Rich Dad: Why Teach Financial Literacy?

Lesson 2: Why Teach Financial Literacy?  why don't they teach this at school?

The growing gap between rich and poor is rooted in the antiquated educational system. The system trains people to be good employees, and not employers. The obsolete school system also fails to provide young people with basic financial skills rich people use to grow their wealth.

The Best Way To Make Money! The Power Of Your Mind

If you have read and understood “MONEY OR VALUE” and you have chosen that way, the next thing on your mind should be “The best way to make money.”

If you want to make money, you need to ask yourself some questions and make some necessary research. For example in a city like Lagos or Abuja where the combined population is over 20 million people and on the average a person spends 150 naira on food in a day. That will come to a total of  3 billion naira spent on food every day.

When people say there is no money in town, they may not be stating the truth. The truth is that there is money, but they have not been able to see it. Because you do not see money with your eyes, you see it with your mind.

Let us take our illustration a little further. The supposed 20 million people in both cities need houses to live in. Those houses are built with cement, gravel, sand, iron rods and roofing sheets. These things cost money to buy. But it is those who are selling them that make the money.

Each of the 20 million people puts on at least two pieces of cloth per day. They wear around 20 million pairs of shoes. They brush their teeth everyday with toothbrushes and toothpaste. Most of them use soap for their bath and wash their clothes. May be 70% of them move from one part of the city to the other every day. They sleep on beds which have mattresses, which need bed sheets and pillow cases. The children within the population need to go to school.
Can you see how to make money now?

What you have to do is to solve a particular kind of problem for a fraction of the people in you can by giving or adding value and money will flow in your direction. By the way, we describe the money spent in a country as its currency. Currency describes a current or something that flows. Actually, money flows. Each time you spend money, someone makes money. Why not be the one making the money? It is now your turn to prosper. Write down your own goals and work towards creating value and problems you are to solve for people.

It may not work out the way you expected the first time, but with persistence, determination and the
willingness to learn along the way, you will achieve your goals.
Another thing you should be mindful of is the fact that you will make mistakes. But do not be afraid, all you need to do is learn from your mistakes.

"Have no fear of perfection - because no one ever reaches it."

Money OR Value? Which is more Important?

When money comes into your life, it likes to take the first place and alter what you think about it you begin to worship it.

But “No servant can serve two masters. For either he will hate the one and love the other or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot make a honest living without creating real value for money.

Money must never take the first place in your life. Settle that forever, and you will be a great success.

“The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil" for which many have strayed from and pursued money instead of value in their greediness and pierced themselves through with alot of failure”.

If I were to have something to say to the young generation of Nigerians today, it will be this; “Money is only a means of exchange. If you want to break free from poverty, keep this at the back of your mind. "You will not get something for nothing."

Because there has been so much poverty and deprivation in our society today, due to mismanagement and the greed of some other people, many people want to survive at all cost. People want to make money by all means.

But note this, when it comes to the issue of money, except you bring something that has value, something that has worth, something that is usable that will meet a need in somebody’s life to the market place or the place of exchange, you will not get money.

It is not the absence of money that makes a person poor, it is the absence of value.

If you fall into the trap of making money illegally like many people have, it will distort your values and then redefine wisdom for you. For someone who is in love with money and who wants to get it at all cost, ‘money is the beginning of wisdom and whatever he has to do to get it, is right’. Whatever will not bring it is what is wrong. So today we have people who are hurting other people and even killing others to make money.

                             
If you want to put money where it belongs in your life, sacrifice is the key. Making money is not as important as getting value. Without value, every money you make will seem useless.

Myles Munroe said “If the value of a thing is not known, the abuse of it is inevitable.” I realised that ultimately, what you will be abusing is your own life.

This is a great gift for you. It is absolutely free and life-changing!! Do not think about it, just Try and create value!!!

You will succeed!

Rich Dad: The Rich Don't Work For Money

Lesson 1: The Rich Don't Work For Money

 Some people quit a job because it doesn't pay well. Others see it as an opportunity to learn something new

At age 9, Robert Kiyosaki and his best friend Mike asked Mike's father (Rich Dad) to teach them how to make money. After 3 weeks of dusting cans in one of Rich Dad's convenience stores at 10 cents a week, Kiyosaki was ready to quit. Rich Dad pointed out this is exactly what his employees sounded like. Some people quit a job because it doesn't pay well. Others see it as an opportunity to learn something new.

WORK TO LEARN
Next Rich Dad put the two boys to work, this time for nothing. Doing this forced them to think up a source of income, a business scheme. The opportunity came to them upon noticing discarded comic books in the store. The first business plan was hatched. The boys opened a comic book library and employed Mike's sister at 1$ a week to mind it. Soon they were earning $9.50 a week without having to physically run the library, while kids read as much comics as they could in two hours after school for only a few cents.

In the process, Robert was taught the following lessons:
Don't accept mediocre circumstances just because they're handed to you.
Making more money doesn't help, if you don't have financial literacy. As income increases, most people increase their expenses, and end up with nicer stuff, but no more financial freedom than when they earned less.

The rich have money work for them."

Most of us become enslaved to money, and then get angry at our situation. Or at our boss. But our boss isn't the one exploiting us; we're exploiting ourselves (by trading time for money, and by working for money, instead of letting the money work for us).

According to Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, "The poor and middle class work for money. The rich have money work for them."

How you grow your finance without quitting your job.

Professor Pat Utomi is not only a role model for the Nigerian youths, the political economist and business angel has continued to engage the Nigerian system through discourses, lectures, seminars and webinars. Recently, at a forum in Lagos on network marketing, the co-founder of the Lagos Business School wowed the audience with what he called his testimony. Beyond that, he unfolded the limitless possibilities of network marketing and the necessity for individuals to always have multiple streams of income. Nigeria Political Economist was there and captured his thoughts. I will take a personal perspective in sharing this topic. I will give my personal testimony and how I have been able to organise my life which in the long run gave me soft-landings at every point in time. I go back to the systemic distress in the Nigeria banking industry. The banks have gone through systemic challenges, the first round of systemic challenges was in the 1920s. And in the 1950s was another round of failings which eventually led to the Banking Ordinance of 1959 and the attempt to regulate the banking industry, which meant that from the early 1960s until Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), banking was an extraordinary oligopoly of only government and foreign players. In the 1990s we had our first systemic crisis of the modern era. I recall a gentleman coming to see me during that crisis, he just lost his job as a Deputy General Manager in a bank and his wife was an AGM in another bank, she also had just lost her job. He felt and looked so helpless and this touched my soul. It wasn’t as if he was going to the next level, this was a no level situation, and he didn’t know what to do as there was no income from another source. He borrowed so much to buy a house, cars etcetera and all I could do at that time was to tell him my story. My style I’ve always believed in plan B. I have never lived off one stream of income not so much as a result of worry for income, but just a common sense way of life.

When I came back from graduate school in the United States in the very early eighties, 1982 to be precise, I wanted to start my own business straight away. At first people thought it was crazy because I was in high demand. When I was writing my PhD thesis I had come home to do some field work. I had interviews with some prominent Nigerians then and one of them ( Alhaji Abubakar Alhaji) told me to come back and come take a position with him. In those days if you come back straight home as a special assistant you’ll become a level 10 worker, and I would have moved into a very significant house in Ikoyi but I chose not to do that. I chose to start a business and everyone thought I was crazy. A few months later the government offered me a presidential advisory role but before that happened I had started a business and a few months after I was offered that position there was a coups d’état. It was as seamless as driving in my car to my home in Ikoyi and driving to Surulere the next day where my office was to resume in my own office. I did not feel jobless for a second. I didn’t realize something had happened and to some people it was the end of the world, they had invested all they had. How I got government appointment The story of how I got into government is funny. My views on issues of public policy were expressed very strongly even when I lived in America in the Nigerian newspapers. Ray Ekpu who was editor of the Sunday Times, was a good friend of mine that used to harass me to do opinion pieces from the US. When I came back the then Vice President sought me out and I was commissioned to do some report for him, I did the report and he invited me to the Vice President’s home. It was a second meeting with him in my life and he just casually asked if it has been approved for me to replace Professor Odenigwe. The only word I could think of uttering was ‘why’? Because there was no prior conversation in that direction, and the Professor was my teacher at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, why would I be replacing him? And he turned to his Special Assistant, “look at these young people, they said we don’t know what we are doing, we said they should come and they’re asking why”. So, I asked him if I could think about it, and he gave me leave. As I was driving back I met a friend of mine from primary school, and he said he heard I was to replace the Professor, I told him I wanted to think about it. He got into my car and asked that we go to his house. He had tried very hard to get this same appointment and I was asking why? You can imagine if that kind of person got the position, what would have happened to him in the night of the coup d’état. Always have a plan B I have told these real life stories to buttress the need for everyone to give thought to a plan B in the course of any career. One of the nice things about the plan B is that it may appear attractive enough to make the plan A become questionable. Many successful businesses we know happened because somebody got fired. The idea of a plan B for me has always been an opportunity to challenge myself. One of the plan Bs that has made currency in the last couple of decades is the plan B that takes advantage of our natural strength. When we do SWOT analysis and we are looking at strength and weaknesses to take advantage of opportunities and manage threats. We always pack up our strength. One strength that is very rarely played up is our natural strength; that is the fact that man was created a gregarious animal. I like to say very often that if God intended man to be individualistic he wouldn’t have created man in a society. Man is basically created as a gift unto others. If our gifting and associating with others flows naturally as part of our humanity, how about building on that to create economic value, because that is all that network marketing is all about. Network marketing Someone once told me that if he had to invest again he would invest enormously in network marketing opportunity building because what it does is, allow that natural strength to help cut a lot of cost in distribution channels and create profit for the persons who engage in that track. I’ll make a comment very quickly on why network marketing is sometimes challenged in our environment; it is probably because we’ve not managed to educate people well enough and to create institutional boundaries to regulate the context of network marketing. One of the things I have tried to encourage is the founding of an institute of network marketing, because it has not been properly grounded there are some who have operated network marketing initiatives more or less like quality skills and it has led people to be wary of that process. That is a wrong way to understand this great possibility for marketing, distribution of goods and services. I think another important thing to note about the challenges of network marketing is the terrible syndrome plaguing the country today which is instant gratification. We have built an instant gratification culture in a world where real progress is a function of delayed gratification. People are looking for their reward instantly, if the reward is delayed till three months’ time people become sceptical and that has been the major problem in our environment. Advantages of network marketing One advantage of network marketing is the possibility of passive income when we’re not strong enough as we used to. When we look around us, I think one of the most frightening things is the reality that we are getting old. As we get older the things we take for granted that we’re doing now we won’t be able to do again. If you’re a businessman, getting a lot of contracts now and executing them, even if you’re physically strong you’ll find out in 10-15 years that your connections have become irrelevant; the people who will be happening then are your children’s mates. You’re not getting business any more not because you’re less strong but they’re looking at you as someone that is old fashioned. I say this particularly because I’ve been in a very sad situation in the last one year of having had to be part of a network to contribute money for a friend whom 25 years ago we thought was one of the richest boys in Lagos, to go abroad for treatment. This is depressing. Old age is inevitable Many of us live like we’re going to remain the way we are forever and it is not true. The window is very short, it is not just a social thing it is true. In the changing world there is an axiom in organizational learning which says, unless the rate of learning in an organisation is equal to or greater than the pace of change in the environment, the organisation is progressively becoming a dinosaur. Many of us will find out that the knowledge we had yesterday that made us relevant is actually the reasons we’ll be irrelevant sooner. Learning involves two things; unlearning, we have to climb the unlearning curve before we climb the learning curve. What this means is that unless we’re one of those extra ordinary people who manage to keep learning as change is taking place, within a space of 15-20 years we’ll no longer be happening people. How do we survive when we’re no longer happening people? The corporations of now will be getting rid of people much earlier even when you’ve been a great guy in that corporation. They look at you and say you’re no longer near the goal of what they want in the new direction they’re travelling, and you’re settled handsomely with may be N20 million and you think it’s a huge sum, but one year later the money is gone. It is very important that we ask ourselves what we can do to ensure that after working for money, money can work for us. As we get older the work we do today can now work for us in the future. The way that this has been emerging is through investments, carefully building up your investments portfolio. Before you know it someone in New York has over extended in mortgage lending to some people and they’ve been able to package some risks in some manner that there’re managing to spread the risks out and they call it securitisation and because people in Japan are buying into this, one day the excesses of people who are trying to get bonuses will overheat the system and you get a systemic blowout and all that your portfolio comes to zero. A practical scenario A man has just retired, he is 60 years old and can live for another 30 years, but has no capacity to continue to think for himself and just out of worry he is dead within a few years. If he wants to build other platforms, to be able to ensure that those later years are going to be such that the work of yesterday can carry us today. I think we need to be thinking of opportunities. There are people who think that the ultimate investment is in owning properties. Less than 50 per cent of the houses in Ikoyi today are occupied. For many people that is the ultimate safe investment. It is safe quite alright but there is no income. This means there should be a little more than owning some houses. From the stock market we learnt some lessons as most people sold their properties to invest in the stock market. This is a time to diversify a little bit more, and essentially with network marketing, It is high time you used this natural strength to get people into a network and build this pipeline up line. Different models for different people One of the things I have said to people who are managing network marketing enterprises is that if you can teach some to accommodate the possibilities that different type of demographic profiles seek, because many of us come with completely different needs profile. There are those of us who need income every January to pay school fees. Some need income long after retirement. What this means is that network marketing companies have to be more environment and culture sensitive. Move from the Eurocentric to be more African. Profile members; get a sense of what their expectations are and what their goals are and develop products, processes and systems that are more in tune with the needs of the people that are part of this network, if that can be done, you can imagine that many of us who are working professionals can find that we’re in touch with so many people and when we bring certain goods and services to those people they take advantage of it and there is mutual benefit. You can be your own boss One of the real benefits of network marketing in today’s world is that it allows you to run your own business completely. Network marketing organization provides an electronic platform which also gives you the opportunity to have your own business there which you would not have been able to set up as an entrepreneur. In today’s world, when I first started talking about globalization and illustrating it in my classes, it sounded esoteric, I remember in a class in 1994 in the Lagos Business School and I was talking about the convergence; the three streams of technology, computing, telecommunications and broadcasting and that the effect of convergence will allow some small player to play with ease, competing against major multinationals anywhere in the world. It will help also the small player to be able to go down to the specific needs of one consumer. When a network marketing platform gives you the opportunity to go online, take your own business there because there is already a network of say sixty thousand people already on the network and when you put your business there, it means you have a first hit of sixty thousand customers, and then those people can extend it to other people. This is a remarkable opportunity to build one’s business. And what’s even more interesting is that you can actually be building this while you’re still working for other companies and not stealing their time. There are many genuine network marketing schemes out there, take advantage of this unfolding opportunity before it is too late

7 Mistakes to Avoid in Your Journey of Life -Sam Adeyemi

An awesome e-book written by Sam Adeyemi, one of the top success coaches in Nigeria. The title of the e-book is ‘What I Would Do Differently – 7 Costly Mistakes to Avoid in Your Journey of Life’.
The costly life mistakes to avoid shared in this e-book are really great. The e-book is truly a life changer. Lets share the preamble of the 7 lessons shared in the e-book.

LESSON #1:  Worry Won’t Solve Any Problem
“When you worry, you are paying interest on an overdraft you never took! Does it make any sense?”

LESSON #2: Success Is Not A Day’s Job
“A tomato fruit can be ripened in two ways. You could spray a chemical on it and you would have a ripe tomato fruit overnight. You could also allow it to grow through the maturation process. Which one do you think would taste better? Drop that microwave success mentality. It won’t get you anywhere. Believe me!”

LESSON #3: More Money Won’t Make You Rich Without Discipline
“I remember the words of the great evangelist, Billy Graham. He said, “When wealth is lost, nothing is lost. When health is lost, something is lost. But when character is lost, all is lost.” Don’t lose your character in the bid to make some small amount of money!”

LESSON #4: Location Won’t Change Who You Are
“Archbishop Benson Idahosa once said that a lizard in Nigeria will not become a crocodile in America. He was trying to address a mindset that many of us in the third world have. We say that if only we could go to the western nations, if only we could go to the countries that look so beautiful in the movies and in the magazines, then our lives would change. That is a big lie!”

LESSON #5: Success Always Comes With A Balance
“Zig Ziglar said, I believe that being successful means having a balance of success stories across the many areas of your life. You can’t truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles. How true!”

LESSON #6: Accept People The Way They Are
“Mike Murdock once said that when two people are doing the same thing or acting the same way, one of them is irrelevant! God does not have a duplicating machine. He fashioned every one of us differently. ”

LESSON #7: You Need Your Body to Achieve Your Goals
“Someone once remarked that he wouldn’t want to become the wealthiest man on the hospital bed or in the graveyard. You need sound health to achieve God’s purpose for your life. ”

The Best Career Advice For Young Entrepreneurs

As a fresh-faced university graduate I was eager to find a shortcut to fast track my way up the corporate ladder. Though being from a rural background, the only person around who had achieved distinction in a major organisation was my imposing great uncle Gus -a second world-war veteran who reached an executive level at one of Australia’s largest industrial companies.

So one Sunday lunch I decided to strike. Strategically picking my moment after the lamb roast had been devoured and the apple pie was safely in our bellies, I managed to corner Gus in the lounge room alone. After some idle chitchat about his illustrious yet now long-retired career, I plucked up the courage to ask, “So Uncle Gus what’s the secret to getting ahead in your career?”

The sparkle in his eye evidenced the compliment I had paid him. And you could see his still agile mind reminisce back to a time when he felt that same eagerness one has at the start of their career where options and opportunity abound. With little hesitation required for his almost ninety year-old brain to sift through the thousands of possible answers - he gave me this gem:

“It’s simple. Do the jobs no one else wants to do.”

At the time I was a little underwhelmed to be honest. I was hoping more for something like “go abroad and learn”, or “invest in continual education”. Even a simple “work harder than your boss” would have satisfied my hunger for an insider’s tip to miss a few rungs on that daunting ladder of promise. But seriously, was my youth about to be stolen from me, enduring year after year doing the jobs no one else wanted to do?

Yet twenty-something years later this simple career building principle has become part of my business DNA and has helped frame my career in four distinct ways:

1. DOING THE UNPOPULAR JOBS MYSELF: The few years where I did work for another organisation I always embraced doing the jobs no one else wanted to do and smiled inwardly, safe in the knowledge that the karma it built would one day be repaid. I recall landing in the UK as a 24 year-old and having to take a role as a filing clerk despite having been a manager back in Australia. To replace the monotony I set myself the challenge of becoming the UK’s fastest filing clerk, which saw me photocopier hopping to make up time and running up the stairs rather than waiting for elevators in my mission for speed. Soon the tasks that took my predecessor a week to complete were finished in less than a day, and yes, the ‘powers that be’ wanted to know why.'

2. LEADING BY EXAMPLE: As leaders we often delay doing the tasks no one else wants to do such as calling an irate customer, giving someone bad news or finishing that laborious proposal on the weekend. Leaders who are prepared to lead by example and complete these tasks themselves (at least initially) gain respect from their employees and create a can-do culture where a strong work ethic is the norm.

3. LAUNCHING BUSINESSES IN UNPOPULAR INDUSTRIES: When seeking avenues for a new business I tend to steer clear of the latest crazes as these areas have usually been oversubscribed. Rather, I have sought out the less glamorous opportunities given they invariably present the least competition, the highest margins and best possibilities to disrupt. During the Dot-com Bubble I was informed by a prominent venture capital firm they wouldn’t invest in our call centre business because it wasn’t ‘sexy’ enough. Two months later, every ‘sexy’ business they invested in had crumbled and our business took off -no longer requiring investor funds and growing to what would have resulted in a thirty-fold increase in their contribution.

4. PROMOTING EMPLOYEES WHO GIVE BEFORE THEY GET: I have always attempted to go out of my way to promote and recognize staff who have an inclination towards tackling tough or inglorious tasks without complaint or promise of reward. I have passed over many a self-promoter, over-resuméd, ‘suck-up to the boss’ type, in favour of those who are prepared to invest before they are given glory, titles or rewards. And it is in the backing of these types of employees that I attribute to the enormous growth our companies achieved against the odds.

Whether you are looking to get ahead in your corporate job or launch your own business, remember this sage piece of advice from Great Uncle Gus – “Do the jobs no one else wants to do”. If that means chasing up overdue debtors, making a dreaded phone call or delivering some bad news, do it today not tomorrow. And if you are already doing the jobs no one else wants to do then allow yourself a self-indulgent smile amid the drudgery, knowing you could be one mundane task away from a view higher up the ladder.

Source: Creel Price