A choice called poverty (5)

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Last week, I said that there is no recession but only a migration of value. Money goes where value goes. This was recently demonstrated in Nigeria where a young lady named Hilda Baci decided to undertake a cookathon to write herself into the Guinness Book of World Records by cooking for 100 hours, the longest time spent cooking by anyone up until that time. She became an instant sensation and trended on social media for the period her cookathon lasted. A few months thereafter, she decided to have an online training programme for people who would love to cook. She charged N35,000 (the equivalent of $50) per participant. As at the time of writing this, she had about 6,000 participants. Do the math. $300,000 earned from one single event, in an economy where most people complain of poverty and blame the government for all their problems. In any economy under the sun, anyone who earns what she got in a few days in a year cannot be categorized as poor! The more notably significant value you create, the more reward you attract. Whatever people need, they will find a means of paying equivalent value for. According to Hilda, she invested millions of Naira in her Guinness record quest. There is no amount of money that you spend on personal growth and the development of a significant value proposition that is a waste. Yet these things are the last things that the poor invest in.

Only the poor spend money they don’t have, in anticipation of some largesse that will come from a source that is only in the realm of conjecture. This means borrowing money that they have no idea how it will be paid back except to hope that some freak intervention will bring the resources to pay back. This often translates to delayed repayments or non-payment of borrowed funds, a vicious cycle that only leads to more debt.

Birds of the same feather flock together. If you want to know your wealth or poverty quotient, check the five most resourced relationships in your life. Research has shown that when it comes to income levels, each one of us is the average of the five most significant relationships in our lives apart from our immediate family members. What kind of people do you spend significant time with? You know people’s wealth potential by the quality of their network. Your network has a significant effect on your net worth. A young man wrote a book on how to become a millionaire. He invited a wealthy man to preside over the public launch of the book. On receiving the invitation, the wealthy man gave him an assignment to carry out before the day of the launch as a precondition for his presence. The author was to mine his (author’s) network for 5 people who could give him N200,000 each, or 10 people who could each give him N100,000 or more, or 100 people who could give him N10,000 each, or 200 people who could each give him N5,000. If the author succeeded, then he would come and add his own N1m contribution. However, if he could not, then he (the wealthy man) would not attend and would counsel the young man to go and develop capacity in networking for success because wealth is in people. The young man could not fulfill the condition.

Not everyone you see on the golf course is able to play 18 holes! The maximum some have ever done is nine holes. But the quality and class of people they interact with is their primary reason for belonging there. Any successful person will tell you that the biggest deals that warrant high levels of trust are concluded first in person – through direct contacts or referrals – or by phone, before they are formalized on paper! If you are the most successful person in your network, you need a change of circle. Poor people develop relationships around their frustrations, but rich people develop relationships around their aspirations. When the poor gather, especially in roadside drinking spots, what do they discuss? Problems, the opposite sex, who can drink the most, fashion, sports, etc. They usually pontificate on solutions to national problems. The only thing is that they would never lift a finger to confront or solve the myriad problems they identify and so beautifully analyze. The difference between the poor and the rich when they gather is that even when the rich talk about these issues, it is with a nose for smelling opportunities for making business out of the identified problems.

It doesn’t take superior knowledge to identify or discuss problems. However, rewards only go to problem solvers. For the poor, problems – bills to pay, a roof over the head, food on the table, children’s school fees, etc. – drive performance. For the rich, the desire to solve a human problem is the motivator of performance. For the former, you get wages not determined by you but by the person by whose benevolence you get to address your problems. For the latter, you name your reward and negotiate on your own terms. The world pays depending on the perceived relevance of the solution code that you bring to the table. In essence, rich people become so by enhancing their value contribution capacity while the poor are further impoverished by their insatiable appetite for sometimes needless consumption. The consumer will always serve the producer. While the poor are constantly looking for jobs through skills acquisition, the rich are constantly creating jobs through value creation. The wealthy become so by engaging people with skills to help them translate their value code into reality.

The wealth of the rich largely comes from the poor. Jesus, after telling the story of the unfaithful steward who buried the money that he was supposed to have invested, said that those who have will continue to have more while those who do not have will ultimately lose even the little that they think they have to those who have more. Not fair, right? Who ever told you that life was fair? God doesn’t respect persons, He respects principles. Poverty or wealth is never a function of religious inclination but the operations of certain principles that God Himself established.

Words are very powerful. From my study of scriptures, words created the universe. The Bible teaches us that we are either justified or condemned by our words. We are further taught in the scriptures that death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat the fruits of it. Rich people are very guarded, proactive and optimistic in their utterances. Conversely, the poor are frivolous and largely pessimistic when it comes to words. They speak the most limiting words over themselves and their circumstances and sneer at possibilities and opportunities with statements like, “Even if they sold me and my family, I could never afford that”, “Only rogue politicians are making money in this economy”, “It is difficult to become anything significant in this kind of environment” etc. Yet, when those utterances ultimately become their reality, they blame their misfortune on someone else!… continued

Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!

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