Maxim Behar for Almanach 2022: About The "Sexy" Things in Business and More...

Maxim Behar in the eighth edition of Almanach 2022 of the leading Bulgarian TBMagazine on the project "Managers Share - Successful Case Studies in Bulgarian Business."

In the following article, the world-renowned PR Expert Maxim Behar shares with you what the new sexy in business is today. How did we manage to shift our perspective on doing business? How has COVID-19 affected the way we manage ourselves and our work? Why might you be a new type of leader without knowing it?

About thе "sexy" things in business and something else...

I'll make the disclaimer right away—we’re going to talk about business and nothing else. Everyone can think what they want and interpret it as they know it. It's like we're on Facebook.

However, life is practically outside of social media, especially regarding business. Today, in 2022, a company without exciting and attractive features, which we often colloquially call "sexy" stuff, is worth nothing.

"Business as usual",

or "business as it is" was something we could hear too often in recent years, and somehow, we involuntarily shrugged our shoulders as a justification for our constant busyness or because we were too focused on profits and other things. Well, profits are essential, we can’t argue with that. Exactly 20 years ago, I wrote Bulgaria's first “Standard of Business Ethics”; many readers will recall that the ten tenets circulated lightning-fast from hand to hand and office to office across the country. I took it days later, after it was ready, to present it to Prince Charles in London, and when he was curiously reading it point by point in the splendid hall at St. James's Palace, he suddenly asked me, "And what do you think business ethics is...?" I did not hesitate for a second in answering, for I had already worked out the definition:

To make profits transparently...

Yeep. Business as usual. Profits are important, but they are not the only thing. Making them transparently guarantees that we make them with integrity.

As weird as it sounds now, integrity is the first super attractive aspect of business because it gives us limitless creativity to do whatever we do, always benefiting people and improving our lives.  

I've thought in recent years that my business - Public Relations - was the most dynamic in the world, but the pandemic has brought us other surprises. Doing business, in general, has become so "entangled," and the criteria have changed so much that there is no longer even the tiniest, most little detail that is boring, static, or traditional. Somewhere at the beginning of this century, just getting used to the rise of the free Bulgarian market, American partners explained how, after the rise of the market.

In business, it won’t always be a “smooth sail.”

I argued furiously with them. What crises? We are already free; competition, freedom of speech, trade, and prices exist.
In recent months, I heard from them again; they were no longer standing with their feet held high on their desks somewhere on the 28th floor of a Manhattan office building but rather being kept under quarantine in their houses and slightly shaky voices explaining to me how what is happening now, during the pandemic has nothing to do with everyday business crises, but is something more, much more... They are right. That's why it's not just the communications business that's dynamic anymore; it's everything else in the world. And that's why everything new that’s coming out every day should not only be new but "sexy," or at least that's how we have to present it to make an impression.

One of the most important things is, without a doubt, the total change in leadership.

You know well how it was before - directors, deputies, heads of departments, deputy heads... titles, business cards, posts, long signatures. However, the pandemic, working from home, or wherever else we happen to be, has "melted" all these unnecessary obstacles, and now, I say with conviction that everyone is...a leader.  In their place, with their projects, colleagues, and clients. And if that's not "sexy" in business – I don’t know what is. Everyone's responsibilities have changed, wherever they are and whatever position they have in the team. Modern communications, even more so modern media, which everyone now manages efficiently and without inhibitions, but also with many mistakes, have allowed the newcomer in any business to make crucial decisions and contact the customer.

Naturally - this has its risks, but it also has its advantages.

The other super attractive side of this modern and ever-changing day-to-day business is, without a doubt, the opportunity for people to become experts in "all-ecology."

Simultaneously with the rise of social media and mass online information, modern executives, and not only them, suddenly decided that they understood everything. With just fifteen minutes on Google, they can provide a quality opinion on any subject.  And here I don't even mean the homespun know-it-alls, who in front of our eyes suddenly went from football experts to vaccine coryphées, and then a week later, they already understood international relations... Instead, I mean those managers who understand everything all the time because they have read something on as they call it “Uncle Google”.

Public relations, marketing, legal advice—anything as long as we have something to buy and sell to immediately enter the Chinese market.

And anything else you can think of... they understand everything.

Of course, it's also clear to the cats on our street now that, in the end, besides essential communication, photo swapping, and bragging, social media has brought the world a lot—a lot of knowledge and new ideas. The good thing is that hundreds of millions of fresh personas got into the business quickly, made significant profits, and learned how to do this from social media. That's why I'm not so much against "all-ecology," as long as its followers don't try to impose their opinions peremptorily.

Yet, let me also emphasize the most attractive aspect of the new business conditions.

 - the endless opportunity for innovation. Never in history has the world had such an overwhelming need for new things every day, every hour, every minute, for participants in the incredible " competition " game to succeed more and more.

Now, as I often call it, I even put it as the title of one of my best-selling books in the U.S. and worldwide. The Global PR Revolution requires great heroes to use this information in a way that competes even with themselves. Incredible personalities like Richard Branson, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and several hundred other business geniuses do just that, and quite successfully, I may add - they come up with something great without even waiting for the competition to beat them to it, they immediately "upgrade" it, and in such a way that.

It's hard for anyone to reach them.

It is this incredible race, increasingly including honest, transparent, and ethical techniques, that has brought the "sexy" elements into modern business, made it accessible, clear, and possible, and given you the opportunity to succeed without a dollar in your pocket because the information is accessible and communication is quick and easy.

The rest are details. They are up to us, the ones who get excited, no pun intended, about doing good business. And by nobody else.