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Omodele Adigun
Self-belief, or what is called ‘I can do it Spirit’ in the Nigerian parlance, has been attributed to the success of many entrepreneurs. According to Professor Chukwuma Soludo, the erstwhile Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), this lends credence to the notion that what drives success comes from within rather than from without.
At a public forum recently in Lagos, Soludo, who was performing the role of a book reviewer, stated that many entrepreneurs succeed today because they imbibe self-belief, passion and other personal intangibles.
His words: “There is a school of thought that says no one can teach you how to succeed in life. According to this school of thought, while everyone can read or be taught the 17 Principles of Napoleon Hill, only few could still grow rich because what drives success comes from within rather than from without.In other words, some believe that those intangibles that are personal such as positive thinking, intense desire, ambition, visualization, self-belief, passion cannot be taught. The entrepreneurs and the professionals already are practising these principles. That is why they become entrepreneurs so to speak” .
While analysing the work, Soludo shares his thoughts on many economic issues traumatising the country today.
Excerpts:
Alternative facts
If you take a critical look at the title of this book: Think and Grow Rich, emphasis is on think and grow; grow rich in a systematic organic and sustainable manner rather than what I may call a lottery wealth. This book is about growing organically and in a sustainable manner, rather than lottery wealth or instant jumping into riches through criminal activities or what the Ibo will call ego mabute.
What an auspicious time to present such a book especially to the Nigerian public. At a time when poverty is on the rise and youth unemployment and criminalities, kidnapping, armed banditry ritual killings etc are burgeoning; and where all these are presented as all means of getting rich as well as exponential growth of religiosity with its own alternative facts of principles on how to grow rich based on good luck, sowing of seed, fasting and prayer or fighting the devil and relations for destiny snatching.
Destiny snatching seems now to be the dominant narrative. So what this book is actually trying to do is a counter narrative. In much of the popular preachings today, responsibility and hard work have little mention and most rich people are painted with the same brush: “they are rich because they belong to secret societies or engage in criminal activities or snatch somebody’s good luck etc”. And those who are poor are poor “because either the devil holds them down or some relations of theirs have taken their luck etc.”
And this particular narrative is even affecting the programme for anti-poverty by the public spirited individuals because, sometimes, I have quite met a quite number of wealthy people who are thinking of engaging to give and to do something especially in their home towns.But they are confronted with this dilemma: you give, you are in trouble; you don’t give, you are in trouble. And I think this book has come to challenge much of that.
This book seems to be a strong timely push back and counter narrative. It is trying to provide a push-back to what is becoming a dominant narrative in terms of how to become rich. The principles enunciated seem to apply to success in any field generally; be it in academics, sports, music, religious ministry, professions.etc.
The principles embedded in this book are said to have helped thousands around the world to accumulate wealth, implying that the principles have universal application. So it is not snatching of luck , secret societies and money making rituals that can help people accumulate wealth.
Purpose
The illustrative case studies have brought home, perhaps to achieve his own variety goals, which seem to be “mental emancipation” for the readers, especially, according to the author of he book, his focus is on the African entrepreneurs and professionals for whom the book is meant. An unstated objective of the book is to invert the 98 per cent versus two per cent of the pyramid of the ignorant versus the enlightened groups of humans. Napoleon Hill observed that 98 per cent of all human beings in the world “don’t actually know where they are going or what they want out of life”.
If you are a professional and entrepreneur, the professionals and entrepreneurs already embody some of the principles in the book. Anyway, I think the key now is the 98 per cent that is lost.
And I want to encourage the author that that is where the emphasis needs to be. And hopefully, an unstated objective of this book could be to invert the pyramid so that 98 per cent could find their compass in life and move out of poverty.
Success drivers
There is a school of thought that says no one can teach you how to succeed in life. According to this school of thought, while everyone can read or be taught the 17 Principles of Napoleon Hill, only few could still grow rich because what drives success comes from within rather than from without. In other words, some believe that those intangibles that are personal such as positive thinking, intense desire, ambition, visualisation, self-belief, passion cannot be taught. Some people even allude to the so-called Natural Pyramid as the 80-20 Rule or 90-10 Rule. And some even quote the Scriptures to justify poverty and inequality in the world.
A consistent message in this book is “talent is not enough”.
One could be talented or with high Intelligent Quotient (IQ) and yet remains poor. So one has to imbibe three types of intelligence: the IQ, the Emotional Quotient (EQ) and Social Quotient (SQ). The EQ refers to character; what makes you whom you are. And the SQ is about social network.
Sometimes again, making money is not just about what you know; it is also about whom you know. If you have all the knowledge and you go and lock yourself up inside your room, you will never get to make money. You make money by interacting with people.
So all those skills must come together in the process of making money. And so these embody the intangibles that drive success as enunciated in the 17 principles of Napoleon Hill. In my crude way or summarising the principles in my mentoring sections to young people, I posit that those who have succeeded in growing rich on a sustained basis are those who have sourced to solve a problem for humanity. When they say Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook or the Bill Gates of this word, they didn’t just wake up and stumbled on wealth, also it is not about the level of education that they had. But they set out to solve a fundamental problem for humanity. And I posit that those who have succeeded are those who sought to solve a problem for humanity and money follows them. If you solve a problem for humanity, money will inevitably follows you. No question about that because If you are solving a problem, you are creating value. So those doing value creation have always made money. Therefore, I have always asked my metees to start by identifying what problem do you want to solve or what value do you want to add? And there are examples everywhere. This seems to be the principles that have endured everywhere in the world.
Structured guidance
As I said, there is this emphasis on entrepreneurs and professionals. Targetting these people is like preaching to the choir. We need to take the message to every home. Our youths today, everywhere, in the universities, in secondary schools, on the streets, and so on need some structured guidance through the contents of this book. Gather together young graduates and undergraduates ; get people like the author; young entrepreneurs, older ones and telling them their stories. And the author should codify these principles in the book and propagate them.
Publishing the book is just one good step, the other 99 per cent of the job now is in getting this message to every ear; to everybody and so on. That I believe is going to take you to the street. That is the third big job as an evangelist. You don’t light a light and put it under a table. This is the lamp, don’t keep under a table.
Why I am emphasising this is because you are talking about mental emancipation. To achieve mental emancipation, as John Mckenzie, the great economist, said in 1930s, the challenge is not so much in coming up with new ideas. The biggest challenge is its dealing with old ideas. To be able to take out the old ones and replace them with the new, the battle you have is that when a pastor in Church says :Claim it! And everybody says amen. And he says once you shout it to the roof top, you become rich. And you are saying to them, no! And when a pastor tells a member of his Church that it is brother or uncle who has taken his luck or destiny, and you are coming to say your destiny is in your hand! And that whatever you think; your mind can visualise and you believe, and you take steps to get them, you will accomplish it. That is your counter message. My brother! You get your lifetime evangelism cut out for you. And you have the pastors, the luck and the prosperity preachers and the other ones to contend with because you will be challenging those whose source of livelihood you are dealing with.
Case study
There are some case studies which could be nice, not only for the low level people who could get these(Hill’s principles ) who would say, ’hmmm, okay, I am going to do it and come out with testimonies later in life about how they changed my perspective and trajectory.
Let’s also, perhaps I don’t know whether anybody will show up. But I do see some people who confess; who, if it could be found, ‘sought to grow rich’ through rituals, or membership of secret societies or..If it would be possible to even see people. I am sure there are people who sought to do those things and ended up miserably to find out that it just didn’t work. And if we find a way of finding out if two, three, up to eight people and we document their experiences. This might be the way to say to the people; challenge the old narrative and say, it does not work!
