Building structures that hold the future

In this short video, I share my thoughts on the importance of building structures today that will hold and sustain your future.

How to keep track of rapid changes in your business.

Business Series 2: Ideas Rule

In the last article we established that wealth is made. Our minds are trained to see
wealth as the amount of money in our account or the amount of cash we have in our
pockets but real wealth is beyond this. Do not get me wrong; the end result of what
I am teaching is that you should have money available for you but when starting out,
keeping your mind fixated on actual cash will shut down your ability to be creative
about creating wealth.

Wealth creation does not depend on the resources you have outside you but what
you have in your mind. The actual resource used to create wealth is the invisible
component called ideas. Your ideas, as intangible as they may seem, are the
powerful ingredients you need to create the wealth you desire to create. Your
business idea may seem as though it is just an idea but that lone idea when developed
can create a business that not only provides for you and your family but many other
people who will work inside it and earn an honorable living.

This idea stage is one of the most difficult stages of developing a thriving business.
But if you stay on it it will eventually pay you bountifully. It always does. So the
question is if you can pay the price of developing your idea from just another idea
into a concrete substance from which a profitable business will sprout from.

Ideas are powerful. They are so powerful that even when you work with someone
you cannot rise until you begin thinking as if you own the business or organization.
The moment you change the way you see yourself it affects the way you think. If
you successfully change the way you think from a sorry employee to the owner of
the business, it changes the way you think. As the business owner you won’t come
to work late or abandon a sale halfway or talk rudely to customers, etc. now think
of it, if you have an employee who is willing to pay the price an owner pays to see
to the success of your business, will you hold him or her from progressing in your
business? If you are in your right senses you won’t. You will enable the rise of your
employee because diligent people deserve to dine with dignitaries.

In it's simplest form, being in business means getting paid for solving human
problems. The weight of problems you solve determine the promotions you enjoy.
If you solve small problems you enjoy small pay and if you solve big problems you
enjoy big pay. Think of this for a while: a cardiologist and a general practitioner are
both medical doctors but while the medical doctor earns a minimum wage, the
cardiologist enjoys plush benefits. The difference is that one handles problems like
malaria and typhoid fevers while the other almost always handles life or death case.
The weight of problems you solve determine the promotions you enjoy.

Business Series 1: Wealth is Made

The words you are about to read are important – follow them carefully. These words are important because they are predictive of the financial direction of Nigeria (and probably your) over the next decade. Hence, these aren’t just words but seeds that I seek to plant in your life (through your assimilation and action) that have the potential to sprout and blossom into a mighty tree with hundreds of resultant fruits on it.

Entrepreneurship is the way for our financial increase and path out of unemployment. Some people are quick to protest that they are “not cut out for business.” This is an error in perspectives towards. Fact is that nobody is “cut out” for anything nor do you need to be cut out for business to excel therein. We need to understand that entrepreneurship is not the actions taken by a business person but a way of thinking. It is a mindset; an attitude of the mind. This attitude understands that since business exists solely to solve human problems then we are all in business irrespective of what we do to earn a living.

In addition, wealth is made. Wealth is the child of resourceful minds that solve problems other human beings are faced with. Wealth does not jump down from the skies to the lucky and neither is it imparted on any person. Wealthy nations for example are not wealthy because a “god of wealth” favors them. No, they are wealthy because their citizens took the initiative to create it. This means that you can create wealth and I can create wealth.

As a nation, we will begin to experience national wealth when we learn and apply principles of entrepreneurship. These are the principles of wealth creation. We cannot prosper by depending on wealthy nations for aid. No beggar creates wealth. It has not happened in the past and will not happen in the future. Aids reinforce our belief that we are poor and if we believe we are poor then we are poor.

Entrepreneurship is the key to ensuring we have jobs for the future. It is the way for individuals to create wealth. It is the way forward for our families to build sustainable income. Hop on the entrepreneurship ride as we take the journey towards creating the wealth we desire.

Let go of the steam - Forgive!

Resentment is like a glass of poison that a man drinks; then he sits down and waits for his enemy to die.

“To err is human but to forgive divine” and you probably believe it is true just like I do. It can either be taken to mean it is normal for a man to err but to forgive means operating in the divine or only the divine can forgive. I may not know what it exactly means but I do know that children have it and we need it.

Some days back, on a sunny afternoon, as I walked down the road that leads to my house, I came by two boys, roughly the age of seven. Both had locally made toys in the form of cars which they pulled with a string behind them. One boy’s toy car lost a wheel and he struggled to fix it. The other in a bid to keep their fun rolling decided to give a helping hand. The first refused and pushed him away. “Ah, what a naughty boy”, I thought, “He deserves no help!” The second boy felt the same (or so I thought) and began to walk away. The boy with the broken toy tried futilely to fix the wheel. It did not take long for him to realize that he needed help. He apologized immediately and asked for help – the same help he had earlier rejected. “No way!” the judge in my head gave verdict, “here is the chance for full pay back.” But to my shame, the first boy who was by now quite a distance away, turned and helped repair the broken wheel of his friend.

I really could not believe it. With kids it seems there will always be a “happily ever after” end to a story. How was it so easy for this kid to forgive and forget? As much as my experience has shown me, it is a difficult thing to forgive. Forgetting is a completely different ballgame. That seven-year-old taught me otherwise.

Forgiveness is a beautiful virtue that the world no longer teaches. Rarely will you hear a public speaker say things like forgive your neighbor. It is one of the virtues that tag people as “weak”. And who wants to be weak? We don’t want to forgive when wronged and funny enough no one is even asking for forgiveness. No one cares if you forgive or not. It is a wild world we live in, a world of vendettas (bloody or not). Consider the words of George Herbert, “He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass.” If peradventure you want to exercise this virtue here are some tips:

·        Make room for people to fail. Human beings will always be human beings and part of being a human is that we will never be perfect. Since we will wrong each other, it is important that we learn to give each other that room to fail. After all, we are humans!

·        Let go of your pride. Some times we don't forgive because we feel to proud to be on the losing side of an argument or a business deal or even of a simple decision. This winner-loser mindset robs us of our enjoyment of life and increases our pride quotient. Let go of some pride. You, yes YOU can lose at somethings. If you'll keep this in mind you'll suddenly realize that there wasn't any reason to fear losing in the first place.

·        Don’t deny the hurt. Sometimes we simply deny that we have been hurt by someone else and that is the reason we remain hurt. You must learn to accept the fact that you have been hurt if you will forgive. Think about it, what is there to forgive if you say you weren't hurt? Accept and admit being hurt if you really want to forgive the person that hurt you.

·        Learn to forgive yourself also. Sometimes the person that needs forgiveness from me is ME. We exhibit unforgiveness towards ourselves even as much as we exhibit it towards others. You really want to learn to forgive? begin with yourself. Forgive yourself for doing things you promised you would never do again. 

t      The fact is that every single one of us can forgive if we follow the steps outlined above.