* Business

Interesting and insightful ‘top tips to success’

TheReview Wednesday, October 16, 1991 — A17

You learn by experience. But
you can, and should, also learn by,
the experiences of others. That’s
why -I always enjoy asking suc-
cessful people their particular
“top tips to success.” Invariably
their replies are both interesting
and insightful.

After all, why make the same
mistakes others have made? And
why not review approaches and
attitudes others credit for their
personal and financial successes?

Margaret Swaine has come a
lone way from her teenage years in

—~@- the °60s.

“Despite the experimentation of
that era, I reached university with
the old beliefs still firmly intact —
those of marriage, kids and the
wife a silent pillar behind hub-
bie,” she said.

“Those beliefs were stoked by
the stream of Ann Landers col-
umns my mother sent me, most
with the theme of fallen women
wailing they wished they had
waited,’ Swaine recalls with a
smile in her words.

“Higher education was mainly
important to keep the options open
in case Plan A failed, besides
being good hunting grounds for a
Mmarnage candidate.”

Swaine said Plan A did not fail
for her. Though she marmied in her
20s, “the union to last a lifetime
barely made it past two years even
with marriage counselling.”

She discovered a business and
entrepreneurial streak in her per-
sonality “while my husband dis-
covered he would have preferred
someone at home with supper on
the table. My nature — impulsive,
impatient, and driven — would
not be tamed into submission.”

And so Swaine started a market-
ing consulting company, while at
the same time developing a hobby
(a love of wine) into a profitable
writing and teaching sideline.

Now 38, Swaine is president of
Pierce Communications which has
seven employees (including
Swaine).

“My business interests have
given me a very comfortable life,
my own house, a place in the
country, private club memberships
and much overseas travel,” she
said.

“But most of all my work has
allowed me a wealth of experi-
ences, introduced me to fascinat-
ing people and opened the doors to
every type of activity I have ever
wondered about.”

Here are Swaine’s tips to both
personal and business/professional
SUCCESS:

Embrace change. “You can
swing back and forth on the same
trapeze all your life —- or let go at
the right moment and grab a
higher rung,” she said. Change
will probably come anyway, so you
might as well approach it in a
positive way.

Develop your individuality. “Be
a whole person with interests,
morals and beliefs which you have
arrived at based on your own
expemence.”

If you define yourself in terms of
“wife,” “employee” or “parent,”
for example, you risk having the
Tug pulled from under you if your
spouse leaves, you get laid off or
your kids tum on you.

‘Even in personal
life the giver Is
rewarded beyond
the geiter’

Keep on trucking. Don’t get
discouraged when the going gets
tough; hang in. If you are stuck
with a difficult situation, make it
work for you. “More businesses
are successful due to determina-
tion than to brilliance,” said
Swaine.

Have faith in your ideas. “Don’t
think Plan B is second best. Most
people’s Plan A is given to them
by parents, society and other out-
side influences. Plan B is the one

they devise themselves and so is
usually more fulfilling.”

Give more than you get. “Go the
extra mile for your friends, clients
or customers,” Swaine said. “In
business, some will never be satis-
fied but most return favors with
referrals. Even in personal life the

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giver is rewarded beyond the get-
ter.”

Be positive. “Keep upbeat no
matter how many defeats you suf-
fer. Eventually the tides will turn.”
Swaine gave an example to prove
her point.

“T spent almost 10 years after
the demise of my mariage intro-

ducing myself to men through |

friends, dating services, classified
ads and parties,” she said.

“At umes it seemed like I was
meeting the frogs of a thousand
ponds. Yet the last relationship has
bloomed and just a few months
ago I started living with a divorced
man who has two boys.”

Swaine said if she had her life to
live over, she wouldn't change
anything. “My moral beliefs have

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been shattered but then rebuilt
with stronger ones which are the
result of my own life experience
rather than the sayings of others.”

Mike Grenby is a Vancouver
based columnist and independent
financial adviser who works with
individuals; he will answer your
questions as space allows — write
to him clo The Review.

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