In a previous episode of Business Built Freedom, Martin Morris shared his expert knowledge about networking, building relationships, and making sure that your personal life is somewhat of a reflection of your business life.
Martin is one of Australia’s top business mentors and the group chairman of C-Sky. He specialises in brokerage business structures and has over 35 years’ of experience across a broad variety of markets, including construction and property developments, telecommunications, networking, e-commerce, insurance, financial services, health, training, and education. He returns this week to provide even more insightful knowledge about business growth.
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Getting to Know People
Martin suggests that if you’re going to do business some things with a man, meet his family and observe. You can quickly see at dinner table how a man treats and respects his wife. This is important because the way you operate in your home, as a leader, as a man, how you respond, how you handle questions, how your general demeanour is in the household is how you’re going to perform at work.
Martin adds, “The thing I look for or try to assess is empathy. That serving attitude. I’ll know quickly whether the guy just sits there while the mum serves dinner and if he doesn’t even help put his plate out or offer to do anything.”
“Empathy is certainly being a listener and getting feedback from the kids about their day on the table because that tells communication—willing to listen from staff members,” Martin explains.
Martin also suggests that you observe how the family look at the person you want to work with: with respect and admiration or with their eyes down. “I just know if I’m going to go work that business and develop it, I’m going to have to work with the CEO to make some changes in himself for him to grow. Because you can’t grow a large corporation with a fat controller boss mentality today. You might have gotten away in the 50s or 60s when you had slave mentality, but people today can choose where they want to work. There’s a lot of flexibility…you can’t dictate anything.”
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Appreciating Contributions
Martin shares, “I’m thankful that my wife still chooses to be with me. I don’t have a right to say ‘You’re my wife.’ I’m thankful that she wants to be in a relationship with me.”
Martin takes that same attitude to work. As a leader or director, he is appreciative of employees bringing in at least 10 hours of their life per day to prepare, travel and put their effort, sweat, and energy into someone else’s dream.
Your employees are the ones who look after your customers. Some of them become friends.
Ability to Change
In addition to being thankful, Martin emphasises the importance of being forgiving to employees who make mistakes at work, “I learned a long time ago that if people don’t make mistakes at work, they won’t grow.”
As human beings, we are not the strongest species but we have the ability to think, change and adapt.
Martin shares, “When I was 19, I couldn’t speak English. I couldn’t read or write. But someone said to me: you can change, you can learn. I thought it might take me time, which it did.”
With the literary pieces that he watches and reads, Martin was able to turn his worst attribute into his best. His greatest weakness became his greatest strength.
Reacting Versus Thinking
TikTok and similar streaming platforms are popular even if people are doing terrible things taken by other users as funny. In the previous episode, we touched on the whole world becoming more and more into instant gratification. In relation to that, Martin says people’s impatience is the byproduct of people not thinking and merely reacting to whatever is served by social media.
Business owners must have a thinking mindset. Go to sleep with a question, wake up with an answer. Martin suggests that if you’ve got a challenge, think of what you can do about it. Instead of going to other people, who will just give an opinion, sit down and think of a solution. Then you can bring in other people to help you develop the solution.
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Your Network Is Your Net Worth
Does our circle or influence online (i.e., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn) have any relationship to our influence in person? Interestingly, most of the time, people who have the fewest real friends and the fewest connections have thousands on Facebook and on LinkedIn.
Martin shares that he’s had 10,000 colleagues and clients over the years but many of those were transactional relationships. He was only good for that relationship if he could offer something at the time and he knew that.
If you want to grow your network, remember that it is not a number’s game. Your network is your net worth but you need to establish relationships with people whom you can help grow while they help you grow.
Martin Morris
Martin Morris is a business strategy scientist, master salesperson, entrepreneur, trainer, educator, coach and an expert in the facilitation of business connections and strategic futures planning. He is the group chairman of C-Sky, one of Australia’s top business mentors and CEO Review’s Financial Services Chairperson of the Year 2021 (Australia).
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