Wealth Creation Strategies

On October 22, 2010, I got this email from Brian Tracy. I enjoy reading his articles and feel like using this blogs to share them with you. Hope you find it worth reading and make sure you apply the principles here as they have the ability to change your life completely.

Wealth Creation Strategies
By Brian Tracy

What People Need
Wealth creation occurs when you produce a product or service that people want and need and are willing to pay for at a price that is in excess of your total cost of producing that product or service. The key to business success has always been the same, find a need and fill it. We all earn our livings by serving other people in some way. Your business goal is to find out what people really want and need, and then give it to them better and faster than anyone else.

Secrets of Market Leadership
Hundreds of companies have been studied to discover the secrets of market leadership. There are three secrets. The first one is Operational Excellence—the company has developed the ability to produce its products and services at a cost substantially lower than its competitors. The second is Customer Intimacy—the company develops a close relationship with its customers based on excellent knowledge of the customer's business. Thirdly, there is Technological Superiority—the company offers a product or service that is superior to that of its competitor.

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Additional Value
There are several strategies that you can follow to create additional value for your customers and additional wealth for yourself. Improve your product or service in some way so that it is better than that of your competitors, at the same or at a lower price. Produce or deliver your product or service faster than your competitors. Produce your product or service cheaper than your competitors, maintaining or increasing your level of quality. Offer better follow-up and support services to go along with your product or service than your competitors. Make your product easier to acquire and more readily available than your competitors. Make your prices and terms more attractive and convenient than your competitors. Include additional products and services with your offerings, at the same price.

Reputation
Your reputation in the marketplace determines how much you can sell, and the prices you charge. The friendliness of your staff and the ease of doing business with you is a key part of your reputation. Your credibility with your customers, the degree to which they see you as trustworthy and dependable is a key value to your customers. Selling to an individual customer requires an impeccable reputation and a focus on the improvement your product or service makes in their lives. What does your product achieve for your customer? What does your product help your customer to avoid? What does your product help your customer to preserve? How does your product help your customer to get better results in his life?

Action Exercise
List three ways that you could improve the relationships that you have with your customers.

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Sharpen Up!

Having a been a keen student of life and its practical dynamics, I have seen that while some people struggle all their lives to eke out a living, some others have abundance, opportunities and recognition beyond what they can ever imagine. These people seem to be constantly going up and life seems very robust. While everybody desires a larger life than they are living presently, few seem to know the way.

For the man who must go up and stay up, mediocrity is not an option. The world is full of mediocre fellows who must manage through life and wallow in penury. This is because the surest way to stay down in life is to be a mediocre. Who is a mediocre? A mediocre is an incompetent fellow. According to Encarta Dictionary, it means average: adequate or acceptable, but not very good. It also means ordinary, unexceptional run-of-the-mill, second-rate, pedestrian, commonplace, middle-of-the-road. All these describe a mediocre, and what a wonderful portrayal of failure!

Fortunately, it is imperative to note that though you may have started out as a mediocre, you do have the power to change it. You can become so sharpened up that it becomes impossible to trace mediocre back to you. By sharpening up, I mean becoming highly skilful, very competent. You can become very competent if you want to.

The world is in need of competent fellows. Great companies and organizations the world over will pay anything however high just to secure the services of a competent professional. Competence is powerful. It gives you a say in the decisions of your life. It makes you attractive and desirable. It empowers you to negotiate your reward. It gives you options. Indeed the more competent you become, the more options you will have in life.

You see, you can become so good and proficient that it will be virtually impossible to undermine you. You can become a luminary and icon. When you hear the name, ‘Michael Jackson’ what comes to your mind? What of Michael Jordan, Diego Maradona, Martin Luther King Jr., Dr. Condoleezza Rice? Each of these individuals stands out indisputably in their fields. Sincerely, everyone can become great in his area of calling.

For that to happen, we must become focused in our areas of interest and become so proficient there until our competence becomes visible. We were not created to be Jack of all trades, master of none. We were created to be specialists, competent fellows. So if greatness is our goal, then skilfulness and competence is the road. Become competent and you will be distinguished.

Finally, to be competent we need constant training. Without proper training it will be impossible to reign. What is inside us by way of gifts and talents must be sharpened and that can only happen by training. We need to submit ourselves to strenuous discipline so as to maximize our lives. This is the road many wouldn’t want to travel in but those who do have wonderful result as proofs to show. Throw off the robe of mediocrity and watch your life metamorphose to something bigger than you can ever imagine.

Greatness

Most commercials today are in the business of using the term greatness in trying to convince their audience to purchase their products and services. Tying greatness to their products creates the notion in the minds of people that getting those products will make them great or enable them to achieve greatness. While the ultimate desire of every man is to be great, the road to greatness may be far from the products advertised.

Inherent in every man is the desire for greatness. No one wants to be a push over. Everyone desires to be highly respected among men. That in itself is never wrong. And since many advertisers know that, they present many roads to supposed greatness. But I have come to discover that the road to greatness is the one less travelled. The reason is so obvious – it isn’t very fashionable. It doesn’t look like it.

What is greatness? Simply, it is to be powerful, influential and durable. It is magnificence. Every normal thinking man will want to exert all of these among other people. I have seen people like the Psalmist noted, who rose up suddenly and exerted so much influence but they were like the shooting star. All of a sudden they are nowhere to be found. They had fizzled out suddenly. But why does this happen always, you may ask? The reason is not far-fetched. It is because the basis was either not in place or was violated. What then is the basis for greatness? It is virtue.

Virtue is the only solid basis of greatness. It’s not one of the solid bases; it is the only solid basis.
Virtue deals with godly and moral principles. Daniel Webster states clearly that virtue is nothing but voluntary obedience to truth. From the above statement we can deduce that without a proper knowledge of the truth, there is no basis for virtue because virtue rests on the foundation of the truth. The only truth on which virtue can draw its footing is the Word of God. This proves to us that without the knowledge of God’s Word, we cannot be virtuous. We may have what looks like virtue but can’t be it.

In subsequent writings, I shall pick and examine some of these attributes of virtue that will enable our lives to be properly integrated. Don’t ever forget that you were born great. And if you were born great, then anything less than greatness will amount to an aberration and travesty of purpose.

Fading Glory

Man is richly endowed by His Maker. He is so blessed that all other created things envy him and his position. He was created to be the ruler of all other created thing, to exercise enormous authority on earth and determine so much here. He was also blessed with so much ability to know and learn. He was endowed with the ability to develop ability and to learn how to learn. He was blessed with unimaginable potential and capacity. He was also blessed with the ability to improve and appreciate. He was given the ability to love and be loved, to appreciate and cherish beauty. You realise how beautiful the lady you recently saw was. No other creation has that ability. I think we owe our Creator so much gratitude. He is so benevolent.

For many years I have read the Bible. With each passing day I see how true its teachings are and how relevant they are to our daily life. The wise man, Solomon stated unequivocally, “Favour is deceitful, beauty is vain but a woman that fears the Lord, she shall be praised.” Why do people go after a so called beautiful lady? Why are men willing to die if only that will enable them have access to a beautiful lady they have seen? How come men do everything just to pursue and get a hold of what God said is vain? Doesn’t it baffle you how we can be so blind? Why do we pursue beauty?

I think we pursue beauty because we don’t realize how vain beauty is. For instance, a lady doesn’t need beauty to be faithful in a relationship. She doesn’t need beauty to be a good wife, she doesn’t need beauty to be a good cook, and she doesn’t need beauty to take care of the home. She doesn’t need beauty to be pregnant; she doesn’t need beauty to give birth, raise the children, serve God and do so many other things a lady is supposed to do. Sooner or later the man realises that there is more required in a lady than that she is beautiful.

You see, what is attractive may not be important. Beauty attracts. But if the only thing a lady has is beauty, then she is of all ladies the most miserable. There are things that are more important than beauty. The most important is character. Character is superior to beauty a thousand times over. Many men will toy with a beautiful lady but will want to settle for a serious relationship with a lady with good character. Character is the inherent complex attributes that determine a person’s moral and ethical actions and reactions. Character is cultivated and cultivatable. A lady who has taken time to work on herself and allowed God, people and environments to mould her into a responsible lady is worth more than all the beauty queens of this world who are without character.

A well-cultured lady is humble, God-fearing and trust-worthy. Can you trust a lady because she is beautiful? Can you hand over your business to a lady because she is beautiful? Can you ask a lady to oversee a multi-million dollar project because she is beautiful? I do believe your answer to these questions is emphatic NO. If so, then it’s time to pay attention to the things that matter.
Nothing is as fading as beauty. If you doubt me take a second look at your grandmother if you still have one. Many years ago she could make most men bend their necks to her direction but today... Let’s be real men and go for what is real. I married the most beautiful woman on earth and I thank God for it. But I don’t think I would’ve married her or be enjoying her today just because she is beautiful. She is a woman of great and superior quality than thoughts can imagine. I am eternally grateful to God for the privilege to be her husband.

For us not to go for vanity we must not be vain ourselves. This is because we can only attract who and what we are. We can only attract our kind. We must become men of integrity and allow principles to guide our lives. We must be God-fearing to attract God-fearing ladies. Take a second look at yourself. Are you the kind of man a quality woman will want to identify with? The answer to that question will make all the difference in your life.

Remove the Stumbling Block

As I think about this topic my mind races back to a pathetic story in the Bible. It is the story of a man called Amasa who King David gave an assignment to get his troops ready for an emergency attack against a rebel. For some unknown reason, he delayed and King David delegated another officer to carry out the charge. On the way, they met Amasa, as he was coming to appear before the King.

Unfortunately for him, he was craftily killed by another officer called Joab. As the troops got to where the fallen officer was wallowing in his blood, they stood still. Their attention and sympathy was drawn towards this fallen hero and so they couldn’t move forward. They were on national assignment but couldn’t continue because their attention was arrested by the dead. To enable them move forward the officer on duty removed the dead body from the way and covered it. After this the troops were back on course, carried out their mission successfully and returned to the King. (See 2kings 20)

The road to success is full of stumbling blocks and obstacles. Some are designed to defocus us while others are designed to frustrate us. We are on destiny journey and have been equipped by God with all the requirements for achieving success. But if we don’t take care of obstacles and other distractions on the way we will never become all we were created to be. No one should ever think there wouldn’t be obstacles on the way to achieving success. The good news is the obstacles cannot stop you except you allow them.

There are roadblocks we must deal with if we want to achieve great results and become all that God created us to be. First is mental roadblock. Sometimes the greatest obstacle to success is the mind- how we think. If we are not thinking well, we can’t live well. This is because our thoughts determine our actions and inactions. Our actions and inactions invariably determine our destiny. Success belongs to the innovative and the creative. Our mind is the greatest asset we have and until we begin to deploy it we will remain stagnant.

It is sad to note that majority of people don’t think at all. They live their lives like zombies. A statistic has it that of all humans only 5% think, 15% think they are thinking but are not and 80% will rather die than think. Isn’t that revealing, particularly when you consider that about 95% of the world’s wealth is being controlled by about 5% of the world’s population? Only people who use their brains will be qualified to attain great heights in life.

Another roadblock is emotional immaturity. Our emotions are a precious gift from God. Without emotions, we are deprived of the energy and fortitude to attempt great things and undergo rigorous challenges. But emotional immaturity can hinder us and keep us stagnant. Impatience, outbursts of anger, bitterness and the like will impede on our success drive. We cannot harbour these dysfunctional traits and maximize our lives. We must let them off so as to go ahead.

Next is spiritual emptiness. Many are spiritually empty and that invariably accounts for most dysfunctional lives. We cannot succeed in life without divine input. Many live as if all that life has to offer is what they can see. They fail to realise that everything we can see is temporal. It is only what we don’t see that is permanent. God’s presence makes all the difference. With Him on your side victory is assured. Knowing God is the greatest thing that can happen to anyone. It is the key to lasting success.

As the year gradually winds up, it is important to ensure you make peace with God. This you do by allowing Him to direct and control your life. This is just a logical decision since He made you in the first place. It is only normal for you to allow Him have His property back to Himself. His presence will make the difference.

Slow Down A Little

As the year gradually wounds up, it will be important to sit back and think about our lives. Many people live like cars without break, no wonder there are so many casualties. Life was never made to be lived just on the fast lane. This is because you don't refuel on the fast lane. You don't make purchases on the fast lane either. Having been on the fast lane for many months, friend, it is important to slow down a little, refuel and have some needed rest and prepare for the journey ahead.

Life is not a sprint but a relay race. Oftentimes, we see very fast and sharp people fail. Success in life does not really depend on how fast you are because you can be travelling very fast on the wrong road. Draw your mind back a little, were there not your mates who were the brightest, smartest, most beautiful girls and most promising guys who today are not to be reckoned with? They have fizzled away into oblivion. Those were people who were on the fast lane for too long and could not slow down to reposition themselves. Their fuel and oil got finished in the middle of the road, and suddenly their engine knocked and they got stalked.

I encourage you to slow down and sit down to think and plan. Without proper thinking and planning life will never be meaningful. But for our thinking and planning to be effective, we need God's input. And that will come as we seek His face in prayer and study of His Word. The Scriptures say, "Commit your way to the Lord and your thoughts shall be established." As we seek His face, He will show us the way we are supposed to go and the thing we should do. One idea from God can change your life forever.

Daily Prayer for Leaders

God give us leaders, straight and narrow, kind and good.

Clay-footed men with hearts of gold, selfless, giving and godly;

Men whose needs are few but who desire to leave the world a better place than they met it;

Give us men who are not flattered by praise or flattened by pride.

Men whose presence gives hope to other men.

Dear Lord, great and exceptional nations don’t fall off the sky.

They are always product of great exceptional leadership under You.

So give us leaders whose minds, ideas and policies are rich in content and robust in implementation.

Deliver us oh Lord from weak-hearted, lily-livered and empty headed leaders who desperately seek and obtain power for self and not for service.

Give us oh God, good, godly and transformative leadership who ennobles, enables and inspires.

And deliver us from self-centred, ego-centric and ungodly leadership who oppress, limits potential and destroys those better than themselves.

Give us oh God, large hearted leadership with capacity to lift men from mediocrity to excellence.

Give us team players who do not see their team as competitive, tugging with them for influence

Give us leaders who do not monopolise and get all the credit that truly belongs to everyone on the team.

Give us leaders who extend the frontiers of opportunities to those around and beneath them.

Leaders who are an inspiration for progressive development;

Leaders who don’t just throw their weight around but instead put their weight behind the labour and efforts of their team.

Give us oh Lord we pray valiant men and virtuous women.

A time like this demands strong minds, great hearts, true faith and ready hands.

Men and women whom the lusts of office will not kill; men and women whom the spoils of office cannot buy;

Men and women who possess opinions and will; men and women who love honour and who will not lie. Amen.

Your Greatest Treasure

Treasure! The mere mention of the word sounds good to the ear and stirs up right feelings in our hearts. Everyone wants to have treasures and the more quality these treasures the more we cherish them. The world is full of treasures and you have a share of the vast treasures that God has blessed the world with.

What is treasure? Treasure is something of value or someone of high value. This obviously categorizes treasures into two categories viz. something and someone. There are things of value in our lives which we need to make life more comfortable. These will include assets, wealth, precious objects and more. Treasure could also be someone who we value highly. It could be our President, dignitaries and relations. These are wonderful treasures and it’s important to appreciate them.

But what or who is your greatest treasure? I will allow the Word of God to answer that for us- Proverbs 18:22 tells us that, “A man's greatest treasure is his wife-- she is a gift from the LORD.” Your greatest treasure is your wife! Not your bank account, not your academic achievements, children or any other treasure whether human or objects. Let me say it again, your wife is your greatest asset!

It’s amazing how far we can be from the truth that is necessary for our victory. The person who is our greatest asset can be treated with the greatest levity. Not understanding that a man’s greatest treasure is his wife and vice versa is the singular most important reason why many marriages have packed up and many more will still pack up. The divorce rate in our contemporary society is unprecedented and the statistics is still on the increase. Why? The reason is because many don’t understand this all-important truth. Your spouse is your greatest treasure not any other thing or person. Oh how I wish this will sink deep into you because it will make an eternal difference in your life.

Treasures are made to be cherished, nourished, taken care of and treated with dignity. Do you treat your boss the way you treat your wife? Do you shout on your President the way you shout on your wife? Treatment shows value. If you value your wife you will treat her with the greatest dignity in the entire world.

Where then do we start? We start by recognizing that our spouse is the greatest treasure we have. This is very important because according to Mike Murdock who coined the law of recognition, that anything unrecognized will go uncelebrated, anything uncelebrated will go unrewarded and anything unrewarded will soon exit your life. Because people don’t recognize the worth of their spouses, they treat them with levity and indignity and sooner than later they are headed for the courts. If you want to succeed in life you must value the greatest treasure God has given you-your spouse. This is because if you don’t value the greatest, is it the least that you will value? You will not be qualified to handle lesser treasures if you didn’t value the greatest of all treasures.

It’s time to see your wife as she really is- your greatest treasure. That alone will solve most of your problems in life.

A Sublime Divide

We live in a world that literally worships wealth and prosperity. Though there is nothing wrong with wealth and being wealthy but to make its pursuit the utmost pursuit of our lives is destructive. Why is it so? This is because pursuing wealth for wealth’s sake makes people put a divide between integrity and prosperity. Such divide has wrecked so many and will still destroy many more. This is because we hardly learn from history. We obviously might have seen people who were destroyed for the evil ways they tried to get rich with but we fail to learn. Some think the end justifies the means but the contrary is true-it is the means that justifies the end.

Integrity according to Microsoft Encarta is defined as the quality of possessing and steadfastly adhering to high moral principles or professional standards. There will always be the temptation to change and use undercut methods to make money or achieve success in any endeavour and not be caught. We might have seen people who have successfully covered their tracks after illegal transactions but such methods and successes will invariably lead to the destruction of the possessor, if not now definitely later. Nothing is durable if it was not built of sound and durable moral principles. No one is truly successful who has not succeeded based on application of principles and standards. There is no shortcut to durable success. Shortcut will cut your life short.

Integrity is also defined as the state of being complete or undivided. It was Thomas Paine who said “ It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe.” Integrity is derived from the word integer which means whole without fraction. What a life it is to not have fractions! It makes for trustworthiness. People of integrity can be trusted. This is because they don’t say one thing and do another. Who they are in secret and who they are in public match.

When we merge integrity with prosperity, we achieve lasting result. That is the original way stipulated by God. He says that wealth gotten by fraudulent means shall diminish. He also says that such wealth will destroy the possessors. It is God’s will to make everyone prosperous but that will only happen when we walk in the principles of integrity and truth. Choose integrity and you will be glad you did.

MENTAL FITNESS FOR SUCCESS

Success doesn’t just happen. It takes more than a wish to break even and live life maximally. Many people desire to succeed but not many will taste the sweet juice of success. This is not as a result of divine partiality or age, location or colour. Success is neither a white, a black, a red nor of any other colour. Success starts with the mind. The mind is the centre of human activities that either make or mar any one, man or woman.

FACTS ABOUT SUCCESS

All Success is achievable.
There is no height attained by any one that another person cannot attain. If anyone has done it before then any other person can do it. It is important to know that impossibility is a mental block that tends to siphon our vital energies and renders us incapable of achieving our dreams. A lady who collected our form for an intensive training program, came to inform me that she can’t afford to pay the fees. I told her to never say she can’t afford a thing. This is because when you say you can’t afford to do what are supposed to do, you put a limitation on yourself and your God and that makes it impossible for you to be successful. She took my advice and went back resolving to start the program. Before the program had gone half way, she had completed the payments. I would always remind her of how timid she looked the day she came to indicate her withdrawal. All success is achievable. If someone can do it, then you can do it.

All Success is Relative.
This means that success in one area of life does not mean success in another area of life. That you succeeded as a footballer doesn’t mean you will succeed as a husband. This accounts for so called successful people making a failure morally. The rules are different for every game and in life that is the same. There are rules that govern football and there are rules that govern relationships. There are rules that govern businesses and there are that govern fatherhood. Success in one area does not translate to success in another area. Therefore for every endeavour, we must know and play by the rules.

All success is Unlimited.
There is no end to success. Recently, Usain Bolt, the Jamaican athlete broke his previous world record in track events. The new record will still be broken either by him or by another person. This is because there is no limit to success. The fastest computers of yesterday have been overtaken by newer ones. The same goes for cars and other inventions. There is no limit to success. You can get better. You can improve on your previous performances. You can break your ‘world’ records and set other ones. You can succeed beyond your wildest imagination.

All Success is Parallel.
My success doesn’t make it impossible for you to succeed. This is because all success is parallel. We all can succeed. The sky is so wide that every star can shine. No star can stop another star from shinning. So it will amount to foolishness for one star to envy another star. The success of one doesn’t cancel the success of another. There are enough resources to go round everyone. That is abundant mentality. If you have this mindset you will rejoice when another person succeeds, knowing that his or her success doesn’t stop you from succeeding.

Having the mindset seen in the above sub-themes will equip you for unlimited success. There is no better time to succeed than now. This is your time to make your mark. This is your time to succeed. Rise up from mediocrity and limitation-mentality and break through new horizons. Success is staring at you therefore reach forth and take it. But first of all realize that you can succeed. Yes you can.