Tayo Solagbade’s
Performance Improvement IDEAS
(PI Squared) Newsletter
Monday 2nd January 2017
NB: This PI Squared newsletter will be published weekly, on Mondays, in place of the Speaking/Web Marketing IDEAS newsletter, starting from today – 15th February 2016. I’m reinventing my Monday newsletter content and theme, to accommodate my vision of serving the growing audience of serious minded individuals and organizations reaching out to me, with information, education. news and research findings designed to help them do what they do better.
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PII 047: Sometimes Resourcefulness, NOT MONEY, Is What You Need to Succeed [Hint: A Lack of Ideas Can Hold You Back – A Lack of Money Cannot]
The ability to survive and/or thrive during a period of economic downturn is a function of how creative people can get.
Unfortunately, when things are tough financially, as they tend to be during such periods, most of us tend to focus too much attention on money and our lack (or what we perceive to be our lack) of it.
In other words, I’m saying that a lot of us want to succeed, but the minute we discover that we are limited in our financial means, with regard to achieving our set goals, we tend to get easily demoralized and give up psychologically, leading us to ultimately surrender in physical terms – by quitting.
My message in this maiden issue of my Performance Improvement Ideas (PII) newsletter is therefore that sometimes what you need to succeed is RESOURCEFULNESS and not money.
How are you living your life with regard to achieving your valued goals?
The way you think about the problem you believe you have, especially with regard to achieving your goals using money, will determine how far you can go.
Quite often, you may find it useful to look into historical information available from other societies and cultures outside yours for ideas you can adopt or adapt to suit your unique needs or preferences.
If you keep an open mind, you’ll be shocked to find out that some people from the past you study achieved great success by being resourceful, so that their lack of money could not limit them.
What ideas can you borrow from them?
One big problem I see is that a degree of mis-education is holding many people back. And then there’s some amount of arrogance too, which is always very amusing to me.
I’ve met people who readily conclude the reason why one is emphasizing the need for “resourcefulness” is because you lack money – and not necessarily that you wish to be efficient in your use of money.
What these people do not know is that many wealthy people pay serious attention to making efficient use of their money. They are diligently frugal. Indeed some got wealthy by BEING that way!
That’s why they have wealth that makes them financially independent, such that if they stopped working they could continue living the same lifestyle without worrying about running out of money.
Some people have this mixed up. I’ve heard them say: “But Oga you’re bigger than N100 now. Why don’t you just forget it? No need to insist on collecting that little change.”
So if you insist on having your change, they call you a miser or say that you don’t have money.
I made peace with myself regarding this issue a long time ago, after I read this anecdote about John D. Rockefeller:
One day he made a phone call from a public pay phone after putting several dollar coins into the machine. When he was done, the time he spent indicated the machine was supposed to dispense a one dollar coin ads change, but this did not happen. After trying without success to get the machine to behave, this wealthy man decided to call the operator to file a complaint. But when the operator asked for his name in order to make the entry, it occurred to him that being a millionaire, making this formal complaint about a mere one dollar change would raise many eyebrows and make news he did not need. For that reason, he told her he’d changed his mind and hung up.
The moral of the above story is that if a millionaire of Rockefeller’s stature could be that concerned about keeping the small change, the rest of us have no excuse to be careless in handling such denominations.
So, one way to be resourceful is to spend prudently, in a manner that gets you maximum value for your money.
On the home front, what do you eat or drink? Must you always buy everything? Is it possible for you to make some of your own drinks for instance? What about the snacks you eat?
Example: In my home we make great tasting drinks from pineapple peels (based on a concept I developed in 2013, during my first year in Cotonou) along with various home baked products like cakes, cookies, chin-chin, African-style Pizza, bread etc. On each child’s birthday, the others join hands to make food and drinks for the family celebration – including cakes topped with icing.
The drinks in particular cost next to nothing because the major raw material is pineapple peels obtained free from fruit sellers in the neighborhood. The kids love it, as does their grandmother who gets sent bottled units most times we make them.
Every now and then the kids still buy and eat commercial soft drinks, but most times this homemade drink of ours is what they make, and it saves us money even as it is healthy.
The same thinking can be successfully applied to whatever you do in your business.
For instance, how many things are you currently doing with money to promote your business?
One of the things I say all the time is that today, PC and Internet technology puts so much power in people’s hands, but the lack of resourcefulness of people keep holding them back from using it to excel!
Do you understand how to SAVE some of that money by using the web to promote your products/services to your desired target audience?
If you do, how well are you succeeding? What can you do differently to get even better results?
The answers to all those questions relate directly to your ability to be resourceful – not how much money you have, or are willing to throw at your Internet Marketing efforts.
Indeed, zero cost web marketing is a reality that MANY people live everyday – people like ME. So what I’m saying here is not just wishful thinking. I LIVE this stuff – and my resourcefulness is what makes it possible for me, and similar others to do so.
By the way, just in case you’re one of those who think your kind of business cannot be marketed effectively using the web, let me assure you that NOTHING could be further from the truth.
Only you and your willingness to think creatively – or your willingness to be resourceful in making use of the web – can determine your success, or otherwise!
It does not matter if you sell caskets or (what Yoruba’s in Nigeria call) “Ponmo” (i.e. cooked animal hide/skin) – the web is there for you to use to succeed. It is malleable – you can mould it to suit your unique business marketing needs.
Regardless of what kind of business you run or what part of the planet you are operating from. As long as Internet connectivity is accessible, your use of web marketing is bound to benefit your brand greatly.
The key is to KNOW HOW to use it to get the results you need. And that’s where being RESOURCEFUL becomes necessary.
That is the factor that separates those who get useful lasting results from those who don’t. It’s why people with less money, individuals sometimes, achieve superior marketing success for their brands compared to wealthier others – including organizations.
Final Words: A Lack of Ideas Can Hold You Back – A Lack of Money Cannot
Click here to read an article about a special kind of very low cost, but delicious chocolate cake recipe created during the period of economic depression (and called “Depression Cake”).
I came across it last week and the story about how a lack of money drove people living in those times to think up new creative ways to make foods they loved without needing to spend money like they used to, really resonated with me.
The same situation led to the creation of the Depression Sandwich.
In Nigeria, the secessionist Biafrans invented the use of a perennial evergreen weed as a replacement protein ingredient in livestock feed formulation, to survive the potentially crippling effect of the Nigerian government’s embargo. In other words, they had to be resourceful to find a solution to the problem they were faced with.
All of this is proof that the key to succeeding is not having money. Instead it’s about being creative, being resourceful, and being an ideas person!
This is the key to succeeding in any area of endeavor, under any economic situation, in any part of the world, in any culture you may have to operate under.
Once again I refer you to history. Read and you will find that some of the most creative ideas that make the world turn today, came through the efforts of some of the most financially deprived people , who had no financial means to pursue their goals with what privileged others would consider basic necessities.
So they had to learn to be resourceful in using what they had to get what they wanted, and to go where they needed to be!
If YOU want to achieve authentic success, for the long term, in spite of any form of adversity, be it economic recession, or depression, YOU WILL need to adopt a similar mindset!
When you’ve got RESOURCEFULNESS, it boosts your ability to attract what you lack (e.g money), or those who have it, and are willing to give it to you. Take it from me: I LIVE THIS STUFF!
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