I had the opportunity to speak to a dozen of young impressionable undergraduates drawn from middle and low income families who were eager to learn what to do to succeed, to remain successful and the act of remaining successful in their future endeavours. I could see in them the zeel to listen to me. The master of ceremony had overhyped my credentials.
It was initially a big challenge to find a communication strategy that would enable me convey my thoughts and personal experience to them. I finally decided to keep it simple and smart. Below is my address and advice to them:
That which would make you successful might not be connected to what you studied in school but the experience in studying had and make good grades or even graduating will help you a great deal. The hard work and the tenacity that saw you through school would be needed in any trade or profession you finally find yourself in. I told them that I read Microbiology in the university but now I work in the financial industry. My plan was to become a medical doctor or a brewer or a professor in the university but everything changed after my graduation. Given the enormous financial situation of my extended family, I had to take to more paying banking job and applied hard work and tenacity skills I perfected while in school to largely succeed in my professional career.
Many of you might come with high grades from school but that is not the only determinant of success. Your readiness to learn or being teachable, your visible readiness to accept correction, your ability to deliver on assigned tasks without excuses and respect of your supervisors and colleagues. There is an extent your promotion in your organisation would be based on delivering results. Other factors are applied. Your booses ask the following questions, “can we trust him or her?”, “is he firm in decision making?”, “what do we stand to lose if we lose him?”
It is important some of you who want to take to career to start learning the habits of highly successful people. You should study the conduct of the managers and above in your organisation. What traits do they have? Start imbibing them.
My friends, you’re as knowledgeable as the books you read. Read widely and especially the biographies of great people in the profession you choose and in other areas especially the wealth creators and leaders. Immediately you start work, start saving.
Start investing in real estate. Buy land where you can afford. Don’t spend so much on what you wear or drive. They are wasting assets. Be intentional about your choice of your life business partners. A wrong choice will pull you down or may even kill you. Invest in relationships.
Money is made through contact and dependable relationships. Carefully make friends with the good, the bad and ugly in your organisation or field. Even God has business engagements with Satan as captured in discussion that led to the trial of Job.
When you become successful, be humble and respectful to the critical stakeholders that are responsible for your remaining successful. You must respect those who take decisions on you, your business and even life.
If you find yourself in a profession like banking or in a corporate world, you should learn how to communicate your differing views to management or management policies without appearing rude or making them look stupid. No management keeps an arrogant and manifestly disobedient staff as soon as they find his or her replacement.
I conclude by saying that no successful person who has invested well, lives with a morbid fear of becoming poor again. Aggressive and diversified investments before the peak and at the peak of one’s successful career cannot be overemphasized. Nnewi people would always say that “when a wealthy man falls, he is wedged from descending into poverty by his investments”.
My address above may make sense to some of my readers and friends in the coming year.
Chief Anayo Nwosu
