Often, other people dictate what our potential is or how far we can go. We explore what ‘entrepreneurship’ truly is and how you can exceed expectations through work ethic and self belief.
In this week's episode of our Learn Better Podcast host, Stuart Pedley Smith, Head of Learning at Kaplan, takes a look at entrepreneurship and how to succeed in your career.
Our guest is Paul Cheetham, founder of Sedulo Group, an award winning advisory firm and investment house. He is also the author of Taking Care of Business and host of the namesake podcast.
He speaks about his journey from growing up on a council estate, and being told what he could achieve, to taking control of his own destiny and flourishing in his career.
Paul shares the details of how he got into the financial services industry, the pressures of investment and failure, as well as how he went about shaping clients to create a career he is passionate about.
Find your limitations, see what your glass ceiling is and let you be the determining factor behind your own opportunities, not a system or a person or an organisation. Make sure it's you.
Key topics
Fighting stereotypical expectations
Paul found that coming from a working class family and area led to automatic expectations being put upon him. It was the norm to leave school without decent grades and instead your success was determined by “Can you get a job?”.
Paul wanted more. He didn’t see any limitations based on his background, and continued to progress his education through A-levels and a sports science degree. However, even at these stages of his life he was continually told what he was now capable of.
Everytime I seemed to get somewhere, there was something coming in that kind of said ‘this is what you can do now’ or ‘this is the level of opportunity’ and I’ve spent the last 20 odd years fighting back against that
Human optimisation
Paul’s passion lies with sport and sporting professionals. One thing he has learnt from this is the discipline it takes to reach your potential. He suggests you should live life like an athlete.
Think about your goals and figure out what you need to do to get there. Discipline is needed in the pursuit of your goals so you can perform at your optimum level.
Experience from a non-traditional career path
Although Paul didn’t take the traditional route in his accountancy career, starting off in a business before moving to a practice, his experience gave him additional knowledge. He had already learnt about commercialism, and had an understanding of what an entrepreneur needed, which was gold dust when working in practice.
During his time in practice he learnt more about compliance, tax and audit. Putting both experiences together gave him such a strong structure for the rest of his career.
Experiencing both environments also made him understand what he wanted. Ultimately it led him to discover what he wanted from a working environment, so he created Sedulo.
Don’t confuse doing something you love, with doing something everyday that you love. Because that’s not how it works, but never forget what your passion is.