10 MUST DOs TO ATTAIN FINANCIAL FREEDOM IN 2018
Happy
New Year Everybody!
It is
that time of the year again when everybody….or at least, most people,
feverishly set goals for the year.
Most
of the goals tend to have wealth creation, habit change, physical fitness, and
advancement of relationship status, in common, and among the top 3 goals.
It is
not uncommon to hear people say things like: “This year, I want to make more
money” or “ This year, I want to transit from being an employee, to becoming an
employer of labour” or “this year, I want to stop drinking and lose weight” or
even “this year, I must marry”.
However,
when you look at the New Year goals of most people, top on their list is the
desire to create more wealth. This is not surprising, and is even
understandable, as most of the other goals, if not all, can be facilitated, or
achieved better or faster, when there is more money.
To get
wealthy however, is not achievable without strategic planning and execution. To
fail to plan, is to plan to fail. Therefore, if you must achieve wealth in
2018, there is a need to understand and apply some principles that would ensure
that your goal is achieved. Of all possible things you need to do if you must
achieve your financial goal, the outlined 10 are most important.
1. Get Education:
Education in this case is not necessarily formal or structured. The education
referred to here is the art of learning and mastering the skill you need to
exchange in the market place to get financial remuneration. Whatever the skill
is, whether it is a production skill for products, or the skill that culminates
in the rendering of service to your customer, it is important to start today to
hone those skills. If you hitherto didn’t have the skill-set, now is the time
to look for that environment, person, place, office or opportunity in whatever
other form to acquire the skills. Remember, knowledge is power!
2. Keep the right
relationships: Success is not just built
on relationships, but on the right relationships. Eagles keep the company of
eagles. Lions keep the company of Lions. Hens keep the company of Hens. You get
my drift now? The kind of relationships you keep should be determined by your
destination. A man that desires to own a conglomerate should associate with
entrepreneurs. Why? Because the mind-set of a salary-minded employee is very
different from that of the income-minded entrepreneur. If you desire to achieve
your financial goals in 2018, you need to be deliberate and strategic in your
choice of friends, acquaintances, partners, and financial advisers. Look at
your present circle of friends and identify those among them who are
financially literate, and consequently moving in the financial direction you
would like to go; look for opportunities or platforms on which you can mutually
leverage off each other, and propose the value you can add to them first. Over
time, when they see that you add needed value, it is only a matter of time
before they reciprocate.
3. Cultivate the habit
of reading: Poor people have big TVs and small libraries (if any at all); Rich
people have big libraries and small TVs. The preceding statement clearly shows
the mind-set of the poor and the rich regarding reading, and how it impacts
their lives. There is no human pursuit that has not been achieved in one form
or the other by someone in the past, and consequently documented. Readers are
leaders. If you can’t read, you can’t lead. The major source of fresh, global,
multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural knowledge is a book. While food nourishes
the body, books nourish the mind. Imagine how emasculated you would be if you
skipped meals for days, weeks and perhaps, months. Now, imagine how emasculated
your mind must be, if you have not read a book in months! Any wonder why there
are no wealth creation ideas flowing from your mind? If you must attain your
goal of financial freedom, you need to cultivate the habit of reading.
4. Look out for
problems, and solve them: Value flows in the direction of solutions. Take a
look around you, every single one of the items and physical property around you
is a solution to a problem you have. Some of them have become so mundane that
we do not appreciate their importance until they are taken away. As I type on
my laptop, placed on my study table, while I seat on my study chair,
comfortably typing because my air-conditioner is cooling the room; it is easy
to take all these seemingly common things for granted. Until I want to type,
and there is no laptop, and I finally choose to write my story on a paper and
there is no table to place the paper on, neither is there a chair to sit on.
Finally, I decide to cross my legs and sit on the floor, and lean against the
wall. 5 minutes into my writing, I begin to sweat, and the sweat running down
my palm and fingers make holding the biro a serious challenge…..not to talk of
the smudges that begin to form on the sheet of paper. Imagine how many people
need to buy common chairs, tables, a laptop and a cooling system (fan or
air-conditioner) every day. The problems these seemingly common things solve
ensure that the producing companies post profits year on year. What problem
have you identified around you which you can solve? Your financial freedom lies
in solving these problems.
5. Identify your gifts
and talents….Nurture them….and monetize them: Your gifts and talents are those
things you have a natural aptitude for, the things you are able to do
effortlessly. They are also those things which you can do for free, and happily
too. In the pursuit of financial freedom, it is important to identify your
gifts, refine them so that they can become marketable and attract a premium,
and then, monetize them. In your use of your talents, you can start off putting
them to use on a part-time basis, in combination with your day job. It is
supposed to be stressful and tiring, considering that the time you ought to use
for rest is what you are putting in. However, it would not be unbearably
stressful because it is a talent and consequently a passion. I have no doubt
that Cristiano Ronaldo would not do badly if he had to combine playing football
with a tie-wearing job, because it is a gift that is fun to put to use,
irrespective of the condition.
6. Keep your eyes and
ears open to opportunities: Ask 90% of the really wealthy whom the world
believe they got a lucky break, while there is a place for luck in the lives of
men, but these people would tell you that they were constantly on the look-out
for opportunities, and were ready for them. They were constantly in the know
regarding things happening in their surroundings and beyond. Consequently, they
seemed to know opportunities before they became public knowledge.
7. Work Hard: Nothing
replaces hard work. No matter how much education you have, no matter how many
people you know, or how many books you read, if at the end of the day, you
cannot put on your clothes, tighten your belt, lace your shoe straps and
consistently hit the road, then it will all be for naught. All the earlier
mentioned can be likened to the various parts of a car, while hard work refers
to the act of turning the ignition of the car and actually driving the car.
8. Work Smart: Smart
work is what ensures that the journey to the place of financial freedom is
shorter and smoother. While hard work is good, smart work is even great. Smart
work is hard work done with wisdom. An example of smart work is leverage.
Leverage gives its user the ability to achieve things that are naturally
impossible without leverage. One man clearing grass on an acre of land for 21
days is hard work. On the other hand, if the same man hired 6 other men to join
him in the clearing of the land, instead of 21 days, it would take 3 days to
clear the same land. Now, that is smart work.
9. Sell more than one
product/service: No man ever became wealthy by focusing on one source of income.
To achieve financial freedom, it is important that you have at least 4 streams
of income. You start with your day job. As soon as you are an authority in your
day job, you begin to look at a non-conflicting things you can do on a
part-time basis. It may be teaching, it may be consulting, it may be
multi-level marketing. As that begins to work well, you begin to look for how
to make money work for you while you work for money. You may want to consider
setting up a small business such as a laundry shop, a barber shop, a provision
store, or a spa. Already, you have three streams of income. Over a period of
time, you begin to discover that you have multiple streams of income.
10.Give Everything: In the
pursuit of financial freedom, there are no half-measures. To get the prize, you
need to pay the price. And the price you pay, is giving it your all……and more.
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