QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

Based on feedback from readers, we started featuring a Q&A session where readers get to ask my Billionaire Friend questions. Send all questions to ayo.arowolo@thisdaylive.com with the title QUESTIONS FOR MY BILLIONAIRE FRIEND. You can also text your questions to 08086447494. They will be treated as well as the ones sent via email.

We are happy to present the second set of questions from readers and the responses of my Billionaire Friend. Kindly read to the end.

The best scientists and explorers have the attributes of kids. They ask questions and have a sense of wonder. They have curiosity. ‘Who, what, where, why, when and how!’ They never stop asking questions, and I never stop asking questions, just like a five-year-old – Sylvia Earle

I think that probably the most important thing about our education was that it taught us to question even those things we thought we knew – Thabo Mbeki

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom – Francis Bacon

Question everything. Every stripe, every star, every word spoken. Everything – Ernest Gaines

My investment of time, as an educator, in my judgment, is best served teaching people how to think about the world around them. Teach them how to pose a question. How to judge whether one thing is true versus the other – Neil deGrasse Tyson

QUESTION 1

WHY DO I NEED A WEALTH PLAN?

You said in one of the conversations that building wealth requires a plan. I am just wondering why that is the case. Is it not possible to build wealth without the so-called plan?

One author appropriately puts it this way: If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail. Building wealth is the same as constructing buildings and cultural land, dams, bridges, and so on. The building of wealth is a worthy goal like all these others. Thus, in this circumstance, we are discussing how to achieve a specific goal. If a man intends to achieve a set goal, he tends to be successful at it if he has a clear plan. Planning, in this case, is about defining your goals, defining and developing your strategies and tactics, and setting out programmes towards achieving your goals. Strategy here is in terms of how you want to go about ensuring that your set goal of building wealth is achieved.

What I am saying is that you need to create a wealth plan. A wealth plan is a detailed form of looking at the micro and macro-environment and devising ways and means of achieving wealth creation. In other words, it is designing systems, designing structures, and designing qualitative and quantitative inputs into achieving wealth.

But when you don’t plan, you are invariably setting up yourself for failure. I usually like to use the account of creation as detailed in the Book of Genesis to illustrate this point. Take your time to read Genesis chapters 1 and 2 and ponder on the creative process employed there. Many people have got their lives upside down. They do what they should do first, last and what they should do last, first. Lasting success cannot result from such living.

I have encountered individuals who embark on housing projects when they don’t have established sources of income. Invariably, such people truncate their careers and ultimately abandon the housing project. God is a process-driven being. He is deliberate in everything He does, and if we are truly His image, we should act in the same manner. God usually visualises the project He wants to embark on, sees the end from the beginning and carefully activates in sequence all activities that would be necessary to accomplish that project. He would do first things first, middle things, middle and last things last. In His creative work, God created light before the sky and sky before the land and land before the vegetation, and vegetation before the stars, and the moons and the stars before the living creatures, and the living creatures before human beings.
Think for a moment. Assuming He created living creatures before vegetation or human beings before vegetation and living creatures, what would happen? That would have been a recipe for confusion! And God is not an author of confusion. Good planning helps you put the first thing first and the last thing last.

When you live without a plan, you should not blame anyone if you die in penury. Every youth should have a plan for his or her future. And you must be completely devoted to that plan. Your plan must be absolute, the prioritising of things like buying Aso-Ebi should be out of it. Frivolous party goings should be out of it, and the issue of buying unnecessary expensive fashion items should be out of it. The truth is building wealth entails savings that must be devoid of consumptive expenditure. It is a journey of absolute focus.

“Anybody who makes a journey without having a plan should blame his/herself if he goes astray on that journey. It is very important you have a solid plan and keep track of this plan. This helps in paying attention to areas where improvement is needed.

QUESTION 2

WHAT IS IN PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR ME?

In almost all your sessions, you have emphasised the need for personal development. Could you be kind enough to educate me more on this and how I can go about it?

Let me start with this quote credited to Henry Ford: I think that much of the advice given to young men about saving money is wrong. I never saved a cent until I was forty years old. I invested in myself – in the study, in mastering my tools, in preparation. Many a man who is putting a few dollars a week into the bank would do much better to put it into himself.

Even if I use the whole of this space to explain the importance of making personal development a way of life, I can still not exhaust it. Personal development is a leveller; it can catapult you from a position of disadvantage into a vantage position in your area of interest. Not all eyes see; not all ears hear and not all minds perceive. Personal development helps you to train your mind to see better opportunities or to see opportunities better. When you commit yourself to develop your mind, you will begin to accurately interpret events around you and understand why God positions you right where you are now. When your mind is not developed, you simply pass the opportunities (in the form of problems and challenges) and go to your imams and pastors to pray those problems out of your life. Ten years ago, did you ever hear any word such as Zoom? Zoom became prominent during the lockdown period when people could not move around, yet they had to communicate. The owner had been nurturing this idea for years before the lockdown period. So when the opportunity came, he seized it with both hands and legs. Today, the owner is a multi-billionaire. That is how enduring wealth is built. Spending money on personal development enlightens your mind to see opportunities that fly all around you. Step out of your comfort zone; make mistakes but get back on your feet again and soldier on. If your mind is not developed, you will not see those opportunities when they come because, in most cases, they disguise as problems. Have you not observed that while many Nigerians are jetting out of the country permanently to other countries, nationals of other countries are trouping into Nigeria to exploit the incredible opportunities that abound in Nigeria? We now have garri and yam flour made 100% in Nigeria, packaged and resold to Nigerians by the Chinese. Nationals of other countries are establishing modern factories, producing goods from here which are then re-routed. That is why the Bible says that a lazy hunter does not roast his catch.

As to how to go about it, I recommend that you pick a particular field that is of interest to you and draw a 7-year personal development plan for yourself in which you read and study books, acquire specific knowledge and also seek mentorship or apprenticeship opportunities in that area. If you don’t back out, your profit would soon appear for all to see.

QUESTION 3

You mentioned in one of your articles that we should deliberately plan to give back to society some of the wealth we make. Why do you consider this so important and at what point should I start to practise this, while I am building my wealth or when I have built it?

Good questions. As we mentioned in one of the conversations, everything we own here on earth is only on a lease to us; it would pass on to others when we die. The best decision that the wealthy should make is to remain detached from the glamour and ego of their wealth and create happiness for themselves through habitually giving and giving to society’s needy.

Man was not created to own anything. As mere trustees, everything owned by man does not belong to man. We need to learn from Alexandra the Great, who was the ruler of Persia but died at 33 years of age. Alexandra the Great was quoted to have asked his pallbearers to ensure that medical doctors line up the route to his grave and that both his hands must extend outside his coffin throughout the procession to his grave. When asked why this was his request, he informed them, “I want the world to see that even as great as I was, before my death, no doctor could save me from dying”. Again, when asked, why he wanted his two hands extended outside his coffin, he said “I want the world to see that even though, I owned so much of the world, I took nothing away. By so doing, my two hands would be seen by all, to be empty to my grave”.

I have lived by that rule since I was 32. My knowledge of positive psychology and theology has guided me in being aware and conscious that I am a mere TRUSTEE in relation to all that I may possess in life. Indeed, we humans own nothing here on earth. “We came to this world with nothing, and we shall leave with nothing. We are mere trustees of God Almighty. As provided by the Bible in the book of Genesis, God is known to have created everything and decided on the sixth day to create man by saying, “let us create man in our own image” to manage all created things. Hence, we are merely only managing whatever wealth we own while living and in death whatever we own surely belongs to God.

This should always be our guiding principle in the pursuit of building wealth. We should realise that we have primarily only come into this world to live and survive. There are three classes of wealth builders; some of us are positive wealth builders; some others are neutral wealth builders, and some others are negative wealth builders.

The neutral wealth-builders are those who live to build wealth solely for the benefit of themselves and their immediate families. The negative wealth-builders are those who build wealth through any means and who, in the process create turmoil, pain, and hardships for others for their sole benefit. This class of wealth builders are conscienceless, selfish, self-conceited, evil, greedy, wicked and pursue wealth, no matter who or what gets destroyed in the process.

To this class of wealth builders, any means always justifies the end. Such people only build wealth for their perceived pleasure, without giving happiness to others, except themselves. Indeed, negative wealth builders can be found at times to build wealth without spreading happiness even to their immediate families. Their immediate families may be suffering pain, and hardship, without an iota of care for them.

The category wealth-builders for which this series is addressed are the positive wealth builders. Positive wealth-builders are those who live their lives meaningfully in line with Professor Seligman’s school of positive psychology. Positive wealth-builders habitually give more than receive. They spread happiness, love, and joy to others while building and holding on to wealth.

Positive wealth-builders make it their philosophy to develop others, make others happy, develop their society, develop their nation and make a significant difference in the life of many others in the world. Anyone who has been able to create a business, which employs other individuals, puts food on their table and even goes beyond that to give out part of their wealth to society has grown beyond being just a tree branch but into being a huge tree. By so doing, they contribute to society’s wealth distribution system. We thus need to celebrate a few of them here. As to when to start to give back, start from where you are and from what you have; just develop the heart of blessing others from the little you have, and you will see how God will start to expand your coast.

QUESTION 4

WHICH BOOKS TO READ ON WEALTH

For an individual like me just beginning to build wealth, which books would you suggest I start with?

I would recommend these for a start. One, Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Two, The Richest Man in Babylon by George Clarson. Three, Multiple Streams of Income by Robert Allen and One Minute Millionaire by Mark Victor Hansen and Robert Allen. Start with those four; read them but most importantly put the insights you gain from them into practice.

QUOTE 1

QUOTE 2

Anyone who has been able to create a business, which employs other individuals, puts food on their table and even goes beyond that to give out part of their wealth to society, has grown beyond being just a tree branch but into being a huge tree. By so doing, they contribute to society’s wealth distribution system.

Can’t wait to catch up with you next week