From the Argos Stockroom to Venture Capital | Ed Kyei, Global Engagement Manager

i chat to leaders And talk about early career motivations.

Some feel very confident and know where they want to go.

Others are just keeping going forward so that they don't fall over, really.

Does any of that relate to you? What was your motivation when you were starting out in your career?

Not to get too motivational and overly spiritual, but it was a desire to prove to myself and the people around me that I could do something despite the fact that I wasn't an academic, right? So it was something that my dad always drilled into me that you've got to walk away from every task or every opportunity knowing that you've tried your absolute best.

Regardless of the result, he always told me that I don't care what grade you got at school.

I just want you to come home and say, I tried my best.

I revised as hard as I could and I worked hard.

my socks off to do the best in the exam, basically.

So I think for me, that was something in my mind where I said, look, I've always got to just try my hardest.

Yeah.

That, that work ethic has stuck with me till this day, really.

So.

Your advice really from your dad, give it your best shot and keep going as your main motivator.

Brilliant.

100%, yeah.

I think also just another point just to add there is that, you know, in sales is one of the most black and white jobs in terms of seeing where you are, right? There's a lot of roles out there that you could, I'm not saying, you know, you would fund the numbers, but you would, it could be quite ambiguous to how well you're actually doing.

At the end of the quarter, your name is somewhere on that leaderboard and you can see exactly how well you've done.

Yeah, there's no hiding.

Basically, you really have to put the work in order to maintain a good career.

So what do you think is the secret to good sales?

Number one is humility.

You really do have to have a low ego and accept that you're not going to know everything.

The typical... reputation of salespeople is that, you know, they know it all.

They're arrogant, flashy sort of reputation.