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Global Advisors’ Thoughts: Business success. Get real.
By Marc Wilson
We all want success. And as we embark on a career, most of us want to be successful. But when I probe aspirations, “being successful” is usually a proxy for “I want the rewards / power /status of success.”
If you think that business success has different rules to success in sports, less reliance on discipline, more reliance on connections and things out of your control, reconsider or stop reading.
If your job is a ticket to a pay-cheque, is so-many-hours-per-day, stop reading.
Brutally, most of us will not be successful. We will not achieve stand-out performance. We will under-achieve our childish dreams. Choose:
- Continue to fantasize OR
- Get real and set your targets lower OR
- Confront the challenge and do what it takes to chase your dream.
Dreaming is important. It is the often the reason that we try at all. But the great achievers realise that a dream without a plan and action remains a fantasy.
“…in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things.” — U.S. President Barack Obama
Obama was quoting “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.”
When I was younger and starting out, I think I marked a lot of my desires for success in positions or promotions I hoped to achieve. In the first draft of this article, someone remarked that I had not mentioned promotion once. That is quite a stunning reflection. I believe my experience and growing up helped me realise that promotion and position reflect a result of success rather than success in itself.
Many of us do fantasize. As adolescents, we dream of mansions and sports cars, of power and glory, of beautiful spouses and successful children. As we begin our career journey, these dreams inevitably meet reality. We may continue to deny reasons for the gap between dreams and reality, but many reach a realisation at some point that not everybody can be excellent – by definition. And that to be excellent, we need to be doing things better than those in our defined benchmark.
We fantasize for good reason. Life is hard. As we become more experienced, we discover that achieving success typically requires far more from us than we imagined, we are not all exceptional, success is often dependent on the support of others – and people and relationships are not predictable. Life throws curve balls – illness, family needs and financial constraints to name a few.
But if we are to undertake an adult approach to success, it becomes time to replace fantasy with a deliberate approach to achieving our dreams.
What is success? At its simplest, success is achieving a goal. Being successful is therefore achieving goals regularly. But to most of us, being successful is more than this. Being successful in many people’s minds equates to excellence. Excellence – exceeding standard performance, standing-out, being the best. And pointedly, the rewards most desire for being successful equate with those for excellence.
This is an important distinction. The definition of excellence seems to be far more closely aligned with the aspirations of those with the desire to be successful. The measures of excellence are far more objective and demanding than those of success.
We tend to apply different rules to business success. It must be balanced. It must be within its 9-to-5 box. Here is my challenge to you: if you desire super-achiever business status, why would the lessons learnt from Olympian sports success be different to achieving Olympian stand-out performance in business?
Olympic sports success is not balanced. It is not confined to a part of the day. Olympian sports success is obsessive. It is unbalanced. It is single-minded. It requires brutal sacrifice and pain (see the graphic to the left showing the cost and effort required to get into the Olympics – source: Voucherbox). Why would being the best in your business field require anything less?
I think we tend to create an artificial distinction because an Olympic goal might be confined to a target by the age of 30. Thereafter an athlete can retire to a “normal” life. Similarly, an overachieving student might single-mindedly pursue “top-of the-class” performance knowing that the pain and sacrifice will end with the award of a degree. A business career is part of most of our adult lives and sacrifice for that amount of time is untenable for most people. For this reason, careers like investment banking and management consulting tend to have short lifespans before achievers move on to a second phase. I believe that for this reason they tend to attract more employees seeking super-achievement before the “second-phase” – people will accept the discomfort for a short time horizon.
I believe that there are fifteen determinants to achieving business-career excellence.
1. Get real – look outwards
It is impossible for everybody to…. To read more click here.
Strategy Tools

Your due diligence is most likely wrong
As many as 70 – 90% of deals fail to create value for acquirers. The majority of these deals were the subject of commercial or strategic due diligences (DDs). Many DDs are rubber stamps – designed to motivate an investment to shareholders. Yet the requirements for a value-adding DD go beyond this.
Strategic due diligence must test investees against uncertainty via a variety of methods that include scenarios, probabilised forecasts and stress tests to ensure that investees are value accretive.
Firms that invest during downturns outperform those who don’t. DDs undertaken during downturns have a particularly difficult task – how to assess the future prospects of an investee when the future is so uncertain.
There is clearly an integrated approach to successful due diligence – despite the challenges posed by uncertainty.
Read more…
Fast Facts

Going niche is not always a viable strategy for South African manufacturers
- Niche food markets are relatively small in South Africa when craft beer, pure-ground coffee, Fairtrade coffee and organic foods are used as proxies.
- According to Global Advisors analysis, niche products account for between 0,38% and 19,60% of total market volumes and have a potential consumer size of just over 900 000 adults if Gauteng, Kwazulu-Natal and the Western Cape are targeted.
- Companies within the niche market space must therefore carefully consider the size of their particular niche market, in terms of the potential volumes that they should produce, the number of potential consumers, in terms of the targeted LSM group, and where these consumers are located.
- For companies already producing mass market products, niche products might require a different business model and could become a distraction to their core product offerings.
- The size of these niche sectors are expected to increase in South Africa in the near future due to the rise of the middle-class.
Selected News

Quote: Rich Roll, ultra-endurance athlete, bestselling author
“You can stand in the light. And you can set a positive example. But you simply cannot make someone change.” – Rich Roll,
Ultra-endurance athlete, bestselling author
Rich Roll is an ultra-endurance athlete, author, and wellness advocate best known for his memoir Finding Ultra (2012), which details his transformation from a self-described “corporate lawyer with a drinking problem” to a world-class endurance athlete. His philosophy centers on personal accountability, mindfulness, and the power of leading by example—themes reflected in this quote.
Context from Roll’s Work:
The quote appears in Finding Ultra and is tied to his reflections on relationships, mentorship, and the limits of influence. Roll emphasizes that while individuals can model integrity, resilience, or health (e.g., through his own journey with plant-based nutrition and extreme sports), they cannot force others to adopt those values. This idea stems from his experiences with addiction recovery: he realized lasting change requires internal motivation rather than external pressure.
Motivation Behind the Quote:
Roll’s life was marked by periods of self-destructive behavior before he embraced fitness and mindfulness. The quote underscores a core belief in personal agency: while one can inspire others through actions (e.g., training for an Ultraman triathlon or advocating for wellness), true change must come from within. He often contrasts this with his earlier attempts to control outcomes, which led to frustration. His later work as a podcast host (The Rich Roll Podcast) further explores how people find purpose through self-directed growth.
Alignment with Roll’s Philosophy:
In interviews and writings, Roll stresses that “change is a journey of the individual.” For instance, in Finding Ultra, he describes how his own transformation—quitting alcohol, adopting a plant-based diet, training for ultra-endurance events—was driven by personal desire, not external demands. The quote reflects this ethos: while he could share his story and model discipline, he acknowledges that others must choose their paths independently.
Why It Resonates:
The message resonates with themes of non-attachment and self-authorship, common in wellness and mindfulness circles. Roll’s own life exemplifies the power of self-directed change (e.g., completing the Ultraman triathlon at age 43), yet he avoids prescribing solutions to others. This aligns with his broader advocacy for authenticity over dogma, emphasizing that “the light” one stands in must be personal and purpose-driven.
Final Note:
The quote is not about passivity but about recognizing boundaries between influence and control. Roll’s legacy lies in demonstrating how radical self-honesty and perseverance can redefine lives—while also respecting others’ autonomy to do the same (or not). As he writes, “You cannot save anyone else… only yourself.” This duality of responsibility and respect for individual choice is central to his teachings.
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