Inspiring People Discovered In Unlikely Places

Steve Parker, Owner & Director – Steve Parker ICD (International Company Development)
 
As regular readers will know, I have been actively involved in exporting and international trade for 40+ years now and still am on a daily basis. This is often as much of a surprise to me as it is to close friends and family, as by nature I am instinctively shy and wary of people. What a contradiction to the image of globe trotting international trade experts?!
Today I wanted to share some thoughts about how this has happened from a ‘people perspective’.
When I first left the relative sanctity of doing the shipping, finance, administration, internal sales and every other critical element of global growth inside an office, to be the external face of a company, there were many challenges mentally, as you can imagine.
I didn’t have many language skills (‘Black Country’ probably doesn’t count?!) and I wasn’t a fan of smooth and flash sales people. I also even in those days, rarely had the time...