Georgio is the sullen ICT type. He shuffles half heartedly into the office but has not a lot to say other than ask where the funding is. He hasn’t done very much (any) thinking about his business idea, or the business plan, or indeed much else around the concept that he rather pathetically shoved across a table at you in his first meeting. No-one yet has told him that his business proposition sucks, his attitude sucks and that he has much chance of making a success of his sucky idea as I do of winning Wimbledon this year.
All your instincts are saying to you: tell him straight, show him the door. Don’t give up the day job or whatever it is that got you through my office door. Whatever you do, don’t set up in business. You’ll have a terrible time, you sullen young thing.
However, what you don’t recognise is that you have other instincts too that are saying; I’m going to get him through this; he’s going to become a top selling business man if it’s the last thing I get him to do. I’m gonna show him a really tough time and roughen him up in the best Duncan Ballantyne toughing tradition and at the end of it, he’ll look back, dressed up to the nines and thank me for it, he really will. This is gonna be a case of tough business love and he’s gonna take it like a man.
At this point either the business adviser or the sullen proto-business man should probably leave the room or someone should throw a bucket of cold water over the both of them.
It’s not in anyone’s interest to make that relationship between evangelical adviser and sullen prototype a happy one. It’s not going to be happy. Ever. Get over it Mr Adviser and take your evangelical fervour to those who will respond to it in the happy clappy way that sets your and their world alight. Sullen Georgio will remain in his kind of happy sullen way for many years to come and its not your right or responsibility to knock it out of him.
And a word to Sullen Georgio too: if you ever share a space with a business adviser who is trying his hardest to enthuse you about your idea, tell him to mind his own business – and you get on with developing yours, in your own, inimitable, sullen way.
drnickombe 