By Jules NARTEY TOKOLI
In the 1st place, to start your business you need talent and knowledge. When you put those to use, you show wisdom.
So, to even come up with the idea that you can sell this product, even though you don’t have the money, but can use your reputation as an honest person to obtain the goods, sell, then pay back is wisdom. And that wisdom and its components are real, natural money—the real capital!
As you repeat the process and keep building on that reputation, you are, in effect, building your wealth. With that intact, the person who you are dealing with can conveniently vouch for you and even guarantee on your behalf for another supplier to expand your business.
This way you start and run your business without a pesewa (artificial money). That is why reputation is very important to thrive as a smart businessperson.
Don’t ever buy into the notion that being smart in business means being “kuluulu” or tricky. People would see through you, and that would ruin your prospects of creating generational wealth.
Use Talent to Create Wealth
Let’s now talk a little bit more about Talent. Take for example someone who has talent as a musician, a playwright or an author.
They are able to put their talent to use to create currency by carving out a brand for themselves, which also becomes real wealth in the long run. It’s wealth because through copyright or patent, if an inventor, royalties might accrue eternally.
For example, Bob Marley died in 1981, yet his estate earns an estimated $16 to $20 million annually through music royalties, merchandising, and the continued global appeal of his brand, according to Forbes.
Since Michael Jackson’s death in 2009, his estate has earned an average of around $360 million annually, with a total of over $2 billion in earnings, largely through royalties and various business deals.
These illustrate what talent, along with wisdom can produce. Granted, those are unheard of in our part of the world. Plus, the personalities involved are mega stars. But as Africa’s artistes gradually integrate into what I may call the global copyright system, you can check this out again in fifty years’ if alive.
Keep in mind, also, that Bob came from a third world country whose system was not any much better than many African countries’.
So, you see, if this is what human resources can do for you by way of generating currency–artificial money–do you think it makes sense to die for artificial money?
Do you think it makes sense to work for artificial money when you yourself–you in totality–are more valuable than any currency reserve, whether it’s the United States dollar or Ghana cedi, all put together, you as an individual are more valuable than those currencies combined, so why would you waste your life working for and dying for currency? It just doesn’t make sense.
Effects of the Faulty Educational System
Unfortunately, though, our educational system was designed to keep us perpetually as slaves of currency; they make us feel like we have no value in ourselves. The only value we can obtain, we are made to believe, is when we pass our exams and are employed by some big company that pays us “fat” artificial money, (we’ll come back to that “fat” money debacle later).
But you know what? In my short life on earth, there is something that I’ve observed (I don’t know if you have also noticed it) that, growing up in my paradisaic hometown of Ada-Foah in the Greater Accra Region, I observed first hand that majority, if not all of those who had the reputation of being rich were either “illiterate” or had very limited education.
As a matter of fact, until 1961, there was no high school (secondary school, as we used to call it) in that town! Those built all the big homes (unfortunately some of them have been carried away by the sea through erosion). And how did they do it? Mainly through trading, baking, fishing and farming, among others.
Yet, they thought that by sending their children to school they would grow up learning western knowledge and do even better than them. But that hardly happened. Usually, they came out of school, some even as university graduates to fight over the properties of their “illiterate” parents!
Toxic Work Environment
Yes, that’s why I believe that the western-style education that we have in Africa does not train us to unearth our real human resources or how we can put them to good use.
Instead, there is a department in large organizations called the Human Resource Department meant to make good use of our resources to the benefit of the shareholder.
And so, they have reduced us to doing discrete, repetitive tasks that add nothing to our purpose in life, after which they pay us peanuts which some may call “fat” salary.
After you are paid, the government also has to tax about 1/3 of it. Apart from that you still have to pay taxes on goods and services that you use. And you pay for almost everything by continuing to work 9:00 to 5:00.
That is what we’ve been reduced to! And because of the seeming “security” that we enjoy, we work in an environment where, like crabs in a pot that keep pulling each other down because they’re thirsty and famished, we become each other’s enemy at the workplace.
We smile with each other while at the same time we want to pull each other down and climb on top of one, only for another one to also pull us down.
That has brought about mistrust, pain, anger, frustration, and so forth. It reminds me of this song by Bob Marley called Ambush in the Night in which he says in part: “See them fighting for power. but they know not the hour.
So they are bribing with guns spare parts and money. Trying to belittle our integrity now, they say what we know is just what they tell us; and we’re so ignorant that every time they can reach us, through political strategy. They keep us hungry. And when you gonna get some food, your brother got to be your enemy! Ambush in the night”.
Granted, he wrote this song at the time to describe what was happening on the political scene in Jamaica; and really that is what you see happening on the political scene in Africa and throughout the world today. But it’s also applicable to the workplace and even the business environment.
We see top management fighting among themselves while they also try to win the favour of middle management by pulling strings, so they are also divided. Middle management then does same with lower management, and it trickles down to the floor employees.
And so, everyone who’s seeking to climb up will have to ambush another in order to get there. In effect, they’re fighting for power; they’re fighting for money, artificial money; and they’re fighting for prestige.
Thus whatever they have to do in order to get it they do it. They say the end justifies the means. That’s how we’ve reduced our value as human beings made in God’s image! It’s sad, isn’t it? Very sad!
Hence, instead of collaborating to make things happen, we are fighting each other. Thus the axiom “united we stand; divided we fall” has no place in our values.
We only pay lip-service. We claim to believe that “unity is strength” when, in reality, it doesn’t mean anything to us!
Rather, we want to trample on each other. But what we don’t realize is that as you demean another human in order to go up, what you are actually doing is that you are demeaning all humanity including yourself; you are degrading all humanity including yourself; and that for artificial money, currency!
In the third and final part, we address the paradox of fake money and what should be the true store of value.
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The author is a dynamic entrepreneur and the Founder and Group CEO of Groupe Soleil Vision, made up of Soleil Consults (US), LLC, NubianBiz.com and Soleil Publications. He has an extensive background In Strategy, Management, Entrepreneurship, Premium Audit Advisory, And Web Consulting. With professional experiences spanning both Ghana and the United States, Jules has developed a reputation as a thought leader in fields such as corporate governance, leadership, e-commerce, and customer service. His publications explore a variety of topics, including economics, information technology, marketing and branding, making him a prominent voice in discussions on development and business innovation across Africa. Through NubianBiz.com, he actively champions intra-African trade and technology-driven growth to empower SMEs across the continent.
