How do Wisdom and Selling go together?

Welcome to Wisdom Selling. So if you are like me, you are always wanting to learn more. Well here is the deal about selling. It is the desire to exchange something you have, for something of more value to you. You may have an idea, a product, a service which people will want to pay for, allowing you to make a profit. You have to seek out people who might want it, and convince them it is worth the price you are charging. Or like me, you may just have a little wisdom, and are looking for someone who values it enough to want to use it. My value received in return is the joy of your feedback. So, I am selling wisdom. The cost to you, your interest. I want to help others as well. Visit the links page and shop for some good deals. Any profits on money you spend there will be used by Wisdom Selling to support non-profit businesses in developing their strategies.

Friday, June 17, 2011

Thoughts on Wisdom - Part 1

So, with a blog called Wisdom Selling, I ought to at least talk about wisdom once in a while.  I believe wisdom is the use of knowledge for the betterment of something, whether it is your life, your job or your relationships.  My favorite wise guy, King Solomon, had some excellent thoughts on wisdom, which can relate directly to business, family and life.  He spoke in proverbs, which are kind of an if, then format.  He spoke very logical and really did not leave a way out on the path to wisdom.

I thought I would take a few posts and dedicate them to reviewing some of these proverbs that can help.  There are 31 groups of proverbs which is real convenient to read one group a day.

This one is from the 24th group.

It takes wisdom to have a good family, and it takes understanding to make it strong.  It takes knowledge to fill a home with rare and beautiful treasures.  Wise people have great power and those with knowledge have great strength.   So you need advice when you go to war.  If you have lots of good advice, you will win.

This bit of advice really resonates with me because I have always been the kind of person who made decisions on my own.  I decided about college on my own, made my decisions about what to study and how hard to work without any advice or mentoring, and chose my first career without getting any opinions that mattered.  I suffered through a difficult and costly personal relationship because I was afraid to leave it, and did not have anyone who I trusted to give me advice to stop the relationship, much less to keep from letting it escalate to the costly end it had.

I went through periods of darkness related to being alone, with the difficulties related to the stubbornness of making all my own decisions.  It wasn't until later in life, where I realized I was not happy in my job that I finally asked my parents for their opinions on a new career.  They helped me see the wisdom of a particular choice.  My wife has always been available, but until recently I was unable to express myself in a way that allowed her to have an opinion she felt mattered.

To win requires knowledge, so that you know what to do when the time comes to do it.  Wisdom is knowing when to do what you need to do, where, and how much.  In building a business plan it take alot of knowledge about markets, products and customers, but success comes from the wisdom to act, stay, change, remain solidly planted, increase, decrease.  These are choices that are the implementation of knowledge.  We aren't naturally able to make these decisions without instruction, mentoring and input from others. 

Without these inputs from others, we never become bigger than our current capabilities.  The entire consulting industry has value because of this reality.  There really is synergy in the collective wisdom of a group of two or more!  That is why  I went into consulting myself.  I found in my previous employment that there were all sorts of unsolved business challenges.  You probably have experienced the same in your business, ministry or personal life.  People would come to my office with a problem to be overcome in our operations.  We would turn to the white board, and over the course of the next 30-60 minutes  a solution would begin to take shape.

The cool thing was that it often felt like I already knew the answer, but then as I stared at the solution on the board, humility would sink in.  The idea on the board was better than anything I had in my head, and demonstrated what Solomon was saying in the proverb.  So you need advice before you go to war (business operations, family development, relationship development, etc).  If you have lots of good advice you will win.

Chris Byrd is a business strategy and workforce development consultant with Wisdom Selling Solutions.