Monday 9 July 2012

Confessions of a college girl: My Mother said

Confessions of a college girl: My Mother said: My mother says I am gaining weight Losing the shape of a twelve year old girl Gaining that of a woman Soon I will blossom she says ...

Saturday 10 March 2012

DECISIONS·

Its said that life is all about decisions/choices we make. You make them, then they make you! Your life is a pattern formed through a series of choices you've made in the past. The differences in each of our lives is a reflection of the difference in the choices we make.

It's unfortunate though that most of us live other people's choices/decisions. Most of us do things out of pressure from other people's decisions.Most of us work hard, get tired and exhausted, run after things, get busy, study hard, most of these not because we need to, not because we like to, but because someone else thinks it's right for us! Doing things so as to prove to the world that we can, yet we don't like them!

Most of us make decisions based on fear; fear that people will think you're not bright, fear that people would consider you not important if you don't go university or work in an office!Fear-Based Decisions are decisions made to avoid what you fear in life,whereas Faith-Based Decisions are decisions made towards getting what you want and like in life!

It's out of these reasons that most people don't achieve or even make resolutions in their lives. Most of them are not confident they can follow their decisions, aspirations and thus spend most of their time in the year making choices to avoid what they fear. It's said, "if you don't know where you're going, any road will lead you there!"

Resolutions/decisions helps simplify your life, gives you some sense of direction and helps you manage your own life, otherwise, other people will manage it for you. It's funny that most of us who neither makes nor follow their Life Plans/resolutions, at some point become subjects of those who does!Even businesses have Business Plan.
 Remember, any change in your life, begins as a choice/decision. Decisions helps us start and Discipline helps us finish. We do not make decisions because they're EASY; we don't make decisions because they're CHEAP; we don't make decisions because they're POPULAR; WE MAKE DECISIONS, BECAUSE THEY"RE RIGHT!

Don't you blame others for your life's fate or incapability to achieve your set goals.You had your power of choice all along with you!Don't worry though, you still have it with you! Use it well to LIVE YOUR LIFE! You only have this one life to live and it's too short to live other people's choices, but long enough to live your own fulfilling life! It's never too late to some good choices in your life! You may not have a chance to start all over again; you may not be able to change your past, but you can start to change your end/future!

Finally remember; Start with Yourself; Start Early;Start Small; START NOW! Don't be fooled, Life Plan is important. Have a blessed and fulfilling night.

THE BEAUTY OF STARTING small


Many people intending to go into business usually ask me what is the one thing that is most important. My answer in the recent past has been consistent. START SMALL.
Unfortunately not many people want to hear this, because the reason we go into business is to become rich and to build a BIG humongous money making business.I find it amusing how almost  every startup has Safaricom ,Barclays bank or similar big companies on their hit list. They all seem to know someone on the inside who has promised them a contract. 6 months down the line the contract is elusive, and if it comes through they get paid in 120 days,deep in debt and disillusioned.If you are keen on starting big, you might be better off walking into a casino and trying your hand there. Your chances of riches in the casino might be higher,and if you lose all your money, you will not have auctioneers and angry unpaid employees at your doorstep. The only place a business should start big is in your head, DREAM BIG!
The reason I give this advise is because if you have not been an entrepreneur before, the biggest mistake you can make is to go into a big investment right away. These come in the form of plush offices with new furniture, computers,gizmos,randomly hired staff and unnecessarily high rent. Sometimes the entrepreneur will even buy a sleek car on loan to impress their potential clients. Even if you have saved up millions of shillings, or have access to large amounts of money through a partner or investor, I still insist that you start small. Heres why…
Entrepreneurs begin with very unrealistic assumptions about the market. In fact,those who come from big companies and have identified gaps in their industry , are likely to make the biggest mistakes.They bring their big company mentality into their small business. What they dont realise is that their small business is a very different ball game from the big company they worked for, and in a few months the reality begins to sink in. They soon discover that they dont have the bucket loads of cash to waste on lunches that their former employer had, they dont have the trust of the clients, they dont have the brand name and legacy and sometimes, they dont have the capacity to deliver on the same scale.Their  may even have their golfing buddies quickly abandon them and even if they move with 1 or 2 big clients, they soon realise that they have to work even harder to attract and retain more clients.
Starting small mitigates unseen risks. Starting small has no prestige in it, and definitely doesnt promise big money in the short term. But it can save you a lot of problems in future. If you want to start a restaurant, before you go and put millions of shillings into a facility, start with outside catering for your friends and see if they like the food. If you want to start a marketing agency,nothing stops you from doing trial jobs while still employed just to see if people are happy with what you do. If you want to start an airline , do what richard branson did and hire a plane and see if you can do one route succesfully even if its from Nairobi to Lodwar several times. The beauty with such low risk ventures is that if something goes terribly wrong, you have the opportunity to rectify it quickly without causing much damage, and also you can manage the growth without losing a lot of money and making lots of enemies in the process in the form of disappointed clients,re-possesive bank,  unhappy employees or competitors out to destroy you and your descendants to the third and fourth generation.
2 things to keep in mind today
1. If you are employed , start on a part time basis on weekends and after work or during holidays before quitting.
2.If you were brave enough and already  jumped ship ,look for an unserved market or a gap where the  industry you are venturing into is doing a bad job.  It could be a fully fledged product or service, or a support service to the industry. For example, if you want to venture into insurance, you could either start selling insurance directly or you could go into training insurance sales people if you identified that every company did a bad job in training their people. If you want to go into construction, you could buy a rare piece of construction equipment and hire it out to established players or offer a rare service as a subcontractor to the big companies.If you want to start a school, how about tutoring the neighbours kids and see if their grades improve.
Starting small may take years to yield fruits, so you could do something else in which you have a competency to supplement your income before your company takes off. Lecture at a college, be a freelance consultant to your former employer, be a part time employee at your industry lobby association. Be creative, find something.
There is definitely many people who may start big and make it big ,but I usually find that they either have large sums of money to kickstart them, have venture capital backed by expert advise and management from the investors or have an experienced business partner who has cut his or her teeth in business and therefore can help them navigate the terrain. The rest of us mere mortals have to sweat it out for years. Sometimes one is just lucky to step into something new that is just about to take off that makes them extremely wealthy in a short period of time.Early telecoms  dealers made billions by being the first movers in the new industry.  However, this is normally the odd story rather than the norm.
Finally, be proud of whatever you do. Dont look down upon yourself. Every great company today started small in a public phone booth,  garage, SQ, street corner or at a kind friends office kitchen. My business partner  told us today that the only difference between a small elephant and big elephant is time and food.

Wednesday 7 March 2012

FINANCIAL INTELLIGENCE


Money is one form of power. But what is more powerful is financial education. Money comes and goes, but if you have the education about how money works, you gain power over it and can begin building wealth. The reason positive thinking alone does not work is because most people went to school and never learned how money works, so they spend their lives working for money
Intelligence solves problems and produces money. Money without financial intelligence is money soon gone.Most people fail to realize that in life, it's not how much money you make, it's how much money you keep.
Because students leave school without financial skills, millions of educated people pursue their profession successfully, but later find themselves struggling financially. They work harder, but don't get ahead. What is missing from their education is not how to make money, but how to spend money-what to do after you make it. It's called financial aptitude-what you do with the money once you make it, how to keep people from taking it from you, how long you keep it, and how hard that money works for you.
  Most people cannot tell why they struggle financially because they don't understand cash flow. A person can be highly educated, professionally successful and financially illiterate. These people often work harder than they need to because they learned how to work hard, but not how to have their money work for them.
"If you find you have dug yourself into a hole... stop digging."
"A fool and his money is one big party,"

Thursday 15 December 2011

Power of actions

You don’t have to talk about how great you are, just let your actions do the talking.

Never give up.

Even when you feel like crap, think you're ugly or that no one likes you, there's always someone thinking, "Wow, I wish I had their life."

Faith in God

The task ahead of you is never greater than the power behind you. Put your faith in God and all things are possible.