Maxim Behar in the eighth edition of Almanach 2022 of the leading Bulgarian TBMagazine on the special project "Managers Share - successful case studies in Bulgarian business".

In the following article the world renowned PR Expert Maxim Behar shares with you what is the new sexy in business today. How we managed to shift our perspective on making business? How has Covid-19 affected the way we manage ourselves and our work as well as 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 about nothing else. Everyone is free to 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 when it comes to business. And today, currently, in 2022, a business without interesting, attractive and what 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 the last 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 important, we can’t argue with that. Exactly 20 years ago, I wrote Bulgaria's first “Standard of Business Ethics”; many of you, 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. If we make them transparently it is already a guarantee that we make them with integrity.

And as weird as it sounds now, integrity really is the first super attractive aspect of business, because it actually gives us the limitless creativity to do whatever we do, but to always benefit people and improve our lives.  

I've thought in recent years that my business - Public Relations - was the most dynamic in the world, but the pandemic has actually 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 in the beginning of this century, just getting used to the rise of the free Bulgarian market, American partners explained to me how after the rise of a market

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

I argued furiously with them. What crises? We are already free, there is competition, freedom of speech, of trade, of prices...
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 in slightly shaky voices explaining to me how what is happening now, during the pandemic has nothing to do with normal business crises, but is something more, much more... They are right. That's why it's not just the communications business that's terribly 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 now unnecessary obstacles and now, I say it with conviction, everyone is...a leader.  In their place, with their projects, with their colleagues, with their 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 easily and without inhibitions, but also with a lot of mistakes, have given this very opportunity to even the newcomer in any business to make important decisions and have contacts with 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 understand everything and 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 week later they already understood international relations... Rather 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 get into the Chinese market right away...

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 basic communication, photo swapping and bragging, social media has brought the world a lot. A lot of knowledge and new ideas. And the good thing is that hundreds of millions of fresh personas got into the business quickly, made great profits, and learned exactly how to do this from social media. That's why I'm not so much against "all-ecology", as long as of course its’ followers don't try to impose their opinions peremptorily.

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

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

Now, as I often call it, even put it as the title of one of my best-selling books in the U.S. and around the world. The Global PR Revolution really 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 and 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, giving you that 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.