Time seems to be flying faster each day – reflections from an entrepreneur

When I started TELLUS International, Inc 15 years ago, little did I know what I would be facing during the years, but I have to say it has been a journey that has been both thrilling, scary, fantastic, and everything in between. The fact that I have to bring bread to the table every day of the month including vacation months can be intimidating to many people but I have now lived this and understand that whatever you sell, you’d better provide value for the customers you serve.

Time seems to be accelerating

When I look back at the past five years, it seems that time is accelerating each and every day at a faster pace. I realized that the last time I updated this blog was in September 2015, which shows that my personal blog has not been on top of my mind and focus. As a business owner and entrepreneur, I have had to focus on my business, the brand of my business (TELLUS International, Inc) and also the brand of the fantastic customers that I have had the honor to serve and work with.

What this blog was supposed to be

This blog was initially formed to include postings of my personal life, my personal views on topics in entrepreneurship, global business, learnings from different technologies and also thoughts of living a life. People that know me, know that I travel extensively during the year and now with my wife, Rita Salonen building her TELLUS Travels business takes us also to places so she will be able to be effective in selling cruises, vacation resorts, river cruises, and recently also business travel.

The question that I always struggle with is whether I should put effort into TELLUS blogs or to my “personal branding” as both are very important and interconnected. Besides this blog and TELLUS blog, I will have to think TELLUS Travels blog to help my wife to spread the word of travel and services that she can provide to her clients.

Why did I get started again with this blog?

The question that some of you might have is why did I suddenly reactivate this blog. I have had the pleasure to have a few people in my life that have made a tremendous impact on my life and one of these people gave me excitement to the extent that I got goosebumps during the call and he gave me perspective on things that I kind of had lost with the business of life. I have worked with hundreds of people delivering workshops the past five years, tremendously smart people from global brands, brands that every one of you know if you saw the name. I have built new workshop models that have been very successful with strong repeatable processes that enable organizations of different sizes to build a software business regardless of what lifecycle stage they are in. I have to admit that I am proud of what we have been able to get done. Little did I know how this would turn out when living in the town of Kotka, close to the Russian border in eastern Finland.

Having people in your network to learn from

Some of you might wonder who this person is that made a difference in my entrepreneurial life? It is Mr. Robert (Bob) Losey from Source Data Products. Bob did me a favor in my early days as a newly appointed subsidiary CEO for a Finnish software company in the business intelligence and analytics space. I was appointed from a CTO position without a Rolodex of people, without a pipeline. I made a call to Bob pretty much telling him that he should start reselling my solution. Bob did take my call and had one question: “how many have you sold yourself by now?”. I told him that I have been in the role for a week so none. He said: “Petri, call me when you have sold and delivered your first one”. I closed the following month a deal with a steel company in South Carolina. I called Bob and he was a man with his word. He signed a contract with my company and we had a fantastic run with him and his company. Besides this learning from him, I learned so many things from Bob during the years such as the value of the network you have, the content of your customer relationship management (CRM) database, etc. In my call a couple of days ago, Bob yet again gave me something that is hard to explain. He was able to get me to look at the “big picture”. Thank you Bob yet again! Today I told my son Sebastian about Bob and his impact as Seb is building his career and I hope he is going to “run into” Bob’s in his career.

Understanding the bigger picture

I named this blog as “Time seems to be flying faster each day”, and what Bob made me do which I have really failed to do for a while, which is a reflection on what you are doing, what you should not be doing, and what should be part of a “bigger picture”. I have always done reflection, but it seems that the past few years have been just too busy to pay attention to that. We immigrated to the US-based on my reflection when I was a tad over 30 years old. I even wrote two business books about the journey (to a Finnish book publisher Talentum) and I have a feeling that I should reinitiate a book project in reflection on this. It would be almost like an update to what I knew then and where I think I am now with me and my dear family.

Being grateful for your life

We are here in the US as immigrants. It is just me, my wife and my grown-up children. We do not have relatives in the US, every Thanksgiving we have been blessed to spend time with our “US families” and Thanksgiving has become my most important day. I had no clue about the importance when we immigrated to the US, but now after 20 years, I have a better understanding of what it really means. I did not have any idea when we made the decision to immigrate what it really means and what kind of things we would have to deal with along the way. I would not take back a single day though, but I am sure we have learned quite a bit along the way.

Information sharing is caring

My plan with this blog is to use it as a reflection on my life, my business, and my reflection on the business topics that I work with. I am a “book freak”, I buy e-books and educate myself to ensure that I stay on top of things both personally and professionally. I will use this blog to give ideas of books you might have an interest in. My dear Goodson Jere is getting in the same business where I am and he just sent me a request to share good sources of information so this blog will also be to give ideas to Jere and my kids Sebastian and Daniela.