TO BUILD SUSTAINABLE PERSONAL WEALTH, YOU HAVE TO CULTIVATE THE HABIT OF CONTINUOUSLY LEARNING

“I believe it is a normal human desire to be concerned about how we look on the outside. There is nothing wrong with that. What can get us into trouble is worrying more about how we look on the outside than about how we really are on the inside. Our reputation comes from what people believe about our outside. Our character represents who we are on the inside. And the good news is that if you focus on being better on the inside than on the outside, over time, you will also become better on the outside” — John Maxwell

“It is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic tree — make sure you understand the fundamental principles, i.e. the trunk and big branches, before you get into the leaves or there is nothing for them to hang on to.” — Elon Musk

Getting this week’s appointment sorted out was quite simple. As usual, my Billionaire Friend had requested that I share with him the issues the readers would want him to address and the signpost questions. Many questions poured in; below are excerpts of the questions asked:

1. How does the acquisition of knowledge help one in the quest for personal wealth building?
2. How do you know the books to read, training to attend and personal development programmes to go for?
3. How do you cultivate the habit of immediately putting into practice what you learnt from the books read?
4. Should individuals invest only in areas of their passion, or should they stretch beyond that horizon?
5. Why do people invest in acquiring material things instead of on their minds?
6. Can you mention the four books that have shaped your life the most?
7. Why should I read to build wealth when I can just obtain oil blocs and become stupendously rich like politicians and military men?
8. Don’t you think that your path to building wealth is rather slow and old school? What of cryptocurrency? Do you invest in such?
9. Most of our children and youth have a very short attention span. Considering reading as a waste of time. How do you address that?
10. I have a boss who does not read but has more business intelligence than those who read. How do you explain that?
11. What do you intend to do with all the books you have acquired when you are gone?
12. Would you consider travelling a sort of personal learning?

Having reviewed the questions, my Billionaire Friend suggested this topic:

TO BUILD SUSTAINABLE PERSONAL WEALTH, YOU HAVE TO CULTIVATE THE HABIT OF CONTINUOUS LEARNING

My meeting with my Billionaire Friend this particular weekend followed a totally different path. We had always stayed in the garden up till this time for all our interactions; however, this particular weekend, he suggested he would like me to get to take a tour of his home. I was impressed with the stock of books in the rooms we entered, with virtually no space for other things. It was difficult estimating how much my friend could have spent acquiring the books.

My conversation with him was quite lengthy and it centred on the place of continuous learning in the quest for building wealth. We eventually returned to the garden and over cups of coffee and a bottle of room temperature water for me, our conversation began like a monologue. My friend was not addressing the questions in sequence; so I just allowed him to flow while we both indulged in our drinks and some small chops.

The conversation went something like this:

“My boss: Learning should be a continuous exercise in one’s determination to build wealth. Building wealth is like every other human endeavour; it very much requires being driven by knowledge. Learning here includes forming the habit of acquiring knowledge at every stage and covering all related areas towards achieving one’s goal. Learning is the acquisition of knowledge and skills through continuous study, experience or being taught. The aim of this series is to contribute to the learning process of our readers in their quest for building personal wealth.”

“For growing wealth therefore, learning, includes reading, travelling and continuous thirst for gathering as much information as possible towards achieving one’s primary goal of building wealth, as in this case. Learning here requires regularly reading relevant books, journals, economic, financial, money market, stock market publications and the continuous monitoring of local and international economic, fiscal and monetary pronouncements of governments, which relates to and affects finance, investment that will help to provide sustaining knowledge for the purpose of building wealth in the long run”.

“We all studied in school to acquire some basics in being able to effectively communicate, relate and interact and do other things later on in life, which all come to be important also in achieving our wealth building goal. Our learning activities, therefore, have to continue, given the dynamic nature about life and the ever evolving developments around human existence.

“There were some of my friends, who while we were still in the university, had made up their minds that once they finish their degree programmes, the only thing they would read would be naira and nothing else. Unfortunately, such people later found themselves earning naira as salaries without knowing how to use their earned naira salaries to build wealth for themselves in the long run”.

“Hence, the learning required for building wealth is beyond those acquired during the acquisition of university degrees. It must be continuous and endless. You must thirst for and continuously search for the knowledge that would be impactful for building wealth”.

“For instance, I have had to venture into building knowledge in many areas of human endeavour in order to succeed this far in building wealth. This knowledge gathering should include not only how to build wealth but one must expand into knowledge about history, psychology, sociology and all other related and unrelated knowledge spheres towards expanding one’s horizon, critical thinking faculty and sharpen one’s decision making skills. Thus, I significantly expanded my horizon, and in that process, I have been able to reason much better, plan better, build better, relate better and take better decisions”.

“So, the process of learning involves committing oneself to the continuous process of expanding one’s knowledge, by reading extensively beyond one’s area of specialization. With building wealth, one’s learning must include good knowledge about the basic rules of accounting, economics and finance. One does not have to learn to become an accountant or economist, but must learn to be able to read and understand publications in finance, economics and investment.”

How do you cultivate putting in practice what you learnt from books?
“Cultivating this habit requires commitment, focus, determination and ‘a can-do’ spirit. In other words, once the goal has been set for building wealth, then cultivating the habit becomes simple. From experience, this habit will be increasingly encouraged, as one continuously makes progress and observe the progressive growth of his wealth. Thus from beginning to cultivate this habit, you will be increasingly encouraged by your observation of the fruit of your focused determination at building wealth through this advised knowledge-driven process”.

Why do people invest in material things and not their minds?
“The question has to do with those who have unfortunately been caught in the unreasonable glamour of consumptive lifestyle without being primarily focused on saving for the rainy day and/or building wealth. Hence generally, those who are committed to building wealth tend to invest in expanding the knowledge base of their minds, rather than on material things. ‘Anyone who has the goal of building wealth must invest in his mind’. Expanding the mind and knowledge base of wealth builders is primarily necessary. Investing in material things eventually does not last long and does not prepare you for the economic and financial vagaries of the unforeseeable future, as most material things do not generate capital gains, incomes and consumptively depleted. Many material things do not provide capital gains and incomes that could be reinvested for building wealth. Therefore, those who invest in material things are more driven by the ignorance of lifestyle glamour, the allure and showoff in owning material things, instead of the personal and societal multiplier gains in acquiring knowledge for building wealth.

“Can you mention four books that have shaped your life?”
One of those books out of the many others, have been mentioned in the last edition, which is the “Richest Man in Babylon”, the second book which has shaped my life in building wealth, is the book by Robert Kiyosaki, titled: “Rich dad Poor dad”. The third book, is the book “Creating wealth” by Robert G. Allen, and of course, if I must say, that the fourth one is the book titled: “The intelligent investor”, by Benjamin Graham. These are books that have shaped my life. They have propelled me in developing the instinct, the drive, the love for doing what I have eventually done and which further propelled me when good results were accumulating from the beauty of investing in knowledge and building wealth”.

Why should I read to build wealth when I can just obtain oil blocks and become rich like politicians?
Being rich is one thing. Being knowledgeable, well informed, having a solid reputation and well skilled and talented mind cannot be equated with just having money. Any smart fool can and does have money. This comparison can be viewed in comparative terms, with a first-class or second class upper division graduate from a prestigious university having the same volume of wealth with a stack illiterate. In comparison, the graduate is usually more confident and sure of himself with the ‘can-do’ attitude to life, whereas the stupendously rich politician and military man, who has not developed his mind, would just be like the stark illiterate of earlier comparison. The self-esteem level of a stupendously rich politician or military man, who has not developed his mind, would very much likely be of very low self-esteem. The level of self-esteem and his behavioural pattern of such poorly informed and developed minds would many at-times be not as refined as that of those who built wealth through extensive learning, developing their knowledge base and knowing as much as possible about their micro and macro knowledge environment.

“Don’t you think that this path to building wealth is rather slow and old school?”
It is one thing to be wealthy, it is another thing to be methodical, calculated, well informed and skilled in building wealth. Those who attempt to build wealth via shortcuts end up having themselves in prematurely self destruct. Indeed, it is easy to build wealth by investing in Ponzi and Yahoo schemes, but those are not the kind of people this series aims to build. We are here addressing those who want to be solid members of their society, who can defend the source of their wealth and who would end up becoming role models to young upcoming youths. This suggested wealth building process may appear slow, but it is as sure as the long universally accepted maxim, of: ‘Little drops of water make a mighty ocean’. That is the maxim behind this process. This process entails living a life of frugality, integrity, honesty, truthfulness and being a reference person to youths who aspire to be great and want to acquire morally defendable wealth and reputation”.

How about Crytocurrency?
Cryptocurrency is not advised at this stage of its development. Cryptocurrency is a wealth-building process that depends on the originated purse of some individuals who, as we have seen in recent times, may end up building their purse with your funds, only to disappear with the invested funds. It is a means of building wealth that is yet to be regulated by national central banks and/or security and exchange agencies of governments and other regulatory agencies. Hence, an investment in cryptocurrency is generally unregulated, highly risky and could just disappear overnight. For reference, please read about the recent cryptocurrency investment experience of Elon Musk of the USA, that of Ali Baba of China and many reported others. Cryptocurrency is a highly speculative investment instrument that is not recommended on this series except for those who are prepared to take unreasonable risks for which consequences they may not be able to recover”.

Most of our children and youths have a very short attention span who consider reading as a waste of time. How do you address this issue?
First of all, such a general uninformed statement should be avoided. Many of our children have a short attention span, but many others have very solid attention span, and these are willing to learn. In confirmation of my belief in the quality of Nigerian youths, many of them leave our shores to achieve greatness and become great ambassadors of our country. Hence, I do not subscribe to the uninformed judgmental statement that most of our children have short attention span. I would only subscribe to the idea that the Nigerian public educational system is not receiving the good attention and funding that it deserves and in conformity with United Nations recommendation. Particularly, our public schools do not get the adequate care and attention that it deserves.

To this issue, I am advising us all to please remember that it is the children of the majority, poor population of nations that end up building great nations and not the children of the rich. There is a universally accepted adage that states: ‘The first generation founds, the second generation builds, but the third generation squanders’. That adage is as true yesterday, as it is true today and would be true tomorrow. The children of our poor majority are those who go through a lot of deprivation and who in the process, develop success instincts that make them perform and outperform themselves in life for which nations ultimately benefit from their development. Well managed nations, greatly invest in the children of public schools, who are usually products of poor homes (the majority of national populations), because of the understanding that by the nature of their being poor, they end up better in building nations more than the children of the rich.

The process of development from strive and struggle of the poor, out of deprivation and unsatisfied basic human needs help to develop the determination, drive and instinct to succeed in the children of the poor as against those of the rich, to the ultimate benefit of nations who invest in educating their poor majority. For reference, we should ask ourselves, who were our fathers as compared to ourselves? What background did they have? What propelled us to succeed more than the children of our rich neighbours? Many of us succeeded through hard work, deprivation and determination.

“I have a boss who does not read but has more business intelligence than those who do not read; how do you explain that?”
There are three things that should be used to measure the level of sharpness of people’s minds. These are cleverness, intelligence and brilliance. I would suggest that your boss is a clever man but would not ascribe being intelligent to him. The word intelligence should only be ascribed to people of high intellect. That is people who are widely read. Intelligent people are those who have widely invested in and acquired sound knowledge base. That is what intelligence talks about. However, cleverness is most common and more basic. Cleverness is inborn. It is not gained through reading. It is easily found with successful people whose success arise mostly from their basic inborn instinctively good decision making and response to issues that from time to time arises with them.

Clever people mostly learn by watching and copying people around them. Being brilliant is the ultimate and not very common. Just as it sounds, it is not a common endowment of man. I would rather say your boss is a very clever man and therefore do not agree that he is intelligent. Being clever is a very basic thing. The goods container load importing traders in Alaba Market, are with due respect, very clever people, but I will not ascribe to classifying them as generally intelligent people. Intelligence is something much higher than cleverness, and is best acquired through reading, investing in knowledge and learning.

What do you intend to do with all the books you have acquired when you must have gone?
“When I am gone, I leave that to my children. I can only suggest that they put them in the library of a private university where they can be best utilized and which generally have the system in place to ensure that those books are adequately utilized”.

Would you consider travelling in a sort of learning lane?
“Yes, travelling is a very important element of learning. Travelling exposes one to many frontiers of life that one hitherto may not have been acquainted. For instance, travelling to America exposes one to the fallacy versus the realities of America, as it is with travelling to Britain and so on. It’s a very good process of learning, because it allows one to understand and appreciate the difference between fallacy and reality and it modifies one’s attitude to life, understanding of others and it is one of the best experiences of learning for “life long” memory acquisition and sweet experiences”.

As we were rounding off the tour of his home, my friend dropped a hint that this week’s subject provides a building block for a very important secret for building personal wealth. He asked me to get ready for best kept secret for wealth building.

As usual, I bade him bye bye and could not but wonder what the secret could be.

See you next week.

Yours moneywise-ly

QUOTABLE QUOTE 1
My meeting with my Billionaire Friend this particular weekend followed a totally different path. We had always stayed in the garden up till this time for all our interactions; however, this particular weekend, he suggested he would like me to get to take a tour of his home. I was impressed with the stock of books in the rooms we entered, with virtually no space for other things.

QUOTABLE QUOTE 2
It is one thing to be wealthy, it is another thing to be methodical, calculated, well informed and skilled in building wealth. Those who attempt to build wealth via shortcuts end up having themselves in prematurely self destruct. Indeed, it is easy to build wealth by investing in Ponzi and Yahoo schemes, but those are not the kind of people this series aims to build.