Hello and welcome to Business 300.

My name is Philip Kulenshov and this is 300 seconds about business.

We're all a busy people, so I have five minutes or less to get my point across.

I've only got five minutes to get you some results.

Business people are after results.

Actually, everybody's after results.

It's just that a business makes it very clear if you have results or not.

If you don't produce results, you don't stay in business.

Results are not just strived for.

They are necessary for the business to exist and to thrive. So it's not just that business people are after results. Let me rephrase that. Business people can't get away from results.

Results are a requirement of the trade. And, as in all things, results in this trade follow tradeoffs.

Idealists have a hard time with the concept of tradeoffs. It's why idealists make bad business

owners. Any result you pursue will require some sort of tradeoff. Context is inescapable in your

pursuit of results, and so tradeoffs must be made. To an idealist, the trade-offs

will feel like compromise. Okay, that's fine, but then what you're trading and compromising

are the results. If you can't bring yourself to look at your context and make a decision that

requires saying no to something in order to say yes to the thing you're pursuing, then you're just

saying no to that thing. That's fine if that's what you want.

But the trade-off is still there.

Making a trade-off is an inescapable concept.

It's not if you're going to say no to something.

It's what you're going to say no to.

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