A VALUABLE BOOK TO CONSIDER: LEARN IT, DO IT, SELL IT

Have you ever found yourself in any of these situations before? After attending a great seminar and feeling blown away by the great concepts and nuggets, shared by the facilitator, you begin to see yourself accomplishing great things. But shortly after the seminar, the excitement begins to wane, and the motivation to implement the ideas you have just been exposed to disappears. Or you have just read a great book and you were moved by the ideas and nuggets shared by the author, but a few moments later, the excitement flies out of the window. Do any of these scenarios apply to you? The truth is that you are not alone!

Research has shown that 99 per cent of individuals who attend workshops and seminars hardly find the motivation to apply the knowledge gained to their businesses or real-life challenges. Why is this so? One reason is that many people are overwhelmed by the concepts they are exposed to and cannot figure out which to take and which to drop. Again, many are unable to try out new ideas without a guide.

Learn it! Do It! Sell It! is a book authored by the late Pastor (Dr.) Sunny Emmanuel-Ojeagbase. It has a compelling panacea to this problem. Until his demise two years ago, Emmanuel-Ojeagbase was Nigeria’s No. 1 Business Success Coach and co-founder and Executive Chairman of Success Attitude Development Centre (SADC), a not-for-profit organisation with a mission to raise and nurture successful entrepreneurs.

WHAT DID THE BOOK SET OUT TO DO?

The author wanted to address regular questions from many of his admirers: Is there a wealth formula that can never fail?
His admirers were also curious to know how complex the formula is if it exists. They also wanted to know whether the formula can be successfully applied by anyone.

The author’s position was this: “After months of deep reflection and extensive research, I believe I know the answer to those questions. Yes, there is a wealth creation formula that can never fail.”

How did the author arrive at this conclusion?

The author recommends a three-step formula set out in a sequential template, which he believes is the guaranteed wealth creation formula that can never fail.

The first step advises the potential wealth builder: “Make God the foundation.”

The author believes that the first step for anyone who wants to build wealth is to make God the foundation of that venture. The author explains that to make the formula work, the reader must decide to fall in line with what the Word of God (Scriptures) says.

I believe the author is assuming that the reader understands that he is referring to the Word of God as contained in the Bible. Expatiating further, the author explains that making God the foundation means the reader must become a serious student of the Word of God, not just by reading the Scriptures but by applying such Scriptures to specific situations once the meaning is clear and well-understood, apparently through meditation (continuous pondering on the applicable Scriptures).

In the second step in the wealth creation formula, the author advises that for anyone who is out of options on how to generate wealth, the next step after recognising the source is to look for any valuable service he can render to others for which he would be paid. Just anything as long as it is legitimate. A critical extension of this step is that when the money starts to roll in, a personal finance management principle must be applied to ensure that everything earned is not spent.

From the author’s explanation, this is the most difficult aspect of the three steps. Most people, according to him, hardly get past this stage. Rather than seeing the first service they render as a stepping stone to other income streams, most people get stuck after spending everything they earn and are reduced to the level of just struggling for survival. The approach recommended by the author is that once you start to earn money from the first level service, there should be a concrete plan in place on how to continuously invest in personal development to enable the individual to develop a specialist skill from which a great business that can generate an endless flow of cash can be developed.

The third step of the three-step formula to wealth is that once a specialist skill is developed, the skill should be further honed so that the person can be paid over and over for the service. This entails turning the specialist skill into a business system that would be automated to serve as a funnel for a continuous flow of cash.

According to the author, staying on course at this stage requires much discipline as most people are usually impatient as they begin to consider other business ideas when things don’t work as quickly as they would want them. I believe the author is reiterating the point of view by some authors that it takes about seven to 10 years of deliberate activity to get any business to a level where it can become a permanent automated cash machine.

Once these three steps are activated for a perfect wealth creation system, the author suggests a fourth step, which is to continue to apply everything you have learnt in the three steps and make them work better, faster and smarter.

This is the author’s guarantee: “As you read it and implement the ideas in the book, you will be led to your pot of gold.” In the rest of the book, the author articulated about 21 tips that you can apply to power those three steps. These are laid out in three sections and 21 chapters. We shall just consider a few of them to drive home the points.

LEARN IT! Section one is devoted to four tips in four chapters on how to get started on any skills you want to acquire in income generation. The author believes that to start generating cash, you need to learn how to do something that will fetch you money (Section 1, chapter 1). And the beauty of this, according to the author, is that just about anything can be learned once an individual is willing to pay the price. But the author wonders why most people still don’t embrace this step.

It is like someone telling you that there is someone somewhere who is willing to teach you how to create wealth even without paying and yet the individual still refuses to take that step. Without taking this vital step, attempting to create wealth using the formula is reduced only to a mirage, he says.

Again in this section, the author explains that learning a skill is not enough, you need to go a step further to ensure that there is evidence that the skill can be sold as a product. It must be what you enjoy doing and such a skill is within the ambit of the law – it must be legally and morally right. The author’s advice in this section is that even if you have taken all those steps and you still refuse to embrace these two words – do it – everything will remain a pipe dream. According to the author, without action, everything remains a dream. Truly so!

In Section 2, consisting of 12 chapters of very hot tips for wealth creation, the author not only dwells on the importance of taking prompt actions, but he also details 12 reasons from his personal experience that people don’t apply what they learn. Those identified include:
· Instant gratification, not willing to take a long-term view of the cash creation process.
· Lack of patience, looking for other ideas when the current one encounters temporary challenges.
· Procrastination, delaying not working immediately on activities that require instant actions.
· Lack of discipline, inability to do what should be done at the time it should be done, regardless of whether it is convenient or not.
· Other excuses that have prevented most people from achieving their wealth dreams are beautifully articulated in Section 2, Chapter 5 of the book.

SECTION 2

Carefully blended with the other great tips in Section 2 of the book are two nuggets that deserve special mention. In Chapter 7 of Section 2 (The Power of Definite Purpose), the author explains that while it might be difficult to eliminate those 12 wealth dream killers. When there is a definite purpose, a dream that is bigger and exciting enough to stake the rest of your life on, many of the obstacles would pale into insignificance.

The author paints it better: “You’ve got to be able to see the end of the journey before you embark on it, the Rolls-Royce and Jaguar in your garage, the ability to pay cash for items priced at N15 million at the snap of your fingers, just like that….”

This step, according to the author, involves not just picturing the good things of life you would enjoy when you arrive at the destination, the individual should also take time to see himself rendering quality service to members of a community, which would enable them to hand over raw cash to him in appreciation of the service rendered to him.

The author highlights, with powerful personal examples, how to activate the force of the Higher Power in the process of creating wealth that cannot fail. Indeed, the author believes that is the foundation for creating wealth that cannot fail. The author shares a personal example of how, before recognising God as the source of enduring wealth, he almost lost the vision of the business God had given to him by erroneously concluding that once he could not get human help to bail him out of the financial crisis he was facing then, he would just forgo the business. The section narrates how that business was miraculously saved when he turned it over to God. There are eight other tips well-articulated in that section on how to get God involved in the process of your wealth creation endeavour. You would learn there for instance: How to be face to face with your Source; how to connect with your Source; the benefits of staying connected to your Source; how to sow your free time and how to reap the harvest from the time seed. You would certainly find the author’s exposition on those points very illuminating.

SECTION 3

Section 3, which can be called the icing on the cake for the book, dwells extensively on how to sell whatever knowledge you have acquired for profit. Obviously, without learning how to sell, there is no way the invisible paymaster would allow the cash to flow in your direction. In four hot chapters: Selling for profit; why do people buy?; the rich world of master marketers; and the ultimate wealth creation secret, the author gives practical and easily applicable (not theoretical) marketing tips for turning your knowledge into instant cash.

In an unusual display of openness, the author also reveals the list of the key marketing resources he has used over time to generate a continuous flow of cash. The information and tips espoused here would determine if the wealth creation venture would fail or not. In this section, the author explains the process of information product creation, which simply shows you how to generate raw cash by finding out what people want, how much they are willing to pay for the service and going out to put the product together either by yourself or by hiring other experts to make it happen for you.

And the ultimate formula for converting your knowledge into cash: once you can generate the first sale from an income process, you have got into a wealth zone where all you need to launch your endless cash machine is to apply what he called the ultimate wealth plan – RRSID. Once the first income is generated, you can turn it into a permanent income stream by doing the following: Checking the process to see what can be improved (RINSE); Going ahead to offer the service again (REPEAT); extending the service to another person (SCALE-UP) creating new ideas of how to sell the same service (INNOVATE) and using money generated from the process to set up another income stream process (DIVERSIFY).

The author beautifully explains how to apply the RRSID formula in practical terms. And of course, no reader should miss two bonus chapters where the author features excerpts of the invaluable marketing tips he has used over time – Gabor Olla.

Has the author personally experienced what he is teaching?
As detailed in the book, SADC, the publisher of the book, has been in the business of teaching people how to create cash using a variety of marketing methods.” In every section of the book, the author buttressed all the key points made with his personal experiences, including how he spent about seven years trying without success to figure out how to convert his knowledge of sports into cash until he stumbled on the missing link: marketing.

OVERALL IMPRESSION
· The book is practical as it contains principles that can be applied immediately to generate cash.
· It is a book that has solved the riddle usually faced by those who read books written by foreign authors on the business of wealth creation. Every experience shared in the book is Nigerian. More importantly, you can walk into the author’s office for further explanation on any aspect of the book that you cannot figure out.
· The style of the writing is also so simple that people who are challenged in literary appreciation can still read with understanding.
· It is loaded with bonus materials that appear to be more expensive than the book.