THE Chief Executive Officer, Commonsense Group, Mr Olumide Emmanuel, has hinted that it takes strategic, consistent and intentional application of wealth creation principles to create wealth, stressing that schools do not teach financial intelligence.
He also said Nigeria “has some of the best policies but they are not being implemented because the people that developed the policies are not the ones in charge of running the government.”
Speaking with some select journalists in Lagos, he said Nigeria’s current business environment affected by insecurity and economic crisis had, however, created opportunities for the nation’s over 200 million people
According to him, one of the reasons foreign investors are investing in Nigeria is because of the population and wealth, adding that money hides in problems.
“So, when you talk about Nigeria, the country is loaded with people and problems which means that Nigeria is a land of opportunities and is one of the places one can make so much money if one knows what to do,” he said.
Emmanuel said there was a need to make entrepreneurship a major part of education from the primary level, emphasising that once people had the right understanding of finances and wealth creation, they would begin to understand the options available to make better education.
He noted that formal education could be structured to accommodate wealth creation once it gave realistic expectations.
He said, “All over the world, it is not the job of the government to create wealth for the people but to put an enabling environment and infrastructure in place to create wealth.
“The policies to help people create wealth exist. Nigeria has some of the best policies but they are not being implemented because the people that developed the policies are not the ones in charge of running the government.”
Speaking on an enabling business environment, he noted, “If you wait for favourable conditions, you will not get anything done. Solving that lack of enabling environment is what will enable you to make money.
“The environment has programmed our minds and that has affected the way we think. In an environment like this, it is important to invest in yourself.”
He advised that people invest in financial intelligence because learning capacity determines earning capacity.
Emmanuel said, “You must invest in your gift, talent and potential, this means investing in something that belongs to you and is unique to you.
“You should also invest in your passion. One of the pointers to passions is that it is something you are willing to do without money; and whatever you do with passion consistently always ends up bringing money. There are two ways to make more money available to you; these are increasing your income and decreasing your expenditure.”
According to him, another name for investment is risk, urging individuals to understand that every investment has a risk factor and “there are informed risk and calculated risk.”
“Informed risk means carrying out due diligence to know how volatile that sector is. Calculated risk is investing the money you can do without. The question is how manageable is the risk? What is your investment goal? What is your risk appetite? How much do you have to invest? For how long do you have to invest,” he noted.
He also spoke on the need for entrepreneurs to have the right kind of education.
He said, “When we talk about education, there are three dimensions to education. You are either educated or uneducated or mis-educated. To be mis-educated is one thing that became real to me.
The expert said, “Mis-education is a situation where you don’t know; you don’t know that you don’t know, and you think that you know. When you don’t give people the truth, it’s mis-education.
“When you give people only a dimension, an aspect, or just a picture, it is mis-education. So, people walk away thinking that they know all they need to know, meanwhile they don’t, and that came as a shock to me.
“For me, wealth creation is broken down into three different steps and these are: financial intelligence which means understanding money, what money is, where money hides, how to manage it, how to attract it, how to multiply it, and the new rules of money.
“Schools don’t teach financial intelligence and that is why you can go to school and get a master’s degree in business administration yet you can’t run a barbing salon or a restaurant successfully. That is because you know the theory and not the practical.
“For you to be financially intelligent, you need to go through personal education. That is taking your personal development seriously.
“The second step is the financial plan. It is not enough to have financial intelligence. It is what you do with what you know that yields result. So, financial planning involves you sitting down to actually have a plan on how to execute the intelligence you have.
“One thing that helps people out with financial planning is realising that there are basic things that must be put into perspective.”
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