What do people need?

Speciality Bites with

Paul Hargreaves

Chief executive of Cotswold Fayre

• Becoming a B Corp
• Top trend predictions for Christmas 2021
• Self-sacrifice: The importance of building a leadership legacy centred on others
• Undercover Boss
• Can/should bosses really be close friends with their staff?

By the time you read this, someone will be £60 Million richer as the winner of the largest jackpot ever in the National Lottery

I never play myself, but even I just tried to put an entry in on-line but their website has crashed as National Lottery Fever grips the nation.  Despite odds of 45 Million to one, people seem to think they might be “the one” this time.  Most people have never won more than £10 and I have just calculated that the money I have saved by not spending £4 a week since the lottery started is nearly £4,500 – the cost of a very nice holiday in the Tropics!

By all means, continue to play if you must, but you may be better off giving away half the money you spend on the lottery and saving up the rest to spend on a holiday.  Would you really want all that money anyway?  The happiest previous lottery winners in the UK seem to be those that have given much of it away.  One lady gave much of her winnings to help miners who had recently been made redundant.

I am reminded of a small Spanish farming village, Sodeto, where every resident of whole village won between 100,000 and a Million Euros in 2012.  They were besieged very quickly by a load of sales people from the surrounding towns and cities trying to sell them all manner of things they probably didn’t need.  One enterprising vendor drove a €200,000 Jaguar into the square, and parked it prominently to entice the local buyers. But he was dismayed when a villager’s response was: “What would I do with that? I’d rather have a new tractor.”  It seems that the whole village took the opportunity, not to travel the world, or buy a luxury car, but to underpin their already happy life, to allow them to live the same life as before but with less stress and perhaps eating out a little more.  The whole community gained as a result.

The actions above in Spain weren’t driven by some great noble aspirations just that the greed that is prevalent in much of the western world hadn’t reached a tiny Spanish village in the mountains.  Many of us too aren’t running our businesses with the sole aim of being very rich, which is just as well!  We are happy if we have a happy bunch of people working for us, can see the difference our business is making in the community and have enough profit at the end of the month to pay the mortgage and save for a decent holiday.  These may be simple aims, but the best businesses have started with a small and simple idea and the idea generators have been proclaimed as a genius.  One of the keys of achieving this in our own small way in 2016 is to think, “What do other people need?” and “How can I help them achieve it”.  Have a go and let me know how you get on!