I know you are now say, who? Me?
Are you really talking about me? A business man or woman! Hell No! Yes I am
talking about you. I know you might even be fuming inside at me, is this guy
trying to ruin my day? Oh No my friend. Just think for a moment, you are buying
things every day but don’t you think there is something you are also selling
that is bringing in the cash you are using for your expenses?
Am I speaking in Parables?
What are parables or proverbs anyway?
Even our Lord Jesus Christ spoke in parables, why? In our African Society, old
and young men in history used to gather in designated places called 'Insaka' in
my language, these specially built or designated places for gatherings where
different kinds of discussion sessions on issues of life and maybe development
took place. During such discussion forums, whenever the old men of the day
wanted to drive a point which they felt the young men were too young to handle,
they always spoke in parables, which is a form of symbolic language only
familiar to a certain age group or class. By the way don’t try that old parable
scheme with the young ones of today, they will just Google the key word and
catch you off guard. The parable paradigm of old times could be attributed to
the reasons why the young generation of yester-years probably (note: bearing in
mind that I haven’t conducted a statistical analysis with my favorite SPSS
program) stayed away from what was deemed illicit behavior in those days until
they were old enough to be given the keys of life. But today, the young will
see things on the Internet even before you think they are old enough to receive
the wisdom and by the time you are unleashing the so called wisdom at the
appointed time, they are laughing behind your back.
The question is why do we use
parables or proverbs? This is my opinion; parables are used to make the wise
even wiser and the foolish even more foolish. Whenever, you want to hide the
truth from fools, just use parables to portray a truth. When
Jesus Christ was asked why he continually spoke in parables, he said it was
because the Pharisees or the men of God of the old testament times, sort of
Ministries Internationals of the time could easily decode the truth and get
saved. Therefore, Jesus used parables so that the truth could be hidden from
the Pharisees. Of course we don’t need the Old Testament Pharisee type of men
of God in the New Testament Kingdom principle hanging on to an Old Testament
temple made of brick which has visibly some partitions of the so called holy
place and the most holy place and so on etc. Last time I checked, God does not
dwell in temples made with the hands of man Heb_9:24, 1Co_3:16,17
My fellow soldiers in life, I do
not intend to use parables loosely without clarifying what I am trying to put
across to you. I know and do realize that everything I write will be analyzed
by your logical or conscious mind. I am fully aware how the conscious mind
works. The only problem is that your conscious mind just like everyone else’s,
has a very limited scope of reference and to be precise, your conscious mind
has only one point of reference which is your past experiences and knowledge. That
is the reason why some people are dealing with you based on what you did to
them yesterday, last week, last year and so on and they are very forceful about
it like “Remember what you did to me last so and so”. The mind always has a
tendency to want to keep you safe from what is perceived dangerous based on
what you have experienced previously. And new information is usually the victim
of your conscious protective mechanism and easily deletes new information that
call for change, as it comes. I hope you can give what we are sharing a chance
to see if it can try to help you see things in another light. That is the
reason why sometimes you fail to take certain actions that the mind considers
as risks. Think about that business idea you keep putting off for later, that
song that has been bubbling in your heart waiting to be produced all because of
the fear of the unknown that can happen. The common business excuses I hear are like;
the Chinese have taken the business or the Rwandees have taken all the
business. But wait a minute; are you talking about our friends? With all due
respect, you saw them when they came, you saw them when they began to go to
Soweto to buy tomato without feeling any shame and sell it to you and you
bought ( and by saying this, it’s not my intention to demean our friends
because I am aware that most of them had comfortable lives and probably doing
better in their native country, but it’s their resolve to rise from the ashes
and become an entity to be reckoned with in a foreign country that is
admirable). The money they raised they expanded their business. The difference
is that they took action to change their circumstances while the majority of us
are still complaining about how bad things are in Zambia. A typical Zambian I
know, when they get a little out of the ordinary amounts of money, all they do
is buy the most expensive asset like a car just to frustrate the neighborhood
(just a joke but sometimes it does happen) without any clear thought of how to
add value to earn more money. All that
most foreigners had were dreams and determination (of course probably not all
of them). You don’t need money to have a dream but you need to have a dream to
pursue and resources will follow. Money flows where there is a purpose. ‘You
don’t have to be great to get started but you have to get started in order to
be great’ does that make sense? In all your dreams you already have at least
one resource and that is you. Therefore, the notion that there isn’t wealth in
Zambia for anyone willing to create value does not hold water or probably
maheu.
Therefore, as you read this
material your brain will be trying to refer to your repository of existing knowledge
based on your past experiences, and whatever information is considered foreign
or strange, that knowledge will be rejected and filtered out. If your life has
been filled with unfortunate events like past failures or failed relationships,
the mind will use these same reference points in order not to allow you to take
any action today to do something different. More like a computer which keeps
blipping error messages whenever it does not have a program to execute a new
instruction whose associated program cannot be found in its logic. I beg that
you read this with an open mind please. Are you following so far? I know that
somebody might be saying but we don’t know where the wealth is and how to get
it, the rules or laws on how to tap into the so called hidden wealth? First of
all let me be blunt with you like a lawyer would say, Ignorance of the law is
not an excuse to commit a crime. The fact that you don’t know how to generate
wealth does not make you appetite for food go away. The fact that you have a
snake in your house and all you do is complaining about it does not make the
snake go away. Sometimes your ignorance may be genuine but before the courts of
law that excuse does not fly an inch. Just think about this, here is a good
responsible father who hunts an Impala in the protected wild life areas for
food for his family because they genuinely need the meal (by law this is called
poaching). The wild life agency unfortunately pounces on him and arrests him
for poaching what is classified by law as ‘government trophy’ and he is taken
before the courts of law for justice. Supposing the poacher tries to play his
own smart lawyer in the courts and tries to defend himself by saying to the
court, your worship I am being accused of killing an Impala but I also demand
to be availed the Impala’s family complaint that I have murdered their child or
that their child is missing. The good
man may genuinely believe that wild animals are a gift from God as food for
mankind. Guess what! He may not have read the text in the law (probably because
he can’t read) that mankind, the world over has since adopted the wild animals
as its legal protector. Despite the plea of ignorance, the courts are still
obliged to register him for free accommodation under the prison service. By the
way, if you are ever in higher courts of laws please use a lawyer they know how
to interpret the law, don’t try to be smart.
Before I get carried away, let me
return to my theme ‘Business men and women by default’. But why don’t we know
that we are born business people from our early years in life? If you already
know that you were born a business person, that’s good, but the majority of the
people may obviously plead ignorant. Now before you start blaming yourself,
wait and hear what I want to say. It’s not your fault that you don’t know, I
also didn’t know but it has been our education system and the role models that
we have had that have had an influence throughout our lives. Let’s try this,
remember when you were at primary school?(I am hoping you went to primary
school) Was you teacher a business person or entrepreneur? Probably like my
case the answer is no. what then did you model yourself after in your teacher?
Probably becoming a good teacher or worker, and hope to become more educated
than the teacher. Let us try secondary school or even College and University
education, were the people in front of the chalk board; teachers or lecturers (note:
by the way only chalk boards existed in my time) entrepreneurs? I guess not,
unless they were doing some part time tuition classes as well. Therefore, throughout
our school system we have been trained to be workers in fact good workers who
should look for employment after completing the school system and stay in the
job until you are retired with the so called full retirement benefits. What our
school system has been missing is that we have not been trained to get out of
employment and the truth is that outside of employment, we do not have the
tools to deal with life and in the process people get stressed out. Why? They
do not know how to deal with life without a job that provided a guaranteed
income every month. Think about yourself if you are one of the many loyal
workers like me, who are you without a job? If you remove a job from your life,
what will you become? If you see Zero in your life without a job, that should
be a signal to start thinking outside the box. Even with the Millions or thousands of bucks
many retire with, people are unable to add value to it. It becomes a
diminishing resource. You can’t blame them, they have been workers all their
life and adding value to an income has not been part of the life’s syllabus. Is
this making sense? OK let us look at people in formal employment, everyone
working whether in the civil service or private company is doing business. How?
They are selling a commodity called time. Now the general rule of business
(call it common sense if you will) is that when you sell products in large
quantities to a big buyer, you will surely sell the products at a reduced cost
price. In other words you sell the commodity at wholesale price. This type of
contract of sale also ensures your continued mutually beneficial business
relationship. What I am saying is that the, working time any worker provides is
sold at wholesale price because the organization or company you work for has a
cost structure that can only pay so much to maintain operational sustainability.
Therefore, that is the reason you get the salary you receive every month. The
company you work for is correct; they have prescribed what your duties will be
and how much they are willing to pay for the services provide. You can never be
rich selling your time because you only have so much time to sell every day, 8
hours to be specific. If you have been hoping to get rich through selling your
time, you have been living an illusion and it’s time to work up from the
slumber. I can assure you that you will
always be going on strike trying to force the company to make you rich by
increasing your pay until they fire you. You only become rich by multiplying
your time through developing multiple sources of income. How do you multiply
your time? A simple example is investing in a shop (this is just an
illustration). Don’t tell me there isn’t any profit in retail business because
the last time I checked, our foreign friends are dancing quite a bit in the
retail business. That would mean you are working and you also run a shop.
Within the eight hours, you are earning your salary at work and your shop is
raising an income in the same amount of time space. That is called multiplying
your time. Am I saying people must stop work? No, your job has provided you
with an opportunity of an income on which you can begin to learn to add value
to part of your income that is why the company will even give you a sum of
amount at retirement hoping that through your working life you have learnt how
to add value to your income (by the way this is what is missing in company
policies, i.e. helping employees to prepare for retirement). Your job provides
you with an environment where you can identify skills, products and services
that the economy requires and hopefully you can capitalize and make a killing
out of such, while you are still in employment or when you are out of
employment. Your employment is like a school of empowerment where you learn
business procedures. Therefore, allow yourself to see opportunities in your
current environment, may be you have been sleep walking for too long and you
have lost the ability to see what others are seeing. If others are making it,
you can also do it. But fear has stood in your way for too long and you have
begun to believe it’s a normal way of life. No it isn’t! Ask yourself, how much talk time do you use
per month and what do you use it for? Let us say you buy K10 ($2) of airtime and you
really want to give somebody a piece of your mind because you believe they have
betrayed you. You use your phone and make a call to your victim and unleash the
venom on them. What has happened here is that, you have used K10 ($2) to abuse or
react to your perceived enemy. In essence you have just paid for your own
insults and probably lost a friend at the same time. You may reconcile with
your friend but you will not recover the money. Supposing you asked your spouse to start
selling talk time and simple mathematics has revealed that you use close to
K500 ($100) on talk time. Wouldn’t it be empowering to start buying from your newly
started in-house dealer? This is just a thought because the entire economy is
based on revenue and expenditure and I am simply trying to show you on which
side of the economic equation you may be playing more.
Quote of the day
Success
is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.
~
Sir Winston Churchill
With you in Mind
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