of the way you appeal to customers, it might be a reason people buy you. Your name creates an impression on people. Often times our names create an atmosphere, feeling or mood wherever they are mentioned.  See how many times some names are mentioned and someone smiles or frowns. Your name is an entity and integral part of your identity. Your name is your brand. If you are in double Google brands like Coca-cola, Microsoft, IBM, Xerox to Tiger Woods, Giorgio Armani (Hah! I won’t delve much into the subject of branding here).

Your name tells people something about you. Your name might tell us where you are coming from, where you are or perhaps where you are going. A name as your identity can tell us a bit of whom you are or perhaps something about you. A name can tell your story.

Name means access. Your name is the first point of contact with you. People know your name first before they ever get to know you. Most times they see you before they might be opportune to hear you and what comes to every one’s mind consciously or subconsciously is always one question- WHAT IS YOUR NAME?? – Who are you?

Your name is people’s first access to you because that is what you answer and most likely that is what they already have. I have a list and some pictures of mentors on my goal pad/ vision board some I have never met while some I have already met yet I have never met any of these great minds without at least knowledge of their names.If according to Robert C. Lee  “The sweetest sound to anyone's ears is the sounds of his own name” then I also discover people’s name will make different music to the m based on the level of access  or relationship you have with them. However people’s name most times will be your first access to them.

Names also create access. Have you ever had an appointment with an executive without knowing his name? Probably not. If you were in a great place and you were scheduled for an appointment,  you will most likely be asked who you want to see. And the name creates a level of access for you.

Just like  a busy executive that wouldn’t be disturbed in the midst of a meeting but on hearing the voice of his son call out ‘Dad’  or the voice of the wife call out ‘Bill’ will excuse himself for few minutes to answer his name or the call.

What is your name? We have heard this  question countless times and behind those words are the vital questions ‘who are you?’ or ‘what is your story?’. Names aren’t just words. A name is a vital part of your identity, it has a life of its own – it doesn’t die depending on how you use it or what you do with it and it creates the first level of access to you. In  W. C Fields' Words, “It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to.”  and I might add that what you call yourself and what you answer to, matters a whole lot on your Journey to Greatness. I will love to read your thoughts on this subject in the comments section below.

To your utmost Greatness!

My name is Emmanuel Ayeni.

Your billion-dollar friend!

(c) Emmanuel Ayeni, August 2014
EMMANDUS Networks Nigeria
www.emmanuelayeni.com
Twitter: @emmandus
Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/emmandus




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BILL GATES' BEST BUSINESS BOOK

I have been a regular visitor to the Gate's personal blog for a couple of weeks and I am always amazed by his Reading list, trips and continuous philantrophic feats around the world.
I am compelled to share his review of his favourite business book,a book with a captivating title. I also share a link to downloading a free chapter of the book. As a matter of fact Gates created an instant it for this book after he revealed to the world it's hi favourite!
The book is out of print but sure amazon is your answer ;)
Read on!

The Best Business Book I’ve Ever Read
BY BILL GATES ON JULY 12, 2014

Not long after I first met Warren Buffett back in 1991, I asked him to recommend his favorite book about business. He didn’t miss a beat: “It’s Business Adventures, by John Brooks,” he said. “I’ll send you my copy.” I was intrigued: I had never heard of Business Adventures or John Brooks.

Today, more than two decades after Warren lent it to me—and more than four decades after it was first published—Business Adventures remains the best business book I’ve ever read. John Brooks is still my favorite business writer. (And Warren, if you’re reading this, I still have your copy.)

A skeptic might wonder how this out-of-print collection of New Yorker articles from the 1960s could have anything to say about business today. After all, in 1966, when Brooks profiled Xerox, the company’s top-of-the-line copier weighed 650 pounds, cost $27,500, required a full-time operator, and came with a fire extinguisher because of its tendency to overheat. A lot has changed since then.

It’s certainly true that many of the particulars of business have changed. But the fundamentals have not. Brooks’s deeper insights about business are just as relevant today as they were back then. In terms of its longevity, Business Adventures stands alongside Benjamin Graham’s The Intelligent Investor, the 1949 book that Warren says is the best book on investing that he has ever read.
Brooks grew up in New Jersey during the Depression, attended Princeton University (where he roomed with future Secretary of State George Shultz), and, after serving in World War II, turned to journalism with dreams of becoming a novelist. In addition to his magazine work, he published a handful of books, only some of which are still in print. He died in 1993.

As the journalist Michael Lewis wrote in his foreword to Brooks’s book The Go-Go Years, even when Brooks got things wrong, “at least he got them wrong in an interesting way.” Unlike a lot of today’s business writers, Brooks didn’t boil his work down into pat how-to lessons or simplistic explanations for success. (How many times have you read that some company is taking off because they give their employees free lunch?) You won’t find any listicles in his work. Brooks wrote long articles that frame an issue, explore it in depth, introduce a few compelling characters, and show how things went for them.

In one called “The Impacted Philosophers,” he uses a case of price-fixing at General Electric to explore miscommunication—sometimes intentional miscommunication—up and down the corporate ladder. It was, he writes, “a breakdown in intramural communication so drastic as to make the building of the Tower of Babel seem a triumph of organizational rapport.”
In “The Fate of the Edsel,” he refutes the popular explanations for why Ford’s flagship car was such a historic flop. It wasn’t because the car was overly poll-tested; it was because Ford’s executives only pretended to be acting on what the polls said. “Although the Edsel was supposed to be advertised, and otherwise promoted, strictly on the basis of preferences expressed in polls, some old-fashioned snake-oil selling methods, intuitive rather than scientific, crept in.” It certainly didn’t help that the first Edsels “were delivered with oil leaks, sticking hoods, trunks that wouldn’t open, and push buttons that…couldn’t be budged with a hammer.”
One of Brooks’s most instructive stories is “Xerox Xerox Xerox Xerox.” (The headline alone belongs in the Journalism Hall of Fame.) The example of Xerox is one that everyone in the tech industry should study. Starting in the early ’70s, the company funded a huge amount of R&D that wasn’t directly related to copiers, including research that led to Ethernet networks and the first graphical user interface (the look you know today as Windows or OS X).

But because Xerox executives didn’t think these ideas fit their core business, they chose not to turn them into marketable products. Others stepped in and went to market with products based on the research that Xerox had done. Both Apple and Microsoft, for example, drew on Xerox’s work on graphical user interfaces.

I know I’m not alone in seeing this decision as a mistake on Xerox’s part. I was certainly determined to avoid it at Microsoft. I pushed hard to make sure that we kept thinking big about the opportunities created by our research in areas like computer vision and speech recognition. Many other journalists have written about Xerox, but Brooks’s article tells an important part of the company’s early story. He shows how it was built on original, outside-the-box thinking, which makes it all the more surprising that as Xerox matured, it would miss out on unconventional ideas developed by its own researchers.

Brooks was also a masterful storyteller. He could craft a page-turner like “The Last Great Corner,” about the man who founded the Piggly Wiggly grocery chain and his attempt to foil investors intent on shorting his company’s stock. I couldn’t wait to see how things turned out for him. (Here’s a spoiler: Not well.) Other times you can almost hear Brooks chuckling as he tells some absurd story. There’s a passage in “The Fate of the Edsel” in which a PR man for Ford organizes a fashion show for the wives of newspaper reporters. The host of the fashion show turns out to be a female impersonator, which might seem edgy today but would have been scandalous for a major American corporation in 1957. Brooks notes that the reporters’ wives “were able to give their husbands an extra paragraph or two for their stories.”

Brooks’s work is a great reminder that the rules for running a strong business and creating value haven’t changed. For one thing, there’s an essential human factor in every business endeavor. It doesn’t matter if you have a perfect product, production plan, and marketing pitch; you’ll still need the right people to lead and implement those plans.
That is a lesson you learn quickly in business, and I’ve been reminded of it at every step of my career, first at Microsoft and now at the foundation. Which people are you going to back? Do their roles fit their abilities? Do they have both the IQ and EQ to succeed? Warren is famous for this approach at Berkshire Hathaway, where he buys great businesses run by wonderful managers and then gets out of the way.
Business Adventures is as much about the strengths and weaknesses of leaders in challenging circumstances as it is about the particulars of one business or another. In that sense, it is still relevant not despite its age but because of it. John Brooks’s work is really about human nature, which is why it has stood the test of time.


Source: Bill's Personal blog at www.gatesnotes.com


Download a chapter of the book from Gates' blog here

Read to Lead!


Emmanuel Ayeni
EMMANDUS Networks Nigeria
www.emmanuelayeni.com
Twitter: @emmandus
Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/emmandus




ADVERTS

• Up for grabs Over 500 books on Wealth Creation, Internet Marketing and Network Marketing. Call 07033875827 to lock down your slot.

• The search for your next Compere or Master of Ceremonies stops here  Call 07033875827 for booking or enquiries

OWN YOUR LIFE AND CREATE YOUR DREAM LIFESYLE


Are you interested in making extra passive and active income?
Do you want to learn how to live your dreams and generate multiple streams of income by investing little of your time ..Proceed! to the link www.creatingwealth.co/lcp1/emmandus
 

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