[Go Back to Articles list] [Give your comments] [Newtimes website]

Money? It’s the last thing in my mind
25th Feb 08 -  Published by The Business Post - Feb/March 2008  (the magazine for the enterprising)
YOU can for sure make money without thinking about making money. This may sound unlikely or impossible, particularly in Kenya where some people’s second name seems to be “money-minded”. Philip Ochieng’, the newspaper columnist recently wrote that “Kenyans will kill their mothers, mortgage their sisters, sell their daughters or do anything for money”.

There is no doubt that many of our people have lost all common decency, all humanity, all conscience and so on in the name of money. True, money pays our bills and endows on us the power to buy nearly anything that we want, but should we just be thinking about money? I don’t think so.

We should learn from Zig Ziglar, one of the world’s foremost motivational speakers and author. One of the lessons in “Top Performance Management”, one of his books, is that you can get whatever you want in life if you can help as many people to meet their own needs. For sometime, I didn’t grasp the deepness of this statement but when it dawned on me, I regretted that I had not read the book earlier as I could have avoided the many mistakes that I made in my youth, when I was preoccupied with making money. In the process of “minting” more and more money, I ended up losing most of it.

When you make money your No. 1 objective, it is most likely you will go to any length—including riding roughshod over other peoples needs and obliterating any obstacles in your path—to make and get money. Since being confronted by Zig Ziglar’s wisdom, my orientation has changed. I have a better appreciation of my mission in life; I am better equipped with practical and theoretical knowledge which are even more organized. One of the reasons why people have the wrong attitude towards money, or wealth creation, is a poor learning culture. When it comes to the process of making money, there is a lot that we don’t know. Learning improves our understanding of the pursuit of money and shows us how to do it meaningfully and successfully. Most people are not poor for lack of trying, but their efforts are misguided.

Ziglar offers a unique and fairly successful approach to “money making”. He suggests that many rich people rarely think of the money they are making or stand to make when they are doing their work. Rather, they focus on the problems that people are encountering and offer a solution, of course at a cost. Others identify gaps—or work that needs to be done and nobody is doing—and fill them, in the process getting paid for their effort.

To these types of people, money is a result, not an objective. In contrast, most of us view money as an end. And often, we convince ourselves that the end justifies the means: as long as we make money, it does not matter how we do it. Any wonder then that every corner of the country stinks of corruption? Or that the country’s name is regularly mentioned in relation to child and drug trafficking among other unpalatable social vices?

Our misguided view of money in particular and wealth in general will be the downfall of many of us. Even worse, is the lack of respect for people of integrity in society and the glorification of money, its source or means of acquisition notwithstanding? To a large extent, this is what is fuelling the get-rich schemes propping up around the country. Whatever happened to thrift and humbleness?

There is of course a way out this cesspit. Our firm, for instance, is helping people “make money without thinking about money”. And believe me, it does not involve miracles or pyramid schemes. All it takes is a two-day seminar for groups or a personalized, two hour, one day a week course undertaken over a six week period. It does not matter whether you are a school leaver or a professional. You only need to have an interest in business.

For business minded individuals, it is good to lay the right strategies and plans for your venture. It is even better to have the right mindset and orientation. You will in fact stop thinking of how to make money and start helping people and their enterprises to meet their needs. The ball is now in your court; the choice to play or not to is all yours.

The writer is a Management/Entrepreneurship Trainer and Strategist based in Nairobi

[Go Back to Articles list] [Give your comments] [Newtimes website]