Becoming Mr Ceo Is No Sin
Owning a company or business is often seen as one meant for only the fortunate and wealthy. Most persons think they were called to work for others. Some think that they aren’t designed to run a business like some persons have been hand-picked by God to start and run businesses. I’ve heard people make these assumptions severally.
Those thoughts are laughable and the people who think this way are wrong. Everyone have the capacity to own a business and should own one at some point in their lives. We may not all become CEOs at the same time but we must be thinking about starting our own startups in our lifetime.
What do you do at that job in that company you work for? You do business. You are offering your services to the company who produces the goods and services. Your efforts help create the value chain for the goods and services offered by the company. You may just sit behind the desk and do some menial work on the computer; all you may be concerned with is the numbers. Its business!
Your boss isn’t one of a kind, he is just like you. He just decided to push himself a little, decided to take risk a little more and started the company you now delight yourself with. Guess what? Your boss is not paying you enough for what your capacity can do. He is paying you only for that part of you he wants and he is paying you only what he can afford to pay. This means you are probably getting far less than your capacity even if you earn a six digit salary.
Start your business before you turn forty! This however won’t be possible if you are comfortable with calling some person boss and expecting salary at the end of the month.
Whether you are a civil servant or you work in the private sector, you should someday start your company where you call the shots too. Your salary is your seed; it is not your tree. Even if you earn six digits every month, you will realize soon that your monthly expenditure is also hitting six digits. Your expenditure is bound to soar when more salary arrives.
Have you ever asked yourself why some politicians steal money from the treasury when they are already earning so much from their top positions in government? The obvious answer is that their needs has increased beyond what they are been paid.
The higher the salary you earn, the more renowned the school you want to send your children to, the bigger the house you want to live in, the more costly the designer clothes you want to put on, the bigger the hotels you want to lodge in and the more money you want to spend on what you eat. Oh yes!
You can get stuck trying to live up to your salary. This is how the average salary earner thinks. Only those who know better, whose minds have been rejigged think a bit differently. That’s why you are reading this book, to rejig your mind.
The faster you see your salary as a seed, the smarter you’d become financially. This means you will be calling the shots of your life.
If you don’t start your company before forty, chance is, you may never start one. Dedicate a part of your salary intentionally to starting an enterprise around something that you love. Certainly, everyone has some business idea and you have one. Business starts from the ideas that run through your mind. You can figure that out, you can scan through a book of ideas or you can visit the internet.
Instead of getting paid for your skills at that job, how about if you start your own company with the same skills? How about starting a company from the services your company offers? Your company needs marketers for their product; you could start a marketing firm for the products and get a good deal. I’ve seen former workers of companies who started marketing companies to sell the products produced by the company they once worked in. They were smart.
But why should you start your company before forty? The years before forty are your most active years in life. You have so much energy today, so much wits, so much zest, so much talents, so much gifts, and you have the capacity to take so much risks and make so many mistakes without the world turning on your head.
Beyond forty, the expectations are different. It is believed you’ve been grounded. How about leveraging on all the much that you have in your arsenal? That’s actually the best deal you’d gift yourself.
Look, Challenges of life will always hang around. They will always grow as the years increase. I am not the one saying this; this is how life is wired. Your best years are now that you have much more energy and zest to face the challenges. Seize them.
As a matter of fact, everyone gets a head start in their twenties and early thirties; I mean every one, except morons of course. But you aren’t one that’s why you are reading this book. Your head start is for you to start something.
Now you are young, you work for a boss who is older than you are. The same boss will push you out of job when he sees that the quality of service you are offering is depreciating as a result of old age. He will look for a younger mind with so much energy to drive his company, you will be left on your own to search for another job. You may claim you did your best, you gave all your best years but your boss still sacked you! It’s certainly going to happen with that job of yours.
You may think you are a lucky chap, because you’ve gotten a job in the civil service. I don’t celebrate you. Why? Because civil servants are the ones who are most privileged but most of them who never planned beyond their jobs fall tumbling down to the ground. The reason is because they fail to plan with the resources at their disposal.
Whether you are sacked form your job or you retire, your only sure guarantee is your own business that you were investing in when the good days were good. Your business my friend, is your retirement package. And if you like, you can even decide to sack yourself from your present job and face your business. Most persons who have a good job that pays them well will hardly want to give it up to risk running their own business.
If you are one of those persons, it’s still ok. You can start the business and pay someone to manage it while you do the supervision when you are back from your job.
The years beyond forty are years of consolidation and expansion. Then, you should be seizing the knowledge you have learnt in your young years when you took the risks and made the mistakes.
By the way, you are happy and thankful to God for your job, but you’ve not thanked your boss or thanked God for him. You think your prayers got you the job. The moment you got the job, you shouted at the top of your voice before the church congregation. Tomorrow morning, go thank your boss for the opportunity for the opportunity he has given you with the wisdom God gave him. He will bless you with the same grace.
You need this grace to create opportunities for others. Everywhere around you, young people are looking for opportunities to take off. Your business can make them leverage on their talents and skills to also get their seed. God will be glad with you that you used your opportunity correctly to create options for others. You too will be called boss and will put food on people’s table.
Your best years are now! You may be single, married and have kids, where you are now is just perfect for you to take off. The higher you go, the more difficult it will be for you to make a decision. One day, if you don’t seize now, you will realize how much time you’ve wasted.
You see those companies that you dream of working for; they started as someone’s dreams. Someone had to put his money inside it. Someone had to believe about it, someone had to be laughed at about it; someone had to be called foolish about it. But they believed in what they were doing. Many of them were in their twenties and thirties and they kick started their ideas regardless of how and what others thought about them.
If you are afraid of all the stones that will be thrown at you, sorry for you! No business runs without stones been thrown at them. The smart thing to do is to take all those stones and turn them into stepping stones.
Let someone dream to work for you! You will be proud of your achievements knowing that you were young and adding value to not just your life but people’s lives.
Starting your business before you turn forty gives you the drive to push ahead in your later years. When you have a strong foundation, you can build a superstructure on it. The same principle works with your life. When you make the right plans today, you get the leverage for a better future tomorrow.
Remember your salary is your seed not your tree. Your tree is your business. That business that you groom will produce seeds via salaries for those who will receive salaries from you. Your sustenance beyond now is dependent on what you are investing today.
Does your job guarantee opportunities for your children? Will your children get automatic jobs if peradventure you die in service? How about if you are maimed, will your job keep serving you? You will agree with me that even civil service jobs don’t guarantee these.
Your guarantee against these difficult realities of life is your own business. When you invest correctly on the right ideas, you’d also have the right results. When you can grow your business, you can have something to hand over to your children when you do grow up to retirement.
Your children deserve your correct investments. Your business is one of those investments. It’s not just about you, it is also about them. Your children can have your business as their starting point for more in life.
If you get over forty and you’ve not started your own business, you increase your challenges naturally. This does not mean that you will not succeed if you try, it’s just that it will take you so much work than when you are younger and this will cost you more. Starting now will cost you less because you may have the time and energy resources to put that you may lack as you grow up.
By all means, do start your own business before you turn forty. You will never regret it.