Burnaby Young Professionals Hosts MP Terry Beech

On April 20th, the Burnaby Young Professionals Network hosted MP Terry Beech to discuss where entrepreneurship meets politics. Beech wove his own values and experience into a presentation that stresses the importance of understanding that every individual, with a lot of hard work and a little luck, has the opportunity to rise to success. He further elaborated on the similarities between skills in politics and business where education and entrepreneurship tie everything together by empowering people to rise up and succeed. MP Beech left the audience with a powerful message that no newspaper success story ever happens without challenges behind the scenes; however, nothing will ever happen if people do not take a risk on something they are truly passionate about.

  • Benjamin Zander’s Rule #6: Do not take yourself too seriously
    • If you care about what others people think, then you will develop a fear of failure that prevents you from pursuing something you are passionate about
    • Takeaway: There is nothing that is guaranteed, but you should not regret trying and failing because at least you gave it a shot
  • Malcolm Gladwell: It takes 10,000 hours to master a skill and be the best at anything
    • If you do not have a job, a person can realistically only master 12 skills in a lifetime without giving up the basic necessities; a person with a job can only master 2
    • Takeaway: If you are not doing something you are truly excited about, then you will never be the leader of it
  • Be passionate about something and be willing to ask for help; more likely than not, people are willing to provide support to someone they can see is genuine about what they want to do
    • Never try to do anything alone, and do not try to re-invent the whee

Suggested readings:

  • Whoever tells the best story wins – Annette Simmons
  • The Dip – Seth Godin
  • The Art of Possibility – Benjamin Zander
  • Outliers – Malcolm Gladwell

 

Full Notes:

  • What is world class and how do we make it make it known?
    • Burnaby has a lot of world class businesses and facilities, but it is less known than Vancouver and Surrey because less people talk about it
    • If no one says anything, no one else will know
  • Leadership is under rated
    • People who become leaders in their industry/profession/etc have a lot more benefits than others but very people seem to acknowledge it
    • Even if you are in an organization, you should be able to start your own business in some way to provide benefits
  • Terry’s platform is that he wants to bring more entrepreneurship to the government because he sees the similarities in skills between politics and business
    • In both, education and entrepreneurship tie everything together to help empower people to rise up and succed
  • Canadian Dream: Every individual, with a lot of hard work and a little luck, has the opportunity to rise to success no matter what their definition of success is
    • There are two common threads in successful nations
      1. They produce something of a high enough quality that others want (which means they have a highly educated workforce)
      2. They have a strong and empowered middle class (which means there are enough people to help cultivate additional opportunities for future generations)
  • People are often caught up in the ‘newspaper view of the world’
    • Media typically only paints the story in a way that seems like a dream or a miracle; however, people never really get to hear about what happens behind the scenes to make it a reality
  • To be a true entrepreneur, you need hubris and humility
    • You need to be confident enough in yourself that you can pursue what you want, but also humble enough to recognize that you cannot do it alone
  • One key rule about business, whether it is selling something or selling yourself, is that everything is based on trust
    • People will do business and work with you based on a perceived brand, so they need to know that you are able to do what you say you want to do
  • Stanford marshmallow experiment to illustrate delayed gratification
    • The study showed that people who are willing to wait longer for before being rewarded tended to have better outcomes later in life
    • Takeaway: Everything that is worth doing is hard
  • Don’t put people on pedestals
    • Just because they are in a position that you are currently not in doesn’t necessarily mean it is impossible to get there eventually
    • If you have something you want to do, let other people know and ask for help
    • If people are not aware that you are trying to do something, then you will never get any opportunities or assistance