While we were children, we aspired to become doctors, engineers, pilots and as well as humble teachers and nurses. We never worried about about the details. We did not know know business nor were we aware of such great names like Warren Buffet, who have made it in business.
We admired regular people and could explain the realities we had achieved. Most people around you fall in the category of the “problem solving group” – a group of people who get broke within a week after pay day or receiving a big cheque,” having solved all recurring life problems, except the permanent one – personal and family level poverty.
Entrepreneurs are different from the poor majority, whether they have made it accross the line of real money or are anywhere along the path to financial success . Unlike a majority of people around you, they are motivated by specific financial goals that pull them through difficulties.
It is absolutely alright to be the problem solving person. It is just another view of the same elephant. In this case you can achieve the same result by making a list of the problems you would like to solve on the way to your goal(s). And then clarify the conditions that you have to create in your life so that all the outcomes happen automatically!
The legendry Andrew Carnigie, while asking Napoleon Hill to consider the project of studying the causes of success and faulire said it in no uncertain terms.
“There seem to me that there is an opportunity here which should challenge an ambition of a young man of your type; but ambition alone is not enough for the task which I have suggested. The one who undertakes it must have courage and tenacity.”
It took a single business failure and a recession, following many successful business ventures for Napoleon Hill to discover that failure is an important source of success instructions.
In “Out Witting The Devil’ Napoleon Hill recorded a personal account of this lesson and advises that “the other self” never exerts its influence or makes itself known except at times of unusual emergency, “when men are forced , through adversity and temporary defeat to change their habits and to think their way of out difficulty.”
Have you ever failed in business?
Everything good or bad starts from small beginnings. Every skill, wisdom and financial success is acquired, in small dozes sometimes over a long stretch of time depending on how much you take on to bring in the experience. Becoming money-savvy is an active learning process requiring hands-on practice.
Cash flows out from doing what you first imagined, then established as a business sytem to solve a specific problem for the society.You set out with a dream and proceed to create, design and build a practise that will produce results the society needs.
Like Frank Howard once said, “eveyone is trying to accomplish something big, not realising that life is made up of little things”. It is the little things we do towards the same goal that bring the big results. In business this starts with establishing the right mix between working assets and the fixed assets that support the operations.
Wisdom, I’m reminded by Evengelist Mike Mudock, is the ability to decern right from wrong, good from bad and so on. It is learnt. It is not an inborn talent. People who have focused on specific primary aims have acquired more of the wisdom dose faster than people who focus on nothing in particular. Building a business brings wisdom home through active learning.
I dare you dear reader, take next weekend out to find out answers to the following questions, for God made you with great potential:
- What is my purpose?
- What is the importance of what I am doing?
- What impact will it have on the people my business is being invented to serve?
Many people have missed the boat to success by handing over their dreams in exchange for fear and procastination, and financially depressing thoughts. Life should be all about creating something new to solve the same or a different problem differently, better than somebody else has done it before. I am very convinced that poverty is a visitor. It can not stay where the host is not welcoming.
Patrick Wameyo, has practised commercial and investment banking for over 19 years in Kenyas Financial System. He is currently practising as a Financial Literacy Educator and coach, and Small Business Consulting on finance and business strategy. He holds a double speciality MBA in Finance and Strategic Management from University of Nairobi. Email [email protected] for a personalised personal finance management coaching plan.
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